Vedic Wisdom

The Binet-Simon tests of children's intelligence have been the subject of much discussion during the past few years, both in this country and in America. Much of this discussion seems to have been carried on, at times, without any knowledge of the original aim or purpose for which these tests were devised, and as if, so to speak, they were invented as a means for ascertaining the relative intellectual powers of all children, and so of affording to the teacher a ready and sure means of accurately classifying and grading the children under his charge. As a consequence, there is a tendency, in some quarters, to search for and to endeavour to establish some absolute standard or criterion of intelligence which shall be valid, irrespective of the nationality, or the class, or the particular environment of the child.It is hoped that the publication in translation of the work of Binet and Simon in which these tests first appeared, along with the complete series of tests as extended and revised during the lifetime of the former, will tend to remove this twofold misapprehension, and make the educationalist, as well as the wider public interested in social questions, acquainted with the real purpose which underlay the devisal or invention of the tests, and so enable all to perceive that their relative value, as measuring stages of intelligence, must be judged by the purpose for which they were devised.