American Misgivings
FEBRUARY, 1922
BY CORNELIA JAMES CANNON
O such themes — equalities! O divine average! — WALT WHITMAN
I
THE World War brought us many strange revelations, perhaps none more unexpected than the discovery that intrinsic values inhere in the supposedly purely ornamental aspects of our intellectual life. Before the spring of 1917, our meteorologists had been for years pursuing their innocent, vocation, unnoted and unsung. They had sent up their kites from obscure little hills by day and by night; they had charted the layers of air-currents above our indifferent heads; they had made pictures of clouds and studies of storm motions, with an ardor that seemed to require no appreciation from us. We had tolerated them on the theory that curiosity is in itself a valuable asset, and that, having once given this particular aspect of it a professional status, we must philosophically accept the lean with the fat.
When we had joined the Allies, these quaint enthusiasts were found to be the only persons in the world who knew enough to advise our aviators and to protect them from the terrors of the celestial deep. From previously unheeded laboratories the meteorologists were proudly brought forth into the light of day. They were asked to serve on important committees, and to spend much of their time imparting to thousands of eager students the knowledge they had acquired through years of patient study. Prophets are seldom so honored in their own country.
Another group of searchers for the truth, the psychologists, had likewise borne their years of indifference from the multitude, and of active opposition from the ignorant. They had spent such money as was available from vested funds, and such leisure as university duties allowed them, to pursue the study of mankind. Their particular penchant was the mind of man; its qualities, its capabilities, its methods of functioning. They had gone up and down the scale of creation in their search for light. Every type of reaction to the universe of which the brainsubstance seemed capable was tabulated and analyzed. These activities were tolerated, though the knowing shrugged their shoulders at such fatuous endeavors.
Then upon America fell the task of selecting and preparing, within the short space of a few weeks or, at most, months, millions of men for a great diversity of duties requiring varied and different abilities. It was instantly clear that the selection could be done neither by rule of thumb nor by any haphazard game of counting out, however rapid and easily administered such a method might be. Those who knew something of the delicate art of choosing a man for a job must come to the help of a nation facing a desperate emergency under conditions of the greatest stress.
As it happened, we were better able than any other of the allied nations to undertake this responsibility, for the methods of measuring human abilities, initiated by Cattell in America and Binet in France, had been carried to a higher degree of perfection in this country, and tested out on a far greater scale, than in any other country in the world. The intelligence-rating in our army was the fruit of ‘preparedness’ on the part of the American psychologists. In the first weeks of the war they threw themselves into the work of preparing tests to be given on a gigantic scale; and as soon as the drafted men were in the cantonments, and the assistance psychology could render was recognized by those in authority, their work of making the tests and grading the enlisted men was begun. During the anxious and strenuous months of 1917 and 1918, when the army was being built up for its fateful activities in France, the psychologists were rapidly putting in the hands of the army officers data concerning the mental alertness of the enlisted men, to be used as an aid in the assignment of each individual to the task to which he was best suited.
The tests did their important service during the days of war, but they have left in our hands, for the days of peace, data the value of which is just beginning to be realized.
II
The army intelligence tests were given to 1,726,966 of our officers and men, in the years 1917 and 1918. The tests were of two types: the Alpha examination for those who could read and write English readily; and the Beta examination for the illiterate, the nonEnglish speaking, and for those who could read and write English, but without facility. The first, which comprised a series of eight markedly different tests, although it required almost no writing on the part, of the subject, did demand ability in using written and oral instruction. The second type was, in effect, the first translated into pictorial form, in which written and oral instructions were replaced by pantomime and demonstration. Individual examinations were given to those making a very low score on one or both of the standard examinations.
The object of the tests was to sift out the mental defectives not qualified for military service; to classify soldiers according to their mental capacity for proper assignment in the army; to discover men of superior ability, for report to their officers; and to select men with marked special skill. The tests were carefully devised and given; in the early stages of critical study of the data, each record was checked, so far as possible, by comparison with the actual performance of the individual tested, and by the practical judgment of his officers on his ability. The results have been carefully analyzed, so that we have in the totals a significant psychological picture of the young manhood of the country.
What is the kind of intelligence these tests were devised to grade? Our newspapers and magazines have been flooded lately by popular so-called intelligence tests — a mixture of catch-questions, inquiries about facts not worth knowing, and upheavings of the dust-bins of general information. They are, of course, utterly valueless as a measure of mental ability as well as of discrimination in the accumulation of details. The army intelligence tests were distinctly not of this type. They were, in the first place, not tests of verbal or literary proficiency; for as high a grade could be attained by the non-English-speaking individual as by one readily conversant with the language. They did not measure educational acquirement or general information; for the illiterate was at no disadvantage with the most erudite university graduate. Nor were they tests of rapidity of mental processes; for though the time was strictly limited, control-tests given with double time showed only a slight improvement in the records of the lower grades of mind. This was doubtless due to the fact that the tests were not primarily tests of memory, in which associations could be slowly summoned to mind, but tests of intelligence, which was once for all capable or incapable of recognizing the situations which the questions presented. Nor was there discrepancy due to the two types of examination; for those who took high rank in the Alpha examination took equally high rank in the Beta, and those who took a low rating in the Alpha did the same in the other.
The intelligence the examinations were primarily designed to test was capacity to see things in relation, ability to grasp situations as a whole, and power to reason. These are innate qualities, independent of circumstance, yet characterizing the individual’s every reaction to his environment. The men were grouped, according to their standing in the tests, in five grades, from A to E. A and B represented superior intelligence, the two being recommended for officer rank; the C group was average intelligence, varying from fair noncommissioned-officer type to average soldier; and D and E indicated inferior to very inferior intelligence, in some cases fit for certain kinds of low-grade service, in others only for dismissal from the army. Men of the superior grades were found in all ranks, officers and privates, the educated and the uneducated, but the individuals stood out markedly from their fellows.
In terms of mental age, — a classification used by the psychologists, based on studies of the capacities of schoolchildren of different ages, the range of the drafted men was from eighteen years or over, the superior grade, down to a mental age of below nine years, the inferior grade. In civil life a moron, or high-grade feebleminded person, has been defined as any adult with a mental age of from seven to twelve years. If this definition can be interpreted as meaning any adult below the mental age of thirteen, almost half of the white draft, 47.3 per cent, would have been classed as morons. It is clear that a very much larger proportion of low-grade intelligence must exist in our population than has been heretofore suspected. The totals from all the tests give the following percentages of the different levels of mental ability found in our white drafted army: superior men, 12 per cent; average men, 66 per cent; and inferior men, 22 per cent. Probably this is, roughly, the average of the community as a whole; for the men of superior ability, kept out of the draft for work in essential industries, and officers not included in the total, were offset by the feebleminded and the defective rejected by the draft boards and never sent to the cantonments.
There are several reasons why the results of these examinations possess particular authority and significance. In the first place, they worked. When the grading was used with care and discrimination, a man’s actual performance corresponded closely to the probabilities forecast by the examination record. The officers found it a rapid method of ranking men according to ability to do the tasks required in army service, so that fewer men wasted time attempting work beyond their capacity or burning their hearts out at inferior duties. The army authorities have recognized the value of the tests as an adjunct of the service, and the examinations continue in use in the permanent military organization.
The tests were applied on so huge a scale, and with so complete an elimination of personal slant on the part of the examiners, that the data are of unprecedented and enormous value — almost in a class by themselves. Even making every allowance for errors in individual tests, the numbers are so great as to give assurance that incidental errors balance one another. We can therefore feel justified in using, for the wiser organization of our democracy, the new insight into the mental make-up of our people which the tests have brought. We must ask ourselves how far these revelations of our intellectual quality as a nation affect our judgment of the value or futility of the different governmental expedients — representation, the initiative, referendum, and recall, direct election of senators, education for citizenship, restriction of immigration and naturalization — with which we have been experimenting; and from what mistaken courses in the use of these devices of our national life they may rescue us.
III
One interesting use that the army organizers made of the ratings from the intelligence tests was in apportioning the proper percentages of men of the different mental grades to each company according to its type of service — aviation, machine-gun, engineer, signal corps, or work-battalion. The discovery of the proportions that yielded the best results was a matter of practical experiment; and a fine middleground had to be chosen, between putting in an undue number of inferior men, making the company heavy and unmalleable, and wasting ability by mixing in more of the superior men than were needed to leaven the lump.
Our industrial concerns might well take a leaf from the experience of the army experts, and seek out that admixture of men of the different grades, both in small groups and in large, on technical jobs and on crude manual processes, which is most certain to make the perfect working unit. A railroad would require a proportion of the various abilities quite different from that most effective in a coal-mine; and a university might find it difficult to function with as many inferior men on the faculty as could be profitably utilized in a cotton-mill. A street-cleaning squad could use to advantage a high order of moral excellence, but it could do its work with a very much smaller percentage of individuals of superior mental ability than could a laboratory of inventors, wherein new and intricate machinery is being devised.
From the point of view of our national problem, the developing of democratic institutions and forms of government, what are the proportions of citizens of the varied mental abilities which promise to bring, most certainly and speedily, the desired end of universal justice and happiness? Would democracy flourish best in a community made up entirely of D men, or in one made up entirely of A men? Is true democracy attainable only when natural equality is coexistent with political equality? The assumption in any discussion based on questions of this character is that intelligence is of positive value, a yardstick by which human worth is to be measured. Is this a just estimate of the importance of intelligence in community life, or would its absence create only a momentary inconvenience?
So many of our criminals and perverts, our socially maladjusted, have been found to be feeble-minded, that the general public has comfortably assumed that lack of brains is the root of all evil. More careful and exhaustive study has shown, however, that, although feeble-mindedness does, indeed, play a large and important part in many types of delinquency, it is not the sole, or perhaps the determining, factor in crimes against society. Defects of will, uncontrolled impulses, wayward desires, consuming egotism bring at least as many to disaster as does defective intelligence. We do not know the distribution of moral qualities in relation to intellectual, but we are safe in assuming that they are not the perquisite of any particular level of intelligence. May we therefore conclude that we can get along without good minds if we can only cultivate good wills? We might desire both, but which can we least afford to do without?
On any throw, the dice seem to be loaded for intelligence. Feeble-mindedness is not a desirable quality in itself, and its possession does not exclude the possibility of additional defects of will, so that one disability may in reality be two. Given brains, there is a chance that the will may be fortified, since moral excellence depends in part on judgment, and that in turn on mental alertness; but without intelligence no nature is proof against the chance sowings of noxious weeds. In whatever measures we take to reduce the number of the mentally inferior, we cannot hope that the strain of defective mentality will soon die out of the race; for the number of feeble-minded in the United States undoubtedly runs into the millions. The general level of intelligence will be in no danger, either in our lifetime or in that of our children, of rising unduly high.
During the war the men of superior intelligence proved of transcendent importance. They were the brains of the army. The average men were as helpless without them as frogs without their cerebrums. But do days of peace have the same need of these abilities?
If the theory of evolution holds any truth, it strengthens in us a conviction that intellectual capacity has developed by some selective process working on the occasional superior types which were the offspring of earlier inferior forms. Man has not always possessed his present insight and powers. The geniuses of his race have discovered, at different periods of development, how to plant seeds, to domesticate animals, to control disease, to master the air. As man, under the guidance of these gifted ones, has acquired a partial control over his environment, he has spread across the continents in ever-increasing numbers. He has built cities, and railroads to connect them, and ships to sail the Seven Seas. He has invented gunpowder and poison-gas, chained the waterfall, and forced the air to carry his messages. His world is a very different one from that in which the Java Man first saw the light of day. Is the lower type of man, the D grade of intelligence, our modern Java Man, able to cope with this Frankenstein that the genius of the race has created?
The high-grade feeble-minded can be trained to simple motions, repetitions, imitations, activities that require no complicated mental processes, and are able, under proper supervision, to live a useful and harmless life in a simple community. Indeed, those born on farms seldom come to schools for the defective, or appear in the annals of the state, save as they are born and die. But our farms are rapidly ceasing to be a possible refuge for the lower grades of intelligence. Not only is our civilization no longer a rural one, but the agricultural pursuits are themselves becoming more elaborate. The elimination of crude hand-labor, its replacement by complicated farm-machinery, the increase of urban contacts, and an intensified community life in the country districts, reduce the usefulness of the farm as a recourse for the intelligences unable to cope with the complexities of modern society.
In cities the inferior-minded are speedily recognized as a problem, and often as a handicap and a menace. Some psychiatrists affirm that our civilization is based on the labor of these unfortunates, as other civilizations have been based on the labor of slaves: that our sewers are dug by them, our railroads built by them; that they perform the mechanical processes in our factories, load and unload our ships, pick our cotton, mine our coal. The problems presented by their presence in our midst is, however, no less difficult than that presented by the slave; for they contribute more than their quota to our juvenile courts, our reform schools, our jails and houses of prostitution. They are the drifters from job to job; the first to be dropped from employment, the last to be taken on; the patrons of municipal lodging-houses; the loafers on the street-corners, as well as the patient plodders at the unskilled tasks. In the future, the inferior type is certain to be far more of a perplexity; for we cannot, expect a less complex civilization until the race is born again. But what are the present prospects of reducing the 22 per cent of inferior intelligences already in our population?
IV
The army intelligence tests have been analyzed on the basis of country of origin of the foreign-born. Some data of quite appalling significance are assembled. The white draft, as a whole, had 22 per cent of inferior men: those of the draft who were born in Poland had 70 per cent; in Italy, 63, in Russia, 60. Of all the foreign-born, 46 per cent were of this very low grade of intelligence, with an almost negligible number of superior individuals.
We could argue that from these inferior strains might emerge, in some future age, a race of superior capacity; for from some such undeveloped types must have evolved the best strains of our day. But our problem as Americans is immediate. We cannot make our decisions in terms of geological eras when we discuss the referendum, universal suffrage, the segregation of the unfit, and the reduction of tubercular infection throughout the country. We must have a population to which these words convey some meaning, if we are to share alike in the privileges and responsibilities of democracy. In the light of recent revelations as to the country of origin of those now pressing for entrance into the United States, these statistics are like the handwriting on the wall. Our melting-pot may fuse these elements with the others, but the resulting metal does not promise to be one to stand heavy strains.
We cannot draw comfort from the thought that residence in this country will alter the mental characteristics of the immigrant and transmute the lead into fine gold. An analysis of the draft on the basis of length of stay in this country does not bear out any such assumption. The tables show a very slight difference in favor of those who had been here longer; but the difference is so slight as to lead the examiners to suggest that it may be an artifact of the method of examination itself.
There is no doubt that to throw our gates open to these groups is to add to our racial stocks the poorest that Europe has to give. The eastern European comes to us with a slant toward revolution, a hatred of whatever power there may be, engendered by centuries of finding that every power was inimical. His admission to a country engaged in the hazardous task of working out a self-governing community might seem somewhat of a risk. Given a high grade of intelligence, however, the danger is negligible; for education can train in the ideals of democracy, and each national group would have opportunity and ability to make characteristic contributions to a solution of the complexities of democratic society.
But what chance of this is there with the inferior grade of intelligence? Such individuals form the material of unrest, the stuff of which mobs are made, the tools of demagogues; for they are peculiarly liable to the emotional uncontrol which has been found to characterize so many of the criminals who come before our courts. They are persons who not only do not think, but are unable to think; who cannot help in the solution of our problems, but, instead, become a drag on the progress of civilization. In a crude society they have a place, may even serve a use. In a society so complex as that which we are developing, they are a menace which may compass our destruction.
We might well eliminate the D and E intelligences which are not homegrown by stiffening the exclusion laws and more adequately backing our medical-port officers in their efforts to keep down our intake of defectives. If our legislative intelligence is not sharp enough to realize that we might keep out many of the persons of average ability, to our ultimate advantage,there can certainly be no two opinions about the exclusion of the inferior mind. It is not only the individual whom we exclude, but that ever-widening circle of his descendants, whose blood may be destined to mingle with and deteriorate the best we have. Theoretically the inferior-minded are ineligible for admission to our country. How liberally this provision is interpreted, and how ineffective is the exclusion practised, may be surmised from the proportions of this type found among the foreign-born in the draft.
A democracy is the most difficult form of government, to perfect, because it demands of each citizen so much understanding and coöperation. Its achievement halts because of the imperfection of its component members. However much the forms of democracy may be clung to, when the majority of the citizens of a country are of a low grade of intelligence, an oligarchy is inevitable. Contrast the so-called democracy of Mexico with the so-called monarchies of England and Holland, whose nationals in our army ranked in intelligence above those of any other nation in the draft, and far above the average for America as a whole. An enthusiast for education might see in this disparity evidence that the sole impediment to the coming in of a true democracy is illiteracy. Let all the potential citizens learn to read and write, and the difficulties will vanish. But the differences in the liberties of men in these contrasted countries lie deeper than any difference in the dissemination of education; they run back to the gray substance in the brain-cases of the people themselves.
If the building-up of democratic institutions in a population composed in large part of inferior men presents difficulties, what would be the case in a world of superior men? Would the citizens of such a country be high-strung, nervous, exacting, unwilling to do, and perhaps incapable of doing, heavy physical labor — the flower of civilization without the roots and leaves?
Australia and New Zealand have a population more homogeneous, on a higher level economically, and, judging from similar communities in our own country, — for example, Oregon, Washington, and Montana, whose citizens were tested in the draft, — of a higher general level of intelligence than is found, perhaps, anywhere else in the world; and yet their pleasant lands are not free from problems. Their very homogeneity and equality develop sharp jealousies and antagonisms between labor and capital, which threaten to destroy them both. Stagnation seizes many of their industries, and internal dissension dries up the sources of their wealth. In the life of the family in New Zealand, the labor of the woman who has a home to manage is so unrelieved, the aid that the community brings to the reduction of her burden so slight, that late marriages and small families are becoming the rule and not the exception. A country in which the men will not adjust themselves to doing the exacting tasks of a developing civilization, and the women will not bear children, is a country which is doomed. Can it ever hold the ‘Islands of the Blessed’ in the South Seas, against the pressure of a fecund race of fierce industry and diversified talents, such as the Japanese, for instance?
We may well doubt whether a civilization composed wholly of inferior, or wholly of superior men and women would be a complete success. The subject cannot, unfortunately, be put to experimental proof, because the laboratory would have to be the world, and men are not so tractable as guinea-pigs. There is nothing left for us save to observe the proportions of mind of the different classes in that democracy which seems to serve best the interests of all its citizens, and take those proportions as the working basis for a balanced community. Given our own country’s present distribution of mental abilities, —12 per cent of the best type and 22 per cent of the poorest, the average lying between, — what adaptation of governmental organization would be helpful in bringing about the most successful functioning of the groups?
V
What do we mean when we say that a country is not ready for self-government? Do we mean that the citizens are illiterate, that they have not studied history, or been taught how to cast a ballot? or do we mean that they have not yet evolved sufficient intelligence to grapple with the problems incident to the administration of a democracy? In the first interpretation, we could name a date for the coming in of freedom. Fifteen years of schooling and a little practice in running the machinery of government would make a nation ready to manage its own affairs. In the second interpretation, we might feel that generations must elapse, and even then nothing entitled to the name of self-government would characterize the type of political organization which such people might devise.
What are the qualities essential in human beings for the running of a democracy? The difficulties of administration are inherently great. So many men, so many minds; such conflicts of wills and wants; such need for endless patience and tolerance to make compatible the inevitable incompatibility of political equality and natural inequality! To work out these neverending problems of the adjustments of man to man demands mental abilities of a high order, inventiveness, inexhaustible ingenuity. So far as we can judge, it promises best in communities where there is homogeneity of language and of ideals, and at least, a fair average of intelligence. What prospect of success is there here in America, with the average of intelligence of the citizens already so much lower than we could have expected, and with an unceasing influx of potential citizens who are destined to bring the average still lower ?
The ideal of our constitution-builders was that of a representative government. There has been of late years a wave, perhaps past its crest, of desire for more direct government through the initiative, the referendum, and the recall. In theory, these forms promise the purest and surest democracy, a method of making the voice of the people heard and the will of the people immediately effective. In fact, they have everywhere disappointed the high hopes of those who advocated their adoption as an advance in the art of freedom. They have not worked for progress. It is difficult to say why, though indifference, inborn conservatism, ignorance of the issue, and reluctance on the part of the voter to make the effort to understand the issue, have all been given as explanations for their failure. The recall has made self-respecting men unwilling to take positions from which any disgruntled faction could recall them, and in which their effectiveness would be limited by the constant need of conciliating the malcontents.
The trade-union movement, itself an experiment, in democracy, has had to give up the high hope with which it hailed the expedients of the initiative and the referendum, and admit the non-fulfillment of their original promise of good.
Is it not possible that the failure of these devices of democracy is due, not to any imperfection inherent in the devices themselves, but to a fundamental inferiority in the average intelligence of the voters, which makes them unable to use the methods wisely? How can we expect a man with a mental age of less than ten years to deal intelligently with the complicated questions submitted to the voters in a referendum? Has not the impossible been demanded of a nation, nearly half of whose population is under the mental age of thirteen? How can such men and women determine the relative values of the sales tax and the surtax, or display a discriminating preference for a tariff on lemons over a tariff on wheat?
Our forefathers, who were a canny lot of men, in spite of the handicap of being behind our times, organized a representative government because they felt that there was one thing that every man could do intelligently — select leaders to represent him. Man shares with many lower forms of animal life a desire to follow leaders. The elk, the buffalo, the wild geese, the sheep, the creatures that hunt or feed in flocks or herds, follow leaders who are, so far as we can judge, the most intelligent, the best equipped, and the speediest in reaction-time of all the group. If we could develop as sound a sense of the type of leader we need as seems to come intuitively to the lower animals, our worst difficulties might be overcome. Can we be trained to recognize and choose the best to lead us? Can we learn not to weary, as did the Athenians of old, of hearing Aristides called ‘ the Just,’ and refrain from selecting a good mixer in his stead?
The psychologists have not as yet offered us tests to detect in the individual an ability to recognize wisdom in others. We do see in children, however, an almost eerie understanding of the character and capacities of parents and teachers. Their failure to use the same unerring instinct in adult life may be due to the fact that the opportunities to observe those to whom they must look for guidance in later years are not so great as in childhood. Perhaps the problem of the future is to bring about more frequent and intimate contacts between the potential leaders of our democracy and their sovereigns, the voters. We must teach our children to look for the qualities that characterize the able, and to reject the cheap attractions of the demagogue. They must see and hear in our schools the persons of ability and character in the community.
Our tendency in this country is to deplore our selection of leaders, to throw up our hands in despair at the choices of the electorate, and make no effort to create new standards of choice. In so far as we can, we must imitate in the large cities the safeguard of firsthand information as to the qualities and abilities of those to whom we plan to entrust our common interests, which was possible in the early days of the Republic. It may be that the final test of our civilization and the assurance of the continuation of our democracy will be our capacity to recognize and follow the true leaders of our race.
If we can train our electorate to choose honest men of the superior type to represent them, we can count on protection from our worst dangers. The very basis of representative government is the opportunity for knowledge of the many-sided problems of government possible to the representative, but impossible to the individual voter. From the conflicts of minds and ideals in representative groups, truth, and finally wisdom, may emerge.
The A and B man may appear from any social group in the community; the only point the C or D man need consider is, that it is to the interest of all to be represented by those possessing the highest abilities. He is choosing, not a master, but a servant. He must learn that his best servant is not the politician who gives him a turkey on Thanksgiving, but the representative who insists on clean streets and the prompt collection of garbage. The average man can learn this in time; the inferior man may not be able to grasp a situation presenting so many complications. Indeed, we may have to admit that the lower-grade man is material unusable in a democracy, and to eliminate him from the electorate, as we have the criminal, the insane, the idiot, and the alien.
The direct election of senators was hailed as a great step forward. As a matter of fact, the senators so chosen show no distinct rise in quality. The men sent to the Senate by the older method had their defects, and the system its dangers; but the innovation is at least of problematic value. We try one type of city charter; then, in desperation, we try another; but, in the end, we are about where we were at the beginning — inefficiency appearing where we should have efficiency, and dishonesty where honesty is the prime requisite. Is it possible that we might be brought to recognize political offices as technical jobs, requiring a technical training which could be determined by examination? Then, if we still wished to exercise our prerogative of choice, we could elect, from a list submitted by the examiners, the officers of our preference.
We have shown an eagerness to naturalize the newcomers to our shores as promptly as possible, and an inclination to make the way easy and discrimination difficult. Is this the part of true wisdom? Should not the goal of membership in the great Republic be attainable only through special effort and distinct merit? How much do we augment our collective wisdom by adding inferior minds to it? Has not the time come to withhold the privilege and responsibility of citizenship from the majority of the newer immigrants, whose quality shows so marked a falling-off from that of the immigrants of fifty years ago, and whose intelligence is so far below that of the ordinary American, and bestow it only upon carefully selected members of the group?
VI
What light do the intelligence tests throw on our educational problems? The tests here are of a peculiar cogency, for they are tests of intelligence, which is a measure of educability. We are committed in a democracy to the fundamental thesis that each citizen must have opportunity to get as much education as he can or will take. Nothing is, however, more obvious than that the differences in ability to take education are as extreme as the differences in intelligence itself. The A man’s meat may be the C man’s poison. What would feed the D man’s mind might starve the B man. A common-school education for all alike is a practical possibility, but it must be so organized that the A minds pass forward rapidly; that the C mind is spared stagnation because of slow advance, by a broadening and enriching of the curriculum at each intellectual level; and that the D mind does not suffer humiliating contrast with its more competent fellows, but is educated in those ways best suited to its particular capacities.
The subjects basic to a civilized community life must be given alike to all: the three R’s, some knowledge of the ideals of a form of government such as ours, and the duties and responsibilities of citizenship therein. But beyond the earlier stages of education, is not the community entitled to a pretty rigorous process of selection? The wisdom of a civilization old and experienced in the ways of human nature was evidenced in the Chinese method of determining their Mandarin class by the elaborate system of examination of the literati. Foolish as many of the criteria seem to-day, those individuals who survived the ordeal were the fittest in intellectual quality and staying power. In any country is not education necessarily a process of establishing a group trained for greater responsibilities than the average? In each generation such a selection is made. The imperative need in a democracy is, not that this training be given to all, but that the opportunity for such selective discipline be available to the qualified, wherever and whenever they appear.
The higher education is the most costly and elaborate of all the types, and the public, which pays the bills, may feel justified in excluding from any attempt at mastering its intricacies those who have already shown themselves incapable of taking advantage of it. Educational processes are helpless in the face of native incapacity. Not more than a pint can be poured into a pint receptacle; the rest sinks into the ground and is lost. Professional training is becoming more and not less expensive, and the community has the right to decide to whom this higher education is to be given. We cannot afford to invest our largest sums in our second-rate men. For our own sakes we must select our best for the types of training that demand a high order of ability.
The data from the army tests concerning the negro present the first concrete material, on a large scale, by which we can check up the partisan asseverations of the friends and critics of the race. Of the entire negro draft 80 per cent were in the D grade, 89 per cent under the mental age of thirteen. Compare this with the white draft, 22 per cent of the D grade and 47 per cent under the mental age of thirteen. The differences are sufficiently startling to convince us that, in the education of the negro race, we are confronted by an educational problem of a very special kind. Emphasis must necessarily be laid on the development of the primary schools, on the training in activities, habits, occupations which do not demand the more evolved faculties. In the South particularly, where in some of the states the percentage of D men among the negroes of the draft ran over 90 per cent, the education of the whites and colored in separate schools may have justification other than that created by race-prejudice. Of course, the ideal line of cleavage is on the basis of the individual child’s ability, irrespective of color; but the problem of the education of the larger group in the two races presents marked contrasts. A public-school system, preparing for life young people of a race, 50 per cent of whom never reach a mental age of ten, is a system yet to be perfected, if indeed we have so far recognized the urgency of the need for adequate grappling with the problem.
Vocational guidance started as a more or less haphazard effort to direct schoolchildren to jobs and to special training opportunities, acting both as an encourager of education, and as a bureau of information about factories, employment-offices, and work-certificates. It has rapidly developed from that, to a study of the child’s abilities, and advice based on such knowledge. The achievement of the army officers in adjusting, with the help of the intelligence-rating, millions of men, in a minimum of time, to tasks which brought victory to the American arms is indicative of the possibilities in vocational guidance.
Vocational guidance depends on an intelligence-rating of both the individual and the job, and a competent matching of the two. Personal preferences, family limitations, community facilities, character, are all variants to be considered, but the rock-bottom determining factor is the ability of the individual, the mental capacity, which holds priority over every other element involved. To send the grade D boy to make a Widal test is as cruel as to set. the grade A boy to breaking coal, and as wasteful of the resources of a world all too poorly furnished with outstanding ability.
The average man belongs to that group which gives significance to the history of the race. He conserves the achievements of the past, keeps our machinery of the everyday life going, does the work that the superior man will not and the inferior man cannot do, and by his steadiness, his patience, and his control, keeps the world from tearing itself to pieces. But he cannot better his fate without the help of the men of superior ability. To them he must look for leadership, for an understanding of the way out of the dark and tragic stages in our evolving civilization. They are the men who invent our machinery, make possible the telephone, the wireless, the electric light, the steamship, the airplane; who wipe out disease, write the great literature of the world, organize our industries and our methods of distribution, make the laws, write the constitutions, guide the revolts for freedom, destroy superstitions, read the mystery of the rocks, study the motions of the stars, interpret the evolution of man. They are the members of our race who have led us up from barbarism and keep us from sinking back into it. There is nothing of the wisdom of the ages which can be offered to them, no opportunity for advancing them, which does not bring rich dividends of added prosperity and happiness to the rest of us.
One happy finding of the army tests was the very large proportion of the A and B men who had had the advantages of higher education. This does not extenuate the deprivation of the hundreds who had not, — our country is so much the poorer for that, — but it does show how difficult it is to keep real ability from coming into its own.
Our civilization halts, and our unsolved problems pile up in the lean generations; then the powers that watch over us smile upon us, and fill our cradles with wonder-children, as in 1809, that annus mirabilis, and the world leaps forward again. The highest wisdom demands that we cherish those in our midst who show even a flickering of the divine flame, and guard against the dying-down of the sacred fire because of our preoccupation with matters of less importance. In a democracy, our major hope, as well as our major responsibility, must always lie in the discovery and development of those among us who are endowed with the capacity to inspire us, and the ability to lead us to a fuller life.