The last group average is quite inconsistent, but is possibly so because the range of test scores was greater in this group. It would probably have been more consistent to have sorted them in score-groups, each group have the same range, as was done below with the item of years schooling of parents. With this item the questionnaires were sorted into groups, each group having a test range of three points, as one group containing the questionnaires with the grades 74-76, the next 77-79, etc., and the average years schooling of both parents for each group was constructed. The table follows: The relation of the child's moral judgments grade to his intelligence quotient was next studied. It has been commonly conceded that the relationship between morals and intelligence is close, indeed that a means of measuring one also measured the other. The isolation of character traits from intelligence abilities is one of the most difficult of the problems in this field, a rather general doubt existing at the present as to whether or not it can be done at all. At any rate the relationship in this study was close and consistent. The results of the Illinois Examination, given two years before in all the schools of the city, were utilized. The intelligence quotient was now marked on each moral judgments paper and the papers grouped in four equal parts ranging from high to low of intelligence quotients. The median moral judgments scores resulted in the four groups: 77.2; 75.8; 74.8; and 72.8. The process was next reversed and the papers grouped in four parts from high to low moral judgments scores, the median intelligence quotient for each group resulting as follows: 109.7; 112.2; 104.5; and 99.0. Such a consistent rise and fall in the moral judgments score when related to the intelligence quotient, and of the I. Q. when related to the moral judgments score, and a marked difference in the scores in the highest and lowest groups, may be somewhat significant. Such conclusions as may be drawn from the above study seem to indicate that the factors of a child's intelligence, his parents' schooling and the child's Sunday School affiliations are constant in their influence upon the child's reaction to a situation involving moral judgment. The first two factors named above are quite possibly due to a common element, i. e., the parents' intelligence. Whether or not the same constant factor of the child's Sunday School membership would be present four years from the age at which these tests were given constitutes an interesting problem. In fact, with the above skeleton of treatment, a number of possible influences might be investigated. A definition of character is necessary, but to use that of Dewey's "Character is the working interaction of habits," it would seem difficult for the school, which is the one intelligent director of habitformation, to escape responsibility in this direction. 1. Athern, Walter S. The Indiana Survey of Religious Education, Doran Company, New York, 1923. 2. Charters, W. W. The Teaching of Ideals, The Macmillan Co., New York, 1928. 3. Character Education Methods, The Iowa Plan $20,000 Award, Character Education Institution, Chevy Chase, Washington, D. C. 4. Dewey, John. Human Nature and Conduct, Henry Holt and Co., New York, 1922. 5. Watson, Goodwin B. The Measurement of Fairmindedness, Teachers College Contributions, No. 176, New York. 5 Dewey, John, "Human Nature and Conduct," page 38, Henry Holt & Co., New York, 1922. The Temptations of Intelligence HORACE G. WYATE, UNIVERSITY OF OREGON, EUGENE, OREGON NE would perhaps, if the question were put to one, agree that a high level of intelligence is an invaluable quality in a teacher. And so of course it is, provided it is rightly used and directed. But the trouble is that superiority in intelligence is itself a temptation to its own. misuse. More than this, it is to some extent a drawback. The man whose power of comprehension, of relevant thinking, of apprehending relations, is above the average, may still be in other respects as other men are, no better if no worse. But his very ease of thinking leads him into three temptations, each a cause of teaching inefficiency. The first is that he is apt to pitch his teaching above the level of his class, and so to waste much of his energy. No doubt his very intelligence itself should enable him to avoid this mistake, for he should be quicker than the average in detecting the qualities and disabilities of his pupils, by reason of the intelligence that is in him. But in practice it often works out otherwise. To begin with the duller teacher is more appreciative of his pupils' difficulties for the very reason that they have been his own. What he has himself experienced he can understand in others and recall, while the very intelligent teacher in spite of all his intelligence, can yet not recall what he has never experienced. And apart from the past inexperience of the clever man, the facility of his mind is a drawback in the present. For because things come so easily to him, he is less able to detect wherein the difficulties of his intellectual inferiors consist. In presenting the solution of a problem he leaves out the simpler parts of the argument, or assumes premises which are by no means obvious to his pupils. More than this, the repetition of the obvious is irksome in proportion to obviousness; so The cure that the clever teacher is the more easily bored. for this is to apply his abilities not only to his subject, but to a study of his pupils themselves, of their difficulties and of their mental processes, when he will be able to make more rapid progress in understanding how to teach, that is, understanding how to make his pupils understand,-than his less intelligent fellow can ever attain. The few brilliant teachers who have also been brilliant thinkers are those who have taken the trouble to do this. Again, for reasons already given, the clever teacher is prone to pay most attention to the brighter members of his class, and to overlook the dull. Not only is his teaching attuned to their requirements, but his interest is directed to them also. One gets no kick out of endless repetition; interest depends upon novelty and progress: the bright pupil offers him his only chance of novelty and is less wearying than the ordinary or the dull. Here again the cure for this defect is to direct intelligence to a study of the dull mind, and to the methods of imparting knowledge to it. The clever teacher who undertakes this enterprise may find no little interest in his increasing knowledge of human nature, and incidentally in the way to handle it, be it dull or bright. But the clever teacher who cannot or will not make this diversion, being interested in his subject but not in his pupils, will do wisely, for himself and others, to change his profession. Then there is the danger of conceit. This is one of the besetting sins of the young teacher with high university honors, who has won unmerited praise and regard for the possession of qualities which he did nothing to acquire. His character is as yet too small for his intelligence, and he may be found any day expatiating in college classrooms in a way intended to impress his hearers, but not calculated to instruct or inform them. The classroom is not a place in which to air one's knowledge or display one's cleverness. It is a place for interesting and instructing students in the elements of a subject. One cure for this kind of conceit is experience; but it is not an infallible cure. Another cure is for the students, and particularly for the teacher's superiors, to listen to his teaching and be completely unimpressed. But there are other expedients: they vary with the individual. The fact is all clever men are tempted to a certain intellectual arrogance. Not that all fall a prey to the temptation. But in their hearts many clever people are apt to despise fools. They have no right to do so. What the dullard requires is help and sympathy. What he gets is often a measure of good-humored contempt. But his dullness is his misfortune, not his fault; just as on the other hand the ability of the highly intelligent is a piece of good fortune and not a merit. The intelligent person has many undeserved advantages. By a stroke of luck at the beginning he comes into the world with an endowment likely to make life much more profitable and much more interesting to him, and often happier, than his lesser abilities can make possible to his less well-endowed fellow-beings. He wins praise and admiration for qualities he may have done nothing, or at least no more than any one else, to develop. It is frequently the case that the dull child works harder than the clever child at school, and often continues to do so throughout life. He is indeed more often in a position which compels him to do so, for on the whole the more remunerative occupations fall to the lot of the more intelligent. But in spite of this the intelligent sometimes add to the many afflictions of the dull the sense of inferiority, the feeling that they are being looked down upon. The clever teacher is not exempt from this intellectual arrogance, a defect of character to which his abilities and the praise of others tempt him. For this again there is no cure but a clear understanding of the merits of the case, of which the intelligent is naturally capable, and the cultivation of that sympathy with stupidity which if the heart is sound will follow from that clear understanding. |