Evening star., 1938-02-19
STARS, MEN AND ATOMS
Notebook OF Science Progress in Field.
Laboratory and Study.
BY THOMAS r. HENRY.

Some long cherished ideas of American
educators and intelligence testers fall by
the wayside in the report on intellectual
growth, based on continuous studies of
children In the experimental school Of
the University Of Chicago by Dr. Frank
N. Freeman and Charles D. Flory of the
university staff, which has just been
issued by the Child Development Society
Of the National Research Council.
Also, granting the validity of tests in
proving anything, the studies led to the
discovery of several hitherto unsuspected
phenomena in mental development.
The tests uncovered three periods Of
mental growth for nearly all the children
studied:
First. speeding up for two or three
years before adolescence, approximately
between the tenth and twelfth years, in
elusive.
Second, a small decline in growth rate
during early adolescence, running from
about 13 to IA. inclusive.
Third, a period of steady upward
growth until 10 or 20 and probably
beyond.
Boys and girls each showed the same
periods and about the same growth rates
in each. This contradicts, DR.. Freeman
points out, an assumption often made by
educators. The big -adolescent squirt
in physical growth occurs in girls about
two years earlier than in boys The
belief has been that this is also the
time when girls 60 ahead of boys tenn
porarily in intellectual development. The
findings are that the mind growth spurts
Of the two sexes take place at exactly
the same time. There is bare sugges-
ton, DR.. Freeman says, that girls 20
ahead little faster between II and
13 and that boys make this up by 8
slightly greater acceleration between Is
and II.
Perhaps the finding of most practical
Importance, contradicting another widely
held assumption by which misguided
educators may have ruined some lives,
relates to the difference between dull
and bright children. None Of the Uni
versity of Chicago children, of course,
were very dull. The lowest had intelli-
gence quotients of close to 100. They
were only comparatively dull in relation
to some of the others.
The assumption has been that as chill
dren grow older their intellectual differ
ences are augmented-that is, that the
mind" of the dull child slows up and
stops growing sooner than that of the
bright child. Say two boys are II and
had scores of 100 and 113, respectively.
Psychologists have believed that at l6 the
scores would be something like 100 and
125. The differences, they thought, would
grow greater instead Of less.
For this reason the dull" children
have been discouraged from planning to
enter college and urged to 60 into the
trades. From this time on, it was held,
their minds would grow more slowly and
stop growing sooner. DR.. Freeman's
findings contradict this without reser-
vations He finds that the naturally
bright children have faster mental
growth than the slow children-and
sometimes even much faster growth
during the vital pre-adolescent squirt be-
tween 10 and 13. After this both settle
down to about the same constant rate
and keep 1t up. Both were going strong
when the tests ended as they were
entering the 20s.
That Is, the relatively dull have as
much of q chance to benefit from higher
education as their supposedly brighter
brothers and sisters. This explains some
Of the contradictions which have puzzled
educators In tho past and which they