THE HEREDITARIAN THEORY OF IQ 183trained according to their inheritance and channeled into profes-
sions appropriate for their biology. Mental testing becomes a the-
ory of limits. Antihereditarians, like Binet, test in order to identify
and help. Without denying the evident fact that not all children,
whatever their training, will enter the company of Newton and
Einstein, they emphasize the power of creative education to
increase the achievements of all children, often in extensive and
unanticipated ways. Mental testing becomes a theory for enhancing
potential through proper education.
Binet spoke eloquently of well-meaning teachers, caught in the
unwarranted pessimism of their invalid hereditarian assumptions
(1909, pp. 16-17):
As I know from experience,... they seem to admit implicitly that in a
class where we find the best, we must also find the worst, and that this is a
natural and inevitable phenomenon, with which a teacher must not
become preoccupied, and that it is like the existence of rich and poor
within a society. What a profound error.
How can we help a child if we label him as unable to achieve by
biological proclamation?
If we do nothing, if we don't intervene actively and usefully, he will
continue to lose time... and will finally become discouraged. The situa-
tion is very serious for him, and since his is not an exceptional case (since
children with defective comprehension are legion), we might say that it is
a serious question for all of us and for all of society. The child who loses
the taste for work in class strongly risks being unable to acquire it after he
leaves school (1909, p. 100).Binet railed against the motto "stupidity is for a long time"
("quand on est bete, c'estpour longtemps"), and upbraided teachers who
"are not interested in students who lack intelligence. They have
neither sympathy nor respect for them, and their intemperate lan-
guage leads them to say such things in their presence as 'This is a
child who will never amount to anything ... he is poorly endowed- • • he is not intelligent at all.' How often have I heard these impru-
dent words" (1909, p. 100). Binet then cites an episode in his own
baccalaureate when one examiner told him that he would never
nave a "true" philosophical spirit: "Never! What a momentous
w°rd. Some recent thinkers seem to have given their moral support
to these deplorable verdicts by affirming that an individual's intel-