THE MIS MEASURE OF MANBinet tests on the four groups led to an astounding result: 83
percent of the Jews, 80 percent of the Hungarians, 79 percent of
the Italians, and 87 percent of the Russians were feeble-minded—
that is, below age twelve on the Binet scale. Goddard himself was
flabbergasted: could anyone be made to believe that four-fifths of
any nation were morons? "The results obtained by the foregoing
evaluation of the data are so surprising and difficult of acceptance
that they can hardly stand by themselves as valid" (1917, p. 247).
Perhaps the tests had not been adequately explained by interpret-
ers? But the Jews had been tested by a Yiddish-speaking psycholo-
gist, and they ranked no higher than the other groups. Eventually,
Goddard monkied about with the tests, tossed several out, and got
his figures down to 40 to 50 percent, but still he was disturbed.
Goddard's figures were even more absurd than he imagined
for two reasons, one obvious, the other less so. As a nonevident
reason, Goddard's original translation of the Binet scale scored
people harshly and made morons out of subjects usually regarded
as normal. When Terman devised the Stanford-Binet scale in 1916,
he found that Goddard's version ranked people well below his own.
Terman reports (1916, p. 62) that of 104 adults tested by him as
between twelve and fourteen years mental age (low, but normal
intelligence), 50 percent were morons on the Goddard scale.
For the evident reason, consider a group of frightened men
and women who speak no English and who have just endured an
oceanic voyage in steerage. Most are poor and have never gone to
school; many have never held a pencil or pen in their hand. They
march off the boat; one of Goddard's intuitive women takes them
aside shortly thereafter, sits them down, hands them a pencil, and
asks them to reproduce on paper a figure shown to them a moment
ago, but now withdrawn from their sight. Could their failure be a
result of testing conditions, of weakness, fear, or confusion, rather
than of innate stupidity? Goddard considered the possibility, but
rejected it:
The next question is 'drawing a design from memory,' which is passed
by only 50 percent. To the uninitiated this will not seem surprising since it
looks hard, and even those who are familiar with the fact that normal
children of 10 pass it without difficulty may admit that persons who have
never had a pen or pencil in their hands, as was true of many of the
immigrants, may find it impossible to draw the design (1917, p. 250).