184 THE MISMEASURE OF MAN
ligence is a fixed quandty, a quantity that cannot be increased. We
must protest and react against this brutal pessimism; we must try
to demonstrate that it is founded upon nothing" (1909, p. 101).
The children identified by Binet's test were to be helped, not
indelibly labeled. Binet had definite pedagogical suggestions, and
many were implemented. He believed, first of all, that special
education must be tailored to the individual needs of disadvan-
taged children: it must be based on "their character and their apti-
tudes, and on the necessity for adapting ourselves to their needs
and their capacities" (1909, p. 15). Binet recommended small class-
rooms of fifteen to twenty students, compared with sixty to eighty
then common in public schools catering to poor children. In par-
ticular, he advocated special methods of education, including a
program that he called "mental orthopedics":
What they should learn first is not the subjects ordinarily taught, how-
ever important they may be; they should be given lessons of will, of atten-
tion, of discipline; before exercises in grammar, they need to be exercised
in mental orthopedics; in a word they must learn how to learn (1908, p.
257)-
Binet's interesting program of mental orthopedics included a
set of physical exercises designed to improve, by transfer to mental
functioning, the will, attention, and discipline that Binet viewed as
prerequisites for studying academic subjects. In one, called
"Vexercise des statues," and designed to increase attention span, chil-
dren moved vigorously until told to adopt and retain an immobile
position. (I played this game as a kid in the streets of New York;
we also called it "statues.") Each day the period of immobility would
be increased. In another, designed to improve speed, children
filled a piece of paper with as many dots as they could produce in
the allotted time.
Binet spoke with pleasure about the success of his special class-
rooms (1909, p. 104) and argued that pupils so benefited had not
only increased their knowledge, but their intelligence as well. Intel-
ligence, in any meaningful sense of the word, can be augmented by
good education; it is not a fixed and inborn quantity:
It is in this practical sense, the only one accessible to us, that we say that
the intelligence of these children has been increased. We have increased
what constitutes the intelligence of a pupil: the capacity to learn and to
assimilate instruction.