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The correlation between the various systems enables us to say only that the tests are not mere chance, and that they do seem to seize upon a certain kind of ability. But whether this ability is a sign of general intelligence or not, we have no means of knowing from such evidence alone. The same conclusion holds true of the fact that when the tests are repeated at intervals on the same group of people they give much the same results. Data of this sort are as yet meager, for intelligence testing has not been practised long enough to give results over long periods of time. Yet the fact that the same child makes much the same score year after year is significant. It permits us to believe that some genuine capacity is being tested. But whether this is the capacity to pass tests or the capacity to deal with life, which we call intelligence, we do not know.

This is the crucial question, and in the nature of things there can as yet be little evidence one way or another. The Stanford-Binet tests were set in order about the year 1914. The oldest children of the group tested at that time were 142 children ranging from fourteen to sixteen years of age. Those children are now between twenty-two and twenty-four. The returns are not in. The main question of whether the children who ranked high in the Stanford-Binet tests will rank high in real life is now unanswerable, and will remain unanswered for a generation. We are thrown back, therefore, for a test of the tests on the success of these children in school. We ask whether the results of the intelligence test correspond with the quality of school work, with school grades and with school progress.

The crude figures at first glance show a poor correspondence. In Terman's studies (3) the intelligence quotient correlated with school work, as judged by teachers, only .45 and with intelligence as judged by teachers, only .48. But that in itself proves nothing against the reliability of the intelligent tests. For after all the test of school marks, of promotion or the teacher's judgments, is not necessarily more reliable. There is no reason certainly for thinking that the way public school teachers classify children is any final criterion of intelligence. The teachers may be mistaken. In a definite number of cases Terman has shown that they are mistaken, especially when they judge a child's intelligence by his grade in school and not by his age. A retarded child may be doing excellent work, an advanced child poorer work. Terman has shown also that teachers make their largest mistakes in judging children who are above or below the average. The teachers become confused by the fact that the school system is graded according to age.

A fair reading of the evidence will, I think, convince anyone that as a system of grading the intelligence tests may prove superior in the end to the system now prevailing in the public schools. The intelligence test, as we noted in an earlier article, is an instrument of classification. When it comes into competition with the method of classifying that prevails in school it exhibits many signs of superiority. If you have to classify children for the convenience of school administration, you are likely to get a more coherent classification with the tests than without them. I should like to emphasize this point especially, because "it is important that in denying the larger pretensions and misunderstandings we should not lose sight of the positive value of the tests. We say, then, that none of the evidence thus far considered shows whether they are reliable tests of the capacity to deal intelligently with the problems of real life. But as gauges of the capacity to deal intelligently with the problems of the classroom, the evidence justifies us in thinking that the tests will grade the pupils more accurately than do the traditional school examinations.

If school success were a reliable index of human capacity, we should be able to go a step further and say that the intelligence test is a general measure of human capacity. But of course no such claim can be made for school success, for that would be to say that the purpose of the schools is to measure capacity. It is impossible to admit this. The child's success with school work cannot be a measure of the child's success in life. On the contrary, his success in life must be a significant measure of the school's success in developing the capacities of the child. If a child fails in school and then fails in life, the school cannot sit back and say: you see how accurately I predicted this. Unless we are to admit that education is essentially impotent, we have to throw back the child's failure at the school, and describe it as a failure not by the child but by the school.

For this reason, the fact that the intelligence test may turn out to be an excellent administrative device for grading children in school cannot be accepted as evidence that it is a reliable test of intelligence. We shall see in the succeeding articles that the whole claim of the intelligence testers to have found a reliable measure of human capacity rests on an assumption, imported into the argument, that education is essentially impotent because intelligence is hereditary and unchangeable. This belief is the ultimate foundation of the claim that the tests are not merely an instrument of classification but a true measure of intelligence. It is this belief which has been seized upon eagerly by writers like Stoddard and McDougall. It is a belief which is, I am convinced, wholly unproved, and it is this belief which is obstructing and perverting the practical development of the tests.