Professor Thorndike's exposition[41] of the investigation is
as follows:
"E. L. Earle ('03) measured the spelling abilities of some 800 children
in the St. Xavier school in New York by careful tests. As the children
in this school commonly enter at a very early age, and as the staff and
methods of teaching remain very constant, we have in the case of the 180
pairs of brothers and sisters included in the 600 children closely
similar school training. Mr. Earle measured the ability of any
individual by his deviation from the average for his grade and sex, and
found the coefficient of correlation between children of the same family
to be .50. That is, any individual is on the average 50% as much above
or below the average for his age and sex as his brother or sister.
"Similarities of home training might account for this, but any one
experienced in teaching will hesitate to attribute much efficacy to
such similarities. Bad spellers remain bad spellers though their
teachers change. Moreover, Dr. J. M. Rice in his exhaustive study of
spelling ability ('97) found little or no relationship between good
spelling and any one of the popular methods, and little or none between
poor spelling and foreign parentage.
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