Psychologically, the mentally defective child does
not belong to a distinct type, nor does the genius.... The common
opinion that extreme deviations below the median are vastly more
frequent than extreme deviations above the median seems to have no
foundation in fact. Among unselected school children, at least, for
every child of any given degree of deficiency there is roughly another
child as far above the average as the former is below." Lewis M. Terman,
_The Measurement of Intelligence_, pp. 66-67.]
It would be well to extend our view by measuring a whole population with
one of the standard tests. If the intelligence of a thousand children
picked at random from the population be measured, it will prove (as
outlined in Chapter III) that some of them are feeble-minded, some are
precocious or highly intelligent; and that there is every possible
degree of intelligence between the two extremes. If a great number of
children, all 10 years old, were tested for intelligence, it would
reveal a few absolute idiots whose intelligence was no more than that of
the ordinary infant, a few more who were as bright as the ordinary
kindergarten child, and so up to the great bulk of normal 10-year-olds,
and farther to a few prize eugenic specimens who had as much
intelligence as the average college freshman.
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