Intelligence Tests Not Always Right Says Former P.M.

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 14, Issue 82, 6 January 1950, Page 5

Intelligence Tests Not Always Right Says Former P.M.

A warning against the use of intelligence tests as an instrument for deciding a child’s destiny was given by the former Prime Minister (Mr Fraser) in an address at the Kowhai School, Auckland. Mr Fraser said he had submitted himself to the Crichton group tests, and found that he was minus intelligence. When he put the same questions to former Minister for Education during a parliamentary debate, the result had been the same. He did not know that any test could do more than just indicate a child’s possibilities, he said. Within the next few years almost every child in Britain will Rave undergone an intelligence test, says reefent news from London. No longer will teachers have to rely on the old method of observing a child’s work. Instead, the answers to a standard \ questionnaire will give the child’s mental age and intelligence quotient. Genius and moral will also be discovered by this method, according to education psychologists.