The development of intelligence in children (the Binet-Simon scale) / by Alfred Binet and Th. Simon ; translated by Elizabeth S. Kite.

  • Alfred Binet
Date:
1916
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The development of intelligence in children (the Binet-Simon scale) / by Alfred Binet and Th. Simon ; translated by Elizabeth S. Kite. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    and spirit of the authors of the Scale that we realized what an injustice had been done by publishing our condensed outline— 16 pages out of 90. We at once resolved to publish a complete translation. Permission was obtained from Dr. Simon and the work was begun. It had to be crowded in with other work of the Laboratory, and, hence, there have been many delays. At last, however, the book is presented to the public. We regret the delay, but perhaps the present is the best time for presentation. Certainly it was never more needed than now. It will seem an exaggeration to some to say that the world is talking of the Binet-Simon Scale; but consider that the Vine- land Laboratory alone, has without effort or advertisement dis- tributed to date 22,000 copies of the pamphlet describing the tests, and 88,000 record blanks.* This in spite of the fact that the same matter has been freely published in numerous other places. The Scale is used in Canada, England, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Russia, China, and has recently been translated into Japanese and Turkish. The literature on the Scale has increased enormously; in 1914 there was already a bibliography of 254 titles; yet in all this time no complete translation of Binet’s work on the Scale has appeared. A number of criticisms have appeared, many of which could not have been written if Binet’s complete discussion of his Scale had been available to the critics. It is little less than marvelous that the tests have had such a remarkable acceptance even in the mutilated form of our con- densed abstract. That the Scale was so eminently useful in this abbreviated form shows the masterly work of the authors. By many persons the Measuring Scale of Intelligence is sup- posed to be a mere incidental chapter in Binet’s work. Scarcely anyone in America realizes to what an extent it was his magnum opus. That his writings on this subject fill a book of this size will be a great surprise. And yet this is only the half. Another volume the size of this (already translated and which we hope soon to publish) is devoted to the application of the Scale. More- over, many other writings of Binet show how large a place it occupied in his thinking. *(Note: This pamphlet is a 16-page condensation of Chapter IV of this book, with such revisions as our experience with the tests on American children seemed to justify.)
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