Journal of Applied Psychology (Volume 6)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1922 edition. Excerpt: ...percent, and.44 percent to several times this proportion that the question of method is pertinent. The county being surveyed contains fourteen townships. Seven of these are represented in the group of schools under consideration, and only two of these by less than five schools. The results of the completed survey may show that conditions in the other townships are better than in those represented in this study. It is certain that one of the townships, which contains six of the schools out of the 35, is not inhabited by enterprising farmers because of the poor quality and unfavorable nature of much of the land in it. The percents of cases below an I. Q. of 75 in these schools are: 7, 10, 22, 36, 40, and 50. This last school had an additional 30 percent which graded as borderline cases. The enrollment of the school was made up of children from five families. The children of two of these, which comprised all but four of the total enrollment, were cousins. One of the remaining four was a middle-grade imbecile and was almost totally blind, one was a borderline case, and the remaining two were a brother and a sister who were normal. Even if the majority of the cases of mental deficiency in the county were in these 35 schools, the percentage for the county would still be extremely high compared to that quoted by other investigators. It is probable that the county as a whole is not representative of Minnesota. That this is undoubtedly not a representative Minnesota county is indicated by the 1920 United States census report for Minnesota.21 This report includes figures on the percent of illiteracy in the counties and cities of Minnesota. For the state taken as a whole the percent of illiteracy is 1.8. Sixty out of the 86 counties have less than two...