TOM BROWN AND JOHN SMITH

Psychologists and alarmists periodically come out with new discoveries, so called, which affect the future of humanity. They have proved that man, is, as a race, incapable of true civilization; that negroes and eskimoes have the minimum of brain capacity, and that woman is far inferior to man; but it has remained for a scientist to declare that "70,000,000 of the inhabitants of the United States have little or no brains, and education can add little to their intelligence". Not more than 50 per cent of our population is capable of completing high school, and less than 10 per cent could meet the requirements for a Bachelor's degree.

This wholesale attack on education, has of course, drawn out of storm of opposition; and a writer in the "Century Magazine" has succeeded in beating the psychologists at their own game. By using the results of the same tests, he has proved with remarkable conclusiveness that schooling and efficiency go hand in hand. Incidentally, he has brought to light a good deal of rotteness in the state of education. He has shown that, of those who took the army intelligence tests, the officers were the most successful, with a score considerably higher than that of any group of men--but they, supposedly, were of that half of the population capable of getting through high school. However, digging deeper into the mass of statistics, proof was adduced that for every additional year of schooling which the average man had undergone, his score of intelligence points was increased about 9. And the foreign-born enlisted men led all the rest in capacity for profiting by teaching--gaining more intellectual ability for each year spent in school than the officers themselves. In each case the point was proved that intelligence varies in direct proportion to education.

Thus, whether figures lie or not, they can be used to refute their own compilers. Education is of some help even to the brainless; and, of those of which "one is born every minute", there are a few who may profit by the wisdom of their teachers.