A French psychologist built a test to find Paris schoolchildren who needed extra help and warned it must never be used to fix a child's intelligence. In America it became a sorting machine, spread by mass testing and tracking. In 1963 the new term learning disabilities began to pry the label of just slow open.
Who's who
- Alfred Binet+2 more episodesFrench psychologist who built the 1905 scale and warned against fixed intelligence
- Théodore Simon+1 more episodeFrench physician and Binet's collaborator on the 1905 scale
- Henry H. Goddard+3 more episodesAmerican psychologist who brought the test to the U.S. and coined "moron"
- Lewis Terman+1 more episodeStanford psychologist who produced the Stanford-Binet and championed mass testing
- Robert Yerkes+1 more episodeChaired the WWI Army committee that built Army Alpha and Beta tests
- Samuel A. KirkSpecial educator who proposed the term learning disabilities in 1963
- Arthur Jensen+7 more episodesEducational psychologist whose 1969 article reignited the IQ and heredity argument
Where it happens
- Paris, France+5 more episodesWhere Binet and Simon built a test for struggling schoolchildren
- Vineland Training School, New JerseyGoddard's base for distributing the scale in the U.S.
- Ellis Island, New York+3 more episodesWhere Goddard began testing arriving immigrants
- Chicago, Illinois+15 more episodesSite of the 1963 conference where Kirk proposed learning disabilities
Timeline
- 1905Binet and Simon publish the first scale to find children who need help
- 1910Goddard proposes a classification of feeble-mindedness and coins "moron"
- 1916Terman publishes the Stanford-Binet, popularizing the intelligence quotient
- 1917-1918Army Alpha and Beta tests examine roughly 1.7 million men
- 1920sGroup intelligence tests enter schools and tracking spreads
- 1963Kirk proposes the term learning disabilities at a Chicago conference of parents
Still debated
How far a creator is responsible for later misuse of a tool, and whether tracking helps or harms, remain open. Historians also argue whether diagnostic labels help children by unlocking services or hurt them through stigma.
