I
A startling bit of news has recently been unearthed and is now being retailed by the credulous to the gullible. "The average mental age of Americans," says Mr. Lothrop Stoddard in The Revolt Against Civilization, "is only about fourteen."
Mr. Stoddard did not invent this astonishing conclusion. He found it ready-made in the writings of a number of other writers. They in their turn got the conclusion by misreading the data collected in the army intelligence tests. For the data themselves lead to no such conclusion. It is impossible that they should. It is quite impossible for honest statistics to show that the average adult intelligence of a representative sample of the nation is that of an immature child in that same nation. The average adult intelligence cannot be less than the average adult intelligence, and to anyone who knows what the words "mental age" mean, Mr. Stoddard's remark is precisely as silly as if he had written that the average mile was three quarters of a......
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