Alfred Binet, answered from the texts and cited to the page.
The Binet-Kamat Test is an adaptation of my scale for use with Indian children — a localization of the instrument Simon and I built, carried out by researchers who recognized that the norms we established in Paris could not simply be transplanted to a different population and expected to hold. The underlying logic is entirely mine; the calibration is theirs, and that is exactly as it should be.
The purpose of the original scale was precise and limited: to study a child's condition at the time of examination, and that only.1 We wished to know where a given child stands now, not to pronounce on etiology, not to establish a prognosis, not to settle the question of whether any retardation is curable or improvable.2 A scale adapted for Indian schoolchildren pursues the same aim — identifying which children need special help — while acknowledging that the age-norms must be drawn from the population actually being examined, not imported wholesale from French classrooms.
The most valuable use of such a scale, as I always maintained, is not its application to normal pupils but to those of inferior grades of intelligence, where the need for precise diagnosis is most urgent.3 The difficulty I identified in ordinary medical practice — that an alienist examining a child suspected of backwardness would not even possess the means to recognize a normal child, having no measured standard of what normality requires — is precisely what a properly normed scale corrects.4
What the Binet-Kamat adaptation preserves, and what matters most, is the distinction between a diagnosis and a sentence. The scale gives the actual level of intelligence without analyzing the type of mentality behind it, much as a measuring rod gives height without informing us whether the development is normal in kind.5 To read a low result as proof of a fixed and unalterable incapacity is to misuse the instrument in India exactly as Goddard and Terman misused it in America. The number tells us which child needs our help; it does not tell us that our help is useless.
We should therefore, study his condition at the time and that only. We have nothing to do either with his past history or with his future.The Development of Intelligence in Children
we shall make no attempt to distinguish between acquired and congenital idiocy... we do not attempt to establish or prepare a prognosis and we leave unanswered the question of whether this retardation is curable, or even improvable.The Development of Intelligence in Children
we are of the opinion that the most valuable use of our scale will not be its application to the normal pupils, but rather to those of inferior grades of intelligence.The Development of Intelligence in Children
the most serious criticisms that one can make of the actual medical practice is that if by chance, a child of normal intelligence were presented at a clinic, the alienist would not be able to know that he is dealing with a normal child.The Development of Intelligence in Children
our scale of intelligence gives the actual level of intelligence without analyzing it and without informing us as to the type of mentality.The Intelligence of the Feeble-Minded