Goddard's Binet-Simon Translation (1910)

This page quotes historical classification terms, including "idiot", "imbecile" and "moron", because they are part of this history. They are offensive today and have no clinical use.

Same scale, different job

Binet & Simon, Paris →Goddard, Vineland

PURPOSESpot children held back at school, so they could be given suitable teaching.¹Classify institution residents and screen far wider populations.¹

GRADESTwo grades of deficiency, by mental age.⁴Three grades, with a new top grade that he named himself.⁴

VIEW OF CAUSEDeliberately separated environment and schooling from deficit.¹Treated low scores as largely inherited, the premise of The Kallikak Family.³

REACHA clinical tool for French schools.¹Promoted to physicians and schools, and used at Ellis Island and in court.¹

Three grades on a mental-age ruler

Binet's scale had two grades of deficiency. Goddard added a third for people whose mental age reached 8 to 12, and named it from the Greek moros, "dull" or "foolish".^4,3

Idiot0–2

Imbecile3–7

"Moron"8–12

Not classed13+

02712mental age →

Contemporary writers noted that the top grade "shades off imperceptibly" into the normal population.⁶ A test score was being used to draw a sharp line through a continuum. Compare Norsworthy's 1906 argument.

EXPLORE · WHERE THE TEST WENT

Scrub from 1906 to 1930

Each year adds the places the translated test reached. Red marks uses that went beyond Binet's school-diagnosis purpose.

Year1908

1906Vineland

1908Europe

1908Print

1910Institutions

1911Schools

1912Eugenics

1913Ellis Island

1914Courts

1916Translation

1930Everywhere

1908 · PRINTThe first English versionIn December he publishes "The Binet and Simon Tests of Intellectual Capacity" and begins testing Vineland children and public-school pupils.¹

HIS OWN VERDICTHe later disowned the Kallikak studyGoddard came to regard The Kallikak Family as flawed for its unhistorical portrayal of the family.²

THE EVIDENCERetouched photographsCritics, notably Stephen Jay Gould, accused Goddard of retouching photographs in the book to make the "defective" family members look menacing.⁴

THE LEGACYTesting as a tool of eugenicsBinet's test, meant to find children who needed help at school, gave the eugenics movement new impetus in the United States.³

References

[1]The birth of American intelligence testing. Monitor on Psychology, American Psychological Association (Jan 2009).apa.org

[2]Wikipedia contributors. Henry H. Goddard (accessed 1 Oct 2026).en.wikipedia.org

[3]Intellectual and developmental disabilities: eugenics. PubMed Central.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

[4]Mental deficiency: idiot, imbecile, and moron. Eugenics Archives encyclopedia.eugenicsarchives.ca

[5]Wikipedia contributors. Vineland Training School (accessed 1 Oct 2026).en.wikipedia.org

[6]Feeble-mindedness: a review by the editor of the Journal of Heredity. PubMed Central.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

[7]Crump, M. Cognition, Chapter 4: Intelligence testing. CrumpLab open textbook.crumplab.com

HOW TO CITE THIS PAGE

What's Your IQ. (2026). Goddard's Binet-Simon Translation (1908–1910). In Historical IQ Tests Archive. Retrieved October 1, 2026, from /en/historical-iq-tests/goddard-binet-1910

EDITORIAL RECORD

First published2026

Last reviewed1 October 2026

Sources7: APA history, encyclopedia entries and historical reviews

Open questionsThe exact changes Goddard made to Binet's items in translation; the year of the 2,000-child standardisation

Canonical URLwhats-your-iq.com/en/historical-iq-tests/goddard-binet-1910

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Part of the Historical IQ Tests Archive. Editorial content under CC BY-SA 4.0. Goddard's 1908 and 1910 publications are in the public domain.

BibTeX RIS

One translation, many uses.

Same scale, different job

Three grades on a mental-age ruler

Scrub from 1906 to 1930

References

Related historical tests

A score describes a performance. It doesn't sort people.