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Primary Mental Abilities: Other things being equal, however, a person's mastery of language for general purposes is a reliable index to his intellectual powers (170, pp. 25-26, 1944). In fact, it has been demonstrated that verbal comprehension and word fluency is influenced by inheritance to a larger extent than any of the other primary mental abilities that have so far been isolated. Number ability seems to be more readily educable than either verbal or reasoning abilities (18, pp. 922-933,1954).
Mass investigations on the basis of age norms, however, have indicated only a slight relation between the mental and physical status of children. A spurt in mental growth does not appear to parallel the preadolescent spurt in physical growth. The pattern of mental development is similar in boys and girls, despite the difference in their rates of physical maturing.
Primary Level Experimental Programs. Primary education in Britain is free and compulsory for all children from the exceptionally early age of 5, but there is very little public provision of nursery education. Most primary schools are divided into an infant section, from 5 to 7, and a junior section, from 7 to 11. Most local authorities have begun to close down the small village primary schools, where one or two teachers taught the whole age range, and have been transporting the children to larger schools in the bigger villages and towns.
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