Scientism and Values.pdf - Ludwig von Mises Institute

192 Scientism and Values
the organismic area is shown to illustrate more clearly the fact that
both maturity and readiness are distributed as necessary consequences
of variation within the individual rather than narrowly fixed as the
organismic age line would imply.
The peripheral lighter band has been added to the pattern to insure
recognition of another fact of within variability [sid]; namely, that for
about 20 to 25 percent of growth items, maturity and readiness are,
indeed, very broadly distributed.
Within some individual graphs and from graph to graph, there
is in the organismic area a variation in "readiness" from one half
to three chronological years and a variation in "maturity" of about
the same number of growth years. For the peripheral band, that
is, for about twenty percent of the growth items, readiness and
maturity extend twice as far-from one to six chronological years.
Most teachers will agree that Hughes' treatment of "readiness"
and "maturity" expresses these concepts in a manner much closer
to reality as determined by observations of growing children. The
concepts in this form appear to agree with Olson's (12) observation
that "one of the striking abilities of the human organism is
the power to take on new modifications throughout its lifetime."
With these views of variability in mind, one wonders if possibly
"readiness" in most students may not be more a matter of being
ready for persistent work at studies rather than being some innate
developmental factor which cannot be overcome by insistence
upon reasonable standards of accomplishment.
Resistance to Displacement and Convergence. Under the heading
"Resistance to Displacement" Olson (12) says:
A useful principle growing out of hundreds of studies of growth is
that if an experimental factor capable of producing a difference in
growth is introduced, either artificially or naturally, a child tends to
resume his own normal rate of growth as soon as the factor disappears
or is removed.
To support this view Olson cites a study on head sizes of premature
and mature infants. Is this kind of extrapolation, which