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In order to assess the feasibility of alternative methods for determining the cognitive development of bilingual or non-English speaking children from a disparate cultural background, 28 Seminole Indian children from two Head Start centers were administered a series of intelligence tests, some based on verbal ability, some not. The tests used were (1) the Ravens Colored Matrices, (2) three Piagetian measures designed to assess the child's stage of concrete operations, (3) two measures of classificatory behavior (class inclusion and object sorting), and (4) the Stanford-Binet. The Ravens test purports to assess a person's present capacity for intellectual activity and has a minumum of verbal requirements. This test showed the least deficit for the Indian children and was a good predictor of the child's functioning on other tasks. The Stanford-Binet showed the children to be very deficient in intellectual ability. The children did poorly on the Piagetian measures, considerably below normative levels. On the sorting tasks, the Indian children scored below urban Negro children who had taken the same test. An appendix containing task descriptions follows this report. (WD)

1Boy Crusoe

By Allan Eric

Also published as" A Yankee Crusoe" . A 15 year old hard working and studious farm boy finds the lure of adventure on the seas as a merchant seaman more than he can resist. This is his story. " I was born in a little town in the State of Maine, near the close of the Civil War. My boyhood life did not differ materially from that of the average farmer's son in the remote country districts of New England--except, perhaps, that I read more and thought more. Hard work on the rugged soil, two terms each year in the little yellow country schoolhouse, a day's fishing now and then filled the early years of my life full to over-flowing. " What he gets is enough excitement and adventure to overflow his wildest dreams. How he experiences disaster and uses his wits and knowledge to overcome every problem makes for a great read. - Summary by Phil Chenevert