The article describes a method for quick appraisal of junior schoolchildren intellectual development with the assistance of the teacher as an expert. It also contains measurement scales and methods of their standardization, data on reliability and validity trials attesting to the method's applicability in the sphere of traditional IQ testing. The theoretical problems arising in this connection are: a) the possibility of studying the image of the child in the teacher's mind as material for psychodiagnostics; b) disparateness of the notions "subjectivity" and "adequacy" of the teacher's appraisals; c) overcoming the opposition between the scientific and humanitarian paradigms in experimental psychology on the basis of the principle of complementarity.