CHAPTER NINETEEN THE DEVELOPMENT OF PERSONALITY IN HIGHLY INTELLIGENT CHILDREN [1]
The children included in the term "highly intelligent children" cover a very wide range in intellectual variation—from an IQ of 130 (S-B) to the topmost limit of human diversity. This topmost limit seems to define itself at approximately 200 IQ. The most extreme deviates reported in the literature as fully measured fall at or near this point. A considerable number falling above 180 IQ have been reported, many of them not fully measured by Stanford-Binet because of the limitations of the test. It is therefore clear that children in the upper 1 per cent are not all alike. On the contrary, the child at the top of this group exceeds the child who barely reaches the group by much more than the latter exceeds the average child. The most able child in the upper 1 per cent surpasses the least able in this group by as much as the average child surpasses a moron (in terms of IQ). The really difficult problems of adjustment to life and to people come to those who test above 170 IQ. As there are so very few of these children, parents and teachers are seldom called upon to consider their needs. Thus when one does appear, he or she is the more likely to be misunderstood.
GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS
Obviously, it is not possible to discuss every aspect of personality in the limited number of pages of this book. We shall confine ourselves, therefore, to a few of the more important phases of development which are unique in the case of gifted children; particularly to such complexities as arise from the combination of immaturity and deviation, these continuing for approximately twenty-one years. This is the period when development is taking place as distinguished from the period of maturity.
It should be stated emphatically at the outset that children of very superior intelligence are not, as a group, socially annoying. The problems of personality adjustment are those of the child, not those of society as ordinarily understood. If the gifted child should annoy society, society would pay more attention to him. Society builds splendid institutions and provides expert care and guidance for vicious and feeble-minded children. That society does not pay such attention to the gifted is in itself evidence of social acceptability. The researches of Terman, [2] of Hartshorne and May, [3] and of Haggerty, [4] among others, have shown that highly intelligent children are more stable emotionally than are children in general, are much more resistant to childish temptations, and exhibit far less of undesirable behavior than is exhibited by the dull. Teachers do, however, report them for "restlessness" and "lack of interest" somewhat more often than they report children of 100 IQ for these behaviorisms. The researches of Burt [5] and of Healy and Bronner [6] show few children testing above 130 IQ among delinquents, in proportion to their frequency in the population as a whole.
With these facts as to generally superior adjustment before us, let us inquire whether there are, nevertheless, special perplexities in the life of a gifted child, and at what point in the range of intellect these perplexities begin. Is it possible that a child who varies as far above his contemporaries as an imbecile or an idiot varies below them, will find only advantages and no special difficulties of development created for him by the fact of his wide deviation from the norm?
Observation and measurement of gifted children as they have grown from early childhood to maturity have made it possible to formulate definitely some of the special problems of development which arise from being an extreme and infrequently occurring deviate. The more intelligent the child, the more likely he or she is to become involved in these puzzling difficulties. Let us consider some of these problems.
THE PART PLAYED BY PHYSIQUE
The "looks" of a person has much to do with his social adjustment. If highly intelligent children really resembled the cartoonist's idea of them, there would be little chance of excellent development. Fortunately, the researches of the past twenty years have proved that the popular notions about the poor physiques of the gifted and the weird ugliness of their physiognomies are not only erroneous but the exact opposite of the truth. These are superstitions, founded perhaps on the unconscious longing for "a just nature" which will distribute gifts somewhat equally instead of bestowing everything upon a few persons.
It has been amply proved, by measurements, that highly intelligent children are tall, heavy, strong, healthy, and fine looking as a group, exceeding the generality of children in all these respects. This does not mean that every individual among the gifted is physically superior, but it does mean that a gifted child is more likely to have a fine body than is a child taken from the general population.
As for beauty of face, in two separate series of photographs in which the faces of highly intelligent adolescents were compared with the faces of adolescents of ordinary mentality, the faces of the former were found to be more beautiful. This was the impression made upon "naïve" judges who knew nothing concerning the comparative intelligence of those judged. It may be that one reason why teachers often do not identify gifted children accurately, is that they are looking for pupils who correspond to the cartoonist's picture, and thus are led away from consideration of the beautiful and the well grown!
As gifted children approach and reach maturity, they reap the benefits of superior vitality, size, and beauty. However, many of them suffer, while growing up, from feelings of inferiority connected with size and strength, for typically they are somewhat accelerated in school status and they naturally choose children older than themselves as chums. Thus in physical competitions they are at a disadvantage. Observation shows that they tend to develop sedentary forms of play, or forms of physical enjoyment that do not depend upon being included in a group; such as swimming, skating, horseback riding, and walking.
PROBLEM OF LEADERSHIP
Also, in all matters pertaining to leadership, the competition with older classmates and friends exerts an influence, particularly during adolescence. The very young boy (or girl) in high school is not so likely to be elected to a post of leadership because of his comparative size, his voice, and the juvenility of his clothes. Thus a feeling may be engendered in him that he cannot gain the confidence of contemporaries; and this, in turn, may impair his self-confidence.
If long continued, this state of affairs may lead to emotional straining after social recognition. In social gatherings, size and physical maturity are important as absolute quantities and qualities, and not in relation to age. Thus a child should not be placed too far out of his age-group. A very gifted boy, reaching at twenty years a stature of five feet nine inches, remarked, "It is very odd to be as large as the people you're with!" Being always the smallest member of a social group may develop attitudes which are hard to revise when eventually the boy or girl achieves adult stature and is "as large as the people you're with."
This difficulty in assuming a normal place among more mature schoolmates arises especially in adolescence, when association with members of the opposite sex makes its introduction. Being in high school or in college with much older classmates, the boy of thirteen to sixteen finds himself at a disadvantage with the girls whom he meets. The girls brought to parties by the older boys are "too old" for him, and he feels unable to claim their attention. Many of these young boys show sufficient insight and sufficient management of their disadvantage to take care of it. They know that the trouble lies in being "too young," and that later they will achieve standing with the girls. In a few cases, however, this difficulty may lead to an unfortunate avoidance of girls, even in more mature years. In the case of girls, adjustment to the society of older boys in high school and college seems to present no special difficulties, since girls develop earlier than boys do, and are taken seriously by boys who are older than themselves.
The "inferiority complexes" of gifted persons have been little studied, but it is certain that many such persons do feel socially inferior and shy. Some of this may be due to the physical comparisons just suggested, arising from prolonged association with older persons.
PROBLEMS OF ADJUSTMENT TO OCCUPATION
Where the gifted child drifts in the school unrecognized, working chronically far below his capacity (even though young for his grade), he receives daily practice in habits of idleness and daydreaming. His abilities never receive the stimulus of genuine challenge, and the situation tends to form in him the expectation of an effortless existence. Children with IQ's up to 150 get along in the ordinary course of school life quite well, achieving excellent marks without serious effort. But children above this mental status become almost intolerably bored with school work if kept in lockstep with unselected pupils of their own age. Children who rise above 170 IQ are liable to regard school with indifference or with positive dislike, for they find nothing in the work to absorb their interest. This condition of affairs, coupled with the supervision of unseeing and unsympathetic teachers, has sometimes led even to truancy on the part of gifted children.
On the other hand, if a very gifted child is placed in the regular grades as far ahead of his age as his learning capacity warrants, the evils of social dislocation may result, as previously described. Experimental education is at present trying to solve the problem of how to secure right habits of work for the highly intelligent child, and some progress has been made in recent years.
Another problem of development with reference to occupation grows out of the versatility of these children. So far from being one-sided in ability and interest, they are typically capable of so many different kinds of success that they may have difficulty in confining themselves to a reasonable number of enterprises. Some of them are lost to usefulness through spreading their available time and energy over such a wide array of projects that nothing can be finished or done perfectly. After all, time and space are as limited for the gifted as for others, and the life-span is probably not much longer for them than for others. A choice must be made among the numerous possibilities, since modern life calls for specialization.
The dangers in development with respect to work habits are, therefore, that the child may not develop any habits of sustained effort, and that he may fail of success as a worker through being interested in too many things ever to accomplish very much at any one of them. His problem as he goes into adolescence is to make a definite choice, and to form the habit of effort.
LEARNING TO "SUFFER FOOLS GLADLY"
A lesson which many gifted persons never learn as long as they live is that human beings in general are inherently very different from themselves in thought, in action, in general intention, and in interests. Many a reformer has died at the hands of a mob which he was trying to improve in the belief that other human beings can and should enjoy what he enjoys. This is one of the most painful and difficult lessons that each gifted child must learn, if personal development is to proceed successfully. It is more necessary that this be learned than that any school subject be mastered. Failure to learn how to tolerate in a reasonable fashion the foolishness of others leads to bitterness, disillusionment, and misanthropy.
This point may be illustrated by the behavior of a seven-year-old boy with an IQ of 178. He was not sent to school until the age of seven because of his advanced interest in reading. At seven, however, the compulsory attendance law took effect and the child was placed in the third grade at school. After about four weeks of attendance, he came home from school weeping bitterly. "Oh Grandmother, Grand-mother," he cried, "they don't know what's good! They just won't read!"
The fact came to light that he had taken book after book to school—all his favorites from his grandfather's library—and had tried to show the other third-grade pupils what treasures these were, but the boys and girls only resisted his efforts, made fun of him, threw the treasures on the floor, and finally pulled his hair.
Such struggles as these, if they continue without directing the child's insight, may lead to complete alienation from his contemporaries in childhood, and to misanthropy in adolescence and adulthood. Particularly deplorable are the struggles of these children against dull or otherwise unworthy adults in authority. The very gifted child or adolescent, perceiving the illogical conduct of those in charge of his affairs, may turn rebellious against all authority and fall into a condition of negative suggestibility—a most unfortunate trend of personality, since the person is then unable to take a coöperative attitude toward authority.
A person who is highly suggestible in a negative direction is as much in bondage to others around him as is the person who is positively suggestible. The social value of the person is seriously impaired in either case. The gifted are not likely to fall victims to positive suggestion but many of them develop negativism to a conspicuous degree.
The highly intelligent child will be intellectually capable of self-determination, and his greatest value to society can be realized only if he is truly self-possessed and detached from the influences of both positive and negative suggestion. The more intelligent the child, the truer this statement is. It is especially unfortunate, therefore, that so many gifted children have in authority over them persons of no special fitness for the task, who cannot gain or keep the respect of these good thinkers. Such unworthy guardians arouse, by the process of "redintegration," contempt for authority wherever it is found, and the inability to yield gracefully to command.
Thus some gifted persons, mishandled in youth, become contentious, aggressive, and stubborn to an extent which renders them difficult and disagreeable in all human relationships involving subordination. Since subordination must precede posts of command in the ordinary course of life, this is an unfortunate trend of personality. Cynicism and negativism are likely to interfere seriously with a life career. Happily, gifted children are typically endowed with a keen sense of humor, and are apparently able to mature beyond cynicism eventually in a majority of cases.
THE TENDENCY TO BECOME ISOLATED
Yoder [7] noticed, in studying the boyhood of great men, that although play interests were keen among them, the play was often of a solitary kind. The same is true of children who "test high." The majority of children testing above 160 IQ play little with other children unless special conditions are provided, such as those found in a special class. The difficulties are too great, in the ordinary course of events, in finding playmates who are appropriate in size and congenial in mentality. This fact was noted some years ago by the present writer. Terman [8] in 1930 made a special study of the play of those in his group of children who tested above 170 IQ and found them generally more solitary in work and play than children clustering around 140 IQ.
These superior children are not unfriendly or ungregarious by nature. Typically they strive to play with others but their efforts are defeated by the difficulties of the case. These difficulties are illustrated in the efforts of the seven-year-old boy already mentioned. Other children do not share their interests, their vocabulary, or their desire to organize activities. They try to reform their contemporaries but finally give up the struggle and play alone, since older children regard them as "babies" and adults seldom play during the hours when children are awake. As a result, forms of solitary play develop, and these, becoming fixed as habits, may explain the fact that many highly intellectual adults are shy, ungregarious, and unmindful of human relationships, or are even misanthropic and uncomfortable in ordinary social intercourse.
This difficulty of the gifted child in forming friendships is largely a result of the infrequency of persons who are like-minded. The more intelligent a person is, regardless of age, the less often can he find a truly congenial companion. The average child finds playmates in abundance who can think and act on a level congenial to him because there are so many average children.
Adding to the conditions which make for isolation is the fact that gifted children are often "only" children, or they have brothers and sisters who differ widely from them in age. Thus playmates in the home are less numerous for them than for children generally.
The imaginary playmate as a solution of the problem of loneliness is fairly frequent. We know but little at present of the psychology of this invention of the unreal to fill real needs. Reasoning from the general principles of mental hygiene, one would say that the pattern of companionship represented in the imaginary playmate is less valuable for personal development than a pattern founded on reality, and that effort should be made to fill the real need with genuine persons, if possible.
Also, the deep interest in reading which typifies the gifted child may further his isolation. Irwin believes that reading should be deferred in the education of the highly intelligent. "I believe it is especially important that intellectual children get a grasp on reality through real experiences in making and doing things before they are ever introduced to the wonders that lie within books." From this point of view, the development of the physical, social, and emotional aspects of personality would have first attention in the education of a gifted child, the intellectual being fostered last of all because it comes of itself and is too likely to run away with the other three and lead to isolation.
This tendency to become isolated is one of the most important factors to be considered in guiding the development of personality in highly intelligent children, but it does not become a serious problem except at the very extreme degrees of intelligence. The majority of children between 130 and 150 IQ find fairly easy adjustment, because neighborhoods and schools are selective, so that like-minded children tend to be located in the same schools and districts. Furthermore, the gifted child, being large and strong for his age, is acceptable to playmates a year or two older. Great difficulty arises only when a young child is above 160 IQ. At the extremely high levels of 180 and 190 IQ, the problem of friendships is difficult indeed, and the younger the person, the more difficult it is. The trouble decreases with age because as persons become adult, they naturally seek and find on their own initiative groups who are like-minded, such as learned societies.
THE CONCEPT OF "OPTIMUM INTELLIGENCE"
All things considered, the psychologist who has observed the development of gifted children over a long period of time from early childhood to maturity, evolves the idea that there is a certain restricted portion of the total range of intelligence which is most favorable to the development of successful and well-rounded personality in the world as it now exists. This limited range appears to be somewhere between 125 and 155 IQ. Children and adolescents in this area are enough more intelligent than the average to win the confidence of large numbers of their fellows, which brings about leadership, and to manage their own lives with superior efficiency. Moreover, there are enough of them to afford mutual esteem and understanding. But those of 170 IQ and beyond are too intelligent to be understood by the general run of persons with whom they make contact. They are too infrequent to find many congenial companions. They have to contend with loneliness and with personal isolation from their contemporaries throughout the period of immaturity. To what extent these patterns become permanently fixed, we cannot yet tell.
There is thus an "optimum" intelligence, from the viewpoint of personal happiness and adjustment to society, which is well below the maximum. The exploration of this concept should yield truths of value for education, and for social science as well. The few children who test at the very top of the juvenile population have a unique value for society. On them depends in large measure the advancement of learning. If they fail of personal happiness and human contact, their work for society as a whole may be impaired or lost.
CONCLUSION
As far as observations go at present, intellectually gifted children between 130 and 150 IQ seem to find the world well suited to their development. As a group, they enjoy the advantages of superior size, strength, health, and beauty; they are emotionally well balanced and controlled; they are of good character; and they tend to win the confidence of their contemporaries, which gives them leadership. This is the "optimum" range of intelligence, if personal happiness is being considered. If a parent would want his child to enjoy "every advantage," he could not do better than wish the child to be endowed with an IQ not lower than 130 or higher than 150.
Above this limit, however—surely above 160 IQ—the deviation is so great that it leads to special problems of development which are correlated with personal isolation. As one boy with an IQ of 190 has said: "It isn't good to be in college so awfully young (twelve years of age). It produces a feeling of alienation."
How to provide against alienation from contemporaries of both sexes, and how to prevent the negativism that results from continuous living under inefficient or unreasonable authority, are two of the important problems for education in its attempt to insure good adjustment of personality for children of extremely high intelligence.
[1] For the original discussion of this topic see the paper by this title, by Leta S. Hollingworth, in the Fifteenth Yearbook of the Department of Elementary School Principals, National Education Association (July, 1936), pages 272-281.
[2] Terman, Lewis M. Genetic Studies of Genius: Vol. I. Stanford University Press, Stanford University, California; 1925.
[3] Hartshorne, H., and May, M. A. Studies in Deceit. The Macmillan Company, New York; 1927.
[4] Haggerty, Melvin E. Evaluation of Higher Institutions. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Illinois; 1937.
[5] Burt, C. The Young Delinquent. D. Appleton-Century Company, Inc., New York; 1924.
[6] Healy, W., and Bronner, A. F. Criminals and Delinquents: Their Making and Unmaking. The Macmillan Company, New York; 1928.
[7] Yoder, G. F. "A Study of the Boyhood of Great Men." Pedagogical Seminary (1894).
[8] Op. cit.
CHAPTER TWENTY
THE CHILD OF VERY SUPERIOR INTELLIGENCE AS A SPECIAL PROBLEM IN SOCIAL ADJUSTMENT [1]
This discussion is limited to the problems that arise from the combination of immaturity and superiority. Thus the problems considered pertain chiefly to the period in the life of the gifted child before he is twenty years of age; for the problems of the person of superior intellect tend to be less numerous as he grows older and can use his intelligence independently in gaining control of his own life.
It should be stated emphatically at the outset that children of very superior intelligence are not, as a group, socially annoying. The problems presented are those of the child, not those of society, as ordinarily understood. That this is so is sufficiently proved by the scant attention that organized society has bestowed upon the study of gifted children. Society studies that which is socially annoying. The school attends to those who give it trouble. Thus feeble-minded children ("minus deviates," as they are called in modern laboratories) have long been studied. Millions of dollars have been spent in considering them, and a voluminous literature has grown up through prolonged investigation of their maladjustments. Gifted children, on the other hand, have been studied hardly at all. Such investigations as we have are the result of intellectual interest on the part of a few educators and psychologists, who in the course of mental surveys became interested in those children who test always at the top.
THE QUALITY OF GIFTED CHILDREN
Such data as we now possess, from the scientific study of the gifted as organisms, show us that children of very superior intelligence are typically superior in other qualities also. They are superior in emotional stability and control. The old idea that the very bright "child prodigy" is likely to be nervous has been widespread, and popular fallacy inclines to mention "bright and high-strung" in the same breath. In fact, we not infrequently hear people claiming to be "high-strung" as a kind of compliment to themselves, implying that they are therefore also bright. Psychological researches of recent years have shown these ideas to be merely superstitions, founded on nothing more substantial than the human craving for a just nature that will somehow penalize the lucky and equalize biological wealth.
The researches of Terman [2], particularly, and of Hartshorne and May [3], have shown that highly intelligent children are more stable emotionally than are unselected "controls" age for age, and are superior to "controls" in their resistance to temptation. The researches of Burt [4], and of Healy and Bronner [5], show among delinquents few children of the high degree of intelligence with which this paper deals.
The studies cited do not, of course, exhaust the recent scientific literature, but they do fairly exemplify the results of concrete, impersonal investigation, as distinguished from the results of popular "wishful thinking." The child who tests above 130 IQ [6] is typically (though of course not invariably) large and strong for his age, healthier than the average, contributes far less than his quota to juvenile misbehavior as socially defined, and is emotionally stable in superior degree.
Starting with these facts as to generally superior adjustment, let us inquire whether there are, therefore, no special perplexities in the life of a gifted child. Is it possible that a child may vary as far in a "plus" direction from the average performance of his contemporaries as an imbecile varies in a "minus" direction, and find no special problems created for him by this wide difference in mental power between himself and the average child of his age?
The psychologist who is professionally acquainted with children who test above 130 IQ will be able to formulate clearly certain special problems of adjustment, observed in the case study of these children, which arise primarily from the very fact that they are gifted. Let us attempt to state some of these problems. The more intelligent the child, the more likely he is to become involved in these puzzling situations.
THE PROBLEM OF WORK
Where the gifted child drifts in the school unrecognized, held to the lock step which is determined by the capacities of the average, he has little to do. He receives daily practice in habits of idleness and daydreaming. His abilities are never genuinely challenged, and the situation is contrived to build in him expectations of an effortless existence. Children up to about 140 IQ tolerate the ordinary school routine quite well, being usually a little young for grade through an extra promotion or two, and achieving excellent marks without serious effort. But above this status, children become increasingly bored with school work, if kept in or nearly in the lock step. Children at or above 180 IQ, for instance, are likely to regard school with indifference, or with positive distaste, for they find nothing interesting to do there.
On the other hand, if the child be greatly accelerated in grade status, so that he is able to function intellectually with real interest, he will be misplaced in other important respects. A child of eight years graded with twelve-year-olds is out of his depth socially and physically, though able to do intellectual work as well as they can. These problems come out clearly when we consider that the seats and desks planned for twelve-year-olds will not fit him; that he will always be the last one chosen in athletic contests; that no one will know how to treat him at class parties; that the teacher will be prone to complain of his manual work, such as handwriting; and that he will be emotionally immature in comparison with older classmates. When he jumps up and down, clapping his hands and shouting, "Goody! goody!" at an announcement from the teacher, the older children will laugh at him, and later may hang paper tails and other tokens of ignominy upon him; whereas his childish glee would have constituted no violation of taste among eight-year-olds.
A thousand concrete instances might be described to show what these problems of adjustment are. Experimental education is trying to solve them. At present, the special class is being tried in populous centers, wherein a whole group of the young gifted can be brought together (as has long been done for the dull and slow).
In less populous communities, a moderate degree of acceleration, combined with enrichment of the curriculum for the individual, is being tried. We do not yet know how the problem of adjustment to school work can best be solved. Indeed, we have just learned how to define this problem.
THE PROBLEM OF ADJUSTMENT TO CLASSMATES
Typically, where there is no scientific recognition of the presence of the gifted, these children, by the time they are eight or nine years old, are more or less accelerated in scholastic status and appear as the youngest in the class. Such a child is thus youngest in the fourth or fifth grade, in a heterogeneous group in which the oldest are retardates, thirteen or fourteen years old. Now, in the case of boys especially, it may happen that these dull adolescents lie in wait to bully and tease the young gifted boy, whose "book-learning" they detest and whose immaturity suggests the term "baby." The present writer knows of instances in which these young children have valiantly suffered at the hands of dull, bullying classmates, protecting themselves as best they might by agility and wit, since, of course, they could not possibly compete in size and strength. The gross indignities and tortures thus suffered are directly a penalty of being gifted; for little boys of like age, in the grade proper to their age, do not come into classroom contact with these over-age bullies to anything like the same extent, and hence do not become targets for the latter.
One young gifted boy thus bullied said, "I rigged up a sling and was going to hit him [[the bully]] with a marble, but got afraid I might shoot his eye out." This simple statement tells volumes.
It would seem that the school should somehow take effective cognizance of this problem of the bully, which is created for the gifted child directly as a result of the contacts forced upon both of them by the school. Segregation of pupils on the basis of mentality would go far to obviate such problems, but except in cities, homogeneous grouping is difficult. At present, compulsory education, with heterogeneous classes, forced upon gifted children situations that would be analogous to those arising if teachers and superintendents were compelled to consort daily, unprotected, with giant thugs and gangsters. Gifted adults are free to segregate themselves from thugs and gangsters, and also to make explicit provision for police protection, but the American school forces the dull bully upon the gifted child, in daily contacts, out of which lasting problems of mental hygiene may arise.
THE PROBLEM OF PLAY
Reports by gifted children themselves show that they are, as a group, much interested in play, and that they have more "play knowledge" than has the average child. When their reports are compared item by item with reports similarly rendered by unselected children, it appears that the gifted know more games of intellectual skill, such as bridge and chess; that they care less, age for age, for play which involves predominantly simple sensori-motor activity which is aimless; and that gifted girls are far less interested in traditional girls' play, as with dolls and tea sets, than unselected girls are. The gifted enjoy more complicated and more highly competitive games than the generality do, age for age. Outdoor sports hold a high place with the gifted, being almost as popular among them as is reading.
But although they love play, and have much play knowledge, the play of the highly intelligent works out in practice as a somewhat difficult compromise among their various powers. They follow their intellectual interests as far as they can, but these are checked in many ways by age, by degree of physical immaturity, and by tradition. An eight-year-old of 160 IQ may, for example, be deeply interested in tennis, but he is likely to be more or less kept from playing because his physical development is not yet equal to the demands of the game. He may love to play bridge, but others of his age who are available as playmates do not, of course, know how to play bridge, and he is not allowed to sit up at night when his elders play.
By trial-and error experience, the highly intelligent child has to work out an adjustment if he can, but there is likely to be noticeable difficulty if he tests above 170 IQ. In the ordinary course of events, it is hard for such a child to find playmates who are congenial both in size and in mental interests. Thus many of those who test very high are finally thrown back upon themselves, and tend strongly to work out forms of solitary, intellectual play. [7] The same situation is discovered in studies of the childhood of eminent persons. Yoder [8], in his study of the juvenile history of fifty very eminent persons, concluded that their play "was often of a solitary kind." Reading, calculation, designing, compiling collections, constructing an "imaginary land," evoking imaginary playmates—these forms of play stand out prominently among the recreational interests of such children. Since physical activity is hard to carry out interestingly alone, their play tends to become habitually sedentary. Nevertheless, they develop a high degree swimming, skating, and other forms of athletic enjoyment which do not depend upon being included in a group.
Of six young children testing above 180 IQ, known to the present writer, only one [9] had no conspicuous difficulty in play, during early childhood. [10] The other five were all so divergent from the usual in play interests that parents and teachers noticed them. They were unpopular with children of their own age because they always wanted to organize the play into a complicated pattern, with some remote and definite climax as the goal. As the mother of one six-year-old said, "He can never be satisfied just to toss a ball around, or to run about pulling and shouting." Children of six years are ordinarily incapable of becoming interested in long-sustained, complicated games which lead to remote goals, but are, on the contrary, characteristically satisfied only by the kind of random activity which bored this child of 187 IQ. The playmates of ordinary intelligence naturally resented persistent efforts to reform them and to organize them for the attainment of remote goals. Furthermore, they did not have in their vocabulary words that the gifted child knew well, used habitually, and took for granted. Literally, they could not understand each other. The result was that the child of 187 IQ did not "get along" with those of his own age and size. But when he sought to join the play of children of his own mental age (above twelve years), the six-year-old was rejected by them also, as being "a baby" and "too little to play with us." The child, thus thrown back upon himself, developed elaborate mathematical calculation, collecting, reading, and games with imaginary playmates, as his chief forms of play.
These young children of extremely high intellectual acumen fail to be interested in "child's play" for the same reasons that in adulthood they will fail to patronize custard-pie movies or chute-the-chutes at amusement parks. It is futile, and probably wholly unsound psychologically, to strive to interest the child above 170 IQ in ring-around-the-rosy or blind-man's-buff. Many well-meaning persons speak of such efforts as "socializing the child," but it is probably not in this way that the very gifted can be socialized. The problem of how the play interests of these children can be realized is one that will depend largely on individual circumstances for solution. Often it can be solved only by the development of solitary play.
What, if any, effect the habitual evocation of imaginary playmates, and the elaboration of the imaginary land, may exert on character formation and habits of adjustment in adulthood is at present unknown. Psychologists should study the hygienic aspects of these methods of finding satisfaction outside of the real world. Since gifted children are, as has been stated, on the whole a stable and rational group, perhaps no effects, or good effects only, result from this play of the imagination.
SPECIAL PROBLEMS OF THE GIFTED GIRL
It has been mentioned that gifted girls are less interested in traditional girls' play than are unselected girls. They show a preference for boys' books and boys' play, and a greater community of interests with boys than the generality of girls display. This merely means that girls of a high degree of intelligence are, as a group, more competitive, aggressive, and active than girls are supposed to be.
An illustrative case is that of a seven-year-old girl of IQ 170, whose mother wished to learn from psychology how to break her child of being a "tomboy" and how to rear her to "be a lady." The mother complained that the girl had never cared for dolls, that she would not take an interest in her clothes, and that she wanted to do nothing after school but read or play "rough, outdoor games." "How," inquired the mother, "could I break her of the habit of climbing lampposts?" This child was active and competitive. When asked why she did not play with dolls, she replied, "They aren't real. The doll that is supposed to be a baby doll is twice as big as the one that is made like a mother doll."
Aside from their dissatisfaction with the play habits ordinarily associated with their sex, gifted girls have various other problems to face which arise directly from the facts that they are able and that they are girls. When they reach the stage of life-planning, as they do very early, they are confused in their self-seeking by the uncertainty in contemporary customs as to what a girl may become. This difficulty is growing less and less, to be sure, but it is still something to be reckoned with, especially in certain localities. The intelligent girl begins very early to perceive that she is, so to speak, of the wrong sex. From a thousand tiny cues, she learns that she is not expected to entertain the same ambitions as her brother. Her problem is to adjust her ambitions to a sense of sex inferiority without, on the one hand, losing self-respect and self-determination, and, on the other, without becoming morbidly aggressive. This is never an easy adjustment to achieve, and even superior intelligence does not always suffice to accomplish it. The special problem of gifted girls is that they have strong preferences for activities that are hard to follow on account of their sex, which is inescapable.
PROBLEMS OF CONFORMITY
Judgments of teachers and parents indicate that highly intelligent children are, on the whole, more easily disciplined than children generally are. Nonetheless, certain problems of discipline do arise, which grow out of their intelligence. First, in the case of the schoolroom situation almost the only respect in which discipline is especially troublesome with these children is in the matter of orderly discussion when they are together in special classes. It is hard for them to maintain silence when ideas press for utterance. The tendency is for many to speak at once, each striving to outspeak the others. An atmosphere of confusion is thus created unless discipline can be imposed. To hold his tongue, to listen quietly and respectfully to others, to speak according to some order of procedure, and to restrain disappointment at failure to be heard at all—these habits seem especially difficult for gifted children to form. Only gradually do these children learn self-government in this respect.
Also it has been noticed during the experimental education of the highly intelligent that they sometimes tend to slight routine drudgery in favor of more stimulating and more original projects. The sheer drudgery involved in learning their multiplication table, for example, is likely to be waived in order to follow some absorbing story or experiment, unless conformity be urged from without.
At home, a special problem of discipline may arise occasionally due to the circumstance of that child, while still very immature in years, has come to exceed one parent or both in intelligence. For the best discipline routine the parent must be more intelligent than the child or the child's respect for the opinions of the former will inevitably be lost. With the most gifted children this may quite early become a problem, since such children, by the age of ten years or before, are more intelligent than the average adult is. Very readily such a child perceives that in comparison with himself his parent is slow-witted and lacking in general information. Yet in self-control and in experience of life, the child is still very immature. Thus quite unfortunate developments may ensue in the parent-child relationship. The child may become the director of the parent's activities, reversing the socially acceptable condition of affairs. Fortunately, in the vast majority of cases at least one of the parents is a person of superior intelligence. We seldom find a very intelligent child in a home where both parents are average or below average in mental power.
Because he learns everything very quickly, the highly intelligent child is especially quick to discover what forms of conduct on his part bring him satisfactions. If the tantrum is rewarded by the parent with cookies, company, attention, or other childish delights, then the bright child may display even "bigger and better" tantrums than will those who are slower to learn. If illness brings coddling, release from undesired responsibility, and other pleasures, then the quick learner will readily perceive the value of "headaches" and other aches as means to ends. On the other hand, the very intelligent learn readily to refrain from undesirable behavior that is followed quickly and inevitably by punishment. Two or three experiences usually suffice for these excellent learners. Neglect and ostracism are good forms of punishment for them. Darwin tells us that he was cured of telling sensational fibs, as a child, simply by the chilling silence with which they were always received by his parents.
One more problem may be noted here. There is with intelligent children a stronger tendency to argue about what is required of them than is found with the average child. This tendency to argue as to the why and wherefore of a requirement is met both at home and at school, and calls for thought in proper handling on the part of parents and teachers. To find a golden mean between arbitrary abolition of all argument, on the one hand, and weak fostering of an intolerable habit of endless argumentation, on the other, is not always easy, but it is always worth while as a measure for retaining the respect of the child.
THE PROBLEMS OF ORIGIN AND OF DESTINY
Early interest in origins and in destinies is one of the conspicuous symptoms of intellectual acumen. "Where did the moon come from?" "Who made the world?" "What is the very end of autumn leaves?" "Where did I come from?" "What will become of me when I die?" "Why did I come into the world?"
Although these questions rise vaguely and intermittently in the minds of children in general, they do not begin to require logically coherent answers until about the mental age of twelve or thirteen years. Then they begin to press for more or less systematic accounts. From these circumstances of mental development, the erroneous idea has long been promulgated, even by psychologists, that puberty in some mysterious manner leads to the rise of religious needs and convictions. Since among the generality a "mental age" of thirteen years is, roughly, coincident with the age of pubescence, the two developments have been assumed to be casually related.
When we observe young gifted children, we discover that religious ideas and needs originate in them whenever they develop to a mental level past "twelve years mental age." Thus they show these needs when they are but eight or nine years old, or earlier. The higher the IQ the earlier does the pressing need for an explanation of the universe occur, the sooner does the demand for a concept of the origin and destiny of the self appear.
In the cases of children who test above 180 IQ observed by the present writer, definite demand for a systematic philosophy of life and death developed when they were but six or seven years old. Similar phenomena appear in the childhood histories of eminent persons where data of childhood are available. Goethe, for example, at the age of nine constructed an altar and devised a religion of his own, in which God could be worshiped without the help of priests.
Much could be said of the special problems of the young gifted child in this period of immaturity when his intellectual needs are those of an adolescent while his emotional control and physical powers are still but those of a child. It would be of great interest to study the reactions of older persons to the insistent questions and searchings of these young children. "You are too young to understand." "You can't know all that till you grow older." "You unnatural child!" These are responses that have been heard incidentally, falling from the lips of undiscerning parents. A girl of eight years, of IQ 150, recently was heard to express a determination to join the "Agnostic Church," because she had asked, "What is it called when you can't make up your mind whether there is a God or not?" and had been told that this would be agnosticism.
Part and parcel of these questionings concerning origin and destiny are those concerning birth and reproduction. At a "tender" age these children ask for an account of sex and reproduction and suffer much at the hands of parents and guardians who are shocked at what thus emanates from the mouths of babes. Lifelong problems of mental hygiene may be thus engendered by parents who cannot understand why a child should be "so unnatural" as to weep over questions of birth and death at six or seven years of age.
In the same way problems of right and wrong become troublesome for these young children in a way that does not happen except for the very able. For instance, a six-year-old boy of IQ 187 wept bitterly after reading "how the North taxed the South after the Civil War." The problem of evil in the abstract thus comes to trouble these children almost in their cradles, at an age when they are ill-suited to grapple with it from the point of view of emotional maturity. Special problems of mental hygiene are perhaps inherent in this situation which do not arise with the generality of children.
GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS
The list of problems that we have suggested here does not by any means exhaust the subject under discussion. However, the present writer believes that these are some of the more important problems of childhood that originate directly from the circumstance of being very highly intelligent among official guardians who are ignorant or careless of the fact. These problems of adjustment do not arise unless a child is gifted intellectually. They are conspicuous to the psychologist who studies children with "test knowledge" of them.
It is especially to be noted that many of these problems are functions of immaturity. To have the intelligence of an adult and the emotions of a child combined in a childish body is to encounter certain difficulties. It follows that (after babyhood) the younger the child, the greater the difficulties, and that adjustment becomes easier with every additional year of age. The years between four and nine are probably the most likely to be beset with the problems mentioned.
The physical differences between a child of six whose IQ is 150 and children of nine years (whose mental age corresponds to his) are unabridgeable, and so are the differences of taste, due to differences in emotional maturity. The child of six graded with nine-year-olds is out of his element physically and socially, but the same thing is not true of a sixteen-year-old among nineteen-year-olds. The difference between six and nine is very great. The difference between sixteen and nineteen is small in terms of biological development.
Moreover, as the bright go forward in school, they find work increasingly adapted to their powers by the automatic developments of the established curriculum. Senior high schools are, we have discovered, adapted only to adolescents of superior intelligence. Classmates become automatically more congenial through being more highly selected. The dull bully, with his crude horseplay, has left school, and in any case the gifted, being older, can defend themselves physically.
By the time a gifted person is physically mature, many of the problems herein outlined automatically disappear as problems. What after-effects there may be of the poor solution of these childish problems we do not know. Apparently these superior organisms tolerate well the strains put upon them by reason of their deviation from the average. However, that an organism stands strain well is no reason for putting or leaving strain unnecessarily upon it.
As the gifted individual grows to maturity, he or she can achieve control of his or her own life, and can dispense to a relatively great extent with inadvertent cruelties and mistaken efforts of uninformed official guardians. It is during childhood that the gifted boy or girl is at the mercy of guardians whose duty it is to know his nature and his needs much more fully than they now do.
[1] Reprinted from Mental Hygiene: Vol. XI, No. 1, pages 3-16
(January, 1931). Read by Leta. S. Hollingworth at the First
International Congress of Mental Hygiene, Washington, D. C.,
May 8, 1930.
[2] Terman, Lewis M. Genetic Studies of Genius: Vol. I. Stanford University Press, Stanford University, California; 1925.
[3] Hartshorne, H., and May, M. A. Studies in Deceit. The Macmillan Company, New York; 1927.
[4] Burt, C. The Young Delinquent. D. Appleton-Century Company, Inc., New York; 1924.
[5] Healy, W., and Bronner, A. F. Criminals and Delinquents: Their Making and Unmaking. The Macmillan Company, New York; 1928.
[6] The intelligence quotient is the ratio between the [chronological age] status achieved on tests by an individual and that achieved by the generality [of the same chronological age].
[7] Hollingworth, Leta S. Gifted Children: Their Nature and Nurture. The Macmillan Company, New York; 1926.
[8] Yoder, G. F. "A Study of the Boyhood of Great Men." Pedagogical Seminary (1894).
[9] This child attended a private school where a number of the pupils tested above 140 IQ.
[10] This was written in 1931.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOLING OF VERY BRIGHT CHILDREN
In this chapter are presented selected relevant paragraphs from two of the later papers by the author: "An Enrichment Curriculum for Rapid Learners" [1] and "What We Know about the Early Selection and Training of Leaders." [2]
This is neither the time nor the place for discussion of the techniques of mental measurement, but rather for the discussion of results. What, first, do we know about the selection of children who stand in the upper ranges of intelligence? Facts of much importance have been established since 1905.
In the first place, we have proved that children who rate in the top one per cent of the juvenile population in respect to "judgment," as Binet called it, also possess much more often than others those additional qualities which thinkers have most frequently named as desirable in leaders. There is a strong probability that a child who rates as only one in a hundred for intelligence will also be endowed in superior degree with "integrity, independence, originality, creative imagination, vitality, forcefulness, warmth, poise, and stability."
These characteristics are identical with those set forth by Harvard College as the additional traits desired in boys, already proved by tests to be highly intelligent, who are to receive National Scholarships. I believe no one would wish to delete from the list any trait thus stipulated. I would, however, add to it audacity, capacity for nonconformity, love of beauty, and cold courage, as traits to cherish in leaders, although these are often uncongenial to teachers in the elementary school, and possibly to other educators.
We find all these qualities in superior measure among highly intelligent children, according to the ratings of those who know them. If one would call for a mathematical statement of the likelihood of finding these traits in combination with high intelligence, we could give it. I may say that the correlation coefficients hover around .50. This means that in selecting any child testing far up in the top one per cent—say at 160 IQ or above (100 IQ being par)—there is far more than an even chance of having thus automatically selected a tall, healthy, fine-looking, honest, and courageous child, with a great love of adventure and of beauty in his makeup. With a correlation so far from unity as .50, however, we cannot be at all certain of such a happy combination. We shall find a minority of cases where fine judgment is combined with an unstable temper, a crippled body, an ugly face, a ruthless disregard for others, malign chicanery, cowardice. (I would say there cannot be a very high intelligence without the love of beauty.)
Educational psychology works constantly to find ways of knowing how to identify these additional elements. It will be a long time before we advance to a point where we can measure these as well as we can now measure intelligence. Some of these additional qualifications are undoubtedly as essential to leadership as intelligence is. A rascal, a coward, a liar, a tyrant, a panderer, a fanatic, an invalid, is not a desirable leader, no matter whether his IQ is 200. We must learn to select from among the highly intelligent those who have the greatest number of additional qualifications. We must learn what these additional qualifications are. One knows them when one sees them in action. For example, an eleven-year-old boy of IQ close to 180 decided to run for the office of class president in the senior high school to which he had been accelerated. His classmates were around sixteen years of age. During the electioneering a proponent of a rival candidate arose to speak against the eleven-year-old, and he said, among other things, "Fellows, we don't want a president in knee pants!"
In the midst of the applause following this remark, the eleven-year-old arose, and waving his hand casually in the direction of the full-length portrait of George Washington on the wall, he said, "Fellows, try to remember that when George got to be the Father of our country he was wearing knee pants." The eleven-year-old was elected by a large majority. He gave evidence not only of an IQ of 180, but also of the additional qualities of political leadership in highest degree: audacity, presence of mind, good humor, grace, and, above all, the genuine desire to be a popular leader. He knew how to bridge, by a debonair gesture, the great gap between him and those to be led.
This boy had qualities of political leadership. This limiting adjective opens the large subject of the different kinds of leaders. Leaders of whom, and for what ends? Observation of children suggests that there is a direct ratio between the intelligence of the leader and that of the led. To be a leader of his contemporaries, a child must be more intelligent, but not too much more intelligent, than those who are to be led. There are rare exceptions to this principle, as in the case we have cited. But, generally speaking, a leadership pattern will not form—or it will break up—when a discrepancy of more than about 30 points of IQ comes to exist between the leader and the led.
This concept of an optimum which is not a maximum difference between the leader and the led has very important implications for selection and training. We cannot do more than to point to it here, in passing. Among school children—as among the peoples of all times—the great intellectual leaders are unrecognized, isolated, and even ridiculed by all but a few in the ordinary course of mass education. They can develop leadership of their sort only when placed in special classes.
Observation and investigation prove that in the matter of their intellectual work these children are customarily wasting much time in the elementary schools. We know from measurements made over a three-year period that a child of 140 IQ can master all the mental work provided in the elementary school, as established, in half the time allowed him. Therefore, one-half the time which he spends at school could be utilized in doing something more than the curriculum calls for. A child of 170 IQ can do all the studies that are at present required of him, with top "marks," in about one-fourth the time he is compelled to spend at school. What, then, are these pupils doing in the ordinary school setup while the teacher teaches the other children who need the lessons?
No exhaustive discussion of time-wasting can be undertaken here, except to say briefly that these exceptional pupils are running errands, idling, engaging in "busy work," or devising childish tasks of their own, such as learning to read backward—since they can already read forward very fluently. Many are the devices invented by busy teachers to "take up" the extra time of these rapid learners, but few of these devices have the appropriate character that can be built only on psychological insight into the nature and the needs of gifted children.
Before education can discharge this most important task of all with economy and justice, it must become a science. The science which is fundamental to education is psychology. Psychology had to develop the methods of mental measurement before there could be accurate or humane dealing in a system of compulsory education. We must take "the measure of a man" before we can know how to educate him; and it remained for mental measurement to reveal the astonishing power of learning that is latent in an elementary school-child of IQ 170 or 180. How shall such pupils be taught? How shall we educate these rapid learners, these subtle thinkers, these children of potential genius in the elementary school?
CONSIDERATIONS IN PLANNING THE CURRICULUM [3]
At the outset we must realize and admit that no absolute criteria exist by which to select from all aspects of human experience those which are most valuable for a group of gifted children. There is no body of "revealed" wisdom about this matter. Nevertheless, we are not altogether at sea. Common sense, accompanied by scientific facts of psychology, comes to our assistance, and we may note first such negative considerations as occur to us under this guidance.
It is useless to undertake extensive work in classical languages or in mathematics as "general discipline" for the minds of these rapid learners. The education given should be such as will function specifically and uniquely in their lives. It should afford them a rich background of ideas, in terms of which they may perceive the significant features of their own times.
Another definitely negative consideration applies to the avoidance of all "subjects" which they will have occasion to encounter in high school and college in later years. These young children can learn algebra or Latin grammar or chemistry easily enough, but what is the use of having them do so? The opportunity and the prescribed necessity for this will come later.
Turning to positive considerations, we know that these pupils—they and no others—will possess as adults those mental powers on which the learned professions depend for conservation and advancement. Also, we know that they will be the literary interpreters of the world of their generation. And they will be the ones who can think deeply and clearly about abstractions like the state, the government, and economics. We know this because we have seen a group like this "grow up" over a period of fifteen years, and we know what "became" of every one of them. Below an IQ of 130 no very large amount of effective thinking about complex abstractions can be done at any age. That, we are learning, is about the median mental caliber of college students in first-class colleges, taking it our country over. In many highly selected, first-class colleges, the boy or girl of IQ 140 finds himself or herself merely a good average student, steadily receiving "C's." In such colleges one must be a very good thinker in order to survive the course, but no one would consider median students in our first-rate colleges to be geniuses. The suggestion advanced about twenty years ago that 140 IQ represents "genius or near-genius" was premature. And when we remember that 120 IQ and 115 IQ are well below these median students in mental power, it becomes clear that at and below those levels conservation and advancement of the abstractions underlying the learned professions will be very inadequately handled. Really adequate conservation of the precious stores of knowledge laid up in medicine, law, theology, education, and the sciences depends on those not below 130 IQ.
As for originations, whereby one generation progresses beyond another in control of the physical environment and of preventable evils, we are learning that only a few in the topmost ranges can produce them in the realm of abstractions. Only a few in the top one per cent can contribute to actual progress. As Franklin K. Lane has said, "Progress means the discovery of the capable. They are our natural masters. They lead because they have the right. And everything done to keep them from rising is a blow to what we call our civilization." To develop each according to his ability: this is democracy at its ideal best.
The education of the best thinkers should be an education for initiative and originality. Effective originality depends, first of all, upon sound and exhaustive knowledge of what the course of preceding events has been. To take their unique places in civilized society, it would seem, therefore, that the intellectually gifted need especially to know what the evolution of culture has been. And since at eight or nine years of age they are not as yet ready for specialization, what they need to know is the evolution of culture as it has affected common things. At present, this is not taught to children or to adolescents, except in fragmentary and casual ways. Persons typically graduate from elementary school, high school, and college, and take postgraduate degrees without learning much, if anything, about the evolution of lighting, of refrigeration, of shipping, of clothing, of etiquette, of trains, of libraries, and of a thousand things which have been contributed to the common life by persons in past times and which distinguish the life of civilized man from the existence of the savage. These things are vaguely taken for granted even by the intelligent, educated person. No systematic knowledge of how they came into being enriches his understanding. Nor is he aware of the biographies of those who have made his comfort and his safety possible. No more does he understand how dangerous and destructive forces came to be in the world. Of these vast fields the college graduate is typically ignorant, as has frequently been proved.
The activities which make up the life of a civilized man may be variously organized and classified for purposes of study in the elementary school. A number of the progressive schools have undertaken projects in these fields. The pupils in such schools usually test at a median of about 118 IQ, and the work they have done, while it is helpful and suggestive, is not what is needed for pupils of the caliber with which we are here dealing.
Topical classifications which have suggested themselves as areas for study might be stated as follows: food; shelter; clothing; transportation; sanitation and health; trade; time-keeping; illumination; tools and implements; communication; law; government; education; warfare; punishment; labor; recreation. Every one of these areas of human culture affords the opportunity and necessity for studying the evolution of common things, satisfying the intellectual curiosity, and challenging the power of learning of the children here considered.
ENRICHMENT UNITS AT SPEYER SCHOOL
Between the ages of seven and thirteen years, the minds of these children are occupied primarily with exploration of the world in which they have recently arrived. They are full of questions of fact, not yet being distracted by the emotional and dynamic interests that come with adolescence and adulthood. This is the golden age of the intellect. Why? How? When? Who? Where? What? are constantly on their tongues, as any parent of a child in our classes will testify.
Now, in accordance with the philosophy and psychology which we have tried all too briefly to indicate, a series of "enrichment units" is being worked out at Speyer School day by day in our classrooms. These are being published in the form of teachers' handbooks, in a series designated "The Evolution of Common Things," the first numbers of which have been published. It will take five years to complete the series, at the end of which time we shall know from experience how much knowledge along the lines indicated can be organized and learned by children above 130 IQ in the years of the elementary school.
The handbooks, as they appear in published form, will represent the actual work of the pupils themselves, guided by the teacher. The teachers did not discover and assemble the materials of instruction, and "give them out." The children did this work. In the end, the teacher organized the total work into an orderly sequence, and verbalized it in final form for presentation. But no teacher would have the time or energy to carry on the work of the school and also collect and compile the materials contained in one of these units.
When an area of knowledge has been circumscribed by the children as one chosen for study by class discussion, the teacher participating in the thinking but not leading it, the pupils (there are twenty-five in each class) divide themselves into "committees." These various groups of three to five children each bring special knowledge to the class periods, and all share in the sum total of facts and ideas thus assembled. Libraries are thoroughly utilized in this process. Ninety-five per cent of the pupils who were admitted to our classes in February, 1936 (they were then between the ages of seven and nine), had and were using "library cards" from the New York Public Library. They are taken by their teachers to the nearest branch of the Public Library on days arranged for, and they "look up" their own materials, following the topics listed.
Librarians were at first skeptical as to the wisdom of admitting these very young children to the card indices and other facilities of the library. But librarians are an open-minded group, and they were persuaded to let the children try. No difficulty at all has been experienced. Stedman showed long ago that elementary school children of IQ above 140 can use a library and consult reference books as well as students in the normal school do.
In addition to work in the Public Library, the classes have the right to use books from the Teachers College Library; and to the librarians of Teachers College much credit is due for their effective coöperation. Also, the library facilities of the public schools are thoroughly utilized. Current periodical literature, coming to the homes of the pupils, makes a constant contribution. It is surprising how few of the books found most useful were written by professed educators.
Of the trips undertaken, the visual aids supplied, and other methods of instruction there is not space to tell here. These are described fully in the units as they appear.
"The Evolution of Common Things" is the chief enrichment project growing in our classes. However, much in addition to this work is incorporated in our curriculum. These additions may be described as follows.
First may be mentioned the study of Biography, because it is very closely allied to "The Evolution of Common Things." This is planned to continue for five years, though not being done in every term continuously. It is inevitable that it should become apparent to our pupils that all "common things" of the kind being studied have had their origins in the minds of people. Who these people were is answered by the study of biography. The question "Who?" is constantly in the air. During the year 1936-1937, about one hundred persons were "biografied" [4] by our pupils, most of them persons who have given us very important "common things."
The idea that biography is a study well suited to young gifted children was given trial experimentally fifteen years ago at Public School 165, Manhattan, and its suitability was there proved. At the Speyer School we are able to build upon the previous experiment and to extend and improve the work, mainly because of the astonishing improvement in the writing of biography which has taken place in the recent past.
The French language and literature will be taught for the full five years. This is done for three reasons: (1) the pupils with whom we are dealing will, more than others, have occasion to meet foreign peoples, and to represent their country abroad in the realm of ideas; (2) it is thought that the earlier a language is studied, the more thoroughly it can be mastered, especially as regards pronunciation; (3) the teaching of a modern language enriches, without anticipating, the opportunities of the high school and college, since the pupils will have occasion to take various languages later, and may ultimately emerge with three, instead of the usual two, at their command. French rather than German, Spanish, or Italian was chosen because teachers of the French language were available on our staff, and we gladly adopted it.
Another of the important enrichment projects is the formulation of a curriculum in the Science of Nutrition. This, also, is a five-year plan, in the course of which a curriculum in nutrition will be set up in terms of the vocabulary, the concepts, and the capacity of thinking which are proper to these children.
SPECIAL WORK
Special work in general science has been carried on since the opening of the classes. For a time the "question-box" method was tried. A "question-box" dealing with science in any and all its aspects was opened once a week, and the children's questions found in it were discussed by a special teacher.
Through the courtesy of the Music and Arts High School, special teachers of these subjects have been assigned, and many projects have been carried through. The pupils have made murals founded on their studies of common things. They have learned French songs, and have become familiar with many things in music.
Another teacher of the staff of the Speyer School is developing dramatics for our classes. It is evident that a large opportunity for the development of the creative abilities of our pupils lies here.