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.

Handicrafts are taught at least once each week. The handwork of the rapid learners is very superior, contrary to the current superstition that highly intelligent children are "poor with their hands." During the year 1936-1937, the pupils made airplanes from blueprints, which involved very delicate operations with glue and small pieces of wood. They were then seven to nine years old.

One afternoon each week, the Games Club meets, and there the children learn games of intellectual skill. Chess and checkers are the favorites. It is believed that education for leisure time is a special responsibility of those who teach highly intelligent children. The most intelligent tend to become "isolates," through not finding in the ordinary course of life recreations congenial both to themselves and to contemporaries. A game like chess or checkers can be shared with pleasure, irrespective of age, by any two people who have a sufficient "mental nearness." Hence they help a very gifted child to "find company" and "enjoy himself" in all age groups--a very important factor in the social development of such a child. The interest in these games is kept within bounds by the restriction to one hour a week and to those pupils who are up to date in their school work. Possibly more time should be allowed for the Games Club as pupils grow older.

Having followed our description of the enriched curriculum to this point, readers who have no direct experience in the education of children of the caliber being considered may begin to be anxious for the welfare of "reading, writing, and arithmetic." Let them be reassured. Mornings are devoted to the established curriculum of the elementary school, the pupils working by "contracts." Achievement tests are given at regular intervals to determine conventional grade status in the various "subjects." In June, 1937, our pupils showed the "educational age" of pupils at the middle of the seventh grade of the elementary schools as measured by Stanford Achievement Tests. They were then nine years six months old, on the median. The "regular" grade status for them would have been the middle of the fourth grade. The most intelligent tenth of the pupils were already "through the ceiling" of Stanford Achievement and of other standard achievement tests in June, 1937.

At this point, it should be mentioned that our pupils do not have and never have had homework assigned to them.

The intellectual interest and capacity of young children who test from 160 to 200 IQ is incredible to those who have had no experience with the teaching of such children. We have in our classes about a dozen of such extreme deviates. They are truly _original_ thinkers and doers of their generation. A book could be made of the incidents constantly occurring which denote the qualities of their minds. It is these children who suffer most from ennui in the ordinary situation.

For instance, recently in the discussion of the biography of Madame Curie, the question was raised by a pupil as to what "radium _really_ is." One suggested that "radium is a stone." Another said that "radium is a metal." The person in charge of the class then said, "What is the difference between a stone and a metal?" A pupil of an extremely high degree of intelligence rose and said, "The main difference is that a metal is malleable and ductile, and a stone is not." He then enlarged very precisely upon "what these properties are." At the moment of this discussion, this boy was nine years six months old. The others listened attentively, and understood the elucidation.

Such incidents, occurring daily, give some idea of the level of minds being dealt with in our classes. The boy who thought and said what is set forth above was placed in the sixth grade when his principal recommended him to our classes. He had then been "skipped" to a point well out of his age group, and yet he had nothing whatever to learn from the work of the sixth grade.

The pupils in the classes for rapid learners will go to senior high school when they are thirteen years old. In the meantime, they will be learning and thinking in the company of their contemporaries as regards age and social interests. They will have proper intellectual training, and will at no time idle their time away, be practiced in habits of laziness, or become the victims of boredom. They will emerge into high school with a background of knowledge richer and fuller by far than that of pupils of equal mentality, for whom no enrichment program has been provided.

EMOTIONAL EDUCATION

Much more might be said of the program of intellectual training, but I must pass on to consider what may be even more important-- their training in attitudes, emotions, and drives; in other words, their emotional education. How shall we avoid the conditions which, under the prevailing system of mass education, tend to produce emotional habits destructive of leadership?

Of all the speical problems of general conduct which the most intelligent children face, I will mention five, which beset them in early years and may lead to habits subversive of fine leadership: (1) to find enough hard and interesting work at school; (2) to suffer fools gladly; (3) to keep from becoming negativistic toward authority; (4) to keep from becoming hermits; (5) to avoid the formation of habits of extreme chicanery.

In the ordinary elementary school situation children of 140 IQ waste half of their time. Those above 170 IQ waste practically all of their time. With little to do, how can these children develop power of sustained effort, respect for the task, or habits of steady work? I could entertain you for some time telling you the various sorts of bizarre and wasteful activities that were taking up the time of the most intelligent elementary school children in this nation yesterday in their classrooms, but we must pass on to other things.

A lesson which many highly intelligent persons never learn as long as they live is that human beings in general are incorrigibly very different from themselves in thought, action, and desire. Many a reformer has died at the hands of a mob which he was trying to improve. The highly intelligent child must learn to suffer fools gladly--not sneeringly, not angrily, not despairingly, not weepingly--but _gladly_, if personal development is to proceed successfully in the world as it is. Failure to learn how to tolerate in a reasonable fashion the foolishness of others less gifted leads to bitterness, disillusionment, and misanthropy, which are the ruin of potential leaders.

Every day at school the opportunity presents itself to learn this lesson. Especially hard for these intelligent children to bear is the foolishness of accepted authority. For instance, our pupils found it stated in their encyclopedia that Mr. Orville Wright is dead. As is likely to be the case, a child in the group immediately identified error. "Mr. Orville Wright is as much alive as I am," declared this child. This was subsequently verified by the class as a whole. They wrote to Mr. Wright, fiercely protesting against the foolishness of the encyclopedia. They wanted to throw the false authority out at once.

The teacher discussed the incident on the basis of "glad suffering." I can't take time to describe the conversation that pivoted on this incident, but I can say that it was valuable as emotional education. The pupils still have the offending encyclopedia.

As a form of failure to suffer fools gladly, negativism may develop. The foolish teacher who hates to be corrected by a child is unsuited to these children. Too many children of IQ 170 are being taught by teachers of IQ 120. Into this important matter of the _selection of the teacher_ we cannot enter, except to illustrate the difficulty from recent conversation with a ten-year-old boy of IQ 165. This boy was referred to us as a school problem: "Not interested in the school work. Very impudent. A liar." The following is a fragment of conversation with this boy:

What seems to be your _main_ problem in school?

Several of them.

Name _one_.

Well, I will name the teachers. Oh, boy! It is bad enough when the _pupils_ make mistakes, but when the _teachers_ make mistakes, oh, boy!

Mention a few mistakes the teachers made.

For instance I was sitting in 5A and the teacher was teaching 5B. She was telling those children that the Germans discovered printing, that Gutenberg was the first discoverer of it, mind you. After a few minutes I couldn't stand it. I am not supposed to recite in that class, you see, but I got up. I said, "No; the Chinese _invented_, not discovered, printing, before the time of Gutenberg--while the Germans were still barbarians."

Then the teacher said, "Sit down. You are entirely too fresh." Later on she gave me a raking-over before the whole class. Oh, boy! What teaching!

It seemed to me that one should begin at once in this case the lesson about suffering fools gladly. So I said, "Ned, that teacher is foolish, but one of the very first things to learn in the world is to suffer fools _gladly_." The child was so filled with resentment that he heard only the word "suffer."

"Yes, that's it. That's what _I_ say! Make 'em suffer. Roll a rock on 'em."

I quote this to suggest how negativistic rebels may seize on the wrong idea. Before we finished the conversation Ned was straightened out on the subject of who was to do the suffering. He agreed to do it himself.

I will cite another conversation, this time with a nine-year-old, of IQ 183.

What seems to be the _main_ trouble with you at school?

The teacher can't pronounce.

Can't pronounce _what_?

Oh, lots of things. The teacher said "Magdalen College"--at Oxford, you know. I said, "In England they call it Môdlin College." The teacher wrote a note home to say I am rude and disorderly. She does not like me.

Just one more conversation, this time with an eight-year-old, of IQ 178, Sent as a school problem:

What is your _main_ trouble at school?

My really main trouble is _not_ at school.

Where is it, then?

It is the _librarian_.

How is _that_?

Well, for instance, I go to the library to look for my books on mechanics. I am making a new way for engines to go into reverse gear. The librarian says, "Here, where are you going? You belong in the juvenile department." So I have to go where the children are all _supposed_ to go. But I don't stay there long, because they don't have any real books there. Say, do you think you could get me a card to the other department?

This subject is inexhaustible, but we must go on to speak of the psychological isolation of these children when they drift unrecognized. The majority of children above 160 IQ play little with other children because the difficulties of social contact are almost insurmountable. Unless special facilities can be provided, these children tend to become isolates, a condition not conducive to leadership, except perhaps of a few rare sorts, later in life. Such children are ordinarily friendly and gregarious by nature, but their efforts at forming friendship tend to be defeated by the scarcity of like-minded contemporaries. The imaginary playmate as a solution of the problem of loneliness is fairly frequent, but far inferior to the real playmate, could one be found. Shaw makes Saint Joan say, "I was always alone."

This danger of becoming an isolate and a hermit is one that should be carefully studied in the interests of leadership. To combat it we must somehow supply the highly intelligent in their early years with companions, especially of their own age, who can understand what they say, and can answer. This difficulty of communication is illustrated by Voltaire's abortive attempt as an adult to get into contact with the peasants around him. In _The Ignorant Philosopher_, Voltaire says, "I discovered such a wide difference between thought and nourishment, without which I should not think that I believed that there was a substance in me that reasoned and another substance that digested. Nevertheless, by constantly endeavoring that we are two, I materially felt that I was only one: and this contradiction gave me infinite pain. I have asked some of my own likenesses, who cultivate the earth, our common mother, if they felt that they were two? If they had discovered by their philosophy that they possessed within them an immortal substance . . . acting upon their nerves without touching them, sent expressly into them six weeks after their conception? They thought that I was jesting and pursued the cultivation of their land without making me a reply."

Even so, the ten-year-old, of IQ 175, wishes to discuss with his "own likenesses" the events of medieval history, but he finds that they make him "no reply." And if he persists, they become annoyed, hurling at him the dreadful epithet, "Perfesser." If he still persists, they pull his hair, tear his shirt from his back, and hit him with a beer bottle. (I am speaking of _real_ life.)

Turning now to habits of chicanery, it would be a question for long and close debate, as to whether a highly gifted leader can ever live and do his work among the mass of men without developing a technique of benign chicanery. Many of the great political leaders have been past masters of benign chicanery, often exploiting the people for the good of the social order. Perhaps the arts of benign chicanery are absolutely necessary to a child of highest intelligence, compelled to find his spiritual way through mass education. Certain it is that these children learn all sorts of devious ways to self-preservation. For instance, two of our pupils of Public School 500 came to us followed by notes from teachers, saying they were hard-of-hearing. Both of them have very keen ears, but they had learned not to hear the insupportable drill on things they had known for years, and in self-defense they listened so little that their teachers thought them deaf. At Public School 500 their hearing is good--almost too good!

Guidance in regard to this matter of chicanery is absolutely necessary. Here we have one of the most delicate of all aspects of training of a leader. By teaching these children that they should at all times act with complete candor and straightforwardness, in all sorts of company, shall we be educating them for self-destruction? We could spend hours in discussing this. We cannot do much more here than mention it.

MATTERS OF GENERAL POLICY

I am unwilling to close these remarks without touching upon some matters of general policy, which go beyond selection and training. What of those children, gifted for leadership, who through accidents of fate are without means for the development of their gifts? At our school we are compelled to witness daily the sight of children of fine quality, who do not have enough to eat or wear, to say nothing of having about them beauty or comfort. It is thought by those who have given no precise attention to the matter that "bright children will take care of themselves." This is the routine answer given by foundations established to promote human welfare, when requests are made for grants to study and meet the need of such children. The concern of American philanthropy in the present state of public knowledge is for the chronic dependent, forever incapable of development. This criticism may be justly extended to include not only the leaders of philanthropy today, but political, educational, and other kinds of leaders, who would give all to the burdens of society and nothing to the burden-bearers. To such tendencies of those in power today some halt should be called. For a people to deny its natural aristocracy is a social error in the broader sense.

Now the truth is that children of great ability are virtually as helpless as any others under authorities blind to their exceptionality. It would be an impossibly strong and shrewd child who could today conduct his own education under the compulsory school laws; make money to live on and accumulate funds for his own higher education under the child-labor laws--all in the first eighteen years of his life. Yet this seems to be what elderly society has vaguely in mind, when reiterating that "the bright will take care of themselves."

It is common to refer in this connection to the fact that Mr. John D. Rockefeller had earned and saved a large sum of money by the time he was sixteen years old. However, in this day and age Mr. Rockefeller would have been arrested on the double charge of truancy and violation of the child-labor law, and would have had no savings whatsoever at sixteen years of age. It is shocking to think of Mr. Rockefeller standing at ten years of age before the Juvenile Court, but such would be his situation were he a ten-year-old child _today_ instead of having been such nearly a hundred years ago. In our day a ten-year-old acquires no merit by staying out of school and engaging in the egg business. He acquires, instead, a court summons.

What is needed for the support and development of those children whom we see before us daily, and who represent scores of others in the same economic condition, is what we may call a revolving foundation. By this is meant a fund from which the gifted young could draw at any age the means for their development, with the moral (not legal) obligation to repay according to ability to do so, after twenty years, without interest. By this plan the superior could invest in themselves; very little money would actually be spent, because it would come back again, and the nation would always benefit in ways not now fully foreseeable. The establishment of a revolving fund for the development of tested children would be another "new thing under the sun." It would be a great experiment in social science, now rendered possible for the first time by inventions and discoveries in the field of child psychology.

[1] _Teachers College Record_, Vol. 39, No. 4 (1938), pages 296-306.

[2] _Teachers College Record_, Vol. 40 (1939). Also reprinted in _Public Addresses of Leta S. Hollingworth_, Science Press Printing Company, Lancaster, Pennsylvania; 1940.

[3] The curriculum here described is that organized by Leta S. Hollingworth and her collaborators in Speyer School, P.S. 500, Manhattan, for two experimental classes of "rapid learners." For an early account of this project see "The Founding of Public School 500," _Teachers College Record_, Vol. 38, No. 2 (November, 1936). Also "What is Going On at Speyer School?" Chapter 21 of _Public Addresses of Leta S. Hollingworth_, Science Press Printing Company, Lancaster, Pennsylvania; 1940.

[4] A word coined by the pupils.