F started school at the age of 5 years 10 months, in a two-room rural school in upstate New York in the town where he was born. He could already read well at that time; it was first noticed that he could read when he was "around 5 years of age." Riding in streetcars, he would take words apart and put them together again. He had learned the letters before his third year. At school he was received in the first grade. It was soon found that he was memorizing his reader and the teacher gave him a more advanced book. This school was a practically ungraded one; the first four grades were together in one room, and grades five to eight were in the other room. The teacher did not know what to do with F; so he was allowed to go into the second room and listen, in an orderly manner, to the fifth to eighth grades. When he entered New York City schools at the age of 7 years 10 months, the rural teacher gave F a transfer for the fifth grade. The mother presented the letter of transfer to the Manhattan principal, who pooh-poohed the idea that the boy could belong in the fifth grade at that age. He refused to accept the recommendation from the ungraded school and placed F in the third or fourth grade. After the first week the boy's teacher reported that he did not belong in that grade. When the principal insisted that F could not go into the fifth grade, the boy himself spoke up and said if they would give him an examination they would see that he could do it. The principal ordered him to keep still and not to talk so much. He was, however, eventually placed in the fifth grade in the year in which his eighth birthday occurred. At the end of that year he was promoted to Grade 6A, then into 6B, and he was shortly after received into the Special Opportunity Class at P.S. 165. He had always been fond of school up to this time, although he later developed a distaste for it and became a chronic truant. He spent much of his time helping the teachers, carrying books, and running errands, in order to keep occupied. When his mother requested his transfer to the Special Opportunity Class, the principal of the school he was attending, at first refused, saying that he liked to have bright pupils in his classes too. After futilely arguing for half an hour, the mother finally threatened to move to another part of town, thus forcing a transfer, whereupon the principal relented and gave the transfer. F said he liked the new school because he was allowed there to say what he thought. In his early school years he once won a prize, which was to be a book. Several books, supposedly of interest to boys, were offered him from which to choose. He looked them over and then said if it made no difference to the teacher, he would rather have a dictionary instead. This volume was given him, and it was used constantly thereafter. EARLY TEST SCORES