Children Above 180 IQ Stanford-Binet: Origin and DevelopmentHollingworth, Leta Stetter
Science
Children Above 180 IQ Stanford-Binet: Origin and Development
Hollingworth, Leta Stetter
Gifted children; Stanford-Binet Test
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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