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
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]
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