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
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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