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
Sixty per cent of these pupils gave 13 years as the "best age"
to enter high school, and twenty-six per cent gave 14 years or
older. Only one child gave an age younger than 12 years as optimum
for entering high school. This group, as a whole, would have
preferred to enter the ninth grade at an age older than that at
which they entered, and gave cogent reasons for the preference
during their high-school careers.
These ideas persisted through the college careers, especially
among the boys, many of whom felt they were misplaced in college
at 15 years of age. Entering high school near the thirteenth
birthday, a child saves time, and yet is not made subject to the
tensions which may result from trying to meet social and physical
requirements for which he is too immature.
Junior high school is omitted from the picture as ours was a
five-year plan. Such a plan of curriculum enrichment as ours fits
best into the 8B setup, for such a program cannot be supervised
if the pupils are scattered and the situation made subject to the
transition from 6B to junior high school. In the metropolitan
situation it is not feasible to take the pupils for special
classes until they are at least 7 years old. The infrequency
of their occurrence makes it necessary to assemble them from
several districts, and they are not mature enough to come from
a distance when they are 6 years of age. Parents cannot assume the
burden of accompanying them twice a day. Our pupils were 8 years
old, on the median, when they entered our rapid learner classes.
We have found it feasible to organize classes for 8-year-olds, give
them a five-year program of special studies, and have them fully
ready for senior high school at 13 years of age. This plan has
worked out well, whereas, if we had had to consider a transition
to the junior high school in the midst of our work, difficulties
would have arisen, and it is not clear how our program could have
been carried out at all. However, a field for _experimentation_
lies here for those who would be predisposed to favor the
junior-high-school plan of school organization.
We decided that no ceremony of graduation should mark the promotion
to senior high school. Our pupils will make the transition not
in a body, but a few at a time at the end of each term. Some
informal social event may take place, but no ceremony of graduation
as such.
The question, "What items of cumulative record should accompany
each child from the elementary school?" is one requiring much
study. Here we are working quite experimentally. The public schools
of Altoona, Elkins Park, and Fort Wayne, Pennsylvania, are reported
to have formulated a cumulative record card for rapid learners,
which we hope later to consult. The records of mental tests,
the record of scholastic-achievement tests, and a statement of
teachers' ratings on a variety of character traits should no doubt
be included with the health record and attendance record in the
elementary school.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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