V. EXPERIMENTAL ATTEMPTS TO INDIVIDUALIZE EDUCATION Official administrative recognition of individual differences among public school pupils began with the extremely stupid, whom we call feeble-minded. This was natural, because the feeble-minded are incapable of even approximately normal progress, and this, added to their tendency to become disciplinary problems, renders them an intolerable burden to teachers in the regular grades. As long ago as 1872 we find that attention was called to the “pedagogical misfits,” in proceedings at professional teachers’ meetings in the United States. By 1890 the city of Cleveland had established two special classes for children presenting particular difficulties of discipline. Special classes for extremely dull children (the feeble-minded) have passed the stage of experiment. They are now an accepted part of the school system of many cities in this country, and a few state departments of education have undertaken to establish such special classes for districts not so favorably situated as cities are. The relative money cost of thus educating the most stupid children produced in our population is great, and the returns upon the investment are uncertain. We need careful studies of the cost of educating the dull, as compared with the cost of educating the superior, in the light of the returns from education, both to the public and to the individuals taught. The complexity of such study calls for much patience and ingenuity. Special classes for children of very superior general intelligence, who are as far above the average as the feeble-minded are below, are at present much discussed by American educators. Such classes have actually been established in a few school systems. These are still considered to be experimental, but it surely will not be very long before official administrative recognition will be widely given to the needs of pupils whose natural rate of progress is over twice as rapid as that of the average child. Abroad, Germany has already undertaken education for gifted children as a special project of the public schools, in recognition, no doubt, of the extent to which national rehabilitation will be dependent on the training of the able. Contrary to pre-war policy, German educators are now seeking, by the method of mental tests, for superior mental endowment regardless of social-economic status, and even to some extent regardless of sex.