Special talents and defects : $b Their significance for educationHollingworth, Leta Stetter
Science
Special talents and defects : $b Their significance for education
Hollingworth, Leta Stetter
Educational psychology; Educational tests and measurements; Exceptional children
What is the interpretation of the facts reported? Does it not seem
certain that _general intelligence_ is, as indicated by the high
coefficients of correlation obtained between reading and intelligence,
the chief consideration, in predicting whether or not a child will learn
to read? Would it not appear that children of adequate general
intelligence, and of normal sensory capacity, learn to read when given
intensive training, whatever avenue of approach may be particularly
stressed?
It is not credible that all the non-readers found by Schmitt in Chicago,
chanced to have a kind of disability approachable by phonics, and in no
other way; that those discovered by Fernald and Keller in California
were so constituted that they could be approached through motor
exercises, and not otherwise; that Gates’ cases in the Scarborough
School all happened to be susceptible to training through visual
methods, and through no others. In fact, no investigator has established
his or her method as the only method of successful approach to
particular cases, by excluding other methods through experimental
teaching.
For non-readers such as have been described under the criteria laid down
by the investigators quoted, it seems highly probable that the best
method would be that wherein all the avenues of approach are fully
utilized. Such a method would combine all the special exercises devised
by the various investigators, in a proportion and sequence, which should
be determined upon as optimum by experimental teaching.
Such a method, when experimentally established, would be most suitable
for all children—not for the extreme of the distribution exclusively.
Here, as in so many questions of pedagogy, all children might profit
from our study of the extreme cases, who differ from the typical in
degree only.
Children of normal sensory capacity, and of IQ average or superior,
typically learn to read passably well, without approach through all the
possible avenues, and without special attention on the part of the
teacher to all the elements involved. A few such children require
intensive teaching in order “to pass” in reading, because of specific
idiosyncrasies. If the methods that succeed with the extreme cases were
applied to the typical class, perhaps the children might learn to read,
not “passably,” but very well. There might be a rise of ten points in
norms for reading ability throughout the grades. Such perfection of
method might or might not eliminate entirely the necessity for
individual teaching of special cases. Probably it would not, in classes
as large as those seen in most of our public schools to-day.
IX. CASES OF SPECIAL ABILITY IN READING
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