Children Above 180 IQ Stanford-Binet: Origin and Development

Title: Children Above 180 IQ Stanford-Binet: Origin and Development

Author: Leta S. Hollingworth

Original publisher: World Book Company

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FOREWORD

Shortly after the year 1924 Leta S. Hollingworth prepared a manuscript on "Children above 180 IQ (Stanford-Binet)" in which she surveyed the material on the topic available up to that date and added accounts of five cases which she had studied individually. [1] As the years went by she held back the manuscript from publication and one by one she found seven more cases to be included in her list. At the time of her death in 1939 she had begun to revise this manuscript, bringing the survey up to date and adding the new cases. The present book gives as much of this revision from her own hand as is available. The Preface and Chapters 1, 2, and 3 are as she wrote them. The accounts of the first five cases are given just as she originally wrote them up, but to them "editorial supplements" have been added in which an endeavor has been made to present for each case such data as have been found in her files, with little in the way of discussion or interpretation.

The seven new cases which the original author had intended to include in the manuscript she had not yet written up. For these, therefore, it has been necessary to study the data she had accumulated for each child, to secure additional data when and where possible, and to present such an account of each as she might herself have written, patterned after her reports of the earlier cases.

Much is lost that would have been contributed had the author lived to complete her project. She knew these cases intimately and at first hand. Some of them she had followed for as long as twenty years, taking a personal interest in the individual children and their problems, advising them, assisting them, continuously observing them, and frequently testing and measuring them.

Particularly inadequate must be the accounts of the later development of the individuals herein described, for many of the details well known to the author she not committed to paper, since she fully expected to complete the manuscript herself. It is to be regretted that a follow-up study of these recent developments could not have been undertaken, and a hope is expressed that this may yet be done.

The chapters summarizing the group of twelve new cases are wholly without Leta S. Hollingworth's touch. It seemed desirable, however, to give such a summary as could be made under the circumstances. Had the original author been able to complete her book, we know that penetrating light would have been thrown on many of the more personal difficulties of these children of rare intelligence. This experience and insight can no longer be recovered. It must suffice to put on record chiefly the factual data now available, leaving it for future workers to follow up, if it should seem desirable, the subsequent career and destiny of the individuals whose early development and background are herein reported. Identification of these children is not made in this book, but the necessary facts for this purpose are on file and identification can be made at any time in the interests of educational research.

The third section of this book as originally outlined by Leta S. Hollingworth was to have dealt with general principles and with the social and educational implications of the study of children of very high intelligence. Up to the time of her death nothing of this character had been written by her explicitly, but throughout the years in which her projected book was developing she wrote a number of papers and reports bearing on the subject, and these were published from time to time in technical journals. It is well known that the content of these papers was dictated by her study of such cases as are herein reported, by her familiarity with the reports of other students in this field, and by her own very concrete and long experience in the organization and conduct of two experimental projects in the schools of New York City. It is, in fact, likely that the final chapters she had in mind for this book would have been a reorganization of the conclusions set forth in these articles.

Consequently, the last five chapters of this book, instead of being an attempt to guess at what the author might have said in them, are all from her own hand. They are either selections from or complete reproductions of papers she had published on what she considered to be the implications of her observations of children of rare intelligence.

The publication of this book has been made possible by funds granted by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. That Corporation is not, however, the author, owner, publisher, or proprietor of this publication, and it is not to be understood as approving by virtue of its grants any of the statements or views expressed herein.

Harry L. Hollingworth
Barnard College
Columbia University, New York

[1] Chapter 9 of Gifted Children, published in 1926, bears the title "Children Who Test above 180 IQ (Stanford-Binet)." Some of the cases described more fully in the monograph manuscript are also sketched in that chapter.