The family and its members

by Anna Garlin Spencer

If the family really cuts off the education and vocational opportunities of the less gifted below the point required for average success in life, in order to give greater advantages to the gifted one, it is an injustice. The mediocre have their innings now, and it is one of the great demands of democracy, both within and without the family, that the commonplace shall not miss its chance for learning how to serve and enjoy the best it can. The family life must be for all, the one place in which no life is wholly sacrificed to another life.

What, then, shall be done for the gifted whose talent, like that of music, for example, means a high demand for expensive culture? The answer we are beginning to give is that social agencies shall aid the parents in securing that culture. Aristocracy had its "patrons" for artists. Democracy must have its special educational aids for the gifted. Already that demand is being met in countless ways that will readily occur to all. Meanwhile, there is the public school organized to meet the needs of the "average child." At first the grade-system had a Procrustean bed that made it impossible to meet the needs of those below the average and almost as difficult to meet the needs of those above that average. We started special schools and special rooms for those subnormal, retarded, slow, or specially difficult to manage. Now we are beginning to consider how we can best make the tax-supported public school serve the interests of the specially gifted. The first thing we see clearly now is to find out which children are exceptional on the upper side, and for that the newly devised forms of scientific observation and measurement may be useful if care is taken to mix every formula with common sense, patience, and human sympathy. The next essential is to decide whether the children who can go faster shall be passed along through the grades by special arrangement more rapidly or whether they shall be kept on the regular track of school promotions and be given extra lessons to "enrich their curriculum." The part of wisdom, it would seem, is to find out what kind of gift the exceptional child has and hasten his regular course, or add to it, in accordance with his type of talent. If he is to be one of those who are to mix with men and lead others in professions that demand administrative and executive power, the chances are that he should have the regular course in the usual order and add studies that will early give him the facts of practical life and an acquaintance with many phases of political, business, and scientific activity that would serve in such work as he is likely to find to do. If, on the other hand, the gift is creative, and the career nature has seemingly marked out is one where the impulse will come from within, and some special technical training can alone give that impulse expression, then the chances are that the sooner such a child "gets through with school," emerges from formal education into his own atmosphere and his own free alignment with the masters in his own art, the sooner he will really begin to be educated for his task. It seems to be true that the more a human being is set apart by nature for a specialty of art the less he gets from all teachers save those in his own field of interest. It seems also true that the wider a human being's range of dealing with other human beings in business, in politics, in religious organizations, in educational work, the surer it will be that "all is grist that comes to his mill" and there can be no study that is at all worthy that fails to enrich his mind. Hence, the new tendency to examination for the sake of finding out the specially gifted children and giving them the special opportunity in education which they need and will profit by, must be one guided toward details of differing gifts as well as toward quantitative power.

Genius Universal in Nature.—If any family has in it a real genius, that family shines forever in the reflected light of its choicest treasure. Yet a genius belongs to no family, even to no country. Such belong to the world. Mary, we are told, "pondered the things in her heart" which marked the boy Jesus out from all the other lads who played about the carpenter shop of Joseph. And it is not alone poetic imagination that shows her as troubled as well as humbly proud at the testimonies of His coming greatness. Many other mothers of those destined to high achievement have had misgivings as the shadow as truly as the sunlight of that greatness passed across their vision. For true greatness is solitary and often dedicated to tragedies of experience. The family life may be the only refuge from a misunderstanding world while the hero lives and only after death may the high quality of his service be known to all.

Genius Its Own School-master.—The most comforting thought to parents who have children "different" and perhaps different in ways not yet appreciated by the world around them, is this: nature, which takes care that we shall not have too many geniuses and doubtless will still take such care when we grow wise enough to give all the children a chance to prove whether or not they are geniuses—nature sees to it that the most gifted among the children of men carry within themselves their own school-master. If the regular lines of education do not suit their needs they promptly emancipate themselves from the useless pedagogy, and going after what they personally demand for inner nourishment, get it at all hazards. Sometimes, not infrequently, all the gifted child needs is a library and a chance to be free, or a studio and the companionship of an artist and just his own sort of training, at the time he can best appropriate it.

Varieties of the Gifted.—Happily all the flowers of the family are not geniuses or specially talented. Some are just beautiful to look at and yet unspoiled by flattery. It is a great gift of nature to be able to give happiness just by allowing people to look at one! The contour of the face, the turn of the head, the light in the eye, the freshness of the complexion, the grace of the movement, and the sweetness of the voice all go together, if the manner and the feeling only match the coloring and the form, to make it well worth while just to be alive.

And some flowers of the family are not beautiful but charming, those of tact and graciousness and understanding of others and consideration and unselfish behavior. These are they of whom one has said, "The charm of her presence was felt when she went, and men at her side grew nobler, girls purer, as all through the town the children were gladder who pulled at her gown."

Some flowers of the family bloom late and come to their beauty only when some disaster threatens destruction of the home or some sorrow wrecks its happiness. Simple, plain, unassuming, neither very wise nor very strong in other matters, they have a heart that can love with such intensity that it warms the coldest spot and is the refuge most sought when misfortune appears.

And sometimes the flower of the family is but a memory of one who early passes on. Emerson sang in his beautiful "Threnody":

"The gracious boy, who did adorn
The world whereinto he was born,
And by his countenance repay
The favor of the loving Day,—
Has disappeared from the Day's eye;
Far and wide she cannot find him;
My hopes pursue, they cannot bind him.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Nature, who lost, cannot remake him;
Fate let him fall, Fate can't retake him;
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
the feet
Of the most beautiful and sweet
Of human youth had left the hill
And garden,—they were bound and still."

It is of such that affection speaks most tenderly.