2. Depending on the solution of these problems, such children may either be well articulated to the work of school and society and thus their remarkable talents be socially capitalized, or they may, on the other hand, develop distaste for such activities, negativism toward social projects, and personal obstinacy and recalcitrance, perhaps accompanied by bitterness.
3. The advantages of early recognition, appreciation and, if possible, measurement are apparent in the study of this small group of exceptionally intelligent children. Although all were identified fairly early in their lives, there are very different degrees of adaptation to school and society, ranging from opposition and truancy, through indifference, to rapt and enthusiastic preoccupation. To a considerable extent these variations appear to have depended on the earliness of identification of the child's intellectual quality. The valuable services of surveys, guidance clinics, and school psychologists are clearly manifested in this group of cases.
4. The cases that have achieved most contented and socially useful adaptation are those in which parents, teachers, and principals have made prompt use of special gift identification, have sought educational guidance, have personally fostered and supervised the child's development and the solution of his adjustment problems, or have taken advantage of such experimental classes for exceptional children as the schools have offered at the time.
5. Among the cases herein reported the clearest ones of easy and useful adjustment occurred when the exceptional child became a member of an experimental group comprised of others of his approximate kind. In the dozen cases cited, four different projects of this kind in the New York City schools have been referred to.
CREATIVE WORK
Is it true that children such as those herein described differ from those of less intelligence merely in having a readier and more tenacious memory? Are their distinctive achievements only the phenomenal reproduction of things they have learned—the recitation of answers they have been taught? Or do they also exhibit signs of originality and creativeness? Of their superior capacity for learning there is of course ample evidence. Is it this feature of their endowment that accounts for their high scores in conventionally standardized measures such as tests and examinations?
Ordinary records and histories are perhaps not well suited to disclose originality in childhood unless it is obtrusive. The child who devises a new way of tying his shoes, of arranging his books, of managing his pets, of sharpening his skates, may very easily get no clinical credit for these inventions. No one, indeed, except the child himself may ever know of them, and it may never occur to him that they are "creative." A boy who writes a poem, draws a steamboat, or devises a new game of checkers may immediately get credit for originality, while one who invents a technique of his own for shaving the back of his own neck may remain unheralded as a creator.
Our concept of "creativeness" has become standardized so as to suggest chiefly contributions to the conventional arts. It may nevertheless be instructive to review these case histories, looking in each for signs of activity that might in one way or another be construed as creative.
Child A. At 12 months he was classifying his blocks according to letter shapes. Before 16 months of age A tired of saying the letters of the alphabet forward and "guessed he would say them backward." He "made rhymes" of his own by the third year. He developed arithmetical principles unsuspected by either parents or teachers. He had an elaborate "imaginary land." He did not play well with other children because he always wanted to introduce new methods of playing the games. He devised elaborate schemes of his own for classifying events and objects. There is very little of the conventional interest in drawing, painting, poetry, mechanics, or music in this account, but it is clear enough that in his own way A had originality.
Child B. This child's early acquisition of the art of reading appears to have been untutored, and her passion for organizing clubs showed at least a certain type of initiative. But the record gives little evidence of other creative activity. Her chief distinction so far as noted was in the fields of excellent schoolwork and social adaptability.