The psychologist who is professionally acquainted with children who test above 130 IQ will be able to formulate clearly certain special problems of adjustment, observed in the case study of these children, which arise primarily from the very fact that they are gifted. Let us attempt to state some of these problems. The more intelligent the child, the more likely he is to become involved in these puzzling situations.
THE PROBLEM OF WORK
Where the gifted child drifts in the school unrecognized, held to the lock step which is determined by the capacities of the average, he has little to do. He receives daily practice in habits of idleness and daydreaming. His abilities are never genuinely challenged, and the situation is contrived to build in him expectations of an effortless existence. Children up to about 140 IQ tolerate the ordinary school routine quite well, being usually a little young for grade through an extra promotion or two, and achieving excellent marks without serious effort. But above this status, children become increasingly bored with school work, if kept in or nearly in the lock step. Children at or above 180 IQ, for instance, are likely to regard school with indifference, or with positive distaste, for they find nothing interesting to do there.
On the other hand, if the child be greatly accelerated in grade status, so that he is able to function intellectually with real interest, he will be misplaced in other important respects. A child of eight years graded with twelve-year-olds is out of his depth socially and physically, though able to do intellectual work as well as they can. These problems come out clearly when we consider that the seats and desks planned for twelve-year-olds will not fit him; that he will always be the last one chosen in athletic contests; that no one will know how to treat him at class parties; that the teacher will be prone to complain of his manual work, such as handwriting; and that he will be emotionally immature in comparison with older classmates. When he jumps up and down, clapping his hands and shouting, "Goody! goody!" at an announcement from the teacher, the older children will laugh at him, and later may hang paper tails and other tokens of ignominy upon him; whereas his childish glee would have constituted no violation of taste among eight-year-olds.
A thousand concrete instances might be described to show what these problems of adjustment are. Experimental education is trying to solve them. At present, the special class is being tried in populous centers, wherein a whole group of the young gifted can be brought together (as has long been done for the dull and slow).
In less populous communities, a moderate degree of acceleration, combined with enrichment of the curriculum for the individual, is being tried. We do not yet know how the problem of adjustment to school work can best be solved. Indeed, we have just learned how to define this problem.
THE PROBLEM OF ADJUSTMENT TO CLASSMATES
Typically, where there is no scientific recognition of the presence of the gifted, these children, by the time they are eight or nine years old, are more or less accelerated in scholastic status and appear as the youngest in the class. Such a child is thus youngest in the fourth or fifth grade, in a heterogeneous group in which the oldest are retardates, thirteen or fourteen years old. Now, in the case of boys especially, it may happen that these dull adolescents lie in wait to bully and tease the young gifted boy, whose "book-learning" they detest and whose immaturity suggests the term "baby." The present writer knows of instances in which these young children have valiantly suffered at the hands of dull, bullying classmates, protecting themselves as best they might by agility and wit, since, of course, they could not possibly compete in size and strength. The gross indignities and tortures thus suffered are directly a penalty of being gifted; for little boys of like age, in the grade proper to their age, do not come into classroom contact with these over-age bullies to anything like the same extent, and hence do not become targets for the latter.
One young gifted boy thus bullied said, "I rigged up a sling and was going to hit him [the bully] with a marble, but got afraid I might shoot his eye out." This simple statement tells volumes.
It would seem that the school should somehow take effective cognizance of this problem of the bully, which is created for the gifted child directly as a result of the contacts forced upon both of them by the school. Segregation of pupils on the basis of mentality would go far to obviate such problems, but except in cities, homogeneous grouping is difficult. At present, compulsory education, with heterogeneous classes, forced upon gifted children situations that would be analogous to those arising if teachers and superintendents were compelled to consort daily, unprotected, with giant thugs and gangsters. Gifted adults are free to segregate themselves from thugs and gangsters, and also to make explicit provision for police protection, but the American school forces the dull bully upon the gifted child, in daily contacts, out of which lasting problems of mental hygiene may arise.