This boy had qualities of political leadership. This limiting adjective opens the large subject of the different kinds of leaders. Leaders of whom, and for what ends? Observation of children suggests that there is a direct ratio between the intelligence of the leader and that of the led. To be a leader of his contemporaries, a child must be more intelligent, but not too much more intelligent, than those who are to be led. There are rare exceptions to this principle, as in the case we have cited. But, generally speaking, a leadership pattern will not form—or it will break up—when a discrepancy of more than about 30 points of IQ comes to exist between the leader and the led.
This concept of an optimum which is not a maximum difference between the leader and the led has very important implications for selection and training. We cannot do more than to point to it here, in passing. Among school children—as among the peoples of all times—the great intellectual leaders are unrecognized, isolated, and even ridiculed by all but a few in the ordinary course of mass education. They can develop leadership of their sort only when placed in special classes.
Observation and investigation prove that in the matter of their intellectual work these children are customarily wasting much time in the elementary schools. We know from measurements made over a three-year period that a child of 140 IQ can master all the mental work provided in the elementary school, as established, in half the time allowed him. Therefore, one-half the time which he spends at school could be utilized in doing something more than the curriculum calls for. A child of 170 IQ can do all the studies that are at present required of him, with top "marks," in about one-fourth the time he is compelled to spend at school. What, then, are these pupils doing in the ordinary school setup while the teacher teaches the other children who need the lessons?
No exhaustive discussion of time-wasting can be undertaken here, except to say briefly that these exceptional pupils are running errands, idling, engaging in "busy work," or devising childish tasks of their own, such as learning to read backward—since they can already read forward very fluently. Many are the devices invented by busy teachers to "take up" the extra time of these rapid learners, but few of these devices have the appropriate character that can be built only on psychological insight into the nature and the needs of gifted children.
Before education can discharge this most important task of all with economy and justice, it must become a science. The science which is fundamental to education is psychology. Psychology had to develop the methods of mental measurement before there could be accurate or humane dealing in a system of compulsory education. We must take "the measure of a man" before we can know how to educate him; and it remained for mental measurement to reveal the astonishing power of learning that is latent in an elementary school-child of IQ 170 or 180. How shall such pupils be taught? How shall we educate these rapid learners, these subtle thinkers, these children of potential genius in the elementary school?
CONSIDERATIONS IN PLANNING THE CURRICULUM [3]
At the outset we must realize and admit that no absolute criteria exist by which to select from all aspects of human experience those which are most valuable for a group of gifted children. There is no body of "revealed" wisdom about this matter. Nevertheless, we are not altogether at sea. Common sense, accompanied by scientific facts of psychology, comes to our assistance, and we may note first such negative considerations as occur to us under this guidance.
It is useless to undertake extensive work in classical languages or in mathematics as "general discipline" for the minds of these rapid learners. The education given should be such as will function specifically and uniquely in their lives. It should afford them a rich background of ideas, in terms of which they may perceive the significant features of their own times.
Another definitely negative consideration applies to the avoidance of all "subjects" which they will have occasion to encounter in high school and college in later years. These young children can learn algebra or Latin grammar or chemistry easily enough, but what is the use of having them do so? The opportunity and the prescribed necessity for this will come later.
Turning to positive considerations, we know that these pupils—they and no others—will possess as adults those mental powers on which the learned professions depend for conservation and advancement. Also, we know that they will be the literary interpreters of the world of their generation. And they will be the ones who can think deeply and clearly about abstractions like the state, the government, and economics. We know this because we have seen a group like this "grow up" over a period of fifteen years, and we know what "became" of every one of them. Below an IQ of 130 no very large amount of effective thinking about complex abstractions can be done at any age. That, we are learning, is about the median mental caliber of college students in first-class colleges, taking it our country over. In many highly selected, first-class colleges, the boy or girl of IQ 140 finds himself or herself merely a good average student, steadily receiving "C's." In such colleges one must be a very good thinker in order to survive the course, but no one would consider median students in our first-rate colleges to be geniuses. The suggestion advanced about twenty years ago that 140 IQ represents "genius or near-genius" was premature. And when we remember that 120 IQ and 115 IQ are well below these median students in mental power, it becomes clear that at and below those levels conservation and advancement of the abstractions underlying the learned professions will be very inadequately handled. Really adequate conservation of the precious stores of knowledge laid up in medicine, law, theology, education, and the sciences depends on those not below 130 IQ.