Can't pronounce what?
Oh, lots of things. The teacher said "Magdalen College"—at
Oxford, you know. I said, "In England they call it Môdlin
College." The teacher wrote a note home to say I am rude and
disorderly. She does not like me.
Just one more conversation, this time with an eight-year-old, of IQ 178, Sent as a school problem:
What is your main trouble at school?
My really main trouble is not at school.
Where is it, then?
It is the librarian.
How is that?
Well, for instance, I go to the library to look for my books on mechanics. I am making a new way for engines to go into reverse gear. The librarian says, "Here, where are you going? You belong in the juvenile department." So I have to go where the children are all supposed to go. But I don't stay there long, because they don't have any real books there. Say, do you think you could get me a card to the other department?
This subject is inexhaustible, but we must go on to speak of the psychological isolation of these children when they drift unrecognized. The majority of children above 160 IQ play little with other children because the difficulties of social contact are almost insurmountable. Unless special facilities can be provided, these children tend to become isolates, a condition not conducive to leadership, except perhaps of a few rare sorts, later in life. Such children are ordinarily friendly and gregarious by nature, but their efforts at forming friendship tend to be defeated by the scarcity of like-minded contemporaries. The imaginary playmate as a solution of the problem of loneliness is fairly frequent, but far inferior to the real playmate, could one be found. Shaw makes Saint Joan say, "I was always alone."