[2] Teachers College Record, Vol. 40 (1939). Also reprinted in Public Addresses of Leta S. Hollingworth, Science Press Printing Company, Lancaster, Pennsylvania; 1940.
[3] The curriculum here described is that organized by Leta S. Hollingworth and her collaborators in Speyer School, P.S. 500, Manhattan, for two experimental classes of "rapid learners." For an early account of this project see "The Founding of Public School 500," Teachers College Record, Vol. 38, No. 2 (November, 1936). Also "What is Going On at Speyer School?" Chapter 21 of Public Addresses of Leta S. Hollingworth, Science Press Printing Company, Lancaster, Pennsylvania; 1940.
[4] A word coined by the pupils.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO PROBLEMS OF RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN THE CASE OF HIGHLY INTELLIGENT PUPILS
An address before the National Committee on Coördination
of Secondary Education at a symposium on "The Education of
Pupils of High Intelligence," Cleveland, February 27, 1939 [1]
I shall not dwell here upon the present knowledge of gifted children as organisms. Our findings in follow-up studies on tested children in New York City confirm in all particulars Professor Terman's researches on the Pacific coast. Since these several studies have been carried on in complete independence, one in the East, the other in the West, for nearly twenty years, we may certainly feel justified in the conclusion that we are arriving at truth about the mental and physical traits and development of highly intelligent persons, coming as we do to the same results.
My remarks here will deal, rather, with certain problems of the education of the highly intelligent. I may say at the outset that my direct contacts with the education of gifted pupils have all been on the level of the elementary school. I consider that the problems are most urgent on this level, because it is in the primary and elementary school that the very intelligent child most especially needs a supplement to the standard curriculum. The program of progress through the elementary grades is based on what pupils at, or only very slightly above, the average can master at given ages, so that the extremely intelligent child has little or nothing to do there. His interest is not engaged, and his power is not challenged. The situation of such children has been well exemplified in a recent biography [2] which sets forth the sense of futility from which many of them suffer at school in the early years.
When the child reaches senior high school, however, the case is somewhat different. The college preparatory course of the secondary school was originated with and for pupils of college caliber. It is therefore based on what very intelligent adolescents, and they only, can learn. Hence it offers to the pupil at and above 130 IQ (S-B) tasks of sufficient interest and difficulty to engage his powers of learning.
Laying aside, for purposes of the moment, argument as to whether the content of the college preparatory course is what it should be from all angles, we maintain that it is sufficiently abstract, complex, and difficult to operate as an intellectual stimulus for quite highly intelligent adolescents. I shall return to this point later, raising it here merely to explain why it has seemed to me especially important to work in the elementary school.
One cannot work for long in the elementary school, however, without becoming involved in research which has to do with the secondary school. There are many problems of coördination that require for their adequate study the joint efforts of both elementary and secondary school. We are currently trying to find answers to these problems at Public School 500, Manhattan, for we shall begin sending pupils from there to the senior high schools in June, 1939.