WHAT ABOUT GENIUS?
We come finally to what may be the most important point of all—the point to where we inquire into the responsibility of the public schools for children who are as far above those of 130 IQ (S-B) as the latter are above 100 IQ (S-B). I refer to those very rarely occurring pupils who test at or above 170 IQ (S-B). These children are important for civilization in inverse ratio to their infrequency of occurrence. They are the ones who can not only conserve thought in its abstract reaches, but who can originate new thoughts, new inventions, new patterns, and who can solve problems.
When, about twenty years ago, Terman [8] began to attempt classifications of high deviates, on the basis of IQ, he called 140 IQ (S-B) "genius or near genius." The intervening years have proved that this idea must be revised. Seniors in many of our first-rate colleges test at a median of 140 IQ (S-B) or even higher, and about a quarter of all college graduates test at or above this level.
That point in the distribution of IQ where mental products suggestive of genius, as defined by lexicographers, begin to appear, seems to be as far above 140 IQ as 140 IQ is above average. Somewhere between 170 and 180 IQ (S-B) we begin to see merging in early adulthood that "highly unusual power of invention or origination," that "original creative power, frequently working through the imagination," which is ordinarily called "genius." [9]
This element in our juvenile population, so significant and so rarely found, passes unrecognized at present through the public schools. We have not even commenced to evolve an education suitable for a child who at 9 or 10 years of age is able to think on a college level. The idea that such children exist at all is even laughed at to scorn by teachers and principals who have a quarter of a century of "experience" behind them. These children have no way of making themselves known. The mental tests make them known. They become known only to those educators who "believe in" mental tests.
The most interesting problem in education is to discover how these children, testing above 170 IQ (S-B) can and should be educated; to devise ways and means whereby these far deviates may get the full use of their abilities in school and society, especially when they have no money. The concept of democracy on which the United States was founded is one of equality of opportunity. The intention of our educational policy is that every child should have a chance to develop as his natural abilities may entitle him to do, all artificial distinctions being eliminated. Now at last psychological science has provided an effective instrument for achieving this democracy in education, namely the mental test, by means of which a child may be recognized for his own ability, regardless of age, sex, race, creed, or economic condition.
How shall we as educators utilize this instrument of genuine democracy? How shall we proceed under conditions in which the founding fathers are now mistaken by many citizens to have proclaimed and promised biological equality!
Perhaps we should take another leaf from the book of the French Republic, where the delusion of biological equality has always been successfully avoided; where the State continually reviews its attempt to secure equality of opportunity by explicit efforts to find and foster the natural élite, and to know where the gifted are located in the French population. [11]
We may also consider the Belgian policies, with regard to subsidy of the gifted, [12] "Ce principe fondamental: Que chaque enfant, quelle que soit la situation de fortune des parents, soit mis en état d'acquérir par l'instruction tout le développement intellectuel et professionnel dont il est capable."
All the questions here raised call for definite answers at the present time. Such questions could not be effectively raised prior to the twentieth century, because psychologists had not previously advanced to a point of supplying a scientific method of determining intelligence in childhood. It is the most significant contribution of psychology to education, in this century—and perhaps in all centuries—that we are now enabled to know the mental caliber of a human being in his early years.