The Selection of Bright Children for Special Classes

Abstract

The idea of special classes for children showing unusual and rapid progress in school, which came as one of the results of the movement to provide special classes for dull or subnormal children, has been advocated by advanced students of education for several years. In an address in New York City in 1914, E. L. Thorndike called attention to the fact that the United States government and a number of the states and cities, to say nothing of private societies, were spending millions of dollars, doubtless justifiably, for the care of those whose mental ability was low, such as criminals, paupers, and defectives in mind or in body, but that nothing was being done by the states or by the nation in the way of special care for those who were unusually gifted. He said that, in his opinion, the benefit which would accrue to the state in the effort to preserve and to develop its best product so far as possible would be of far greater value than that derived from the care of the less able. During the past decade students of educational psychology have shown a keen interest in the development of opportunities for bright children, and many cities have attempted in one way or another to make provisions accordingly, but even today perhaps no city in the United States is giving as much attention to the gifted child as to the one of less promise and social worth at the lower end of the scale of ability and endowment. In spite of our fund of knowledge concerning the great differences in social, physical, and mental inheritance, the capable have been and still are, to a large extent, permitted to work with the mediocre and with the really incapable. Many believe that the children of unusually good physical and social inheritance will learn regardless of the perfection of the teaching environment, but more and more educators are coming to agree that even those of unusual endowment must be supplied with the most desirable opportunities