High I. Q.

The late Dr. Leta Stetter Hollingworth, a plump, motherly professor of education at Columbia University's Teachers College, all her life deplored mankind's inhumanity to geniuses. Eighteen years ago, as an experiment, she picked 50 of the brightest children (I. Q. 130 to 200)* in New York City, started two special classes for them at Public School 165, near Columbia. Like Stanford University's Professor Lewis M. Terman (TIME, Oct. 14), who for 18 years has followed the careers of 1,300 gifted Californians, Dr. Hollingworth watched her "geniuses" as they grew.

Last week, as a memorial to Dr. Hollingworth, T. C. held a conference on Education for the Gifted. To it went 20 of her proteges, now in their late 20s to tell how they had fared.

Chairman of their meeting was Thomas McKay, 27. Graduated from college at 20, Thomas chose an unpromising vocation--selling bonds in Wall Street in 1933. He made up to $100 a week at it, soon got bored, went to sea as an ordinary seaman. By last week he was back at bond selling, had got an M.A. (in economics) and was studying nights for a Ph.D. Also present: Mrs. Helen Whitebook, radio writer, Jeanne Weiss, secretary.

Absent from the reunion was an anonymous genius with a more extraordinary career. Second brightest in the whole group, he graduated from, high school at 15, became a professional bridge player--for stakes--was rated the world's No. 7 amateur chess player. At 19 he suddenly gave up gambling, went to University of Chicago, whizzed through a four-year course in a year. At 25, well launched toward a career as a lawyer, he died of cancer.

Most of the group had graduated from college in their teens, got modest jobs as teachers, writers, doctors, lawyers, secretaries, housewives. Most successful: Dr. Eugene Lozner, 26, an authority on nutrition. None was unemployed. But they had many a complaint of social maladjustment.

Said Lawyer Sergei Shaskan Zlinkoff: "If [gifted students] try to pursue their interests, they are called grinds and apple polishers. They have to try for low grades if they want classmates to treat them as equals. I went to the University of Arizona, and I found out that there the thing to do was not to study but to go for moonlight rides on the desert."

Other complaints: older classmates in high school and college derided their short pants and childish treble voices; employers failed to recognize them as geniuses, turned them down as too young. The group divided 50-50 on whether segregation in special classes had made them intellectual snobs, agreed that skipping grades had left them with poor study habits.

To the learned educators, industrialists and doctors who had gathered to ponder these problems, famed Psychologist Edward Lee Thorndike made a concrete proposal: let the U. S. establish State asylums for underprivileged geniuses to match its asylums for the feebleminded.

*Before she died last year, Dr. Hollingworth decided that she had rated genius too cheaply, raised the passing mark from 130 to 160 I. Q.

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