The Perishable Resource

Though he had an IQ well above 125, the dark-haired ten-year-old boy had his teachers at San Francisco's Roosevelt Junior High School near despair. Day after day he would blurt out answers he knew were wrong, was so bored with his lessons that he rarely bothered to do them. His teachers had a name for him: he was just one more "gifted drifter."

In Des Moines's Roosevelt High School another bright boy had a different problem. He did his work conscientiously, but he usually kept mum in class because he "didn't want to be the one who always knew the answer."

To teachers in every school across the U.S., such talks of hidden or squelched talent are common. In 1951 the National Manpower Council reported that of the top one-fourth of all U.S. 18-year-olds, 60% never went to college and 20% did not even finish high school. What can be done to encourage the gifted student? Ten years ago, says Robert Havighurst, professor of education at the University of Chicago, scarcely anyone was asking that question. "Today, educating the gifted has almost become a fad."

Skip or Enrich. Though the fad is still largely in the talking stage, scores of U.S. cities have joined the talent hunt. But once the talented student has been identified by elaborate tests and teacher reports, the experts disagree on the best way of treating him. In some places there are special schools for the bright (e.g., The Bronx (N.Y.) High School of Science). Some cities have set up special classes; others allow a few gifted students to accelerate or skip grades. But since the experts do not agree on whether acceleration or segregation might do the talented more harm than good, many cities cautiously keep their gifted in regular classes and give them extra work--a procedure that the educators call "enrichment."

Like the majority of school systems with programs for the gifted. Dade County, Fla. uses a combination of methods. It has a separate program for a group of children with an IQ of 130 or over. But for the most part the schools keep the bright with their regular classmates, separating them only in certain subjects. A fifth grade studying reading might have three groups--one reading at third-grade level, another at fifth-grade, the rest plunging into such classics as Moby Dick and The Swiss Family Robinson. The schools are also on the prowl for such students with a special talent as the eleven-year-old girl who shows promise of becoming a topnotch composer.

Cleveland's gifted spend part of their time in regular classes, the rest in "major work" classes, which now have 715 boys and girls in eight elementary schools. While Baltimore likes to keep most of its gifted in their own grades, it does have four high schools in which students can do four years' work in three.

The Missionaries. In some cities, local colleges and universities are beginning to help the schools with their bright students. Last summer the University of Texas organized an intensive five-week course in advanced chemistry for high-school juniors. It stirred up so much enthusiasm, says Education Dean L.D. Haskew, "that they ate, drank and slept chemistry, and they are regular missionaries back in their schools."

With the help of Reed College, Portland has started one of the nation's most ambitious programs for bright high-school students. One mathematics seminar took up everything from calculus to topology (a division of geometry dealing with the properties of figures unchanged by deformations not involving tearing or joining). A history seminar finished the regular senior high-school work on "American Problems" during the first third of the year, spent their remaining months studying the development of law, delving into Hammurabi's code of laws and discussions of such works as Mill's On Liberty and Vernon Parrington's Main Currents in American Thought. While regular English classes reviewed grammar and read abridged editions of Homer, superior students examined various translations of the full text, supplemented their readings by writing college-level papers.

Resentment or Prestige? Will such special treatment create a breed of intellectual snobs, resented by their less gifted contemporaries and deprived of a well-rounded education? Judging by the evidence so far, most experts say no. Portland found that its program created a greater respect for scholastic ability. While only two out of 865 gifted students claimed they had become unpopular because of the special work, 150 said they had actually gained in prestige. Indeed, special classes are sometimes essential for certain superior students. If the gifted are afraid to seem too bright or go unchallenged by equal minds, they can become complete failures in regular classes.

And what about the charge that even partial segregation is undemocratic? Says Director Boyd McCandless of the Iowa Child Welfare Research Station: "It is an interesting quirk of our national mind that we condemn segregation of the intellectually gifted as undemocratic, but we do not think twice about segregating other talents. No one expects the slight, late-maturing boy to play on the football team or the tone-deaf youngster to be in the school band." Adds Psychologist Paul Witty of Northwestern University: "The gifted must be identified, guided and challenged from the elementary grades right through college. They are as much a natural resource as oil or uranium--and far more perishable."

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