The Educational Treatment of an Intellectually Superior Boy
Miles Murphy, Assistant Professor of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania One afternoon in November, 1927, a boy, then five years and nine months old, sat with his mother in the waiting room of the Psychological Clinic along with other children who, like himself, were to be examined that day. In the doorway between the waiting room and the examining rooms of the clinic there is a small swinging gate upon which are printed the words, “NO ADMITTANCE.” The boy noticed this sign and remarked, “Mother, it says there, ‘No admittance.’ How are we going to get in?” This remark showed of course that the boy, not yet six years old, could read, and it probably showed more. Perhaps he was too young in experience to understand the qualifications which the most logical of conclusions undergo in actual life, and again perhaps he was only facetious. Months afterward when he was being taught French as a part of his clinic teaching program, his teacher in the course of a lesson said, “Say, ‘I am six years old.’ ” He replied obediently, “I am six years old.” “You know very well you are to say it in French,” rebuked the teacher, and the boy answered, “I did just what you told me to.’’
The parents of this boy, whom I shall call Joseph, believed him to be a child of superior ability. A student who had taken courses in clinical psychology advised Joseph’s mother to take him to the Psychological Clinic for a complete psychological examination. When he came for this examination Joseph appeared to be a well developed boy, in excellent health, but there was nothing in his external appearance which would have marked him among boys of his age except that a discerning observer might have noted that his head was large and particularly well formed. He was of Russian Jewish parentage, and while his parents were ambitious and industrious they were not beyond the ordinary in regard to mental ability or accomplishment. The same statement could be made with reference to all his ancestors of whom we have been able to learn anything. Joseph had no brothers or sisters.
When he was first examined, Joseph read well although he had never had any formal teaching in reading. He could also spell, having mastered phonic analysis for himself. He spelled “plateau” plato but that was not his fault. He developed early in every phase of language ability. Between eight and nine months of age he talked in words, he used long words and sentences at fifteen months and at eighteen months he knew the alphabet from a set of blocks with which he played. At the same time he knew the names of all the animals pictured on this set of blocks. Before he was two years of age he could recognize selections played on the Phonograph, and also knew the names of the artists who rendered them.
The psychological examination proved Joseph to be definitely superior. The degree of this superiority and the specific fields in which it was demonstrated are matters into which we can go later. Kis audito-vocal memory span for digits was five forward and three Averse. He gave six digits on two repetitions and his visual-vocal Memory span was seven. When compared with the standards for children in the First Grade1 the forward memory span of five places him in a group of 41 per cent superior to 33 per cent and inferior to 2G per cent; the reverse memory span of three, in a group of 31 per cent superior to 61 per cent and inferior to 8 per cent; the visual span of 7, in a goup of 3 per cent superior to 96 per cent and inferior t? 1 per cent. Ninety per cent of First Grade children were unable to increase their forward memory span on two repetitions. Joseph demonstrated the greatest degree of superiority in the visual memory sPan in which the subject is able to combine the impressions received through several sense modalities, and in which grouping and looking ahead and back?possibly to be characterized as displays of intelligence?are possible. In the test which required increasing the auditory forward memory span by one digit on a number of repetitions, sometimes called the learning span, he demonstrated a degree of superiority almost equal to that shown in the visual span. Joseph’s Intelligence Quotient on the Stanford Revision of the Binet-Simon Tests was 145. Slightly less than 2 per cent of the children tested in the investigation of First Grade pupils mentioned above had an Intelligence Quotient of more than 140. Joseph passed all the tests at the Seven Year Level; at the Eight Year Level he counted backward from twenty and gave the definitions superior t? use; at the Nine Year Level he gave the date, the months of the 1 Easby-Grave, Charlotte. Tests and Norms at the Six Year Old Performance Level. Psychological Clinic. 1924, 15, 261-300. year, the rhymes, and made change; at the Ten Year Level he detected the absurdities and gave sixty words in three minutes; he passed none of the tests at the Twelve Year Level.
The first performance on the Witmer Formboard was by no means a superior one either quantitatively or qualitatively. The same can be said of the first performance with the Witmer Cylinders. Joseph completed the latter test in four minutes and twenty seconds, not much under the time limit of five minutes, and the performance appeared to be largely trial and error. Approximately 50 per cent of children in the First Grade fail to complete this test within the time limit, so that Joseph’s superiority in the abilities required for the completion of this test does not seem to be so great. His discrimination of form was very poor. On the second trial he reduced his time to two minutes, which performance places him at about the same relative position which he had on the first trial. The Dearborn Formboard 1c is a test much beyond Joseph’s chronological age. He solved it in exactly the same time required for the Cylinder test, but his form discrimination was only fair and he made many false moves. His second performance on this test was an excellent one and required only one minute and fifteen seconds; he used both hands?the first time he had done this in any of the tests?and made few false moves. With the exception of the Dearborn Joseph’s work with the performance tests was not in keeping with the abilities shown in the Binet or in the memory span tests. An analysis of this examination should enable us to define Joseph’s superiority more accurately. At the time of the examination I believed that Joseph was superior to 99 per cent of boys of his age with respect to intellectual ability. This judgment rests primarily upon the superiority of his memory span which is the attentional base of associability essential to intellectual development, and upon the Intelligence Quotient2 which represents the functioning of intellectual ability as a whole. Joseph’s general knowledge, his ability to read, as well as certain aspects of his behavior during the examination not adequately expressed by any mere statement of test results contributed to the foregoing diagnosis. The fact that
|2 Jones, Alice M. An Analytic Study of One Hundred Twenty Superior Children. Psychological Clinic, 1925, 16, 19-76.
In this study, restricted to children whose competency was that of the superior one per cent, the criterion of selection was an Intelligence Quotient of 140 or more.|
he had learned to read without formal teaching must certainly be taken into account in the determination of his intellectual ability. Reading demands the acquirement and retention of numerous and definite associations between spoken language and written symbols as well as the organization and use of many elementary abilities in a complex performance. Joseph’s superiority in this field will be apparent when the results of the continuation of his examination in diagnostic teaching are discussed later. His failure to demonstrate an equal degree of superiority in the performance tests sometimes called “intelligence” tests should not too quickly lead us into the belief that his intelligence was not equal to his intellect. It would be more nearly the truth to say that his intelligence displayed itself predominantly in the field of intellect when concrete material was not used. The relation between the first and second trials on the performance tests showed excellent trainability. Joseph was not a genius. He was talented, and his talent lay primarily in the field of intellect, particularly when verbal material was involved. The examiner decided to have Joseph come to the Psychological Clinic for a period of teaching. This teaching was both diagnostic and orthogenic. In the first place it was meant to provide a more accurate determination of the boy’s ability both from the quantitative and qualitative points of view, and in the second place, to give him the educational opportunities which those abilities deserved. This teaching began the last week in November and consisted of two one-hour periods per week.
When Joseph came for his first lesson his teacher naturally engaged him in conversation to get acquainted and to discover the extent of his knowledge. She asked him how high he could count. Oh, I can count to a billion, and more too.’’ Apparently a billion was the largest number he knew, but he would not rest his ability even at that limit. However, when he was specifically asked what number followed 1,999, he said, “One million.” It was discovered that Joseph could count by 2’s, 3’s, 4’s, 5’s and 10’s excellently? but not to a billion. When the conversation changed to other topics his attitude of self-assurance was the same. He refused to admit that he did not know where bananas came from, but he was surprised to learn that they grew on trees in warm countries. He said he knew where coal came from, but he could not trace it beyond the coal wagon. This very brief contact revealed that Joseph was not at all unaware of his superiority; he had an extremely good opinion of himself and his teacher thought that his conceit was enormous.
Joseph could read well from a primer and enjoyed the content of the stories immensely. He could print, but not write. He had never been taught printing or writing, but had taught himself to print from books. He could add two digits, but knew nothing else in arithmetic.
After this brief preliminary exploration Joseph’s educational treatment began. His program consisted of arithmetic, reading, writing, and during the second semester geography, history and French were added. In arithmetic Joseph knew how to add two digits and it was a revelation to him to learn how to add sums in which “carrying” was necessary. He comprehended this principle immediately and never experienced any difficulty in applying it in larger and larger problems. Roman numerals were entirely new to him and his success with them is indicative of his superior ability. In fifteen minutes he learned to write these numbers to thirty, a task on which most children spend many hours in school? and not always with certain success. He showed excellent analytic ability in mastering this problem and remarked while working on it that the X was just two F’s. He was, in the words of his teacher, “terrifically enthusiastic” over the acquisition of this new bit of knowledge which he could show to his father. One week after he had learned the Roman numerals Joseph wrote them to twentyfive without any help. He was then shown the symbol for fifty and he worked out all the numbers up to seventy-five for himself. In learning the multiplication tables Joseph was merely told what a multiplication table was, and then asked to begin saying them. He began with the simpler ones such as the 2’s, 4’s and 5’s which were easy since he could count, as we have mentioned, by these intervals. He had learned this counting in the first place simply by the process of addition and he had no difficulty in transferring the method of the multiplication tables. When asked isolated problems from the tables he would proceed as in the following examples. “8 times 4 is 32, because 8 times 2 is 1G, and 16 and 16 are 32.” “7 times 9 is 63 because 6 times 9 is 54, 54 and 4 are 58, and 58 and 5 are 63.” He usually prefaced every attempt at answering such questions by saying, “Oh! that’s easy.” Not always did his answer justify his ready assurance, but he did remarkably well, and he had never heard of the multiplication tables before. One aspect of the motivation of superiority was strikingly brought out in his attitude when the next lesson in arithmetic began. The teacher wished to reveiw the multiplication tables, and Joseph insisted upon beginning with the twelve table because he did not know that one so well. This, it must be remembered, was the second lesson in which the multiplication tables were mentioned. As we shall see when we come to his work in long division Joseph did not always react at this high level but like those of commoner clay sought the path of ease and freedom from effort.
Joseph always showed great resistance to learning to write. He had learned to print in a method not very unlike the modern “manuscript” writing and he consistently maintained that his own method was the best, and as a matter of fact he was very probably right. The merits of the “manuscript” method of writing are rapidly being recognized and the reader who is interested will find them admirably stated elsewhere.3
Nevertheless, the teaching of cursive writing was introduced into Joseph’s program. One of the aims of the teaching given him in the Psychological Clinic was to prepare him for a satisfactory adjustment to the public schools after a few years. Consequently a concession had to be made to the conventional method of instruction. It is to be hoped that those who teach handwriting to the mediocre child will gather wisdom from the method a superior child invents for himself, the more so since that method has experimental justification. Joseph began by learning to write the capital letters in cursive script. After a few weeks of instruction 3 Saudek, Robert, Experiments with Handwriting, p. IS: “Some fifteen years ago the English schools began to teach, instead of a cursive hand, the so-called “script” or typographic handwriting. The quality of this script is naturally far superior to that of the cursive hand. Typographic writing is more beautiful, more careful, simpler, more harmonious and more legible. ? ? . . All children learn the qualitatively superior script more easily than cursive writing. And further, children from nine to thirteen years who have already been writing in a cursive hand for from three to seven years, on being taught the new method of writing are able within a single term to write the more beautiful script more quickly.’’ For a psychological analysis of the reasons for the greater speed in script writing the reader is referred to the foregoing authority. The problem is treated in Child Study (the Journal of the Child Study Association), vol. viii. 2, vol. ix. 5, vol. x. 1,
in order to practice penmanship he wrote on the board the capitals of the states. He spelled all the names correctly. When he came to Little Bock, he said, “I’ll abbreviate ‘Rock’ and put ‘Ilk’ down.” This information he had apparently derived from the maps in an encyclopedia at home. His handwriting, nevertheless, continued to be a problem. His letters were not well formed and he continued to resort to printing unless forced to do otherwise. He wrote on the board although it took him fifteen minutes to do it, the following sentences: ‘’ The high hill rose up over the west of the brook,’’ and “Did the boys see any Indians?” All the words were spelled correctly and without difficulty. He had difficulty in getting the loops of p and / below the line. He could form all the letters correctly except v and w. A few weeks after Joseph’s teaching began he was taken to the University Museum to promote the general personal development which was one of the objectives of this teaching. He was interested in everything, asked innumerable questions and carried on a continual stream of conversation. The Egyptian room proved to be the most interesting to him; he was greatly impressed by the inscriptions there and by the fact that other people used an alphabet different from his own. He discovered among the hieroglyphic symbols recognizable birds and animals. Needless to say he expressed a desire to revisit the museum. Children of superior ability frequently present problems in motivation and control which are of vital importance in their successful adjustment. Indeed it is these problems involving what is vaguely called “personality” which in the minds of many offer the most serious obstacles in the education of such children. Joseph had the orientation of a superior and he oriented himself as a superior. He never confessed ignorance and remained unabashed before any question. When asked the familiar question in the Binet examination (at the Eight Year Level), “What would you do if you had broken something which belongs to some one else?” His response to the examiner was, “What would you do?” This attitude was brought out even more strikingly during his teaching. In the second week of teaching he was asked by the teacher if he could recite any poems. He had in fact never learned any poems, but unperturbed he began reciting an original one composing it as he went along in the primitive manner of poetry. He did not hesitate on occasions to tell his teacher that he knew more than she did.
During bis lesson one morning he put his feet on the table. His teacher attempted to rebuke him by saying, “You wouldn’t do that at home, would you ?’’ ‘’ Sure I would,’’ was the reply. “Well, you wouldn’t do it in my home.” “Your home,” inquiringly, “where do you live?”
In a respite after a lesson one day Joseph announced, “I have 512 teeth.” It does not appear why he stopped at this number as adequate and proper for a person possessed of his other abilities. Joseph was lacking in the playful infantile imagination. He played store with his teacher using clinic toys as merchandise, in order to learn more about the denominations of money and the use of them in making change. He was much interested in the game as a problem but scorned all efforts of the teacher to make it realistic. He would not respond to such attempts as, “How are your wife and children this morning,” or “You have not been in the store for so long I thought you had moved out of the neighborhood.” When Christmas drew near the conversation naturally involved Santa Claus. Joseph did not believe in the existence of this character and for a very good reason?there were too many of them. His teacher tried to engage him further on the subject but he had settled the question and refused to be concerned with it.
Joseph was always adept in making excuses. This was particularly true when he was asked if he had studied since his last lesson. “I didn’t have time” was typical. “I didn’t have to study, I can remember it from the last time.” When told that his home work was very poorly done he gave various excuses but finally admitted that he had neglected it and had done it on the trolley car while coming to the clinic.
He was always more interested in being exposed to knowledge than in going after it systematically. When he was not taught according to a formal program he seemed to absorb knowledge in an effortless manner. Systematic drill was not an effective educational method with Joseph. As would be expected in a case of his orientation flattery and belittling were effective means to arouse his motivation.
With the beginning of the second semester in February Joseph began his study of French. He was then exactly six years old. His teacher had lived for some time in Paris and was proficient in the use of the language having much more than a merely theoretical knowledge of it. When Joseph came for his first lesson she asked him if he wanted to learn French to which question he replied that he did not care. He knew exactly where France was located and wanted to illustrate its position by drawing a map of Europe on the blackboard which he did. In this first lesson Joseph learned to count up to ten, to tell his age and to tell time in French. Before beginning the second lesson the teacher again asked him if he would like to learn French. This time he said he would have to know more about it before he could say. In three weeks’ instruction he had learned to count to one thousand, to give the days of the week and the months of the year in French. He had also learned the present of the verb “to be” and the relationships? father, mother, son, etc. Often hearing a word once was sufficient to fix it in his mind. He learned then to say the multiplication tables in French, to add and subtract. He also played games such as ‘’ Buzz’’ with his teacher always using French. Next the colors were added. Small colored blocks used to teach the colors to children were used and the teaching took such forms as “Give me two black blocks and three green blocks.”
After this Joseph’s study of French changed from mere conversation to the grammar of the language. This of course entailed a study of English grammar of which he knew nothing as far as the terminology was concerned. Such concepts as number, parts of speech, person, conjugation were new. This was difficult but the boy always “took his medicine” well and the work had valuable disciplinary value. He learned without being told in so many words that there was much he yet did not know and also that not everything came just by looking at it. His French teacher observed the same traits we have mentioned before. The pupil was conceited, over-confident, too flip and self-assured. Nevertheless, failure only spurred him on. For example he said he knew the French alphabet and could write the letters although he admitted he had not studied them as he had promised to do. He could not write six of the letters, but undisturbed he came back on second trial and had them all right. The teacher decided to emphasize certain aspects of personality development which were a necessity rather than French which was a luxury.
On March 19 when he was six years, one month old, Joseph was given a series of tests of school proficiency before he was presented in a demonstration of superior children held in connecEDUCATIONAL TREATMENT 183 tion with the annual Schoolmen’s Week. These tests revealed that he had second grade proficiency in arithmetic and third grade proficiency in reading and spelling. He also knew a great deal of geography learned more or less by chance and not organized into the subject matter of any particular grade.
In October, 1928, Joseph began his second year of clinic teaching. His work consisted of four one hour periods per week, and in addition he had an hour of play with other children each day. During the first term his work consisted of geography, history and a review of arithmetic. Reading and spelling were taught incidentally along with the geography and history. The teacher who had charge of him this term was new and at the end of the first lesson she asked him to write a stanza of poetry on the board. He said he Would not write it but that he would print it if she wanted him to. When asked why, he gave the very natural answer, “Because I can’t write good, but I can print ‘swell.’ ” He had a habit of trying to ward off his teacher in a moment like this by saying, “Now just you wait a minute.” After writing the stanza of poetry he turned and said, “Now I suppose you think that looks nice; well, I don’t.”
His work in arithmetic consisted largely in long division which reviewed the more elementary operations. He had forgotten some ?f the items in the multiplication tables. He insisted on short and easy divisors in long division, but he preferred a long dividend, ?ne of at least ten digits. Once he said, referring to a divisor, “I Won’t do that until you change that 16 to a 5 or a 10.’ It is scarcely necessary to say that he solved the problem with a divisor of 16. If the problems were easy he enjoyed the mechanics of long division.
He had heard tests spoken of about the university and when the nature of a test was explained to him he wanted to take a test in history. He worked up quite an enthusiasm over it. His answers to the questions were all correct in point of fact. He misspelled two words Magellan and tobacco. By December of this year Joseph had entirely overcome his objection to writing, and actually took pride in doing it well. His interest in geography and history was excellent. The material was very real to him partly because he lived in an exceedingly egocentric world. He stopped to tell what he would do if he were an Eskimo, how he would have acted in a more dramatic manner if he had been an early settler. He was much interested in watersheds, how the water on one side of the mountain flows into one ocean, and on the other side into another, not the part of geography interesting to a six-year-old child. In his geography he learned that most of the immigrants coming to this country arrived in New York. He wanted to know all about immigration, its restriction and relation to the standard of living. On the other hand he was not free from the childlike naivete. When told that some salt comes from mines he wondered if there were pepper mines too. One day he noticed the thermometer on the wall and immediately commented on the arrangement of the even deciles on one side and the odd deciles on the other. He asked many questions about the working of the instrument. His teacher told him how the mercury in the tube went up when it was hot and came down when it was cold. “Prom where does it start?” he asked.
Drawing was one of Joseph’s chief interests. When he finished a lesson he would ask to go to the board and draw an elephant or a locomotive or whatever might please his fancy at the time. If boats were mentioned in a history lesson he wanted to draw a boat, when the National Parks were studied in geography he wanted to draw the Natural Bridge and other striking natural phenomena. He could draw and listen to instruction at the same time. Indeed at times it seemed that allowing him to draw was an effective method of holding his attention while explaining something.
At the close of the first term of this year, i.e., in January, 1929, Joseph was given another complete psychological examination. He showed marked improvement over the previous examination. His audito-vocal memory span for digits was eight forward and five reverse and his visual-vocal memory span was eight. His Intelligence Quotient was 170. His results on the performance tests were also very much better but he had seen a great deal of these in the meantime and the results were consequently less significant. In the Intelligence Quotient and memory span some allowance must also be made for increased familiarity with the tests but the examination was nevertheless a definite confirmation of the original diagnosis. During the second term Joseph continued the study of history and geography covering the subject matter of the third grade. He had completed the fundamental operation in arithmetic and took up the study of fractions. This subject was introduced by drawing a circle into halves, quarters, eighths. Joseph visualized the picture completely. One-eighth plus one-eighth made one-fourth because he could see the operation in the picture. He had no difficulty in carrying the method into multiplication. One-half of one-fourth was one-eighth, he could see the relation in the drawing. When asked questions dealing with thirds he immediately said, “Draw me another picture.” One drawing was always sufficient and after that he could solve any problem dealing with similar fractions on the basis of his memory image.
In May Joseph left the clinic school and entered the high third grade of the public schools for the remaining weeks of school. lie enjoyed the work of the public school, was no problem to his teachers and seemed in every way to make a satisfactory adjustment. When he left the clinic school Joseph was one of the most popular pupils, a distinction he did not enjoy when he first came. The success of the clinic teaching program was remarked by many persons who knew the boy. The following example will suffice.
During the last few months of his clinic teaching Joseph studied French with the teacher whom he had had the previous year. Just before Joseph left she wrote in her report, “Joseph has become my special pet. I can remember him as a spoiled, impossible youngster, too ostentatious and conceited for words. Although he still suffers from no inferiority complex, he has become very likable. His indifference has changed to interest and enthusiasm?he has become amiable, pleasant and polite. I think he can be classed as one of the prize packages that the clinic has turned out.”
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