The Psychology and Education of Gifted Children

Philip E. Vernon, Georgina Adamson, Dorothy F. Vernon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781317976301
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Inclusive Education

Originally published in 1977, this book looks at the problem of educating highly intelligent and gifted children, which it felt was of paramount importance to modern society. In the 1970s education increasingly focused on average pupils, and often made excellent provision for handicapped children, the authors felt it all the more important for teachers, parents and educationalists generally to be made aware of the special needs of the bright and talented, and how they could best be catered for. In this book Professor Vernon and his two co-authors discuss the provision of special facilities for the education of these children at the time, particularly with reference to the UK and Canada. The serious losses to society when the gifted and specially talented are ignored or repressed are pointed out and the merits and difficulties of alternative schemes are underlined. Detailed consideration is given to the psychological origins and nature of intelligence (both genetic and environmental) and of creativity and special talents (artistic and scientific), and also to available tests and other techniques for identifying exceptionally able children. The book was particularly intended to help teachers and educational administrators of the time, together with the parents of very bright children.

1 Introduction

It is surely ironic that the most able and talented children in western societies, such as Britain, the United States and Canada, by and large receive the worst education. There are many exceptions of course: that is, schools, or classes within schools, which try to cater for the particular needs of the gifted. But any special provision is apt to be costly, in so far as it involves small classes under highly qualified teachers, and expensive materials. Many private schools do serve the need, but they have to charge fees, and this restricts their clientele mainly to wealthy families. Public educational systems often make special provision for unfortunate children at the bottom of the scale — those who are physically handicapped or mentally retarded, sometimes for the culturally deprived or the emotionally maladjusted and young delinquents. This is equally costly, indeed more costly, in terms of personnel, buildings and equipment, and in addition usually involves a body of highly trained psychologists to diagnose handicaps and to assist in assigning the children who most require special help to appropriate schools or other forms of treatment. The various school authorities, and the tax payers, are usually willing to finance these humanitarian services (though many would say that they are too niggardly); but it is much more difficult to persuade them to make similar provisions for the gifted, despite the obvious point that the latter are likely to make far more valuable contributions to the good of the community in the future, when they become the scientists, artists, teachers and leaders of the next generation. The very fact that these children are able militates against them; they generally learn easily, and do well in and enjoy school and cause little trouble, and this means that they do not seem to constitute a pressing problem. They already have an advantage, so why give them more? However, we shall see later that many of them do have difficulties, and that conventional schooling may turn them into poor learners, and waste their talents.

Moreover, a rather large proportion tend to come from upper- or middle-class homes (partly because those from working-class homes are less likely to be recognized), and such homes can do a lot to make up for what the gifted miss at school. Hence the politicians and the public, and some educational administrators, have a further excuse for shirking the issue. Nevertheless, the situation is by no means hopeless: many educationists and parents are aware of the problem and have stirred up support for a variety of changes in school organization and curriculum, or instituted fruitful experiments, some of which we will describe below. Special provisions for the gifted have been running, in parts of the US and Canada, for over fifty years. There is no simple or universal answer to the question — how to allow for individual differences between pupils in a mass educational system, which of necessity must be run economically. But we can learn a lot from what has been tried, and how it has worked, as well as from psychological studies of the characteristics and development of gifted children.

Brief historical and comparative survey

Throughout history, different societies have held various views as to the appropriate education of the most able, and how it may best be accomplished. In Greece, over 2000 years ago, Plato distinguished the ‘men of gold’, with superior intellects, from those of ‘silver’ and ‘iron or brass’. As children they should be instructed in such subjects as philosophy, metaphysics and science, which would be beyond the ability of those who were destined to become soldiers or artisans.

Until well into the nineteenth century there was very little problem, since so few children were educated anyway. Those that were mostly came from wealthy families. In England, the sons were sent to so-called ‘public schools’ such as Eton and Winchester. Classes were small and likely to be grouped according to ability level. For other sections of the population there were the old-established grammar schools, which were also fee-paying, but usually admitted a proportion of able working-class children who won scholarships. Thus they too catered mainly for pupils of above average ability. Similarly, Germany had its Gymnasium, France its Lycée. Gradually, elementary education for the whole population was introduced in European countries, but the system remained highly élitist. Until well into the twentieth century, only the upper- and middle-class children and a few of the most able working-class, could advance to higher secondary or university education. Moreover, streaming, or homogeneous grouping, was customary; hence, at least in a rough and ready way, the exceptionally talented were picked out and enabled to progress at approximately their own rate, instead of having to be taught along with pupils of only moderate or inferior ability. Naturally the systems of school organization varied greatly from one country to another; but they did allow the most able to rise to the top, even though they obviously provided few opportunities for ‘mute inglorious Miltons’ from the great mass of the peasant and working-class population.

In the United States, the earliest colleges (e.g. Harvard, 1636) were highly selective and a few independent, private schools were set up, mainly in New England. Nevertheless, the opposed philosophy of egalitarianism became predominant, holding that education should be available to all, regardless of wealth or privilege. In addition, particularly in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the common school was seen as a unifying force for Americanizing the children of immigrants from many lands, whose parents spoke many tongues. Initially, it did not work too badly, since the dull and disinterested could and did drop out of school at an early age, leaving mainly the more academically motivated, who were able to progress to the higher grades. But with the increasing spread of educational facilities and increasing realization among parents of the benefits of secondary and college education, the range of ability among those who stayed on widened, till now more than three-quarters of the population complete high school, and a majority in some States go on to some form of tertiary education. Since both homogeneous grouping, and acceleration to allow the brighter to proceed more rapidly, are frowned upon (though currently being employed with increasing frequency), the difficulties of educating the whole range of ability among pupils, grouped simply by age, have become more and more apparent. Some of the slower or more backward children repeat grades and thus become academic retardates, but only a small proportion who are seriously handicapped, physically or mentally or both, are specially catered for. In Canada, school organization is generally similar to the USA, with only a few high-prestige fee-paying schools on the British model.

In the 1930s, and particularly following World War II, more democratic ideals began to spread throughout most European countries. Thus in the UK sufficient ‘grammar’ (i.e. high) schools were built to take, on average, 20 per cent of the elementary school population at the age of eleven, on the basis of a selection examination — the notorious ‘eleven-plus’; and more opportunity was offered to those who failed this hurdle to be upgraded later or to take advanced secondary courses. Comprehensive schools, which, like American high schools, are non-selective, were introduced in the fifties and sixties, and now cater for more 11-18 year old students than do the grammar and independent secondary schools. However, most of these continue to practise streaming; that is, the most able pupils in any year-group are in the top class, then the next slice, and so on down to the lowest class which will tend to consist of the very backward and virtual non-readers. The same sort of grouping by ability is typical also in the larger primary (elementary) schools, though an increasing number are now switching over to mixed-ability classes. Unlike North America, the pace of adoption or non-adoption of comprehensive and unstreamed schooling depends considerably on pressures exerted by the political party that happens to be in power at the moment. When the overall organization of schooling is so controversial an issue, little attention is paid to the special needs of the highly gifted.

Some implications of individual differences

As early as the 1920s psychologists such as Terman and Thorndike in the United States and Burt and Thomson in Britain had constructed objective group tests of intelligence, and of achievement in different school subjects, which made it possible to assess children’s abilities on age scales. For example a bright child aged 9 years might show the intellectual capacity equivalent to that of the average 12 year old, and score at 11-year or sixth-grade level1 on tests of reading and arithmetic. Terman pointed out that in an average unselected class, covering the whole range of ability for that age, the variations are so enormous as to make it absurd to try to teach all children the same topic at the same rate. For example, at 10 years a few children may have the mental capacity or intelligence of 14 or 15 year olds, and others the capacity of 7 year olds, or even lower if the severely defective have not been weeded out. The range in mathematical and language abilities could be almost as great, though most teachers would frankly disbelieve that some of their fifth-grade pupils could cope with ninth-grade work, others only with second-grade. Naturally the brighter ones will probably not have been taught some of the concepts and skills usually studied at ninth grade, though if standardized tests are applied to fifth-graders it may well be found that they have picked them up on their own; and had they been allowed to progress at their own natural rate, they would readily have kept up with children much older than themselves. The range of variation in younger classes is not so marked: at 5 years it is likely to be only half as great as at 10, hence it is more feasible to give uniform instruction to all first-graders. On the other hand, the range is even greater in the secondary school, though sometimes alleviated since, as noted above, many of the dullest drop out, or else are working in a grade, or two grades, lower than usual for their age.

Terman and Burt advocated the organization of classes on a mental age rather than chronological age basis, though they realized that a compromise would be necessary. Otherwise, if, say, all children of mental age 10 were put together, it would mean including pupils whose chronological ages ranged from about 14 to 6. Such a policy also implied that intelligence tests accurately measured each child’s basic or innate capacity for acquiring school learning, which — as we shall see later — is only partially true. Nevertheless, if acceleration or retardation in accordance with achievement were more fully adopted, and more attention paid to children’s IQs in class allocation, it would be possible to arrange more homogeneous groups or streams, and thus to do more for the gifted as well as for the dull. It would mean that a very significant proportion of the most able students would be able to cover the conventional school and university curriculum in two years less than the average student takes, and thus become qualified for productive professional or other highgrade careers two years earlier, which would be of obvious benefit to society. There are, however, various difficulties and disadvantages both in acceleration and other methods of adjusting instruction to individual differences, and these will be discussed in chapters 9-11.

The gifted child in the classroom

The more highly developed an educational system, and the greater the efficiency with which it covers the entire child and adolescent population, the more likely it is to become institutionalized and rigidly standardized, and the less concerned with the needs of the individual child. Administrators and supervisors naturally prefer a neat arrangement where every child of a given age is being taught the same syllabus from the same textbook at the same time. Most parents likewise prefer a standard system with which they are familiar. Another drawback is that the larger the number of children to be educated, the greater the number of teachers needed. And although teachers have to possess good academic qualifications, the unfortunate fact is that they tend to be drawn from the second-grade rather than from top-notch students. The latter, who possess greater initiative and intelligence, tend to aim at professions or other jobs which give them more scope for self-direction than the rather restricted (and not too well-paid) job of teaching. It has been stated also that those teachers who conform most efficiently to the system are more likely to be rewarded by promotion than the individualists or pioneers; though we doubt whether this is justified. Obviously these are broad generalizations which are unfair to large numbers of dedicated and able teachers who keep mentally alive and continue throughout their careers to search for original ways of interesting and stimulating their pupils. Fortunately the professions of teaching and of educational administration do attract, and provide scope for, a wide range of different personalities and abilities, who make different contributions to educating the young. But the clash between good education and bureaucratization is inevitably greater than in the days when schools were less organized and more selective.

It would be unfair also to impute that even average teachers, let alone good ones, fail to take account of individual differences, or expect all members of a class to acquire the same knowledge and skill at the same rate. They normally repeat their instruction in different ways at different levels of complexity, and set exercises of different degrees of difficulty; and they recognize that each child is an unique person who requires different handling. However, there is a tendency to pitch the instruction at the level of the pupil about three quarters’ way down the list in achievement (i.e. the twenty-fifth percentile), so that the least able or most poorly motivated don’t get left too far behind; and then, in so far as time allows, the teacher will give individual help to the weaker pupils. Inevitably this means that the brightest quarter, and still more so the exceptionally gifted, are way ahead, and have nothing to do, except perhaps additional exercises of the same kind. And since they are usually more keen and able than the majority, they receive least attention: good marks and praise, perhaps, but these do not compensate for boredom. Leta Hollingworth, a psychologist who made major c...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Giftedness and intelligence
• 3. Intelligence, heredity and environment
• 4. Special talents, statistical factors, and criteria of giftedness
• 5. The nature of creativity
• 6. Divergent thinking tests
• 7. Identification of gifted pupils
• 8. Home upbringing of gifted children
• 9. Methods of provision: acceleration
• 10. Segregation — full or part-time
• 11. Enrichment
• Bibliography
• Index of Names
• Subject Index