668 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXrV. No. 881 



as children, even though they thought as 

 adults, and even beyond most grown per- 

 sons. One reads that a certain boy of 

 eleven, on entering college, gave lectures 

 in higher mathematics to the professors of 

 the institution, some of whom had grown 

 gray in the unsuccessful attempt to solve 

 complicated problems which this child 

 solved easily. At the same time he would 

 romp like any ten-year-old; and on the 

 street or on the playground he could not 

 be distinguished from other typical boys of 

 his age, concealing a highly developed 

 brain behind childish features and actions. 

 Magazine and newspaper writers have as- 

 cribed this marvelous intellectual develop- 

 ment wholly to a rational educational 

 system, wherein children were taught to 

 concentrate their attentioUj and never to 

 waste their time or energy. 



During the last eighteen months, the 

 writer of this paper has listened to nine 

 different addresses by educators in various 

 parts of the country, all of which assumed 

 that the accounts of the precocity of Sidis 

 and other children were founded on fact, 

 and that somewhat similar results could 

 and ought to be attained in the regular 

 work of the school. The writer has read 

 hundreds of neAvspaper editorials and com- 

 ments on these childish prodigies; and the 

 gist of most of them is that our prevailing 

 methods of teaching in the public schools 

 are, on the whole, of more harm than good, 

 for they waste much of the period of 

 childiood, and develop bad mental habits 

 in the young. Naturally these criticisms 

 have raised in many teachers' minds the 

 queries whether our present conception of 

 childhood is not altogether erroneous, and 

 whether our educational system is not en- 

 tirely wrong. Already in some localities 

 the suggestion is being made that chil- 

 dren should enter school two or three years 

 earlier than they commonly now do, and 



that they should devote themselves at the 

 outset wholly to reading, writing, spelling, 

 grammar and arithmetic; that work with 

 the hands, stories of aU sorts, nature study, 

 drawing, music and the like should be 

 eliminated from the curriculum. State- 

 ments have been made to the effect that 

 any typical boy can be got ready for col- 

 lege at ten or eleven by starting him in to 

 read at two. The chief trouble in our 

 schools of to-day, say the newspaper 

 writers and some educational lecturers, is 

 that children do not learn to think cor- 

 rectly or effectively, because they are not 

 trained from the beginning in the subjects 

 which are of chief value in developing 

 right modes of thought. 



The present writer has attempted to get 

 from those close to some of the precocious 

 children referred to precise and detailed 

 accounts of just what they had accom- 

 plished in the various branches in which 

 they have been reported to be proficient, 

 but nothing but general and unsatisfactory 

 statements have been secured. So far as 

 can be ascertained, there are accessible no 

 really reliable data of a sufficiently de- 

 tailed and specific character to enable one 

 to determine exactly what kind of ability 

 Miss Stoner, Jr., or Master Sidis, or any of 

 their class possesses in reading or arith- 

 metic or calculus or Hebrew or what not. 

 So we m\ist take the popular accounts, 

 such as parents, teachers and editors are 

 attaching importance to, and see what les- 

 sons may be drawn from them. Take read- 

 ing, for instance; some of these children 

 ' ' can read very readily at the age of two. ' ' 

 Now, one may learn to recognize words so 

 that he can pronounce them, but still not 

 be able to read in a true sense — that is to 

 say, his knowledge of a word may not be 

 anything but merely verbal. It may sug- 



