672 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXIV. No. 881 



custom and with native tendency for a 

 young child to learn how to adapt himself 

 to the world of people and things about 

 him than to memorize verbal combinations. 

 It is to be expected that people will marvel 

 at the accomplishments of a boy of ten who 

 can speak divers tongues, and recite geo- 

 metrical demonstrations, because such 

 feats are unusual, not because they are at 

 all impossible for the typical child, or be- 

 cause they denote a superior order of 

 mental development. What such pre- 

 cocious performances indicate is simply 

 that the mind of the "prodigy" has been 

 stimulated in these particular directions, 

 often, if not always, to the exclusion to a 

 greater or less extent of stimulation in the 

 ordinary directions. 



The writer has subjected certain so- 

 called precocious children in language and 

 the like to tests which were designed to 

 show whether they had learned as much 

 about nature and human nature, and had 

 acquired as much skill in manipulating 

 inanimate objects about them at the age 

 of nine or ten, as the typical child whose 

 time and energies from birth onward had 

 been devoted largely to learning things as 

 contrasted with words and formulm. Ma- 

 king allowances for rare exceptions, it may 

 be said that pupils who are precocious in 

 speaking and reading foreign tongues, and 

 working text-book problems in arithmetic, 

 algebra and geometry, are distinctly in- 

 ferior to the typical children of their age 

 in their understanding of realities, and 

 especially in effective reaction upon the 

 environment in making it over into new 

 forms or patterns, or directing the forces 

 of nature into new channels. These pre- 

 cocious children often memorize the con- 

 tents of an arithmetic say, without having 

 any adequate notion of the realities which 

 arithmetical processes ought to symbolize. 

 They may learn the table of dry measure, 



for instance, so they can recite it off, and 

 apply it in text-book problems, but with- 

 out having any just conception of the size 

 and relation of the units which are men- 

 tioned in the table, or any notion of how 

 they are utilized in every-day life in facili- 

 tating the relations between human beings. 

 And what is true of precocity in arith- 

 metic is true in principle of all the studies 

 pursued in the schools, especially of such 

 subjects as algebra, geometry, and other 

 branches of mathematics, which are so fre- 

 quently mentioned in all discussions of 

 precocity. Marked ability in the formal 

 aspects of these subjects, such aspects as 

 are emphasized in the schools usually, may 

 go along with utter incapacity in adjust- 

 ment to the vital situations of life. Con- 

 sider which requires the higher degree of 

 mental development — to look on a group 

 of algebraic symbols at leisure, change 

 their positions according to a pattern- 

 method which has been presented; or to 

 discern the characteristics of a new com- 

 panion who may come into a group, and 

 to determine with celerity what he can be 

 used for, and how he must be dealt with. 

 The fact that the former situation is less 

 interesting to the child than the latter 

 should not prevent one from seeing its 

 relative simplicity. Inasmuch as algebra, 

 geometry, German and so on lack color, 

 life and vitality for the young child they 

 do not appeal to him as do the human face 

 and many natural objects, which are so 

 intimately bound up with his welfare. 

 The mind of the child is unquestionably 

 constructed on a plan whereby attention 

 must be given primarily to people and to 

 things as contrasted with words and sym- 

 bols, because the former have played the 

 leading role in human evolution. If our 

 forbears had not shown a spontaneous in- 

 terest in the realities in their environment 



