s shall aid the
parents in securing that culture. Aristocracy had its "patrons" for
artists. Democracy must have its special educational aids for the
gifted. Already that demand is being met in countless ways that will
readily occur to all. Meanwhile, there is the public school organized
to meet the needs of the "average child." At first the grade-system
had a Procrustean bed that made it impossible to meet the needs of
those below the average and almost as difficult to meet the needs of
those above that average. We started special schools and special rooms
for those subnormal, retarded, slow, or specially difficult to manage.
Now we are beginning to consider how we can best make the
tax-supported public school serve the interests of the specially
gifted. The first thing we see clearly now is to find out which
children are exceptional on the upper side, and for that the newly
devised forms of scientific observation and measurement may be useful
if care is taken to mix every formula with common sense, patience, and
human sympathy. The next essential is to decide whether the children
who can go faster shall be passed along through the grades by special
arrangement more rapidly or whether they shall be kept on the regular
track of school promotions and be given extra lessons to "enrich their
curriculum." The part of wisdom, it would seem, is to find out what
kind of gift the exceptional child has and hasten his regular course,
or add to it, in accordance with his type of talent. If he is to be
one of those who are to mix with men and lead others in professions
that demand administrative and executive power, the chances are that
he should have the regular course in the usual order and add studies
that will early give him the facts of practical life and an
acquaintance with many phases of political, business, and scientific
activity that would serve in such work as he is likely to find to do.
If, on the other hand, the gift is creative, and the career nature has
seemingly marked out is one where the impulse will come from within,
and some special technical training can alone give that impulse
expression, then the chances are that the sooner such a child "gets
through with school," emerges from formal education into his own
atmosphere and his own free alignment with the masters in his own art,
the sooner he will really begin to be educated for his task. It seems
to be true that the more a human being is set apart by nature for