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Genius Revisited: High IQ Children Grown Up
questions are discussed in this interesting study about what it is like to grow up gifted, the realities of school, the expectations of others, and the choices the gifted make in adulthood.
Contemporary Psychology
This volume summarizes a study designed to assess the outcomes of early identification and schooling for a group of highly gifted children. The subjects were graduates of one of America's most selective educational institutions, the Hunter College Elementary School (HCES). HCES developed as an outgrowth of a series of experiments and philosophical statements reflecting the political and social history of the United States in the first half of the 20th century, and was created in1941 to serve children with IQ scores at least two standard deviations above the mean. This book proposes that the reported reflections of individuals in their 40s and 50s, who were selected at approximately age 4 for special instruction on the basis of high IQ scores, can provide insight into the development of future educational options for gifted students. The objective is to contribute these unique perspectives to the literature that describes and analyzes the long-term outcomes of educational decisions concerning the identification and education of gifted children.
Contemporary Psychology
This volume summarizes a study designed to assess the outcomes of early identification and schooling for a group of highly gifted children. The subjects were graduates of one of America's most selective educational institutions, the Hunter College Elementary School (HCES). HCES developed as an outgrowth of a series of experiments and philosophical statements reflecting the political and social history of the United States in the first half of the 20th century, and was created in1941 to serve children with IQ scores at least two standard deviations above the mean. This book proposes that the reported reflections of individuals in their 40s and 50s, who were selected at approximately age 4 for special instruction on the basis of high IQ scores, can provide insight into the development of future educational options for gifted students. The objective is to contribute these unique perspectives to the literature that describes and analyzes the long-term outcomes of educational decisions concerning the identification and education of gifted children.
160 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1993
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
June 19, 2018
Due to length I've split my review out to "Genius Revisited: On the Value of High IQ Elementary Schools"
October 13, 2023
This short report of a follow-up study of children who attended Hunter College Elementary School (HCES) during the years 1948-1960 made me feel “seen” in a way no scholarly literature has in a long time, if ever. Even though my IQ is/was not as high as these kids’, I was in gifted/accelerated/college-bound/Honors tracks and classes from as soon as I could be, which in our school district was second grade. I “heard” so many resonances to my own experience in the study subjects’ experiences: never getting explicitly taught the basics, having reading as a main hobby, not being interested in traditional girly play, being precocious in language, having “culture shock” when entering more “general population” institutions and life phases, never having had firm life goals, having a different perception of the competitive atmosphere of school than my peers, etc.
I sought this book out because I saw it mentioned somewhere as a study which found that most children who attended a prominent school for the gifted (i.e., HCES) did not become eminent or famous, but in fact ended up living what you might call “ordinary lives.” Having gone through K-12 school and college surrounded by “the gifted,” many of whom are doing interesting or distinguished things in their fields but none of whom are famous, part of me thought, “That’s not surprising,” but another part of me wondered, “As opposed to what?” I found the answer to that question on p. 116’s discussion of University High School affiliated with the University of Illinois, whose alums (as of 1993) included a Pulitzer Prize winner and several Nobel Laureates. So, it seems the Hunter College schools’ folks might have been wondering why their students hadn’t been similarly “successful.” Of course, the HCES study examined the effects of having attended an elementary school for the gifted, not a high school, so that accounts for some of the difference in outcomes—some HCES alums did in fact “slack off” after their time at HCES. The authors of the HCES study offer other possible explanations for this lack of prominence, including that high IQ might not predict future prominence, that HCES’ focus on “social adjustment and well-roundedness” might have impeded individual development, that schools are not the best environment for talent development, and that non-prominence was a conscious choice.
It is refreshing and fun to read such a study at all. American K-12 education and thus education research has long had a bias against gifted education (a flawed term, as some of the study participants also pointed out, but which I’m using because it seems to be the most common through time) and a bias toward “regular” and “special” education. Recall the name of the old education law, “No Child Left Behind”—a nation more interested in cultivating academic excellence across the board and/or fostering an intellectual elite might have a policy catchphrase like “Every Child Excelling.” As an illustration of this bias, searches of ERIC on 10/12/23 for the thesaurus terms for education of the two different “ends” of the “spectrum” (of course, there is overlap between these two populations) yield very different results:
“gifted education” 520 results
“special education” 24,610 results
So literature that examines gifted ed at all is rare, and longitudinal follow-up studies rarer still. I wish it would’ve been more carefully documented, though: about 35% of a sample of about 600 students completed and returned study questionnaires (after having been tracked down through New York Times ads, the phone book, word of mouth, etc.), and 74 of those were interviewed. Others were apparently unaccounted for, leaving the reader to wonder whether they had become famous, gone off the grid, or something in-between.
It would be fascinating to catch up with the respondents again and get their reflections on their time at HCES now, 30 years further on—did an early emphasis on “social adjustment and well-roundedness” serve them well, or would they have preferred to have received more focused intellectual development?
I sought this book out because I saw it mentioned somewhere as a study which found that most children who attended a prominent school for the gifted (i.e., HCES) did not become eminent or famous, but in fact ended up living what you might call “ordinary lives.” Having gone through K-12 school and college surrounded by “the gifted,” many of whom are doing interesting or distinguished things in their fields but none of whom are famous, part of me thought, “That’s not surprising,” but another part of me wondered, “As opposed to what?” I found the answer to that question on p. 116’s discussion of University High School affiliated with the University of Illinois, whose alums (as of 1993) included a Pulitzer Prize winner and several Nobel Laureates. So, it seems the Hunter College schools’ folks might have been wondering why their students hadn’t been similarly “successful.” Of course, the HCES study examined the effects of having attended an elementary school for the gifted, not a high school, so that accounts for some of the difference in outcomes—some HCES alums did in fact “slack off” after their time at HCES. The authors of the HCES study offer other possible explanations for this lack of prominence, including that high IQ might not predict future prominence, that HCES’ focus on “social adjustment and well-roundedness” might have impeded individual development, that schools are not the best environment for talent development, and that non-prominence was a conscious choice.
It is refreshing and fun to read such a study at all. American K-12 education and thus education research has long had a bias against gifted education (a flawed term, as some of the study participants also pointed out, but which I’m using because it seems to be the most common through time) and a bias toward “regular” and “special” education. Recall the name of the old education law, “No Child Left Behind”—a nation more interested in cultivating academic excellence across the board and/or fostering an intellectual elite might have a policy catchphrase like “Every Child Excelling.” As an illustration of this bias, searches of ERIC on 10/12/23 for the thesaurus terms for education of the two different “ends” of the “spectrum” (of course, there is overlap between these two populations) yield very different results:
“gifted education” 520 results
“special education” 24,610 results
So literature that examines gifted ed at all is rare, and longitudinal follow-up studies rarer still. I wish it would’ve been more carefully documented, though: about 35% of a sample of about 600 students completed and returned study questionnaires (after having been tracked down through New York Times ads, the phone book, word of mouth, etc.), and 74 of those were interviewed. Others were apparently unaccounted for, leaving the reader to wonder whether they had become famous, gone off the grid, or something in-between.
It would be fascinating to catch up with the respondents again and get their reflections on their time at HCES now, 30 years further on—did an early emphasis on “social adjustment and well-roundedness” serve them well, or would they have preferred to have received more focused intellectual development?
June 21, 2020
An excelent short read that answers questions about inteligence and for-gifted education.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews