How shall we as educators utilize this instrument of genuine democracy? How shall we proceed under conditions in which the founding fathers are now mistaken by many citizens to have proclaimed and promised biological equality!
Perhaps we should take another leaf from the book of the French Republic, where the delusion of biological equality has always been successfully avoided; where the State continually reviews its attempt to secure equality of opportunity by explicit efforts to find and foster the natural élite, and to know where the gifted are located in the French population. [11]
We may also consider the Belgian policies, with regard to subsidy of the gifted, [12] "Ce principe fondamental: Que chaque enfant, quelle que soit la situation de fortune des parents, soit mis en état d'acquérir par l'instruction tout le développement intellectuel et professionnel dont il est capable."
All the questions here raised call for definite answers _at the present time_. Such questions could not be effectively raised prior to the twentieth century, because psychologists had not previously advanced to a point of supplying a scientific method of determining intelligence in childhood. It is the most significant contribution of psychology to education, in this century--and perhaps in all centuries--that we are now enabled to know the mental caliber of a human being in his early years.
More and more it becomes clear that human welfare on the whole is much more a matter of the activities of _deviates_ than it is a matter of what the middle mass of persons does. Those educators who make a joke of the genius and regard the dullard as a mere figment of the imagination of psychologists, or who solve the educational problems which these children present by the simple device of "not believing in" them, fiddle while Rome burns. It is the deviate who takes the initiative and plays the primary part in social determination. How shall we, then, educate him in a democracy?
[1] Reprinted from _The Journal of Educational Sociology_ (October, 1939), pages 90-102.
[2] Bridgman, Amy S. _My Valuable Time: The Story of Paul Bridgman Boyd_. (109 pages.) Stephen Daye Press, Brattleboro, Vermont; 1938.
[3] Hollingworth, Leta S. "The Founding of Public School 500: Speyer School," _Teachers College Record_, Vol. 37 (November, 1936), pages 119-128.