_Parental supervision_. Parents keenly interested in development of children. Their own education is limited, which is a handicap in directing and educating the children. Little need of discipline in home, though mother is lax about carrying out threats. Parental example good. Grade 4.
_Play interests_. F preferred playmates of his own age and sex. He would spend hours at a time "using marbles for soldiers and working out military formations." Being with older children in school, he was somewhat backward in joining in their outdoor games.
_Reading interests_. From 6 to 10 years of age F read a great variety of books, "particularly geography and history" and "averaging probably 20 hours weekly." He was especially interested in dictionaries and encyclopedias; would always look up new words in detail. Most of his leisure time was preferably spent in reading.
As already recorded, F was transferred in 1924, at the age of 10 years, to the Special Opportunity Class in P.S. 165, Manhattan, then being organized for experimental purposes connected with the education of children of rare intelligence. He graduated from this class into senior high school. He and another boy (Child C, Chapter 6) led this highly selected group of children in achievement tests. As he was at this time, Leta S. Hollingworth wrote of him:
I have never met with a more interesting child than he was, and the same creativeness and inexorable logic which characterized him then have always continued.
He entered, after a brief experience in a progressive private school, a public high school in New York City, in 1925. His high school career was a checkered one, typical in some respects of his later educational history. For one thing, he was a constant truant, and he refused to do the required work in physical education. He had always been averse to physical activity and loathed manual work to the end of his career. He said that the gymnasium work always left him feeling "worse," gave him colds, and was of no use to him. Perhaps his subsequent medical history throws some light on the reasons for these observations.
His truant hours were spent partly in the public library, where he read continuously in technical volumes in a great variety of fields and accumulated an amazing fund of general information and esoteric lore. Law, theology, history, science, and literature were some of his favorite fields.