The psychology of youth / by Edgar James Swift.

  • Swift, Edgar James, 1860-1932.
Date:
1927
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The psychology of youth / by Edgar James Swift. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    tunity to progress, each according to his own ability. In the Santa Barbara schools, as Caroline F. Burk 1 has shown, the so-called normal children, i. <?., those who did the usually required year’s work, were less than half of all the pupils. Under a flexible promotion system 281 finished less than the year’s work and 185 exceeded it. As all of the pupils did as much as their ability and sur¬ rounding conditions permitted, the conclusion seems inevitable that if the “‘normal’ children had been permitted to set the pace for all, serious harm would have been done to the 466, or more than half of those in the schools.” The same striking difference in the capacity of children has been shown in the Baltimore schools under former Superintendent Van Sickle:2 “The plan in brief is to allow pupils who have done strong work in the sixth grade, with the approval of their parents, to take up extra studies of high-school grade while doing the regular work of the seventh and eighth grades of the elemen¬ tary school. . . . Pupils who take this work are transferred to a convenient centre in which enough pupils may be gathered together to allow the in¬ struction to be organized on the departmental 1 Educational Review, March, 1900. 2 “Provision for Gifted Children in Public Schools,” by J. H. Van Sickle, Elementary School Teacher, vol. 10, p. 357.