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.