A SCHOOL FOR GENIUSES.
" Future Spinozas, Disraelis, Michelsons, Einsteins and Freuds ! " So, Dr. Arthur Payne, president of the College of the City of New York, speaks of a hundred and twenty or so students, most of them Jews and the children of poor immigrants, for whom a special " college for geniuses " has been organized. These students, it appears, have demon- strated by their academic work, and under searching psycho- logical tests, that they are endowed with mental capacities far beyond the common. While slower students require repeated instruction in the elements of things, the excep- tional student, grasping knowledge much more quickly and easily, is simply bored and kept back from exploring more advanced regions. Hence the " college for geniuses," in which the selected students will be enabled to progress as rapidly as their exceptional capacities allow. The innovation will be watched by American educators with sympathy and close attention. One of the most significant trends in American education at the present time is the movement, growing in strength, away, from standardization based upon more or less arbitrary conceptions of the needs and capacities of the " average " student. Some educators, indeed, are beginning to suspect that there is no " average " student. At any rate, there is a wide measure of agreement that curricula, hitherto, have been far too rigidly defined and that a judicious flexibility may be achieved with fruitful results.
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