Robert Henle, Stimulating the Superior Student (1940)

[15] [Footnote attached to the article title: Summary of paper read at the meeting of the high-school delegates, Jesuit Educational Association, Kansas City, Missouri, March 29, 1940.]

There is little need to insist on the importance of the problem raised by the presence in our schools of the exceptionally gifted student. It is a problem set us by God Himself. For does not the bestowal on our boys of unusual gifts of mind and character, impose, by that very fact, an imperative obligation on those to whom their development is entrusted? We who know of His Providence must believe that He means, in our day, to raise up among us leaders of courage and power. And these leaders—may they not be those highly talented boys that we find in all our schools, boys who are eager and alert, susceptible of inspiration, receptive to ideas and ideals?

The problem seems so important, that I will not limit myself to dealing with individual methods or auxiliary activities by which all good teachers who have the time attempt to stimulate their gifted students. These are makeshift devices, mere appendages of the classroom work. No amount of such extra or special work, excellent as it may be in the circumstances, can provide the adequate treatment that the superior student needs. We will never do him justice nor realize our full potentialities as Jesuit educators until we make basic changes in organization and curriculum. I believe there is latent power in our traditions and our organization which we have not as yet fully realized or applied here in America. I envision a Jesuit high-school education that would not only be superior to all others, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, but also to our own past successes. Whatever criticisms, then, I may offer in the course of this paper will be relative to this ideal.

We are hampered in dealing with gifted boys by the present rigidity and uniformity of curriculum and organization. It is on the superior student that the evils of mass education fall most heavily. He is marked by stronger individuality, by greater differentiation in quality of talent and temperament. This naturally strong individuality he has often further emphasized by accidentally directed interests, habits of reading, observation, and the like. The gifted student simply refuses to be generalized into an average. Yet, he finds himself in a system based on the doctrine of the average. The class is taught according to methods adapted to the average; its matter is set up and assigned by an average; the goal of achievement set is based on an average of ability. This goal the superior student finds [16] easy; the classroom teaching is too plodding for his more rapid mind; mental tension of the classroom is at too low a potential for him. He becomes bored; he does the required; he is not interested or stimulated. Some of these brighter boys become lazy through lack of incentive; some of them expend their intellectual energy in outside activities like debating, dramatics, desultory reading.

Again, the superior student above all others learns by self-activity. To him the principle of St. Ignatius is supremely applicable that what one discovers for oneself is of far more value than what another tells him. Yet, the general classroom technique is necessarily open to the charge of spoon-feeding. With an average class we cannot busy ourselves, as Socrates did, in any midwifery of ideas; the Socratic method would be too slow, would raise more difficulties and obscurities than we could ever handle. And so the greatest thrill and inspiration and profit of the intellectual life, discovery of ideas, is denied to the very student who could most profit by it.

I would propose to meet the situation by setting up an honors course for select students. I do not mean simply a grouping together of the upper-ranking students at a higher average level of teaching and achievement, but a separate course outside the average organization itself, one based precisely on the principle of individual education. We could outline the essential features of such a course under four heads: (1) The subject matter would be divided into two sections; namely, one integrated central course in the humanities, to include the linguistic, literary and historical disciplines; and a small group of auxiliary branches like mathematics and science. (2) A single able teacher would be assigned to a small group of, say, fifteen boys as their permanent director. He would himself teach the humanities throughout the four years. (3) The progress would be based on achievement and mastery, not on the unit-test-mark system. (4) The method would include directed study and self-activity; personal direction; personal tempo of progress; Socratic method in dealing with ideas.

Obviously, the important element in such a system would be the directing teacher. He should be a man of intellectual interests, of balanced character, and, above all, devoted with apostolic zeal to the best interests, both spiritual and intellectual, of the boys. This teacher of high calibre [sic] would, with a small and permanent group, be able to apply himself to the study of each boy as an individual problem. He would come to know and understand the  minds and characters with which he is dealing, and, through his four years of contact, he would be able to direct reading, discussion, and study strategically, like a good general, towards the goal most fitted to each boy. The constant contact with such a teacher would arouse admiration and the incentive to imitation in the young minds. After all, youth develops its ethical attitudes from social pressure and imitation rather than from [17] copy-book maxims and religion-class exhortations. Many would object to wasting, as they would put it, such a man in high-school work. But if there can hardly be a work of more permanent value and of greater ultimate influence than the production of the great Christian character, and if secondary schooling is the most plastic period of a man's life, how could we do better than to place outstanding men in such positions? A province would reap rich rewards from such a 'sacrifice' of talent. If the contact with one major teacher would be thought too narrow, perhaps two such men could handle several groups of honor students in close cooperation, close enough at least not to destroy the intrinsic unity of the humanities course.

The course I suggest would be based on a single major study including languages, literature, and history. All true liberal education has included these disciplines which are so solidly established in our own traditions. This is precisely because such studies present a diversified and yet unified training that corresponds to the fullness of human nature. They bring out in harmony and polish to perfection the potential excellencies and powers of man as such. The arbitrary division of an hour for Greek, an hour for Latin, and hour for English, has greatly weakened the efficiency of the humanities, especially by dividing the direction between a classical M. A. and an English M. A. The underlying habits and ideas are the same; we wish to teach sound linguistic habits, literary attitudes, and general cultural ideas. Unity of study and teaching will throw emphasis on the educational goal and on the boy rather than on a specialized subject-matter. Within the course all our traditional methods and many excellent devices developed in modern times would find place. Basing the whole on the personal tempo of the individual student and on achievement, we could have the boys working at a tension of activity rightly proportioned to their ability. And if the system were based on achievement progress, every step would be sound. It is easy enough in the unit-test-mark system for a boy to get a passing grade in a test or even in a course without real mastery of the subject. As such a boy passes on from class to class, he is found to have preparation progressively less adequate for each advance. He pulls down the average of the class and himself develops a garbled mentality and a set of slipshod intellectual habits. If, on the other hand, mastery is the test of advance to new matter, if new units or projects are not undertaken until habitual mastery of the pre-requisites is acquired, solid and genuine intellectual growth will result, a thing for which the gifted boy will have respect and a growing gratitude.

The matter of the humanities would admit a variety of excellent methods, all permitting a maximum of self-activity and individual direction. Some matters, like syntax, would fall naturally into progressive units to [18] be mastered in sequence by the individual. Others, like history, where a dull lecture-recitation method is often used, would be organized as projects to be worked up under direction. Reading—think what it would mean to be able to direct and study the reading of a boy through four years of high school, especially if one had other opportunities of taking intellectual measure of his mind. With a small and selected group one could frequently resort to the Socratic method, leading a boy to the splendid surprise of idea-discovery.

All this is firmly founded in our Ratio and our traditions; and it would profit by and perfect the better efforts being made by outsiders in this same field.[2] We Jesuits, whose educational achievements turned back heresy and reformed Catholic Europe, whose history is one of courageous conquest of obstacles and daring victory, are not we supremely fitted to turn our hands to the reconstruction of education and of society by making available to boys of talent an even more effective system of secondary education?

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Footnotes:

2. Cf. "An Experiment in Responsible Learning," by William S. Learned and Anna Rose Hawkes, Thirty-Fourth Annual Report, the Carnegie Foundation, New York, 1938, pp. 45-75.

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Source: Robert J. Henle, S.J., "Stimulating the Superior Student," Jesuit Educational Quarterly 3, no. 1 (June 1940): 15–18.