Leta Stetter Hollingworth and the Speyer School, 1935–1940: Historical Roots of the Contradictions in Progressive Education for Gifted Children

Leta Stetter Hollingworth and the Speyer School, 1935-1940: Historical Roots of the Contradictions in Progressive Education for Gifted Children Rose A. Rudnitski S.U.N.Y. New Paltz Leta Stetter Hollingworth, a pioneer of gifted education in America, embodies the dichotomy between the ideals of progressive education and the measurement movement prevalent at the beginning of this century, the movement most closely associated with the identification of gifted and talented students. The Speyer School experiment illustrated how the measurement paradigm could dominate a very democratic model of elementary education for exceptional children. There are vestiges of the strictly "objective" measurement paradigm in the identification of students for gifted programs today, juxtaposed with a very democratic paradigm in curriculum and teaching in those same programs. This article briefly documents that dichotomy, and uses the lens of some of Dewey's writing to analyze how it was articulated at the Speyer School, PS 500 in New York City between 1935 and 1940 by Hollingworth and her colleagues. This historical study will illuminate the roots of inconsistencies that have troubled reflective educators of gifted and talented students for much of this century. The Person Leta Stetter Hollingworth, who was a professor of educational psychology at Teachers College, Columbia University from 1916 until her death in 1939, was responsible for overseeing the program for rapid learners at the Speyer School from 1935 until her untimely death in 1939. An active member of the Women's Suffrage Party, Hollingworth was a champion of women's rights and a published author on the psychology of women. She was also the author of the first comprehensive textbook on the psychology and education of gifted children, Gifted Children: Their Nature and Nurture, in 1926. Born Leta Ann Stetter on May 25, 1886 in what is now Chadron, Nebraska, Hollingworth is primarily remembered as an astute researcher whose goal was social reform effected through change based on scientific study and data.1 She spent most of her career advocating for women's rights at a time when it was widely believed that women were less intelligent than men and that women suffered from monthly incapacitation as a result of menstruation. In fact, the goal of her doctoral dissertation was the scientific investigation of the validity of the theory of "functional periodicity," a theory held by her dissertation sponsor, E. L. Thorndike. Though the idea that women were intellectually equal to men was in strong opposition to views held by men like Thorndike and Terman, Hollingworth shared their belief in the utility of the IQ test in predicting future success in life. She also advocated forms of selective breeding as a means of improving social conditions and the human race.^ Though she believed that women were capable of high intellectual ability as measured by IQ tests, Hollingworth continued to place them in a primarily procreative role, positing that women who had high IQ children should be paid by the government to have more children.^ The eugenic ideas of Hollingworth and other founders of the field of gifted education have not been perpetuated by that field, but the idea that gifted children should be taught according to their needs and interests has persisted to the present, along with the accompanying assumption that if gifted children are taught in the appropriate manner, they will achieve eminence—or at least outperform their peers of more average intelligence. To achieve those goals, Hollingworth chose democratic principles and progressive theory to undergird curriculum and instruction for her section of the Speyer School, the classes that were called the "Terman classes." The Speyer School The Speyer School at PS 500 on 126th Street in Manhattan was established in January of 1936 as the Public School Experiment with Mental Deviates.4 The school was to be the site of an experimental program for exceptional children, whom the New York City Board of Education called "slow" and "rapid" learners, with slow learners defined as children with IQ's of 75 to 90, and rapid learners, children whose IQ's ranged from 130 to 200. This range was later Education and Culture Fall, 1996 Vol. XIII No. 2 2 ROSE A. RUDNITSKI cited as being flexible, since three...