Professor Boris Sidis has given, in response to requests,
an authentic account of the scope and aims of his son’s
intellectual career. “I do not believe in the prevailing system
of education for children,” writes Professor Sidis. “I have
educated my son upon a system of my own, based to some extent
upon principles laid down by Professor William James.” This
system, Professor Sidis insists, has justified itself by its
results in the case of the boy prodigy of Harvard. He knows
as much at eleven, the father says, “as a gifted professor
of mature years,” and when he grows up “he will amaze the
world.” Nor is the result due to heredity or to abnormality of
the child’s brain. The results achieved in the case of this
eleven-year-old lad are due wholly to the methods of training
pursued. To quote the father’s words as given the New York
_American_:
“As the baby grows more rapidly after birth than at any other
time, so his brain develops most rapidly then and becomes less
sensitive to impressions as he grows older. The process of
education can not begin too soon.
“I began to train my boy in the use of his faculties immediately
after his birth. He was bound to use them anyway, and therefore
I took care that he used them properly. I taught the child to
observe accurately, to analyze and synthesize and make sound
deductions. Neither his mother nor myself confused him with baby
talk, meaningless sounds or foolish gestures, and thus, altho he
learned to reason so early, his mind was no more burdened than
that of the ordinary child.
“I knew that as soon as he began to speak his first interest
would be in the sounds he was uttering, and so I trained him to
identify the elements of sound. Taking a box of large alphabet
blocks I named each to him day after day.
“In this way he learned to read and spell correctly before he
was two years old. What was still more important, he learned to
reason correctly.”
(2524)
=Productions, Interchange of=--See CHRISTIANITY, SOCIAL.
=Profanity=--See AMBASSADOR, THE MINISTER AS AN; SWEARING.