The Relative Intellectual Achievement Of Mentally Gifted And Retarded Children

The relative intellectual achievement of mentally gifted and retarded children under our present educational program is an im portant problem for the educator. The pres ent study has as its purpose the investigation of findings relative to this problem. McGehee, in his study of retarded elementary school children, concluded that mentally retarded children achieving more in the subject matter fields in this investigation than would be anticipated from an analysis of their men tal age placements. (6, 52) The writer, in his investigation of mentally superior chil dren, which was based upon the same survey, concluded that, Gifted children are retarded in school achievement when achievement is considered in relation to intelligence capa city- (S> 66) The writer is of the opinion that these findings are correct if only the mental ages of the groups and their grade placement are considered, as was the case in the above mentioned investigations, but it now seems evident that a very important fac tor was not considered, namely, the chrono logical ages of the two groups of children and the length of time the respective groups had been in school. It is quite possible that a consideration of the time the two groups had been in school might lead to different conclusions since the time spent in school should be related directly to their respective opportunities for learning, an important fac tor in relative achievement. There are certain conclusions relative to the achievement of mentally gifted and re tarded children regarding which there is gen eral agreement at the present time and which McGehee and the writer, in their compre hensive investigations of the achievement of the two groups, substantiated. It is beyond dispute that there is a positive, if not high correlation between mental ability and in tellectual achievement, the correlations rang ing from +.45 to+.8o. It has been shown that the achievement of mentally retarded children is less than that of normal or supe rior children of the same chronological age. (7,95 an? 2,126) It does not follow from this that retarded children are achieving less, in terms of their ability than normal or superior children since it would be absurd to expect them to achieve as much as normal or superior children of the same age. The very meaning of the term mentally retarded implies that dull children possess less learn ing ability than normal or superior children of the same age. Normal children should achieve more than mentally retarded chil dren, and superior children should achieve more than normal children.