REMARKABLE PRODIGY

Taranaki Daily News, 23 February 1935, Page 21 (Supplement)

REMARKABLE PRODIGY

SEVEN-YEAR-OLD BOY. HIGHLY-DEVELOPED BRAIN. A boy of seven and a-half has the most highly-developed brain the world has ever known, and he is baffling British educationists and doctors with the wide range of his mental powers. His intelligence quotient is said to be ihighet than Professor Einstein.. His name is Arthur Greenwood, but his parents and teachers are reluctant. to see him become known as a prodigy. The boy is of Jewish parentage. His father is a teacher and his mother was one before her marriage. He is mow in the ; Brooklyn Ethical ..Culture School. Mrs. Henry Neumann, head of the school, told the Sunday Chronicle recently that he came from the Guidance Bureau of the Board of Education, where he had revealed an .intelligence comparable to that of a boy of 16. Arthur astonished his examiners further by arriving at the difficult system whereby • intelligence quotients are determined. In the course of a test he was asked to give in -His own words the thought expressed in a six-line passage which was read to . him and which Was intended for “superior adults.” This was „ the.., child’s . reply:... “The,,. general mediocrity of life prevents it from being radically, unjust.” j ~ . The lad shows, too, an uncanny sense of music. Once, after hearing a tune on the radio, he sat down at the piano and devised a system of numerical notation which competent musicans have examined and' have declared practicable. Dr. Augusta Alpert, the psychologist at the school, who arranged for the boy’s transfer from a public schopl to a special group, stated that he was ,a large baby, but did not walk until he was 14 months and never talked until he was 20 months old.. But when he began to talk he did it intelligently and grammatically, choosing his sentences well and using qualifying clauses. He began at two to discuss topics far beyond' the scope of "the average child. He learned numbers while still a baby and at two learned to read without instruction and by employing lettered bricks and other children’s toys. ■ ’■' •• ' ■■■ ’ Dr. Alpert says, that in other respects the* boy is normal. He dislikes fights and arguments, lucidly observing, “As a rule they are needless, and pointless, since nothing ,is settled by them.” He is unskilled at. all games requiring the use of his hands, and if he. is unable to win at anything he shows a tendency to cry. At school he is surrounded by children of his own age and no .effort is being made to set him apart' from the rest. . ' ' After luncheoh an hour is devoted to

story telling, and here the boy reveals his superiority. His stories are clear and mature. He recently told the class of a trip he had made with his parents to-Washington and concluded’with an accurate description of the city’s street plan and its abstruse system of street numbering. There is nothing unusual in the child’s physical development, according to Dr. Alpert, who said that his high intelligence rating was not balanced by an equally high physical rating. The child is evidently overcoming a tendency to clumsiness in using his fingers,' but he still exhibits no greater skill in games than would foe expected of a boy his age. The chief desire of Arthur’s teachers is to equalise his intellectual development as far as possible, so, he is not allowed to associate with older 'children. It is definitely established that even now he could soon enter a university and hold his own intellectually, but his teachers consider that such a step would ruin him for. ever. The boy has been seen and photographed in the classroom, but it would be impossible to tell, him from the group photograph which is. the child who possesses the most highly-developed brain ever known. When the facts were put before a leading West End doctor he confessed himself dumbfounded by the child’s precocity. “Nothing, in the history of medical science approaches this human phenomena,” he said. “Certainly we have had no parallel in British records.”'