Normally, however, a spiritually heavy child can be helped most by recognizing and accepting, first, that his actual response to situations, however unnatural it may seem to the teacher, is natural for him. It would be desirable also, surely, to be able to point to the geniuses we ve produced especially if, in the process of producing them, we didn t penalize the dull. What happens, instead, is that we handicap the bright students, and don t give even the mediocre ones that kind of education from which they might derive the most benefit. Brightness suffers, but so also does society as a whole. For the world needs greatness in a few, at least, of its men and women, and is deprived when the system it fosters is prejudicial to the development of greatness.
Schools ought indeed to try to bring out the best in every child.
But that best should be encouraged also as a quality distinct from its individual expression, and the potential for it recognized in those vehicles which are the most adapted to its fullest expression. I ve mentioned genius, for example. It would be praiseworthy, no doubt, to encourage the manifestation of genius in a dull student, but where genius itself is concerned it would be more realistic to expect its manifestation in the bright ones. Instead, owing largely to an emphasis on merely discouraging the worst in children, what we often get in fact is the worst side of those children who have the highest potentials. It is never easy for a bright teacher to accept that dull children really are dull.