The Prince George's enquirer and southern Maryland advertiser. (Upper Marlborough, Md.) 1882-1925, 1910-02-11
For the
Younger
Children.

professors of Harvard University are
always giving him difficult problems
to solve, but they are not difficult to
him; and when he was nine years old
he solved without any trouble a
problem which had been part of the
examination for the degree of Phi. D.
at famous German university.
Now, perhaps, the little folk think
that Master William James Sidis
must have worked very hard to learn
all these things, and that he couldn't
ever have had time to play, but that
is not so at all. He is very healthy,
active boy, and just as fond Of play
as other children His room is full
of toys and games. and he is as fond
of tAlice in Wonderland" as of trig-
onometry AS for working hard at
his studies, he really couldn't do that,
because study is all play to him.
Is he, then, so much cleverer than
other children? Well, perhaps he is
just little bit cleverer, his father,
DIR. Boris Sidis, would admit if we
we're to ask him. We could hardly
expect him to say anything else, for
es course all parents think their chill
dren just a little bit brighter than
other folks children. DR.. Sidis in
sists that it isn't because William Is
so wonderfully clever that he knows
so much more than other children of
his age 1t is because he has been so
much better educated, and there Is no
reason, he says, why all children
shouldn't know very nearly as much
at eleven years of age if they were
educated in the same way. Long be-
fore he had a little boy of his own
he had come to the conclusion that we
didn't know how to educate children,
and when little William James came
to live in Brookline he had chance
to prove that his ideas were the right
ones. Other people have been afraid
of overstraining children's minds, but
the doctor didn't believe there was
any such danger. The mind needed
exercise just as the body does, he
argued, and would grow better with
it than without. Nature knows this,
because she sets the child to think
ing and observing almost as soon as
it is born. All we have got to do, then,
is to give it interesting and useful
things to think about and observe.
DR.. Sidis began teaching his little boy
to think when he was only eighteen
months old, and with the help of
blocks the little one learned to read
and spell by the time he was two
years old. He got his first lesson in
arithmetic from dominos, and as soon
as he became interested in the sub
ject he scarcely needed any more
teaching He just went on and
learned things himself.
That is the way DR.. Sidis managed
his sons whole education. He just
got him interested in anything he
wanted him to learn, and then the
boy went on and learned it by him
self 1t wasn't necessary to urge, but
sometimes his parents felt like hold
ing him back. Of course, he didn't
go to school. His parents tried send
ing him once or twice, but he didn't
fit into the classes, and he was so ac-
tive and so much accustomed to lib
erty that he couldn't stand the con-
finement He is now quite ready to
enter college, but no college would
receive boy of eleven. BY the time
he is old enough it makes our heads
swim to think how much he will
know.
Unfortunately for most little folk,
and most big ones as well, they don't
have fathers like DIR. Sidis to teach
them; but DR.. Sidis says it is never
too late to begin. If we can only get
our minds interested in things we
won't have to force them to learn;
they will learn because they can't
helm it,