In the Beginning
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| Omen column, national edition March 2013
In the Beginning By Kathe Oliver Young Mensans and their parents cringe when they hear adult Mensans saying things like “They never should have let children into Mensa!” Members who make such hurtful comments are showing their ignorance of Mensa’s history. A family’s search for help for a gifted student led to the start of Mensa. Most Mensa members know the basic outline of the organization’s founding. In 1945, two men met on a train in Britain. One, Roland Berrill, was a flamboyant barrister who had emigrated from Australia to the United Kingdom. The second, Lancelot Lionel Ware, was a reserved Englishman with a PhD in biochemistry who was studying to become a barrister. The two very different men discovered a shared interest in the study of intelligence. Berrill believed that human intelligence could be studied and measured through phrenology. According to phrenology, the size and relative strength of different areas of the brain could be learned by studying skull shapes. A bump over an area of the brain believed to control a certain thought process could be measured and used to infer intellectual strengths and weaknesses. Phrenology had been very influential in the early 1800s, but was generally categorized as pseudoscience by the 1940s. Ware believed that the way to study and measure human intellect was through the relatively new science of intelligence testing. He eventually gave Berrill an intelligence test. The results showed very high intelligence, encouraging Berrill to move ahead with an idea which he and Ware had apparently already discussed, and start a club with admission based upon intelligence. This was not an original idea. Ware had been involved with one of several earlier groups, none of which survived World War II. Something comparable had even been suggested during BBC radio broadcasts by psychologist Cyril Burt in 1945. However, unlike the other clubs, the group that Berrill organized would thrive. Beginning with six British members on October 1, 1946, Mensa International now has approximately 115,000 members worldwide. That much of the story of Mensa’s founding is widely known. Less widely known is what led to Ware’s interest in intelligence testing, without which Mensa would not exist. In 1940 Ware had become guardian of his teenaged sister, Elaine. He investigated educational testing, including intelligence testing, while trying to find a way to get Elaine an appropriate education. She would join her brother as one of Mensa’s original members. As Mensa changed and grew, support for gifted youth remained a constant. Family friendly picnics began. Mensa’s fourth Mensa Annual Lecture, given at the 1959 Annual Gathering (AG), featured Cyril Burt speaking on “The Gifted Child”. AG participants also heard the news that after thirteen years of growth, Mensa had 750 members. All of those members belonged to “Mensa”, a British organization, even though they came from many countries. That was about to change. In the Secretary’s Report (Chairman’s Report) Victor Serebriakoff noted that Americans were starting to talk about forming their own branch of Mensa. This happened very rapidly. In August 1960, Peter Sturgeon began inviting Mensans to attend the first formal Mensa meeting in North America. 15 members attended that meeting, on October 18, 1960, in New York City. It was the official start of North American Mensa, now Mensa Canada and American Mensa (AML). However, Sturgeon’s was not the first attempt to start an American Mensa. That had come in January, 1960, from the National Association of Gifted Children (today’s National Association for Gifted Children, www.nagc.org), working with Mensa member A.A. Hyatt. It did not succeed, but it shows that the importance of Young Mensans to Mensa was widely recognized. In the years since, Mensa has continued to support and include Young Mensans and their families. Most American Mensa local groups have Gifted Youth Coordinators who share information with parents and educators. Groups with concentrated populations often have special programs for Young Mensans and their families, as do many Regional Gatherings. At the national level, the Mensa Education and Research Foundation sponsors scholarships and research into intelligence. Mensa Colloquium topics have included “Gifted Children: Identification, Education, and Nurturing: Where are we today? Where will we be tomorrow?” Young Mensans have been a part of Annual Gatherings since at least 1967, and now enjoy programming especially for them. In addition, there are workshops which help parents and educators of gifted youth deal with some of the same issues that the Wares faced in the 1940s. The next time that you hear—or think—“Mensa should be adult only”, remember Mensa’s history. Without gifted youth, there would be no Mensa. To learn more about American Mensa’s ongoing support for gifted children and their families, go to the AML Gifted Youth information page, www.us.mensa.org/learn/gifted-youth/ and visit Mensa for Kids at www.mensaforkids.org. For more information about Mensa’s earliest years, read Mensa: The Society for the Highly Intelligent, by Victor Serebriakoff. A History of Mensa, Ted Elzinga, editor, Gordon K. Andersen and Vince Bonzagni, contributing editors, focuses on American Mensa. Additional information is also available on the websites of Mensa International, www.mensa.org, and American Mensa, www.us.mensa.org. ***** This article was adapted from “In the Beginning”, published in Omen, the magazine of Oregon Mensa, in March 2013. |