Education: School for Bright Children

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Detroit spends $287 a year to educate a subnormal child, $58 for a smart one.

This seemed unfair to; Mrs. Evelyn Stafford Brannon, mother of three bright children. Mrs. Brannon, an alumna of Antioch and Columbia and onetime teacher at Chicago's Sherwood School, decided to start a school for bright children.

This week Mrs. Brannon's unusual school, the Sherwood School of Bloomfield Hills, finished its first year $10,000 in the red, but pleased with the accomplishments of its remarkable pupils, aged 2 to 13. Mrs. Brannon had no trouble finding bright children, had less luck finding bright parents. She started with 50 pupils (average I. Q.: 128). She soon weeded out three: a three-year-old because his mother insisted on too frequent brushing of his hair, a five-year-old because his parents spoiled him, a seven-year-old because he was too stupid.

Star pupil was an eight-year-old with an I. Q. of 201. Irked by the insanities of English spelling, he devised a mathematical formula for getting words pronounced right. The formula baffled his teachers, but worked. Then he wrote a three-volume History of Transportation (for which he did most of his research in FORTUNE), illustrated it himself.

Mrs. Brannon's school (tuition: $150 to $750) is run on strictly progressive lines.

Its tots have a rhythm band, paint, wade, swim, take turns eating at a French table (where only French is spoken). Brightest spot in Sherwood School's day is the "conversation hour." Excerpts from a sample kindergarten conversation: "Let's not talk about Hitler today.""No, let's not talk about that awful man." "He's worse than Gulliver."-"Gulliver and Hitler shoot everybody."Last week both boys and girls were busy with war games. For playing too enthusiastically, one little boy was sentenced by his classmates to write 500 times: "It is wrong to hit little girls with a stick on the head."