The Child Buyer by John Hersey Read Free Book Online Page A

were like bugles. Dr. Gozar stood with her back to the steel-pipe frame, her arms raised and spread, gripping two high pipes with her hands. She's in her late sixties, but she made a picture of health and confidence, I tell you. She has the shape of a thirty-year-old woman, and with her arms pulled back that way . . . She has an oval head set on a strong neck. White teeth—her own, I believe.
    Mr. BROADBENT. And you and she were having a discussion.
    THE CHILD BUYER
    Mr. CLEARY. We were talking about the talent search I had been conducting, which had in fact been my idea to begin with. Now, to give you the background on my own point of view, I think I should tell you I flatter myself that I'm a realist. I think the worst I can call anyone is 'na'ive' or 'emotional.' This is a tough world, and I've come to regard all gentle and soft feelings, my own more than anyone else's, as slop, bushwa, naivete, sentimentality, and what confounds people who don't agree with me, like Dr. Gozar, is that I'm so often right. I won't say always. It's a jungle world, and I'm dedicated to being as tough as I can, or seeming so, anyway. I'm not afraid of anything except blushing. Quite frankly, the decisive things in this world are position and money, and of these two the former is by far the more important, because money, though it may help with appearances, can never buy prestige or a real power to manipulate. Money power is bogus; that's why so many rich people are unhappy, Command is the only really satisfying wealth.
    Mr. BROADBENT. You mentioned that you were discussing the talent search with Dr. Gozar.
    Mr. CLEARY. I assume that you want me to be frank with you, so I'll simply say that Dr. Gozar was getting nosey about it. She wanted to know how I ever got the School Board to fall for it, and I explained that I had, on my own initiative, dug up support for the project from a foundation, so it wouldn't cost the taxpayers a cent; that appealed to Mr. Wairy, the chairman of our Board, in a big way. My original idea was to identify the neurotic youngsters, so we could open a parent-child clinic, but the Foundation for National Superiority in Education, which sponsors the project, felt that there should be a slightly different emphasis, and since it was providing the cash—
    Mr. BROADBENT. How do you actually carry out the talent search?
    Mr. CLEARY. Well, the Pequot Talent Search is hunting for
    Friday, October 2$
    the top one per cent of the gifted and the bottom twenty per cent of the retarded in our community.
    Senator MANSFIELD. And you still call it a talent search?
    Mr. CLEARY. Mr. Owing persuaded the Foundation to include the retarded because he knew we'd never get it by the School Board and the community if we didn't take the hardship cases into account. Undemocratic.
    Mr. BROADBENT. How are you finding your talented children?
    Mr. CLEARY. We have tests for intellectual gifts, as well as subjective screening for talents in music, painting, dramatics, dance, pottery—
    Senator SKYPACK. Pottery!
    Mr. CLEARY. We have a Talent Commission of leading citizens. Mrs. Ferrenhigh happens to have a pottery wheel. She-Mr. BROADBENT. Go on, please.
    Mr. CLEARY. We also have tests for creativity, leadership, aggressive maladjustment, and potential alcoholism. The Foundation left these last two in, from my original apparatus, as recognition of my contribution.
    Mr. BROADBENT. What was your disagreement with Dr. Go-zar?
    Mr. CLEARY. We had several differences, but mainly she objected to one of the tests in the battery we use to ferret out intellectual abilities.
    Mr. BROADBENT. What was that?
    Mr. CLEARY. It's something called the Olmstead-Diffendorff Game.
    Senator SKYPACK. Game?
    Mr. CLEARY. It's called that in order to decrease the subject's tension. The Olmstead-Diffendorff Game, called by its authors "A Test of General Intelligence,' was designed to answer a criticism frequently made of the Stanford-Binet, Wechsler, and
    THE CHILD BUYER
    other