Crushing Tall PoppiesShame and the Gifted: The Squandering of Potential
“Shame is a real and potentially devastating emotion, impacting each of us at one time or another. A sense of worthlessness and an urge to hide or cover those feelings can harm the human psyche in ways researchers and psychologists are still uncovering. Social institutions, such as schools, have a responsibility to nurture and guide our youngest citizens; however, all too often, these very institutions perpetuate the cycle of shame. Acknowledging these failures and finding ways to stop the cycle are vital steps in the healing of shame and the healthy development and educational success of students.” 1
Giftedness has a multiplicity of meanings depending upon which population or group one queries—from various clinical definitions to the differing identification criteria used in gifted education programs and the often-misguided societal perceptions of gifted people. The complexity which encompasses giftedness is tremendous and can be a detriment to gifted individuals.
Societal Perceptions
Predominant stereotypes of gifted individuals can be seen portrayed in television shows such as Young Sheldon and Scorpion, both painting a picture of utter genius—extreme intelligence of which the predictable outcome will be a high level of achievement, success, and eminence most of us will not achieve in our lifetimes. Stereotypically, the expected product of giftedness is not accurate for many gifted individuals, but the portrayal of geniuses as misfits in society often is.
Educational Stereotypes
Our educational system has unfortunately unintentionally promoted these inaccurate stereotypes by setting gifted identification criteria based on academic achievement, exemplary behavior in the classroom, and notable extra-curricular attainments—none of which are incontrovertible benchmarks of giftedness in children. As gifted education programs continue to populate their classes with high-achieving, ambitious and driven students who garner note-worthy academic achievements in school and above-average accomplishments outside of school, an erroneous and hurtful stereotype has emerged which plagues gifted individuals throughout their lives.
Gifted children require educational pursuits which meet their innate need to pursue knowledge and skills at an accelerated pace while also immersing themselves more deeply into topics of intense interest. In our traditional school systems which utilize unchangeable lock-step practices such as age-based grade levels, one-size-fits-all curriculums, and tightly-controlled lesson plans and schedules, acceleration and other deviations from the standardized traditional school routines is inconvenient and often logistically impossible. These standardized, impersonal methods can leave gifted students frustrated, bored and disillusioned with school. In turn, these voracious learners become unfulfilled, complacent and angry, and then disengagement from their education seems inevitable.
Behavior problems can also arise from the boredom as well as the frustration a gifted child experiences with his one-size-fits-all education. An inner conflict develops between being gifted and being one’s authentic self and having to conform to educational standards by appearing non-gifted. It’s a contortion which has emotionally depleted and traumatized many gifted children.
Twice-Exceptionality
Within our population of gifted children, there are twice-exceptional (2e) gifted children. These children are both gifted and also have one or more learning differences known as exceptionalities such as dyslexia, autism, ADHD, anxiety, visually- or hearing-impaired, and other conditions which can hinder learning in a standardized learning environment. These exceptionalities, these learning differences can mask identifying gifted traits and can result in the inability of the twice-exceptional student to perform as expected in school. Quite often the scenario is such that a 2e gifted child goes unidentified because, although his high-level intelligence is recognized, his performance and achievement do not meet stereotypical educational expectations. And our traditional educational system will focus on addressing the student’s disability while neglecting his intellectual strengths. Most often, this creates a painful inner conflict within the child–“if I’m so smart, why am I not making good grades?”
This is the point at which the shame spiral begins.
The Shame Versus The Potential
As gifted and 2e children experience this inner conflict, negative consequences can arise from the discord between the common expectations held for them and who they indeed are and need to be. They then begin to disengage from school, they are intensely aware of not fitting in, and their academic performance falls short of the stereotypical expectations— they learn to regret their giftedness, even despise it. The contortions gifted children employ to conform to educational and societal expectations, and the lengths to which they go to hide their authentic selves can wear on gifted children. Classwork is not turned in, there are verbal outbursts in the classroom, and grades plummet. Adding to the painful inner conflict these gifted children can feel about their giftedness, there can also be harsh outward reminders from parents, teachers, and peers that they don’t fit in and are not living up to expectations. Many gifted children have heard the painfully familiar retort, “You are gifted, you should be doing better than this in school!” Feeling like a failure and a misfit, they question their giftedness. This intense inner conflict, the mental ping-pong in their minds creates a sense of shame—shame which can squander a gifted child’s potential.
The squandering of a gifted individual’s potential is the tragic legacy of shame.
Shame is a Destructive Psychological Beast
“The overriding view of psychologists is that shame is an overwhelmingly destructive emotion.” 2 A gifted child, or any child, who has developed a strong sense of shame, is left vulnerable to the destructive effects of shame—the feelings of being unworthy, not good enough, or being a failure are injurious. In turn, this develops into a lack of self-esteem and self-confidence which can be debilitating and affect future endeavors and pursuits, possibly preventing the gifted child from finding a sense of accomplishment with his innate pursuits and passion-filled endeavors. Shame then seems inescapable and can destroy a child’s ability to fulfill his or her potential.
Shame and the Gifted Child
Anecdotal and research-based evidence tells us that gifted children are often highly sensitive and emotionally intense. 3 They experience the world to a depth and degree most of us do not comprehend—not unlike how we view simple microscopic organisms we usually take for granted and perceive them in a new way when observed magnified under a microscope. Gifted children’s views of the world are magnified, amplified, and can be emotionally overwhelming because of their extraordinary sensitivities and intense emotionality. We can logically surmise that gifted children, given their highly-sensitive nature, are more vulnerable to the damaging effects of shame—and shame can destroy a child’s potential.
Shame and the Gifted Adult
As gifted children grow into adolescence and on into adulthood, they can lug their shame with them, like a ball and chain. Those past feelings of being a misfit, of being unworthy, and feeling like a failure—those shameful unresolved feelings—can hinder a gifted adult from fulfilling his or her potential. Shame can have a stranglehold on a gifted adult’s courage and confidence to reach heights he or she is capable of achieving. The need to stay small, dumb down, conform and to fit in can be deeply rooted in a gifted adult’s psyche which can have a devastating effect on their life’s purpose, pursuits, and happiness. As with any adult, a gifted adult who is not able to be his or her authentic self, pursue their passions and find their purpose can suffer psychologically from mental conditions such as anxiety, depression and suicidal ideation which in themselves can be debilitating—or catastrophic.
What Can We Do?
As with every negative gifted issue I address in my writing, I ask us all the question, “What can we do?” My answer is always advocacy.Learning more about giftedness, understanding the traits and behaviors of gifted people, and knowing the facts can galvanize us to step up and speak out about giftedness. We need to all find our voice to advocate for the understanding of gifted people, all gifted people everywhere. And our advocacy needs to start when our gifted children are young enough to feel the shame of being gifted.
RESOURCES
Definitions of Giftedness
Kennedy, Jennifer. “5 Definitions of Giftedness.” Institute for Educational Advancement, May 5, 2012. Accessed March 10, 2019. https://educationaladvancement.wordpress.com/2012/05/01/5-definitions-of-giftedness/
Shame in School
“What If Teachers Could Extinguish Shame?” Hack Learning, May 8, 2018. Accessed March 10, 2019. http://hacklearning.org/shame/
Bayers, Leslie, and Camfield, Eileen. “Student Shaming and the Need for Academic Empathy.” Hybrid Pedagogy, April 10, 2018. Accessed March 10, 2019. http://trieft.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Shame_Solutions_Monroe.pdf
Sensitivity and the Gifted Child
Natcharian, Lisa—Raising Wizards. “Why Are So Many Gifted Children Also Highly Sensitive?” Institute for Educational Advancement, April 18, 2017. Accessed March 10, 2019. https://educationaladvancement.org/many-gifted-children-also-highly-sensitive/
Shame and the Gifted Child
Post, Dr. Gail. “How not to shame a gifted child” Gifted Challenges, December 3, 2018. Accessed March 10, 2019. https://giftedchallenges.blogspot.com/2018/12/how-not-to-shame-gifted-child.html
Shame in Childhood
Hanson, Rick, Ph.D. “From Shame to Self-Worth: Development of Shame Spectrum Feelings in Childhood.” Accessed March 10, 2019. https://www.rickhanson.net/from-shame-to-self-worth-development-of-shame-spectrum-feelings-in-childhood/
Cikanavicius, Darius. “A Brief Guide to Unprocessed Childhood Toxic Shame.” Psychology of Self, October 17, 2018. Accessed March 10, 2019. https://blogs.psychcentral.com/psychology-self/2018/09/childhood-toxic-shame/
CITATIONS
1. Monroe, Ann. “Shame Solutions: How Shame Impacts School-Aged Children and What Teachers Can Do to Help.” The Educational Forum, Volume 73, page 66, 2009. Accessed March 11, 2019. http://trieft.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Shame_Solutions_Monroe.pdf
2. Monroe, Ann. “Shame Solutions: How Shame Impacts School-Aged Children and What Teachers Can Do to Help.” The Educational Forum, Volume 73, page 61, 2009. Accessed March 11, 2019. http://trieft.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Shame_Solutions_Monroe.pdf
3 Natcharian, Lisa—Raising Wizards. “Why Are So Many Gifted Children Also Highly Sensitive?” Institute for Educational Advancement, April 18, 2017. Accessed March 11, 2019. https://educationaladvancement.org/many-gifted-children-also-highly-sensitive/
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A bigger question is, what do we do when we or someone we know IS that adult? Surely we deserve help as well to salvage what we can (easier spoken than done) as well as do much more in the world and our lives to simply serve as a bad example.
Not sure where to post this, but this past weekend I discovered a new PBS show called “Miss Scarlet and the Duke”. It appears to be the first show I know of that portrays a main character as gifted.
The show is about a lady detective in Victorian London. It’s pretty graphic, not for the faint of heart.
An interesting part of each episode is where her now-deceased father offers her advice and criticism that only she can see or hear. I don’t want to give it away, but some of the things he says indicate the lead character was a gifted child, in a time when virtually nobody understood it.
If you are the parents of a gifted child, or are gifted yourself, it might be a good show to watch with friends that have questions about giftedness.
Thanks for letting us know about this show! This sounds like a great one to watch!
“What can we do?”
Sometimes, what we can do is best manifested by what we feel like doing, but hold back from.
I love the movie “Yankee Doodle Dandy”, but as a child, i was always disturbed by the scene that shows George M. Cohan as a young boy. The stage hands are praising him for his performance as the lead, and he’s rightfully proud of what he’s accomplished. His mother responds by telling his father “The time has come for George’s first spanking!”
I would watch this scene over and over, and I couldn’t understand why being proud of himself was grounds for physical punishment. It also made me believe that I was always one sentence away from a spanking myself, for reasons that made no sense to me.
So if you perceive what a gifted child is saying or doing to be defiant, I urge you to read these blogs before simply punishing them.
Again, excellent insights into giftedness, children, and human nature!
I agree that no child is inherently or intentionally malicious, and spanking, shaming, or condemning a child for what one would perceive as bad behavior can break a child’s spirit and confidence. With gifted children, their precocious behavior has a propensity to appear more rebellious, arrogant, or defiant. Thank you for your advocacy in that regard!
And every person needs to feel proud and confident; how else are we to feel whole enough to be productive, contributing citizens?
Many thanks to you, CGB, for sharing your thoughts and personal stories with us!
Wow, you nailed this one and hit home for me right now!
I’ve been pondering my “success” or lack thereof, in a professional sense, for a few weeks now. I knew what I wanted to study when I hit college, but it was roadblock after roadblock when it came down to it … apparently ‘smart people’ really aren’t supposed to want to be teachers. Student teaching went badly at first, so that the professors actually tried to convince me (a straight-A student!) to quit and do something else. I got another placement where everything went perfectly. As I said at the time, I know I was neither that terrible nor that good … the truth of my skills was somewhere in the middle, and I would learn. But I was too angry to have to approach those people for a reference, so I did end up pursuing my alternate career choice, and I loved that too. (Librarian, with story time.)
Except apparently you’re not allowed to want a promotion without wanting a raise. And you need a higher degree even though they can’t actually tell you what you could learn that you haven’t learned already during your ten years of prior employment with them (I started very young as a volunteer). Everyone must want more money, right? I’ve since figured out what I would have needed out of that extra degree (a class in grant writing … but that was all, LOL) … what a waste it would have been.
Health issues led me to an early retirement from that job and into the world of homeschooling, which at least was also in my plans. And then into the world of Scout volunteering, which hadn’t actually occurred to me till it came up. Turns out I’m pretty good at it, when allowed to go at my pace and with my interests. (Too bad it doesn’t come with a paycheck, but we can’t get everything!)
According to most of my teachers and professors, I’ve wasted all that potential. But to the 140 kids I worked with in day camp last week, and the ones from years before, and the kids in the troops I work with … I bet they feel otherwise. I’ve found my niche. I’ve found a place that allows me to have as many passions as I want, and go crazy with them, and share them with others. It rocks.
Now I’m trying to get back in touch with one of my old childhood librarians who was also a scout leader, because I learned a TON from her, and I want her to know how much she’s helped me.
On the 2e Team for the Win,
Kristen
Kristen,
So, so glad you found your niche and you seem truly happy with your choices and following your passions. I especially love your sign off, “On the 2e Team for the Win.” That is spectacular–love it!
Thank you for sharing your story! Most parents of gifted children and gifted adults who will read your story will see there are positives to being gifted–you exemplify many of the upsides and it gives us all hope!
Enjoy following your passions,
Celi
I am gifted. Wow, I normally don’t just say that. I feel safe here. I am picked on without kids knowing, so I just won’t tell them. They don’t need to know anyway, they’re my peers. It’s none of their business, anyway. My friend and my family are the only people that know, which is fine with me.
Two days ago, at school (I’m in sixth grade), in Spanish class, we were doing charades in groups. I got put with the rowdy bunch. A kid at my group kept on saying “autistic” instead of “artística” when they were guessing. Then another kid said, “You can’t say that in front of Hannah, cause she’s autistic!” Everyone laughed except for me. Autism isn’t a bad thing, but many people think it is. It has a negative connotation to it, as many things unfortunately do. I’m not autistic, but I do share a lot of traits with autistic kids. The problem is that that kid said it to be mean, because of their tone and the fact that they laughed with the others after the statement had been said. They weren’t trying to stick up for me, they were making a joke. Kids in my class see autism as bad, because apparently different is bad. Same goes for pretty much anything different.
I’m really weird, but I like that! Weird doesn’t have to be bad, but it can feel like that at school. Kids single me out, push me around, and I just keep a straight face the whole time (which really annoys them). I do that because even if my feelings are really hurt, I won’t give them the satisfaction of knowing that. It doesn’t always work, but it does sometimes. Also, when I’m upset, it’s not my inclination to cry most of the time, which helps. I know that some kids want a reaction, some kids just want to be mean. Either way, not showing them my reaction can’t hurt. Eventually, the kids who want my reaction just give up on getting it. That is my strategy. I don’t know why I’m talking about it, but… that’s it!
My asynchronous development gets me picked on sometimes, but it helps that I’m a late bloomer and am often mistaken for a 9 year old. I am more asynchronous mentally than I am physically, but a lot of people genuinely think that I’m 9 years old. I’m almost 13! It’s annoying sometimes, but it’s also helpful when the two things kind of mask each other so that I look and act like a little kid. I’m also quite short. I bring my favorite stuffed animal on field trips, and so does my friend. We’ve learned that the other kids just have to get over it and move on. If you spend your whole day being mean to other kids, why? Couldn’t you actually do schoolwork and get it done instead of pick on your friends during class? I don’t understand why people choose to be mean. There are more risks, consequences, and it takes more energy. Why can’t they just be kind?
I try to keep a positive mindset when all of this is going on. I remember last year, we had a class play. The teacher let whoever wanted to make a cover for the pamphlet make one, and then the class would vote. Any other drawings would go in the very back of the pamphlet in a collage (the little pamphlet with the cast of the play and things like that inside of it). I worked for days on the pamphlet cover. I drew my thoughts. I drew a flower practically blooming with red, yellow, and blue triangles behind it. I wrote the title of the play in triangles. My friend promised to vote for my picture, but when the time came, she didn’t. Instead, she voted for a drawing of a tiny sword. When my picture was offered, nobody voted for it. One kid said, “What kid drew that? It’s so ugly!” The class started laughing, and I asked to go to the bathroom. I cried for a few minutes. My friend had freedom, she didn’t have to vote for mine, it’s just that she said she would and then didn’t. The tiny sword won, and my drawing was on the very last page of the pamphlet and was the smallest picture (it was on the bottom right corner of the page). My teacher had taken pictures of the drawings and inserted them into the pamphlet, and had clearly made mine the smallest. Apparently even my teacher didn’t like my work. I’m lucky it was in there at all.
My teacher last year suggested that my parents force me to socialize with other kids, and that it was isolating myself. I wasn’t, it was just that my friend was (and is) the only kid at school that cares about me and actually likes me. My teacher never liked my work. She said that she thought that I was writing about being possessed when I was actually writing about microbes living in my body. My body is where my red blood cells live, I’m not possessed.
That is pretty much all. I try to be optimistic about being gifted, but it can feel good to vent about it. This is a safe place for many to do just that. Thank you!
Hannah,
You are quite incredible for a 13-year old! You inspire me!
Kids will be mean and I’m sure we’ve all had our share of being the victim of bullies. You are right, why does anyone want to be mean? Bullying sucks, but you have the right attitude and strategy–I would love to see you give those bullies your straight face! That is so utterly awesome–you need to market that strategy!
I’m pretty sure if you keep that great attitude of yours, nobody will get the best of you! And yes, you can rant and vent here all you want. It does help to write out and vent your feelings and you can do that here anytime you want.
Hannah, it sure looks like you’ve got things under control, but whenever you need to vent, we will all be here to listen and support you.
Go out and do all the great things you were born to do! And stay weird–we love weird! <3
~~Celi
Hannah,
I went through the same thing about 36 years ago. You don’t have to admit to being gifted for people to know it. They notice that you might like something nobody else is interested in, or you have a talent they don’t. Things haven’t been helped much by movies like Rainman portraying a person on the spectrum as being overly skilled in some way.
My own gifts include being able to recite, from memory, the Gettysburg Address, the poem from the Statue of Liberty, and I can name every President of the United States.
As far as that last one goes, I had a classmate who had the annoying habit of introducing me by saying, “This guy knows all the Presidents!” Of course, I would then be expected to prove it. Trust me, it very quickly morphed into the mundane task of rattling off a list of 39 names (today it would be 45, so I guess it wasn’t that bad LOL).
In my earlier years, I had teachers that were convinced I was autistic, and insisted my parents take me to a psychiatrist just to confirm it. They even had my mother convinced, because I liked trains, which apparently is something people on the spectrum also like. Thankfully, were found a competent psychologist, who determined I was gifted, and said I could be anything I wanted to be.
Things didn’t get better overnight, but eventually, when I was a High School Junior, my English teacher read aloud a paper I’d written, as an example of what he wanted everybody’s assignment to sound like.
Today I’m at the top of a successful career in the rail industry. So don’t lose hope, you’ve got several great venues.
You’d make a great artist, or a great doctor, judging from your knowledge. Or maybe both. It’s happened before. Alexander Borodin was a physician and chemist who composed music in his spare time, and today his music is more famous than his contributions to medicine, which were many. Today Ronan Tynan is more famous for his singing with the Irish Tenors, but he too is a successful medical doctor.
you could do something like that.
It’s a difficult road, but when you get there, it’s worth it.
Another thing about shame is that once it kicks in, it’s very difficult to stay enthusiastic about anything for any period of time. No matter how good something seemed, two days later all you can think is there’s no point, it won’t work, and everything that can go wrong.
It’s amazing the demands people will make on the gifted and think nothing of it. I was watching the latest series of Child Genius. If you haven’t seen it, it’s kind of like the Black and White Minstrel Show of the gifted. It leans very heavily on the ‘performing seal’ aspect. It also mainly involves spelling, mental arithmetic, and memory, which have very little to do with giftedness and most people can learn how to do. The father of one of the contestants said he wanted his son to have a normal childhood, put other children first and not show who he really was. So repression and self control and a focus on others, a cognitive and emotional effort similar to being both a psychotherapist, and being undercover in the Mob. Without any of the training in how to do it.
Humans have a limited adaptive capacity. If that wasn’t the case everybody would be able to squat two or three tonnes after a few years of training. Human muscle and bone is strong enough to do it and scientists aren’t really sure why we can’t. But not only is adaption limited, trying to push any area past a certain point carries a price – https://www.strongfirst.com/the-cost-of-adaptation/. That article is about elite athletes willing to sacrifice their health to maximise performance. The gifted are expected to push far more than their bodies to breaking point just for the comfort, convenience, and ideology of others.
The bitter irony is that most gifted children probably could become very effective social chameleons who would be capable in most social environments, and most people would be happy to have them around. As long as they first got to spend time with others like themselves, in a place where they could be themselves, then got the appropriate training in interacting with people different to themselves.
I don’t know if this would work, but I had an amusing thought how to make advocacy easier. Often people won’t want to hear about gifted children, but there are three magic words that may change their minds – continuing professional development. A lot of people who come into contact with gifted children are in professions that require continued education. If you could get accredited, you might go from people not wanting to know, to battering down your door because they’ve been casting around for something to do to fulfil their required hours. 🙂
Hey, it’s great to hear from you again.
You made so many important points and I wish I had time to touch on each of them–actually it would be nice to have a long discussion about the points you made–all important and I agree with them all.
But this: “The bitter irony is that most gifted children probably could become very effective social chameleons who would be capable in most social environments, and most people would be happy to have them around. As long as they first got to spend time with others like themselves, in a place where they could be themselves, then got the appropriate training in interacting with people different to themselves.” I truly believe that gifted children need to time to socialize with like-minded peers in order to get a valid sense of self and to learn that they are not social misfits.
The continuing education/professional development courses are something many organizations want to provide, and ironically, I was just suggesting that to GHF Learners, a non-profit educational organization for which I serve on their board. Yes, it is the best way to reach educators who do not understand gifted children or giftedness in general.
As always, thank you for leaving your thoughts–always interesting, insightful and spot on!
“unfulfilled, complacent and angry” You talk out of my heart. Thank you for this brilliant article that hits the nail on the head on so many issues. I think one of the most drastic problems is that gifted kids (and their parents) are often not taken seriously when they try to state what they need. Kids are belittled when they tell how frustrated and bored they are, kinda like: if you’re so bored, go ahead and try teaching yourself. That’s pretty toxic to say. If you’re not taken seriously, starting ways to make you better is incredibly difficult. Anyway, thanks for this awesome article. Good to know you’re back to posting.
Oh yes, I’m back, and more determined than ever before. Thank you for your encouraging words–I’m so happy this article hit home for you! ~~Celi
I’m happy to see you post again. This is a useful and thought-provoking post.
“As gifted education programs continue to populate their classes with high-achieving, ambitious and driven students who garner note-worthy academic achievements in school and above-average accomplishments outside of school, an erroneous and hurtful stereotype has emerged which plagues gifted individuals throughout their lives.”
I think that maybe as the Geek have inherited the Earth, the prestige aspect of giftedness has flipped. When I was a kid, I went to one school that had a gifted program, and it was the opposite of prestigious. Us refugees in the trailer out back were seen as weirdos. Nobody was trying to get their kids into it. These days, now that the richest men in the world are Gates, Bezos, and Zuckerberg, any sufficiently upper middle-class family wants their kid in a gifted program, and they’re willing to pay big test prep bucks to make that happen.
The result of that is the phenomenon of “gifted education” that’s actually terrible for gifted kids. It’s great for high-achievers, for dutiful kids with massive parental support (as in, parents who will do their homework for them), for competitive memorizers ready for a busywork olympiad. For sensitive kids, for kids whose minds wander, who love learning for its own sake, and want to be able to spend gobs of time on the things that fascinate them, it’s terrible.
Yeah, I pulled my son out of that place. He’s now at a school with a progressive educational philosophy that’s really working for him. It doesn’t have as many opportunities for science as he would at some schools with a tighter “gifted” focus, but they’ll support him to do college math, and he’s now decided he wants to be a musician anyway.
I think that, looking back, the main thing I’d do differently for my son is related to anxiety: in addition to pulling him out of school for a few years, to let him learn in a more free and less threatening environment, I probably should have sought treatment for his anxiety as soon as it became apparent it was persisting.
I think Ms. Natcharian gets some things wrong in her discussion of sensitivity. Sensitive kids get only a subset of those things she lists, not all of them. It is not uncommon, for example, that a very sensitive child may simultaneously have heightened sensory perception and impaired social perception. My son can listen to an orchestra and tell you which instruments are out of tune, but cannot reliably assess the emotion behind a tone of voice.
Hi Dad!
You so hit the nail on the head here: “The result of that is the phenomenon of “gifted education” that’s actually terrible for gifted kids. It’s great for high-achievers, for dutiful kids with massive parental support (as in, parents who will do their homework for them), for competitive memorizers ready for a busywork olympiad. For sensitive kids, for kids whose minds wander, who love learning for its own sake, and want to be able to spend gobs of time on the things that fascinate them, it’s terrible.”
This is why we have so many gifted children underachieving, hating school, dropping out, trying drugs, riddled with anxiety or committing suicide. When the biggest part of your life–school–is miserable and boring, you will have kids who develop unwanted, unfortunate and tragic behaviors.
And we can all look back and be able to say very clearly what we would have done differntly, this is why I try to pay it forward by writing about my own experiences and the experiences of others to help those who are starting on their path.
Thank you for leaving your thoughts and insights!
Oh yes to all! In my experience, gifted programs are great for those who are bright and have learned from an early age to game the system. Someone who is interested in getting good grades rather than in learning. Sadly, in dealing with some complicated health problems, I can see the results of the teacher pleasers becoming doctors. They may have gotten all As in their classes, but some seem incapable of connecting the dots or of recognizing that if the data doesn’t fit the hypothesis, then you change the hypothesis. You don’t ignore or change the data.
Hi Celi; Wow, what an article. I am so blown away by your points about shame. I’ve argued that there are great opportunities for gifted children, adolescents and adults, *if* they can make what I call the ‘leap’ into academic and professional success. But what I don’t know is how many are able to make that leap. There are a great many barriers arrayed against gifted people, and sad to say, the number — and severity — of the barriers is only increasing.
As you did, allow me to start with school, whether elementary, junior, middle or high school. The plain fact is, the school system isn’t set up to benefit students. It’s set up to benefit its stakeholders. These stakeholders include politicians, both elected and unelected, teachers, school boards, and parents. Are students stakeholders? I don’t see them as such. Instead, I see students as the “product” of the school system.
The original publicly funded school systems were set up in the late part of the 19th century, in 1870, the UK parliament passed the Schools Act. The goal was to get youngsters out of the coal mines and factories and get them into schools. This was done for five reasons: firstly, the rate of industrial accidents involving children was actually pretty horrific. Secondly, children were competition for adults, especially adult males, because children undercut the wages of adults, so by putting them in schools, (as per union demands), adult wages could rise. Thirdly, was to give children a good, strong Christian education (this was the Victorian era, remember). Fourthly, was the idea of turning out graduates who, as adolescents and adults, would be literate and numerate enough to operate heavy machinery without losing a limb, or their lives. Fifthly and finally, was the idea of turning out good British citizens who would know their place in society, their station (social class) in life, and be filled with the appropriate respect for Queen and Country, as well as seeing the burgeoning growth of capitalism as a Good Thing.
This model was adopted, in various forms, throughout the world, first in Europe and the British colonies, and later on, in America. The biggest problem with the 1870s schools act model was that it was intended to turn out factory-like product.
Remember, the industrial age was all the rage, and producing identical product at reasonable quality and relatively low cost was always an ideal. Students became transmogrified from persons to products, and in the process, the stakeholders (which then included industries and companies) caused the humanity of the product to be lost, sacrificed to the greater principle of homogenaeity (sameness). After all, that’s what you do with industrial (as opposed to cottage or artisanal) manufactured products: produce the same product over and over again.
Great, except for one tiny problem: humans are NOT mass-produced product. They’re individual human beings, around and for whom the school-system should be centred.Instead students — even now, even today — are forced to make themselves conform to the school’s demands, instead of having the school address each student’s needs. The former is cheaper and easier to implement.
At best, school curricula are aimed at the mushy middle of the pack of students; at worst, at the lowest common denominator, so as to maximize the school’s graduation statistics. Excellence is supposed to be the goal, but how do you produce excellence when you teach to the middle 2/3 of the students?
For gifted students, I believe that the problem is ten times worse. For these students, initially at least, learning is something they WANT to do, not just something they must do. But the system, even today, with all the input of politically Liberal and Progressive educational specialists trying to make the system address the various different learning styles of students (while totally missing the possibility that a bureaucratically run organization just might not be the most optimal way to produce such results), fails to ignore the elephant in the room: principals district supervisors, and even elected School Board members get congratulated not for the quality of students produced, but for the quantity. So even if the students are poorly educated, that’s okay, so long as the great majority graduate high school, so that they can become the best McDonald’s hamburger-flippers they can be. Again product, not people.
A system designed to pump out as many mediocre students as possible, using grade inflation, and just promoting even undeserving students up to the next grade is not one that is designed to bring out the best learners in the students. Students learn to play the game, and lower their own expectations about what school can provide them. Gifted students just can’t thrive in that atmosphere.
Add to that a system that mistakes high grade achievement for giftedness, and you have a lot of unused potential, and a highly inefficient school system.
Ah, but there are even more nasty tricks in the system. Many teachers are trained to teach “to the curriculum”. So what do, or can you do, with a student who wants to go outside the carefully proscribed lines set out by the curriculum, on the assumption that what is good for the masses of students (it isn’t) is just as good for gifted students (even less so)? There are a number of ways I was dealt with by teachers:
* If I finished early, I was given more of the same work. Now, the idea of me finishing it early was to have more time to play or read my own stuff; and if I was done early, it was because I wanted to learn more advanced stuff. But the CURRICULUM said that that couldn’t happen, so it didn’t;
* If I finished early, some teachers (literally) yelled at me, because I hadn’t “paced” myself, and made the other, less bright children feel bad/inferior. So I learned to dawdle and daydream instead, just to kill time waiting for the other students to catch up to me.
* If I wanted to explore a topic in more detail, I can recall only one teacher in elementary school, and three teachers in high school who encouraged that. All the other teachers told me they didn’t have time to give me special focus to allow me to explore in more depth. And before you say, “Well, what about classes for gifted students?”, allow me to explain that there were, in my city, no such thing as “gifted students”. There were only regular, advantaged, or disadvantaged students. The union had forced the Provincial Ministry of Education to get rid of gifted programs, because they were “unfair” to other students. The school board in my city managed to create “mini-schools” where the most accomplished, high-achieving students could go to get more advanced education. And there was no mechanism to allow high school students to study part-time in local universities. The mini-schools, moreover, could not accommodate a 2e student like me. They simply hadn’t the resources. So when I got to high school my parents had the stark choice of considering me a ‘gifted’ student (unofficially, of course), so I could be sent to a mini-school, or as a disabled student, sent off to the Gulag of “the trailers”, which is where all the students who couldn’t cut it in the regular system ended up. I was, at least up to that time, by the way, the only student in my high school ever to be thrown out of the Trailers (learning resources) program for being, get this, **too fast** as a reader. That disabled student label followed me throughout the rest of my time at that school. Fortunately, when I transferred to a nearby but much better high school the label did not follow me there.
* My curiosity and thirst for learning (quickly burnt out of me, at least while at school) caused my elementary school teachers especially, no end of consternation and frustration, to the point where two teachers ganged up against me and tried to label me “mentally retarded” (remember, this was the 1970s). This outraged my father and mother so much that when we flew out to Toronto from my hometown of Vancouver Canada that summer, my mother had arranged for her pediatrician brother (my uncle) to have a school psychologist in the small town where he lived do some testing on me. After the psychologist finished testing me, he told my parents (I’m paraphrasing): “I’ve tested literally thousands of students in my career as a psychologist, and John is one of the two or three brightest students I’ve ever examined in that time; John is a genius, He has an IQ higher than 99 (and something) percent of students his age”. Do you think that helped? No, the two teachers, when I got back for grade 5 and 6, simply went to the teachers in those grades and “warned” them that I was a troublemaker. Problem was, i was one of the sweetest kids they’d ever dealt with and gave them few behavioural problems, at least until grade 7, whereupon my hatred of school combined with the intense bullying I had suffered since coming to that school in grade 3 caused me to have a meltdown. I got held back a year, and was sent to a special school for behaviourally disturbed children. Lovely.
Lots of shame to be had there.
Bullying added to that shame as well. I won’t go into all the hell that they put me through, but I will say this. I found, after thinking long and hard about my experiences with being bullied, that bullies fall into one of four types:
1) Hangers-on. These are the kids who play follow-the-leader and go along with whatever the most dominant bully does.
2) Bullies who bully because they are deeply envious of gifted or high-achieving students, unless, in the case of the high-achievers, the student was very popular, in which case s/he’d be largely untouchable
3) Bullies who bully anyone outside the expected norms of acceptable existence, i.e, gifted kids, very fat or very thin kids, kids with disabilities, etc.
4) And these are the most baffling of all: bullies who bully because they can’t see anything outside of their own narrow, limited perspective. Although they often also did the type #3 bullying above, for them, what really got to them was students who in any way challenged the bully’s status quo. I call such people “cognitively rigid”, and let me just say that such bullying survives into adulthood, most often in the workplace; I can also honestly say that such bullies were never among, shall we say, “the sharpest tools in the shed”; neither were they ever “the brightest lights in the chandelier”.
Workplaces that operate on the traditional social-status basis that says that a boss is always the smartest person in the room, and G-d help any employee who show more intelligence than the boss or supervisor create shame.
Along the same lines, bully-bosses who felt threatened by my intelligence would do their best to level the playing field, mostly by, as your blog says, “Crushing Tall Poppies”. In such situations berating, insulting, micro-managing, and doing everything in their power to undercut my self-confidence was the rule of the day.
In fact, shame seems to be the North American way of “controlling” gifted people.
Other factors:
A part of the conservative Right that does not trust intellectuals, either for class or religious reasons, tries to shame smart people for being, as I like to say, “too damn smart for their own good”.
The entirety of the Radical Egalitarian Left tries to dismiss the existence of giftedness and IQ differences generally by attributing them exclusively to class, gender and social status reasons, and undercuts gifted people by accusing them of being “privileged”, not due to inherent (genetic) factors but exclusively to sociological factors.
Many people argue either “We’re all gifted, each in our own unique way”, which is the equivalent of saying “We’re all seven feet tall, each in our own unique way”. In other words, no-one is gifted because everyone is gifted (conflating “talented” or “skilled” with “gifted”). Or, they argue that no-one is gifted, no-one is a genius, and that anyone who achieved anything brilliant did so via luck and good timing. Both induce shame. The first group by watering down the value of giftedness down to nothing, and the second group by mis-attributing acts of genius and brilliance to be merely random chance or good luck.
People who think that if you’re gifted, you can do everything, and are quick to attack if it turns out that the gifted person is, gasp, HUMAN, and subject to flaws and foibles, just like the rest of humanity. The attacks induce shame, at least it does in me, because then I have to fend off ridiculous attacks like, “If you’re not good at math, you’re no genius!” I suck at math. So I suppose scoring in the 99.5th percentile of the population means, what, exactly? Nothing?
The intersectional/post-modernist war on open inquiry and against science makes it far less attractive to go into science, especially controversial fields. Sex difference research, anyone? How about being a Global warming skeptic as a scientist? Good luck getting any funding. So because the intersectional/post-modernist “intellectuals” (and I use that term VERY loosely) are actively trying to cut off areas of inquiry that ‘triggers’ Social Justice Warriors. People who want to engage in open scientific enquiry are shamed out of even trying it, or at worst, hounded out of their field by baying, bloodthirsty packs of “caring” leftist/post-marxists.
By comparison, the social conservative Right’s intense dislike of Evolutionary Biology pales in comparison.
Anti-intellectuals, in other words, those who, for political or religious reasons, want to shut down any intellectual activity at all, they too shame smart/gifted people by insulting, degrading, and deriding intellectualism of any sort.
I could go on, but I think I will wrap up here. Thanks for letting me vent, though I know you will likely say you’re glad I did so, Celi.
Aside from any other part of your response, this alone is the most profound: “As you did, allow me to start with school, whether elementary, junior, middle or high school. The plain fact is, the school system isn’t set up to benefit students. It’s set up to benefit its stakeholders. These stakeholders include politicians, both elected and unelected, teachers, school boards, and parents. Are students stakeholders? I don’t see them as such. Instead, I see students as the “product” of the school system.”
Absolutely, YES! Our students are not stakeholders, but products, of our traditional education system. The rest of your comment succinctly explained the evolution of how children became products of the system and not stakeholders as they should be.
And yes, I will likely say I’m glad you vented for the mere fact that it is not venting, but educating. It is information that once understood will help many parents advocate more effectively for their gifted children.
Your venting is our education. Thank you for educating us all, John! <3
Are you me?
John,
If you changed the setting to the United States during the same time, you could be telling my life story, right up to teachers trying to get me labeled. I too was “saved” by a psychologist, except that in my case, it was one our pediatrician recommended.
Like you, I had the 99th percentile scores, and the people who would throw an extremely difficult math problem my way, just to prove I wasn’t “Gifted”.
Once, when I was a high School junior, we went on a trip to the United Nations, and while everybody else was watching the Foucault Pendulum “swinging”, I mentioned that it wasn’t really moving at all, the Earth was revolving around it. One of the girls in our group snarled “Shut up!” at me.
We’re still trying to make “excuses” for why people are gifted. Some people are even trying to argue that all gifted people are some form of high-functioning autistic. I suppose some of the “2E” people might fall into that category, but think for a minute about the implications of that argument, coming from people who think autism is a defect. A person can’t be really smart unless there’s some kind of disorder present? That’s not only insulting, but it belies the fact that those who aren’t gifted can be so insecure that they have to make themselves feel better by convincing themselves gifted people are all defective in some way.
I’m frankly tired of hearing, from people that couldn’t begin to understand music, electricity, or nuclear physics that Mozart, Tesla, and Einstein were “probably Autistic”. I’m personally tired of hearing that “autistic people like trains”. I like trains too, and I work in the rail industry. Does that put me on the spectrum? Japan loves trains. They have two or three big museums full of them, and they pride themselves in having one of the best rail systems in the world. Does that make the whole population of Japan Autistic?
Not hardly. Instead, Japan rewards giftedness. Some of the finest mineral water in the world is sold in the vending machines at Japanese train stations, and it was discovered while boring a train tunnel. The tunnel flooded, and one of the track workers suggested they bottle the water and sell it. He was given a commendation by the railway, and they got a good side business in return.
In Tesla’s time, we too rewarded ideas like that. Now we label the people who have them.
I think the reason for the suggestion giftedness is high functioning autism may be that somebody has noticed late adult undiagnosed autism and late adult unidentified giftedness are the same thing and realized it implies the difference between “gifted” kids and “2e” kids has been a matter of diagnostic custom and remains a matter of diagnostic discretion and subjectivity about whether to administer the ADOS.
This guy Darold Treffert who you may or may not have heard of has ended up being the reason hyperlexia isn’t a diagnostic criterion for autism. He did that because when his daughter Jill turned out hyperlexic with comprehension he began to insist that “HL3” is an independent diagnostic entity (protecting his ego investment in discounting the disabled rather than acknowledging their comprehension). I’ve neither thought of myself as gifted nor disabled though I’ve apparently always been both and if either one wouldn’t have gotten me more attention than my parents I’m sure they’d have taken credit or sympathy for it rather than destroying them both. Treffert realized his daughter’s a gifted aspie, so legitimized misinformation into disinformation (aspies w/ hyperlexic IG aren’t autistic) to have a gifted nonautistic daughter…and in so-doing obfuscated a straightforward symptom that could be useful in the differential into diagnostic meaninglessness.
More-constrained average intelligence is unlikely to suspect or realize that empirical observation really does suggest intelligence is adaptive and compensatory, as it offsets the deficit created by evolutionarily-adaptive prepsychotic (autistic) ego development postponement. I think it’s hard for intellectually gifted autistics to identify with the autistic community because those with diagnoses are very unlikely to be gifted. And I really hate the word gifted almost as much as the 2e term because if it had ever been a gift it wouldn’t have had so many strings. It really is compensatorily adaptive. The genome’s been sequenced for a dozen years (and counting). Behavioral heritability within families could of course appear “genetic” before that, but not so much since, IMO.
Never heard the weird thing about trains but do know that Bill Sidis (William James Sidis) has never been thought to be autistic and wrote a book about railcars. Maybe trains are a common special interest but in general autistic special interests seem to be perseverations that can be as anxiolytic under regressive stress as compulsions would be under neurotic stress. So probably he was under regressive stress when he wrote that book. Another good reason to know you’re probably autistic is that we don’t get dementia but we do get autistic catatonia (which gets mistaken for “early onset dementia”). If that’s treated with antipsychotics rather than differentiated by quick lorazepam challenge it will just seem to be a confirmation of that bad misdiagnosis by hastened decline—which is the current standard of care. And that’s the least of a handful of institutionalized or culturally-legitimized murderously destructive falsehoods to which the intellectual norm subjects humanity at scale I could tell you about, but the one that’s actionable if applicable.