ON GIFTED MINDS
Dr. Von may not be able to define ” giftedness” but he knows it when he sees it.
This post was very interesting to me both for Von’s insights into the complicated nature of high intelligence, most of which struck me as spot-on from my own experience in working with gifted and a few profoundly gifted students and the subsequent comment the post evoked. I am reproducing ” What Is a Gifted Student?” in full. My comments are in regular text, Dr. Von’s are in bold.
“As another round of parent conferences fast approaches, I anticipate at some point being asked if various students should be looking for opportunities to participate in ‘gifted’ programs at universities, online or in other venues. And it is just a matter of time before the next article on ‘giftedness’ makes an appearance in one of the education journals, or one hears other teachers talk about ‘gifted’ students who get A’s on all their tests throughout the school year. But what is “giftedness?” Is there a single definition that can work for the masses? Or is this term one of the most misused, overused and exaggerated terms in the educational vocabulary?
I personally think talk of ‘gifted’ students is entirely overused and misinterpreted. I don’t think one can come up with a single definition, either, largely because of my belief and support for Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences (although perhaps a replacement for ‘intelligence’ is ‘competence’).”
Being quite familiar with Gardner’s theories myself I’d agree that ” competence”or perhaps ” modality” is a better descriptor. Some of Gardner’s ” intelligences” appear to be traditionally g-loaded conceptions and others are expressing at least partially non-cognitive physiological or even vague cultural aspects. They all appear to be socially or psychologically useful qualities however, if not all equally useful in every context.
Whatever the language, a truly gifted person in any particular field or activity is, in my mind, someone whose skill, intellect, or ability is off the charts and at a different level than someone who is merely competent, consistent, or accelerated in that field. As an example, I know many teachers and parents who refer to their straight A students as gifted.
A very common misconception. Bright, hardworking, highly motivated students are exactly that and no more. Because they are often able to exceed the curricular standards of their local public school, which has standards set for the student in the low-average range, their relative superiority often lulls them( certainly their parents) into the mistaken belief that they are more able than they actually are. The irony of course is that if these students were truly gifted they would not have fallen into that self-referential trap.
Because of my long involvement with the Center for Talent Development at Northwestern University, I know countless parents who place their kids in programs run through universities because their kids are ‘gifted’ and need new challenges that are not available at their respective schools. Having worked with top-tier students for over ten years, it has been more than obvious to me that ‘gifted’ is a term that is as overused and abused in education as ‘genius’ is in the popular media. Terms like ‘gifted’ and ‘genius’ are meant to be used for the rare individual whose talents, knowledge, ability, and performance is so far beyond even the most competent in a field that there is not another term that would properly describe them.
I might suggest “ polymath” fits some of these multidimensional prodigies better than ” genius”. Even some people of genius level intelligence can be exceptionally linear or tunnel-visioned in their thinking style compared to the extraordinairly creative, high performing minds of a Newton, DaVinci, Aristotle, Mill, Jefferson or similar figures.
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