Ours is a society that takes it as a given that every child should be educated to the limits of her or his abilities. There are special programs in place for the learning disabled, for the mentally retarded, for the physically handicapped, for the emotionally disturbed. An earlier age might have segregated or even institutionalized most of these groups; today they’re more likely to be “mainstreamed” in a conventional classroom.
What they don’t understand is that there is a range of giftedness, in which you can be mildly gifted or moderately gifted or highly gifted, like the genius. You can even be highly gifted and not look gifted at all if you’re in a setting that doesn’t allow the giftedness to emerge. Gifted kids go underground and hide their giftedness, or they go underground and act out and cause all kinds of havoc. And nobody could possibly believe that you could be gifted and be a troublemaker and obnoxious. Except when you’re arrogant. Then you’re a smart aleck and you think you know more than other people–and then you’re in trouble even if you do know more than other people.
Meckstroth: Adriana, I wanted to discuss with you how parents recognize giftedness, and the problems they sometimes have convincing school personnel.
Fiedler: And a result is that when schools are placing a very large emphasis–as they are now–on “time on task,” then the introverted gifted child, who is doing a great deal of internal processing, is perceived by the teacher and the principal as being off task. They’re frequently jerked back to low-level mundane tasks that they may be performing very badly if at all because they have no interest in them and their minds are elsewhere. They say things like “I’m bored,” but what they’re really trying to communicate is that “I’m hungry for learning, I’m hungry for challenge, and I’m not being fed, I’m starving here.” And, at the very least, “I’m hungry for time to spend at thinking and processing.” And that looks like daydreaming to teachers and principals; it doesn’t look like time on task.
Meckstroth: Boredom for gifted kids is acute pain. It’s not just mild discomfort. It’s waiting for other children to catch up, and it depends on how bright the child is and in what area. But they can have half to three-quarters of their classroom time left over where they’re just waiting for the other children to catch up with where they are. Repetition is anathema to gifted children. They hate redundancy. And parents’ experience is that the child comes in and they say, “Well, how was your day?” wanting a recap of everything that went on. And the kid will say Fine and go to his room and to his books, and on to the next thing. It’s painful for them to have to recap with us what they’ve already done. It’s repetition.
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Getting back to definitions–another is that gifted students are those who differ significantly from the average enough that they require services or programs that go beyond what the schools normally provide. And that’s an important point, because what we’re saying is that these kids are exceptions to the rule and therefore they require exceptional education, just as students who differ from the norm in other ways require services that are different.
