Sat 22 Dec 2007
For a long time the meaning of giftedness has been restricted to the rigid confines of achievement and accomplishment. Academic toppers are, and should be entitled to their share of glory, but in the process of lauding top scorers and scholarship winners we may be crowding out those who actually have advanced and complex patterns of development but just don’t fit the system’s definition of ‘top students’.
Characteristics of gifted individuals: If 75 per cent of the following 37 characteristics fit you, you are probably a gifted adult.
Are you a good problem solver?
Can you concentrate for long periods of time?
Are you a perfectionist?
Do you persevere with your interests?
Are you an avid reader?
Do you have a vivid imagination?
Do you enjoy doing jigsaw puzzles?
Often connect seemingly unrelated ideas?
Do you enjoy paradoxes?
Do you set high standards for yourself?
Do you have a good long-term memory?
Are you deeply compassionate?
Do you have persistent curiosity?
Do you have a good sense of humor?
Read
Are you a keen observer?
Do you love mathematics?
Do you need periods of contemplation?
Do you search for meaning in your life?
Are you aware of things that others are not?
Are you fascinated by words?
Are you highly sensitive?
Do you have strong moral convictions?
Do you often feel out-of-sync with others?
Are you perceptive or insightful?
Do you often question rules or authority?
Do you have organized collections?
Do you thrive on challenge?
Do you have extraordinary abilities and deficits?
Do you learn new things rapidly?
Feel overwhelmed by many interests/abilities?
Do you have a great deal of energy?
Often take a stand against injustice?
Do you feel driven by your creativity?
Love ideas and ardent discussion?
Did you have developmentally advanced childhood?
Have unusual ideas or perceptions?
Are you a complex person?
*Adapted from the Institute for the Study of Advanced Development.
One way to identify gifted individuals is their style of thinking. They usually employ divergent thinking. Their style is original and they tend to come up with crazy ideas, which other people find strange. But sometimes it is these crazy ideas that go on to become the most recognized ones of our time.
Gifted individuals face many challenges, with one of biggest being the inability to be correctly identified by the individuals who should be helping them realize their true potential.
As with any other student, it would be a shame if parents, teachers and peers did not recognize the strengths of gifted students and allow them to reach their true potential. But what must educators and parents do in order to make sure this does not happen?
However until more help is readily available, what are the gifted to do?
Sadly, not enough is known about giftedness. More time and energy need to be spent identifying traits among the gifted, especially since it is these students who go on to contribute much to improving the state of our world.
Acknowledge the possibilities, identify your capabilities and allow yourself to be different. You never know, you may be the next Einstein.
Now its your turn to talk. Have your say:
December 22nd, 2007 at 8:44 pm
Excellent article!
If the person does not know he/she is intelligent, the situation may lead to the person turning totally introvert because nobody seems to understand anything.
When a person is aware of his/her intelligence, he/she can try to explain the excellent ideas in a more simplified manner.
December 22nd, 2007 at 9:40 pm
Hi Leena,
Thanks for your appreciation and welcome to FortuneWatch. You are right, its good to be aware of your abilities.
Take care and cheers.
December 22nd, 2007 at 11:46 pm
Hi Robin,
Very interested article.
I agree with your article, in fact i can back up your article.I was always into art as a child, creating things and using my imagination.
As i grew up those things drifted away and placed to one side, as the real world kicked in.
It was ten years ago that my imagination kicked in, i had many ideas but one stood out.
To cut a very long story short, i created the imagination pictures.I have known for many years how amazing these are,how they can help in education and even help in certain levels of Autism. They can help with memory and make great mind games for children and adult.My point here is quite simple,if you have something special, put something back.
I knew with the gift i had it could help many people, not just the pictures but also if the ideas made money.So remember if you do have a gift, the true gift is knowing how to use it to help other people.
Mike
December 23rd, 2007 at 1:41 am
Hi Mike,
Thanks for your comment and welcome to FortuneWatch. Nice story you have there mate. Isn’t it amazing that a lot of time we are not able to follow what we are cut out for. Its later on sometimes we realize and identify our real talent and capabilities.
Quote- “So remember if you do have a gift, the true gift is knowing how to use it to help other people.” I’ll remember that, good line.
Take care and cheers.
December 23rd, 2007 at 9:55 am
I got to the second question and would have gone to the third but I lost my concentration. I have never associated myself with the word “gifted” but that is what I have always been. It took me a few years to get over having my mother hammer that home to me over and over again. I finally got away by going in the Navy the day after High School graduation. Less than four months later I was o a combat patrol aboard a diesel submarine. I was offered a free ride to Annapolis by my first skipper and turned it down. All I felt was shame and unworthiness. Four years of Navy turned me into an anti-war hippie. Then I spent 21 years in a semi-truck criss-crossing the good old USA. They say I went crazy in 1991 while protesting the “Gulf War.” I would like to have gotten help and I did try, but the V.A. was not prepared to deal with me. Nobody is ever prepared to deal with me. When I was 50 I really screwed up and went to prison for 3 years and that calmed me down considerably. Now I’m a cynical old hippie living on a Social Security disability and wondering what the hell was I supposed to do with the gift? I still try, but sometimes I just know that I wasn’t made for this world and I can’t wait to get out. Or rather, can’t wait to go further. Thank you for letting me vent.
December 23rd, 2007 at 9:59 am
Well, for crying out loud! See what I mean? I forgot to click the little square that tells you to notify me, so I’m using this clumsy method to ask to please do. Thanx, Timmy
December 23rd, 2007 at 11:33 am
Oh, be careful. Some of those characteristics are actually not a good thing. I’ve been gifted my whole like and my perfectionism causes so much trouble for me. I’ve giving it up in 2008. I can’t wait for Lent. I need immeidate action!!
December 23rd, 2007 at 1:11 pm
LOL, looking at the list of questions, I’m definitely not a gifted person. Still, I know I still can contribute to the world with whatever knowledge, experience, skill set and resource I have. That’s the beauty of the universe. Everybody can give and everybody can receive.
December 23rd, 2007 at 1:16 pm
This is pathetic. If you are truly a gifted individual school is not even a challenge, no matter how it is structured. This list is completely subjective and ambiguous. It gives no reference, and has no scale to grade the response.
Oh yeah, and Tim Yates, you are a loon and you have no “gift”
December 23rd, 2007 at 1:16 pm
i exactly 75%
well 75.6 something
December 23rd, 2007 at 1:17 pm
Stupid list. If you believe this list is any measure of your intellectual prowess you are definitely not one of hte gifted it tries to identify.
Half the stuff on that list is so subjective its not really quantifiable at all.
December 23rd, 2007 at 1:23 pm
Do you have the source for this?
Perhaps a link to the study from the Institute for the Study of Advanced Development?
Thanks!
December 23rd, 2007 at 1:24 pm
Nice article, I counted up my yes and no’s and I got over 75%, I don’t think i’m gunna ever invent something amazing or anything though. Whenever someone says i’m a great artist I never thought of myself that way, I think i’m awful compared to other people. I don’t know what direction to go in for college yet…I guess I still have a while before I should start worrying about careers and things like that. I don’t connect with people my age, I get along with older college students but I get bad comments for being that way. I don’t know, being gifted is hard haha.
December 23rd, 2007 at 1:28 pm
I have been labeled gifted my whole life. I answered yes to all of the questions except the one about jigsaws.
Although I am glad that I have been blessed the way I am, my style of thinking has made me feel out of place my whole life. I have never found a group of people I truly click with. Developing and maintaining close, personal relationships has been hard for me.
I find it tough to see how other people cannot understand things that I find trivial. Sometimes I wish I just fit in.
December 23rd, 2007 at 1:30 pm
Am I gifted if I think that this list is extraordinarily vague and that the 75% of a point is a disagreeable proposition?
December 23rd, 2007 at 1:33 pm
Let be be the first to say that… if you think benchmarks for giftedness exist then you are most definitely NOT gifted
December 23rd, 2007 at 1:37 pm
I’ve also been considered gifted since I was a kid. The problem that I have, has been the fact that I tend to think too much, and sometimes that makes me seem a little slow.
I know I’m gifted since I can usually solve many problems that others can’t, and people say i work magic because of it. I’ve noticed that my mind tends to wander, and that prevents me from paying attention to others.
There’s always benefits and drawbacks to the traits that I have. I have a hard time communicating to others if it’s not in writing, and it takes me a really long time to get something on paper.
I also do believe that I can contribute something to the world, but I just don’t know what that is yet. I’ll start by helping those around me as much as I can, and see where it takes me from there.. 🙂
December 23rd, 2007 at 1:40 pm
Most intellectually deficient people I know would answer yes to every question every time. Gifted, intelligent, and people of enormous talent tend to keep it a secret. They have to in order to survive. Just an observation from a mediocre individual surrounded by people of extreme brilliance and massive stupidity. Interesting article nonetheless.
Note: Personally, I think we, and I mean every human, is too smart for their own good.
December 23rd, 2007 at 1:42 pm
86.49% – I have to say a few of those really hit home for me. Much of the time I do feel out-of-sync with others, and after spending a lot of time with people, I find that I require plenty of time for contemplation. But even though, according to this article, I am gifted, I did not achieve well in school. It was not the subjects themselves, I would score high on most the tests of any subject (except for languages ((excluding English)) without studying. It was just the piling of work and unneeded extra tasks that drowned me.
And I’ve always found myself acting and thinking differently than most other people, to the point that I became quite introverted at times. And I probably spend at least ten times more time thinking than most other people do, whether it is using my imagination or abstractly philosophizing. But nobody understood me. There was no one to identify this “giftedness”.
Needlessly to say, this made my teenage years, especially High School, very confusing. I just hope others can learn from this article and help others that growing up and quite out of the norm.
Thank you for the article.
December 23rd, 2007 at 1:42 pm
“Gifted”? Thanks for your superb list for a mediocre life:
“Are you a keen observer?
Do you love mathematics?
Do you need periods of contemplation?
Do you search for meaning in your life?”
Sorry, we cannot contain the implication of boredom following the rest of this list..let us instead set up an alternative:
Are you self-made?
Are you talented?
Do you fell obligated to help others?
Does false pretense disgust you?
Does mediocracy and sheep mentality give you sleepless nights?
Does the term middle-class send shivers down your spine?
Does a steady corporate job working lousy hours for a lousy pay including 14 days vacation time every 12 months – because your stock holders want a new Mercedes every six months – makes you wanna puke and instead selling grandma’s cookies on the street while spending quality time with your family?
Then, my friend, you are intelligent – instead of being a total fuck-up life-looser.
December 23rd, 2007 at 1:44 pm
75.6+ rounds to 76%. Exactly 76% would be more precise.
December 23rd, 2007 at 1:46 pm
Whats sucks is when you are gifted and are surrounded by a bunch of idiots that think you’re strange. So you end up dumbing yourself down or being quiet. Which was my situation growing up in Hawaii. P.S. Dont live on the west side of Oahu. Idiots man.
December 23rd, 2007 at 1:55 pm
I adhere to pretty much all of that, i dont know what its like to not lead a gifted existence, I do know that it was fun helping to stave off the war in Iran for certain, and that with the internet its nice to feel futuristic about all of this.
Cisco recently developed an innovation that will eventually have more powerful ramifications than the internet, television, lightbulb, and radio combined. We have one more major communications shift ahead of us that will be our generations opportunity to see the transition of a society from a pre to a post society in terms of pre computer and post computer pre television and post television pre radio and post radio pre cell phone and post cell phone.
We have a new development that the next generation will be able to ask us what life was like before and then we will rightly say, honestly, its difficult to explain, however it will be something like this:
“Son, a long time ago we didnt know what the future wanted us to do, but it wasnt as difficult a transition as you would have though and when the new games began, well, thats how I met your mother. I met her at the first Immersion Summit and you should have seen what her dance moves could do to the audience.”
We get to have conversations such as that within the next fifty or so years. I would say this giftedness will work out juts fine, its just that when you finally unwrap a gift, what it was like before the gifts were unwrapped remains only as a memory.
December 23rd, 2007 at 1:56 pm
Good lord. I match all but three. Being brutally honest with myself (which should be one of the pre-requisites), my sense of humour is off-beat, my energy levels are often low, but I maniacally read and watch documentaries during periods of low activity; I did not advance quickly in school.
I’m impressed with some questions, such as feeling overwhelmed… I feel overwhelmed all the time because my vacuum of a mind is never satisfied with its input rate, yet I often find myself unable to retrieve what I shove into it in an accurate or timely fashion.
Food for thought. Damn you, Internets!!
December 23rd, 2007 at 2:09 pm
This article is true; however, the flip side is that some adults in possession of perfectly normal abilities seem to think they (or their kids) are gifted when they are not.
It disturbs me to see so many children in “gifted” education classes today. Everyone wants their children to be special, but putting these perfectly normal kids in with gifted children does a disservice to those who are truly gifted. In 1980 at my elementary school out of around 500 students only 15 were enrolled in the gifted program. When I last visited the school, gifted enrollment had increased to 20% of the children.
Gifted education needs to return to its roots: offering quality advanced alternative education to those precocious children who feel isolated and alone because they are simply too different from others to do well socially. Most importantly, it must offer these children a group of true peers with whom to socialize and play so they, too, have an opportunity to feel not-so-different from everyone else.
December 23rd, 2007 at 2:11 pm
Robin, from looking at these responses, I wonder what the rates of psychological disorders are in relation to gifted individuals. Obviously within these characteristics certain traits are less adapted to the immediate environment and focusing rather on the general environment, pertaining to accumulative stimuli over several lifetimes. Being less adapted to the immediate environment would most likely contribute to social problems and anxiety. It’s an exilerating thought: the possibility that a man is born adapted to think and live in an Age rather than a century or decade. How would one born and raised in the information age live during the middle-ages under the Catholic Church? It is then easy to see how and why
December 23rd, 2007 at 2:17 pm
≥ ~95%
high school dropout
not “system’s definition of ‘top students’”
f-ck authority
December 23rd, 2007 at 2:17 pm
Do you often say to yourself: I thought everyone knew that?
December 23rd, 2007 at 2:21 pm
Judging by most of these replies, most of your readers are not gifted persons.
December 23rd, 2007 at 2:22 pm
[…] was directed to this website by a friend. I have copied the article here and will respond to each point […]
December 23rd, 2007 at 2:23 pm
Great article!!! I hope more study is done in this area.
December 23rd, 2007 at 2:24 pm
Very interesting read. I’m currenly taking a break from college for a semester in my 3rd year to make sure the degree I would get is what I want for my life. Looks like most of the list has applied to me for as long as I can remember. I recently made the switch from depressed introverted fool to optimist as well after gettin away from school at the end of this past semester. Turns out I never really learned so well in a structured classroom setting; it’s inspiring to think about what I still have to offer the world despite never having fit the “system’s definition of [a top student].”
Thanks again for the read =)
December 23rd, 2007 at 2:26 pm
Robin, from looking at these responses, I wonder what the rates of psychological disorders are in relation to gifted individuals. Obviously within these characteristics certain traits are less adapted to the immediate environment and more adapted to a more general environment, pertaining to accumulative stimuli, perhaps over several lifetimes. Being less adapted to the immediate environment would most likely contribute to social problems and anxiety. It’s an exhilarating thought: the possibility that a man is born adapted to think and live in an Age rather than a century or decade. How would one born and raised in the information age live during the middle-ages under the Catholic Church? It is then easy to see how and why one might be driven to extreme introversion and/or exhibit a psychological/social disorder. If I refuse what I see because it disagrees with my own logic and reason, then the frame work of my mind is not limited by the physical construct of reality. Where some would see only darkness, possibilities exist beyond our perception. A tree becomes a house, a stone becomes a submarine, and incoherent sounds become abstract concepts. Some one had to see something first in his or her own consciousness before it could be shared with some one else and brought into the collective social knowledge and conscious. Perhaps the gifted are the bridge connecting possibility with actuality.
December 23rd, 2007 at 2:28 pm
“drj” you are obviously not gifted.
It’s people like you that give comments like the one above to people who you think are below you and I think it is an easy indicator to your level of intelligence.
December 23rd, 2007 at 2:31 pm
Hey Tbone, at least I didn’t waste my time figuring out that the list was subjective and ambiguous. How I envy your keen insight into the psyche of someone you’ve never heard of, met, seen, wow! What power! And thank you for so vividly demonstrating a basic fact of life, that the gifted person is not recognized. One of my assurances of my being gifted is the frequency with which I am misunderstood. I enjoyed the article, the list wasn’t worth my time.
December 23rd, 2007 at 2:34 pm
i find that if i am encouraged too much it can often be even harder to perform. i often get sloppy or cocky if someone tells me how great i am. tho, that being said, it is definitely important to hear it at least once in a while. most people that are brilliant know that they are different and do not fit. i supose its true that not all of them recognise their own gifts. and that said, i suppose you dont especially need to be brilliant to think in a new and fresh way.
December 23rd, 2007 at 2:34 pm
Haha the only thing I didn’t get in there is the jigsaw puzzles, gosh I think they are annoying. I’d rather paint the picture myself. I dont think this test is really a measurement of “gift.” Rather just people who enjoy using their mind and appreciate their thoughts as something real and important.
During taking this test I had the weirdest thought and tried concentrating to see if I really controlled my thoughts or my thoughts controlled themselves. Look at something, anything. Did you think to look at a certain object or did your eyes just go randomly, and if it did go randomly, why? And obviously, creative ideas aren’t really “invented” by us because they didn’t EXIST to begin with. Our thoughts created them, we just happened to go with one particular one that we agreed with and went with it. I blew my own mind just right there.
Wow I’m crazy.
And people like that are generally the ones that find school to be incredibly boring and are uninspired by the process.
December 23rd, 2007 at 2:35 pm
I do not need that list. The list is pretty accurate. Of course I fall within more than 75%, even when I do not fill it in myself, and have others fill it in for me (self praise is no recommendation).
Unfortunately, even though I can disprove some of Einstein’s theories, I, nor anyone else not in the educational fold will never be known as the next Einstein. Instead people who are not exceptional, but know how to regurgitate others teachings, and know who’s butt needs the most kissing are praised as being the “next Einstein”.
Actually, my wife laughs alongside me now. She understands my many breakthroughs. She laughed only a few days ago at a story about a machine that DARPA are trying to invent. I created half of what they need two decades ago. I had explained it all to her ten years ago.
Me? I will still slip through every crack in society. I do not kiss arses. I will continue with my miserable lot, hating society and the stupid way it organises itself.
December 23rd, 2007 at 2:37 pm
Society already has an excellent way to measure gifted people – it’s called measurable positive results, otherwise known as success. The people who create something that others want to buy, or define a new process that saves or makes a company a bunch of money, etc.
If you are gifted, and can’t seem to convince anyone else of it, then your probably not. And if you are gifted, and aren’t creating success for yourself and others, then your wasting your talents, and you really have nobody to blame but yourself.
December 23rd, 2007 at 2:46 pm
Tbone, drj, Alex, m@
you have missed the point of this article.
I have not seen a school which is actually focusing on the gifted students and just out of boredom to the whole system many gifted students don’t do well in school.
The point was that gifted people very often experience difficulties since they are not understood by the common people.
In my opinion a person who can make that list surely is gifted. Many of those things are not experiences by other people!!!
December 23rd, 2007 at 2:53 pm
Chris is not a gifted person.
Chris has never tried to figure out why some people succeed and other people do not.
Arse kissing is a skill, but not something one would classify as a trait of the ultra intelligent. If you say the right things to the right people at the right time, you will succeed. You will be more enjoyable to be around for your boss. You will not challenge him/her. You may also get lucky and make more than the easy minimum profit for your company.
Everyone nowadays, with the success of the Wii would all claim that fitness based computer games was so obvious. It was not. This branch of computer hardware/software has only had group acceptance for three years. By Chris’s theory, when I invented a completely new idea, childrens fitness software, back in 2000 and tried getting angel investment at that point, I should have been showered with cash. It was a no go. Not one person believed there would be a market for fitness software in 2000.
Maybe the way to use software and redundant space mixed with a bootloader to cheaply make games DVDs scratch proof? Back in 1997 this was a no go as well.
Today, I don’t even bother trying to get anyone to listen to me. Investors, companies, even my own family just are not interested unless they have already held it in their own hands, that they have purchased from someone else. Then they all want to throw money at your invention. Only then do they see value in the idea… too late.
December 23rd, 2007 at 2:55 pm
My estimated match is 91.89% but I have to say that I disagree with the general use of the word “gifted”.
I mean on the one hand, I can meditate all day on large problem sets and figure it all out in my head, but on the other hand, I often spend too much time concentrating on the smallest of details because I feel compelled to.
Also, other things in my life suffer due to lack of attention since I obsess over things that I enjoy doing. For instance, I “forget” to get my mail for up to 2 months at times since I spend every day doing the same thing…perfecting some software project that I’m working on.
Luckily, I’m getting married soon and my wife-to-be promised to take care of all that stuff! All in all, people who are not labeled as “gifted” are actually gifted in the fact that they can have more consistency and fullness in their lives, while people like me are often very obsessive and compulsive. So it all evens out.
December 23rd, 2007 at 3:02 pm
So society measures a person’s gift by that same person’s success? Yuk. The success or what is called success in this society is not something I want anything to do with. Yet another demo of what a backward world I seem to live in. Sometimes I feel that only a thin veil separates me from the flicker of knowledge I need to answer the unanswerable. It seems so close! And the secret seems to be mine to divulge. If only I could pierce the veil, if only I could concentrate enough to snag that one thought, that one thought that will make clear the way!! But success? I fear it would kill me. Else it would have arrived already. Aw hell, there I go thinkin’ again.
December 23rd, 2007 at 3:03 pm
All of these characteristics describe people who are also introverts…
December 23rd, 2007 at 3:03 pm
Yay! I am gifted!
(and the teachers said I had ADD)
December 23rd, 2007 at 3:03 pm
I should also clarify what I said above… When I said “the article was true,” that might have been a bit generous.
The article doesn’t say you ARE gifted if you meet the criteria, it only says you are LIKELY gifted. I’ll half-heartedly agree with the list, BUT: most people are incapable of answering these questions about themselves honestly or accurately.
Are you good at problem solving? Of course you are! You can’t imagine possibly being any better… because if you could, you’d be a better problem solver.
Can you concentrate for long periods of time? Of course you can! You sat reading a book last night 8 hours straight!
People have assumptions about what “good” and “long” mean. Perhaps if you said, ‘fall 2 standard deviations above the mean for’, then the statements would be more meaningful.
Here’s my idea of a long attention span:
At the age of 7 I spent all of my waking weekend hours for several months straight reading… novels? No. Technical books for computers.
The advanced programmer’s guide for the C=64, cover to cover. The Texas Instruments logic databook. Dry, boring, technical stuff that makes college kids fall asleep. Does your average second grader spend 12+ days writing out timing diagrams for computer circuits and boning up on TTL logic chip numbers? (By the way, 7404 = inverter. 7400 = NAND gate, LS = low power Schottky, Etc, etc.)
My mother thought I was insane for reading that crap.
When someone talks about a long attention span, they are not talking about an evening playing Scrabble.
I loved one of the other comments: those of use who are gifted really do try to hide that fact form others from time to time. The rest of the time we spend wondering if we really are gifted, or are just misled person and in denial.
At times I’m sure there’s someone out there who knew what the Fourier Transform was at the age of 7. I didn’t know until I was 12.
December 23rd, 2007 at 3:30 pm
I used to think I was gifted. It all started in 3rd grade when my teacher sent me and another kid, Donnie, to the office to take a “special” test. The outcome was Donnie went into the gifted class and I got sent back to the class with all the normal kids. I’ve long since given up on the idea of being gifted, and in fact now consider myself border line retarded. The proof is I have worked for the last ten year in the film/television business and have nothing to show for it, except a 1990 jeep wrangler and a beautiful wife, and a current job directing videos for a grocery store. Well I guess it didn’t turn out too bad, but really it’s got to be better than this. I bet Donnie is driving a BMW, sipping lattes somewhere in Europe, while sniffing opium off his stock options. Not that that’s any better but still, some people just coast through life. Curse all you gifted people! By the way, if you are gifted and miserable, please contact me if you would like to give money to the non-gifted to finance Hollywood projects.
December 23rd, 2007 at 3:37 pm
Amazing. Just about everyone here believes they are gifted. Who would have predicted that such would be the outcome? Or perhaps those whom are not so fortunate are unable to leave a reply because they are so hindered by their lack of intelligence.
December 23rd, 2007 at 3:40 pm
Wow, that was an uplifting and revealing article. I feel as if I wasn’t able to put some of those listed traits into words until now. Although I do hate maths like Algebra.
PS
Among the traits you listed I found a small typo.
“Did you have developmentally advanced childhood?”
This sentence should have an “a” between “have” and “developmentally”.
December 23rd, 2007 at 3:50 pm
This list doesn’t really seem like a very good indicator. One of the reasons objective intelligence tests were developed is that people are notoriously bad at self-assessment. And of course, the term “gifted” is highly ambiguous to begin with. How do you define gifted; in terms of success? Traditional intelligence (i.e. IQ test)? Creativity? Non-traditional intelligence (I.e. Gardner’s multiple intelligences)?
It seems to me as if the simple categories “gifted” and “not gifted” are far too limiting. People are all different, and you can’t reduce it to one, or even 32, characteristics. That’s one of the problems with “gifted” programs in schools; they tend to be all-or-nothing. When I was in grade school, my first few years I did not see the point in doing more than was minimally required on anything, so I never received very good assessments. In Grade 4, we had a series of more objective assessment tests, and I achieved scores far and away better than anyone in the class of 30, the 2nd highest the teacher had seen in over 30 years of teaching (she had the most seniority at the school), particularly in vocabulary, writing, and reading comprehension. However, due to my continue minimalist attitude and lack of organization (the latter of which has never seriously affected my results), I continued to amass mediocre marks and “Not fulfilling potential” assessments all the way up to secondary school.
I went to a secondary school with a “challenge” program which was one of two in the public school system in my city, and it was fairly rigorous; we had to take tests and submit work samples to get in. I attempted, but wasn’t accepted, presumably because at the time I really wasn’t ready. Yet, by Grade 9 and 10, I was. The reason I bring this up is that often school systems are all-or-nothing, and give you only one chance to get into such a program… a program which may or may not even be continued in High School. I probably should have been in that program for some classes, but not others; it would have helped me a lot socially, and the teachers were often better. Of course, my High School was even worse, as it had no gifted program of any kind, or even any advanced classes; everyone took the same level.
It was not until University that I really found my place in the Philosophy department, finally found people who were accepting, who thought about the same things I did. My first philosophy professor, who was actually a PHD Grad student, was the one who convinced me to follow philosophy. Before that I was planning on English, due to my exceedingly high marks in English in high school. However, in University I found it quite boring, the other English students pedestrian and the subject matter trivial. The postmodernism was anathema to my way of thinking.
Conversely, my first class of philosophy was electric. It was like all the philosophizing I had done off in my own world was being repeated back to me, only in a new form. The ideas, the methodology, struck a chord. I began hanging out in with other philosophy students, going to office hours just to talk about philosophy with that first prof, and would end up staying for hours and even going for dinner on campus with other students talking about various things. I went on to take some more classes with him, and we became good friends for a time, and I still often bounce ideas off him by email.
The point I’m trying to make is, like intelligence, giftedness isn’t a black-and-white category, or even a linear continuum. Not fitting in isn’t always a sign of someone who is gifted, nor is thinking differently, or being creative. Everyone has their own values, and defines which traits are most valuable in terms of them; often, they base what is valuable on the gifts that they have, such as in my case I might consider someone who excels at philosophy to be gifted, whereas someone who excels at sports or art to be less so (not that I do).
I think the message to take away from your article, Robin, is not whether or not you qualify as gifted, but merely to focus on what abilities you have rather than those that you don’t, and use them as best you can. As another memorable teacher of mine once said, “Creating art and never showing it to anyone is just another form of masturbation.” I think something similar can be said for abilities people possess: the worst thing you can do is not use them and share them with the world.