ON: Not every child is gifted
Quote:
Originally Posted by germaine2626
I just read another thread where a young child was having behavior problems and a typical response was "he must be gifted". Sheesh! Not every child with difficulties in behavior or poor interaction with peers is gifted.
In thread after thread dealing with children I read responses like "she is too smart to need to follow the rules" or "he must be bored in school and that is why he is getting into trouble" or similar responses
Of course, every parent wants their child to succeed. Some parents brag and possible exaggerate their child's achievements. And every/most parent hopes and dreams that their child is smart. But, parents sometime seem to forget that children of all intellectual levels can be wonderful, loving children.
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A few years ago several of us teachers were talking about this phenomena where every parent thinks that their child is gifted, or extra special or has some amazing talent. Sort of the Special Snowflake syndrome on steroids.
I really don't have a question but just wanted to vent. Not every child is gifted. But it doesn't matter because a child can be happy, healthy and do well in school without being gifted.
In thread after thread dealing with children I read responses like "she is too smart to need to follow the rules" or "he must be bored in school and that is why he is getting into trouble" or similar responses
Of course, every parent wants their child to succeed. Some parents brag and possible exaggerate their child's achievements. And every/most parent hopes and dreams that their child is smart. But, parents sometime seem to forget that children of all intellectual levels can be wonderful, loving children.
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A few years ago several of us teachers were talking about this phenomena where every parent thinks that their child is gifted, or extra special or has some amazing talent. Sort of the Special Snowflake syndrome on steroids.
I really don't have a question but just wanted to vent. Not every child is gifted. But it doesn't matter because a child can be happy, healthy and do well in school without being gifted.
I enjoyed AP English and similar in High School and as an undergrad. And got B's and C's in calculus along the way, working hard to merely keep up. Cie la vie.Back then we took what I believe was the "PSAT" in Junior High, presumably as preparation for the real-deal (SAT) a few years later. I kept my scores, somehow, across the decades and scanned them. Looking today, those scores were at-least consistent with future IQ tests, and did correlate quite closely with my SAT results approximately three years later.
The previous are all thinly-veiled IQ tests, in my layman's opinion. GMAT, SAT, ACT, etc. What else could they be? Given the thinly-veiled reality that all such tests measure what psychologists call 'G', a general-intelligence measure that correlates quite nicely with socioeconomic success over a person's lifetime.
I remember accidentally seeing another student's PSAT scores, way back when. His name was alphabetically next to mine: they conducted student/guidance counselor meetings one after another, individually-tuned based on scores, to steer us into (or away from) certain kinds of courses in upcoming high school.
That student, Steve, had scores clustered around the average: 50% or so math and reading/writing. I remember thinking, "Steve is a good guy" (we were buddies). "I'm not smarter or dumber, though I probably think differently." Steve was thus not "gifted," nor ever made any pretensions to-same that I can recall. No doubt he was, almost to a percentage point, the "average student." As I recall he was an average kid in every way, which is again: neither good nor bad.
And...so what? He went to college, same one I attended, and I lost track of him not long after our Sophomore year. Today, I bet he's just an average guy, probably leading an average life, and hopefully happy for it. "Gifted" in reading and writing meant I didn't work very hard those subjects, if I felt lazy. Or at the other end, perhaps I was able to tackle Hawthorne and Emerson a bit younger than others. Whoopee. Average people get by OK via the television and radio, and formulate opinion based on a few less facts.
How, exactly, does high intelligence correlate with the elusive thing we call "happiness?"
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