High Cognitive Minds

Teachers want students to learn. But what does that mean? The child who asks “too many questions” wants to know more than the basic facts and definitions that he’s being taught. But if it’s not in the textbook, not a part of the curriculum, he can wind up being considered a troublemaker or a perfectionist. Either one is bad.

Even worse, such a child may expose the teacher’s lack of knowledge beyond the contents of the textbook. Then he is guilty of “challenging authority,” the official term that covers up the teacher’s embarrassment. And if that isn’t sufficient for the teacher’s fragile ego, the child can be disciplined for disrupting the class.

So what do teachers really want students to learn? To read the text, complete their assignments, and open their mouths only to answer the teacher’s questions

I’ve come to believe that intellectually gifted children should start learning about human psychology at a fairly early age. But I wonder what the effect would have been if my first exposure to the subject had been a school textbook. Maybe it would have turned me off the subject completely, or it might have led me in the right direction without years of thrashing around without any sense of direction. Who knows?

It’s a truism that many psychologists start out with themselves as their first subject of interest. Which makes my current reading somewhat serendipitous. In the midst of trying to write this post, I started reading Wisdom, Intelligence, and Creativity, Synthesized, by psychologist Robert J. Sternberg. In giving a brief rundown on what led him to psychology, he turns out to be a perfect example of the truism.

His path started in elementary school, when his extreme test anxiety resulted in a low IQ score. As he put it: “For three years, my teachers thought me stupid, and I obliged, pleasing them by confirming their self-fulfilling prophecies for me.” But his fourth-grade teacher believed in him, and so he started believing in himself and became an “A” student. “By age 13, I was determined to understand why I was now achieving at high levels despite my low IQ...” That led to his learning about IQ testing, and tracking down a Stanford-Binet test and administering it to his classmates. He got in trouble for that, but that didn’t matter, because by then he knew where he was going.

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Was there any time in my childhood or adolescence when someone could have pointed to a particular talent or strong interest and said “There it is, your life path?”  I suppose it could have happened, but whatever they thought they had discovered would have been wrong.

I was a typical early reader, indiscriminately devouring whatever reading matter came my way. And while it’s impossible to prove that any one book or subject was influential in a major way, there were patterns of interest that developed fairly early. In retrospect, it’s easy to see that those patterns eventually resolved themselves into an ever-narrowing set of interests which led me to where I am today. But it’s also easy to see that the final determination of what I would focus on was pure accident.

The error, for those who would like to be able to predict and guide the intellectually gifted thinker, is the belief that a strong focus in childhood is dependably indicative of a future career path. And the error is compounded by evaluating intellectual interests only in relation to their relevance to known career paths. My own winding path shows both the impossibility of prediction, and the difficulty of making a final choice from among many possibilities. Of course, we’re talking here about high cognitives with no apparent talents, but it also tends to be true even of wunderkind who show very strong preferences and talents for particular subjects.

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In his book, Intelligence: a New Look, Hans Eysenck makes a point that has been stated by others, in the ongoing discussion about whether genetics or environment is more influential in giftedness. “ Children, as they grow up, increasingly choose their environment; the choice itself is driven by genetic factors. And they interpret their environment in terms of their genetic contributions.” One example that he selected, from the many possible, was the life of the mathematician, Michael Faraday, who came from a poor family and had almost no schooling except for what he managed to scrabble for himself.

Similarly, Dean Keith Simonton, in The Origins of Genius: “if the parents had not provided opportunities in the home for the desired stimulation, the children would probably seek out stimulation elsewhere.”

“...a child with certain inborn talents may soon put pressure on the environment to make it conform more closely to feed those talents. To the outside observer it may appear as if the environment is influencing the child’s development, but instead it is the child’s genetic disposition that is influencing the home circumstances. The research literature on child prodigies is replete with examples of future geniuses who insist on pursuing specific enthusiasms even in the face of parental discouragement.” Simonton’s example was Pascal, another mathematician from an unpromising background.

 That is a quite different position from one that was fairly common about twenty years ago:  “...giftedness cannot be understood solely as a cognitive trait, but rather must be understood as a complex interaction between a peculiarly supportive environment that the individual helps create, but over which the individual has only limited power.” Frances D. Horowitz, The Gifted and Talented: developmental perspectives

I suspect that research done since then has encouraged many writers to modify their view, but it still has enough support to influence ambitious parents of gifted children. And it isn’t a simple matter of whether a supportive environment is or isn’t a necessity. There is, today, some question about how much influence a highly enriched intellectual environment actually has on future achievements. I don’t think there’s any argument that an enriched environment is a benefit, regardless of whether the child is gifted or average. The confusion about its value probably lies in what effects it's expected to have.

That’s a subject for another post.

Mass education is designed for the average student.
Its goal is to provide students with the basic knowledge they need in order to function in the modern world. The most efficient way to do this is by standardizing curriculum and teaching methods. This is what teachers are trained to accomplish.

Differentiated curriculum is a political football
School financing is always subject to current economic conditions. Changing levels of funding means that special interest groups must fight for a portion of what is available. As a small and almost invisible minority which generally arouses animosity rather than sympathy, the gifted have an uphill fight. The mentally and physically handicapped are both visible and sympathy-evoking,  and are supported by a large and vocal block of special-needs advocates. When the needs of the underdogs are perceived to be in conflict with the needs of those who “have it all,” public sentiment will always favor the underdog, and politicians will take the path of least resistance.

No foundation exists for differentiated gifted programs
There is general agreement that programs for gifted students need to be highly differentiated to meet the wide range of intelligence and skills. The standard approach is broadly defined programs with vague goals. They are designed more for appearance and to deflect complaints and criticism than for actual results. A multitude of problems stands in the way of any real change. 1. A lack of trained teachers, and the costs of special training. 2. Lack of measures for evaluating students’ needs and abilities. 3. Scheduling and curriculum chaos that would ensue from individualizing education to the extent necessary. 3. Lack of real commitment to gifted education, and even disbelief in the concept of giftedness.

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Edweek.org has a variety of resources for teachers, but prowling around, I discovered that a good deal of their material is useful for parents and anyone who’s concerned with education. It’s not specifically for the gifted, but this recent blog entry is certainly one that fits here very well.

The Bill of Rights for the Gifted was originally published in the NAGC’s September 2007 issue of “Parenting for High Potential.” Check out the full bill with all the details here. There’s also a link to a PDF mini-poster of the bill.

A Gifted Child’s Bill of Rights

1. You have a right to know about your giftedness.
2. You have a right to learn something new every day.
3. You have the right to be passionate about your talent area without apologies.
4. You have a right to have an identity beyond your talent area.
5. You have a right to feel good about your accomplishments.
6. You have a right to make mistakes.
7. You have a right to seek guidance in the development of your talent.
8. You have a right to have multiple peer groups and a variety of friends.
9. You have a right to choose which of your talent areas you wish to pursue.
10. You have a right to not be gifted at everything.

Here’s an article on changing trends in gifted education that you might find rather depressing. I’m not sure whether it’s depressing, or simply pointing to something that hasn’t ever made a heck of a lot of difference. The author listed topics that were “hot” for the last 10-30 years but are now getting far less interest. She also lists those that she sees coming to the forefront. She bases her choices on catalogs of National Association for Gifted Children conventions, which is probably about as good a measure as any, of changes in the field of giftedness.

What has decreased in interest? Practically everything that applies to the individual child: underachievement, advocacy, identification, learning styles, among others. Another loser is the once popular topic of multiple intelligences. I suspect that this one reflects the usual fate of fads which are supposed to be the “next big thing,” but turn out to be just one more bandaid on a very big wound.

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For a long time, I’ve noticed that people who talk about their giftedness tend to fall into two categories as they describe themselves. One group says that they know they learn faster and have better memories than most, but don’t see that as a reason to consider themselves gifted. The other group usually knows from a fairly early age that they think differently, perceive the world differently, and have different motivations for what they do. But they judge that difference as what is wrong with them, rather than as a sign of giftedness.

I’ve always thought of these two types just as variations in the way that individuals define themselves when insufficient information is available to them. Giftedness is rarely defined or explained, so the natural tendency is to interpret it on a purely personal level. Now I see that the two very different sets of responses go beyond the personal. Instead, they point to very different types of intelligence, corresponding to the “academically gifted” and the “intellectually gifted.” Those terms are applied to school children, but what they mean is still relevant to adults.

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I’ve discussed my reasons for believing that while limited acceleration has its benefits, it isn’t the answer to fulfilling highly gifted students’ needs for mental stimulation and challenge.  Is there a useful and viable alternative to simply shooting through the educational system like a greased pig? I would like to say that there is, but I can’t. What I offer is a very rough and fragmentary start toward developing such an alternative. Parents who are themselves gifted can use it a jumping off place for working with their gifted child. Teachers whose knowledge extends outside the course textbook can also use it as a source of ideas. I present it as a set of guideline, not a curriculum.

At the moment, the guidelines are divided into four categories: cognitive traits, thinking skills, psychology, and knowledge base. Cognitive traits are biological, and are the substrate on which everything else rests. They include memory, temperament, predisposition to thinking styles: verbal or visual, contextual or linear. Thinking skills include analysis/synthesis, pattern-seeking, problem-finding, theorizing/testing. Psychology is about normal thinking and emotional responses, and how the gifted differ, with the aim of adapting to and living comfortably with the non-gifted. Knowledge base: Identifying personal interests, tracking them over time, and making connections between them. Cross disciplinary expansion of interests, making the knowledge base as broad and rich as possible.

Some of the overall goals are to develop mental flexibility and openness, and the ability to think clearly; to encourage and enhance creativity; to discover the pleasures of intellectual exploration; to shape the environment in a way that’s appropriate for the individual, and to create a rich and satisfying life. Modern education rarely supports or even acknowledges these goals, but for high cognitives they are as essential as learning subject matter. They also take time, not the hour to hour schedules of schooling, but the developmental time of the individual. Brains have to mature, understanding and insight have to develop with increasing age and knowledge. Schools do not and cannot support these needs.

Normal schooling actually serves as an impediment to individual development to the extent that it fills the student’s time and restricts learning to defined paths. Carried to extremes, acceleration merely continues that pattern, consuming ever more time and energy that should be used in more productive ways. Rather than provide new options, it just speeds the student toward those that society has already defined and approved. There must be some reason why “…creative achievers tend to discontinue their education when they feel that they have learned enough to continue on their own. They may simply become bored with formal instruction, or disenchanted with what formal institutions have to offer.” Personal and intellectual growth can’t flourish when education is simply a race to the goal line.

Thanks to a helpful comment that was posted here recently, I’ve made my first rule for blogging: Don’t introduce a topic until you’re ready to expand on it. My view of the blog as a chain of related ideas isn’t necessarily what others see. Readers, especially new ones, see the current post and whatever others they may choose at random, and the relationships, even when they exist, aren’t exactly shouting their presence. So, the post on acceleration was left hanging out by itself, waiting for me to come back and carry on with the theme it started.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t do that until I was ready to introduce the idea of high cognitives, which I’ve now done. The article is here. Reading it first will give you the necessary background for this post.

The high cognitive concept is vital to determining whether acceleration is advisable, and what form it should take. In general, acceleration carries forward what we might call the philosophy of education: that children are learners who have to guided along a predetermined curriculum. In complete opposition to this, we have high cognitives who are thinkers as well as learners. Their interests generally include a wide range of subjects about which they are forming opinions and tentative theories. They are also noticing and critiquing errors in what they read or are told by adults, not merely factual errors, but errors in logic and sense.

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Sometimes I wonder if the lack of real information about high levels of intelligence is just as much about fear as it is about insufficient data. It’s a thought that occurs to me fairly often, and it was triggered once again by High IQ Kids, the latest addition to my long shelf of books about giftedness and creativity. Titles don’t always tell you exactly what a book is about, but they do usually offer a clue, especially in a crowded field like gifted children. But “High IQ Kids” could mean anything from about 125 IQ, on up. It’s only when you turn the book over that you see the truth, halfway down the back cover. After a typically generic intro, the subject is finally revealed: “Raising or educating highly, exceptionally, or profoundly gifted kids can be daunting.” It’s almost as if the extremes of giftedness have to be backed into slowly, so as not to offend anyone.

As if to reinforce this feeling, I got into a conversation with a grad student who’s thought a lot about the state of gifted education and wonders if there is any useful role for him. One of his advisors told him that writing anything in support of gifted education, whether in his dissertation or a published paper, would harm his future career. One example doesn’t necessarily mean that the attitude is wide-spread, but the way in which the academic literature determinedly steers around long-standing problems, and avoids even the suggestion of anything truly innovative makes it a reasonable possibility.

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An article on underachievement and ways of motivating gifted underachievers who are working below their potential — Is a student who’s making all As working up to his potential? Is school achievement an adequate measure of potential?

One idea from various sources that sticks in my mind — students need a well-rounded education. Concentration on one or a few interests, especially if that interferes with curriculum requirements, is a bad thing. Students must be encouraged to balance their interests. Is the normal school curriculum a balanced education? Don’t outside interests broaden a student’s knowledge.

Is it possible that obsessive interests, pursued long enough are indicative of a talent and possible future intellectual creativity? Is it more important that a student exist within the very limited constraints of the typical curriculum or that they acknowledge and nourish their own needs?