High Cognitive Minds

To continue... Living with the feeling that there’s something you should be doing with your life is like an itch that you can’t scratch. So, how do you go about scratching it? There are three parts to this problem:

1. Figure out what you want to accomplish
2. Figure out how to do it

The third, which is really the first part, is figuring out what’s kept you from thinking about it seriously. We live in a society that’s job and career oriented. Whatever you’re doing, it has to be full-time, and it has to enable you to make a decent living. How many people can afford to give that up in order to go in a brand-new direction? How many are willing to take the risk that the new direction won’t work out, or won’t be any more satisfying even if it does work out? How many times have you heard the expression “don’t quit your day job?”

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Hungry mind. Must keep it fed. More books. New subjects. Never enough time. So much to learn.

What do you do with all that knowledge? My guess is that most gifted adults consider their reading and learning as an avocation—not much more than a way to feed a need. It’s a pleasurable need, of course, and it can be useful, but when it comes right down to it, in what way is it different from how the average person spends their time? You’re probably more insightful about important issues, see deeper into the antics of politicians and hucksters, worry more about the state of the world, but what does it amount to? You can make more intelligent choices about what to buy, who to vote for, how to spend your time, but is that all?

You have the feeling that there should be more. That you should be doing more. Potential. The guilt-creating bugaboo that keeps whispering “you’ve neglected me.” But there’s the job, and the family, and whatever other obligations you’ve undertaken. No time to focus. No energy for any more projects. And where would you even begin if you wanted to do something more important with your life? Oh well, there are more books waiting to be read.

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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