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S-M-R-T!
Popular opinion may not be fond of “elitists” these days, but we sure do love our winners. Perhaps that explains the incessant mixed messages in pop culture about whether it’s okay to be smart or not. Use big words so nobody can understand you, question things too much = Bad. Act cool and happy like everybody else, but hit your academic milestones before they do = Good.
Perhaps I’m oversimplifying.
Obviously there’s been a great push in children’s television toward a cool-to-be-smart sensibility. It started with Sesame Street in 1969 and grew stronger over time, from Blue’s Clues to Magic School Bus to the adorable sparkly robots and fairies using math power on Team Umizoomi. Sure, you still see the occasional bespectacled Professor Know-It-All types, like Walden on Wow! Wow! Wubbzy! But for the most part, it’s friendly multi-culti moppets singing the joys of science or hip kids kicking reading’s ass. Learning is powerful! And sparkly!
Team Umizoomi
Of course, it doesn’t take much to sell us parents on the notion that smart is cool. In fact, it’s become something of a rat race. We buy up Bob Books and LeapPads and Japanese lessons. We insist on “academics” in preschool and strive to have our children reading before they’ve set foot in a kindergarten classroom (or even before they’re out of diapers). In some circles, it’s not enough for children to just be organically smart; they have to be quantifiably advanced somehow.
And maybe those efforts are working. Here in my little corner of Seattle, the public school’s gifted program (called Spectrum), doesn’t have enough space for all those brilliant, brilliant children who test into it during the first weeks of kindergarten. The school holds a lottery to assign the spaces, and parents don’t find out until months later if their child is in or not. No potential for drama there! A parent I know jokingly described the end result as a “star-bellied Sneetch” effect. Parents and students alike are very conscious about who’s in Spectrum and who’s not.
So, on the one hand, hooray for valuing academics! On the other hand, WTF, people! Really? We’re going to turn this into a status thing? How much more could we possibly miss the point? In my little land of make believe with flowers and bells and magic frogs with funny hats, these programs exist to help kids who are really struggling in their regular classrooms. “Giftedness” isn’t something you can LeapPad your way into. And it comes with a lot more baggage and quirks than just a shiny IQ. Many of these kids are sensitive and intense and misunderstood. Sometimes they get tripped up by their own perfectionism or sensory issues and can’t even do their work. Sometimes they lose patience with their peers and act like flaming jerks to them. You’re not going to see that on Sid the Science Kid, but it’s true.
What a term. “Gifted.” I can’t even type it without cringing. It reeks of hubris, elitism, and parental self-delusion. And it’s totally misleading, considering all the temperament issues that typically go with the territory. Why is that kid shrieking and chewing on the doorknob? Oh, because he’s gifted.
I guess that’s why it’s taken me so long to acknowledge that this antiquated term actually applies rather accurately to my own son. I was rather surprised when a parent educator recommended I check out A Parent’s Guide to Gifted Children. But I started reading it, and darned if it doesn’t all start to add up.
I apologize if that makes me sound like the very braggy parents I just made fun of, but believe me . . . this is really nothing to brag about. We’ve always known that The Boy was, well, smarter than your average bear. But he’s always been more anxious, sensitive, intense, and prone to meltdowns than your average bear, too. Just thinking about his co-op preschool years still makes me want to go fetal. He’d have his good moments, when he could tell you all about dinosaurs or build a truly impressive block structure. But mostly I remember the freak-outs and the occasional unpleasantness from the other parents. “Gifted” will never be my favorite label, but it’s so much friendlier than the other labels that have been slapped on him over the years.
I won’t be throwing any elbows to get him into Spectrum, though. (For one thing, I didn’t sign him up for the test last fall.) Maybe I’d consider it if his regular school became unbearable for him, but for now he’s very happy there. Academics have never been a big concern. What he doesn’t learn at school, he immerses himself in at home with me, his dad, his library books, and his Legos.
We tend to forget that most gifted kids don’t grow up to be Salinger or Bill Gates or Kristin Hersh. If there’s any pop culture mythology I’m drawing inspiration from, it’s the rosy ending in Good Will Hunting: Find a mentor, find love, find friends, find peace, and drive off into the sunset in your crappy car while Elliott Smith swells in the background.
Neither an elitist, nor a winner. Just a person at peace. That’s the best any of us can hope for, really. I wonder if they make flash cards for that?
(Yes, it turns out they do!)
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Comment by The Oracle on May 27, 2010 at 11:11pm -
Thanks for this. So much. I'm going to come back to it again and again. Lots to think about, too tired to create a coherent sentence around it right now. Mwah.
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Comment by hermit crab on May 28, 2010 at 5:38am -
Don't forget about local cultural context, too - you guys live in one of the major world epicenters of competitive giftedness. I imagine that the struggle over children's entry into giftedness programs in Seattle or San Jose is not unlike how parents feel about getting their boys on the football team in Green Bay.
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Comment by wookie on May 28, 2010 at 5:39am -
What Oracle said. Many true things ring in this post.
Gifted Smifted. They don't have more success in life than anyone else. Yes, really.
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Comment by mcglory13 on May 28, 2010 at 5:42am -
Amen. When all of the above average kids get into gifted classes, they water them down for the truly gifted anyway. I have a zillion complicated thoughts about this, but no way to discuss them without sounding like a pain. At any rate, of the truly gifted kids I knew (top one half of one percent in math or verbal, tested seventh grade), many of them went to great schools and have good jobs. Of course, of the above average kids I knew... the same is pretty much true for them.
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Comment by Mamawho on May 28, 2010 at 5:45am
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Some parents in our neighborhood fight like hell to get their kids into the gifted school, basically so their kids don't have to go to the neighborhood school with the brown kids, referred to as "kids from the apartments." More than a few parents were absolutely appalled that I didn't even have GirlWho tested.
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Comment by ks on May 28, 2010 at 6:22am -
N's teacher last year recommended that he get tested and he apparently *just* missed it. Mr. S was really upset, because could not understand why N wouldn't get it. I had to explain that because we let him skip a grade, he was being tested a year early (our district tests in 2nd grade) and while he may be academically really, really smart, there are other factors as well. And like mcglory said, way above average does not always translate to truly gifted (which I don't think he is, thankfully). But Mr. S was still pissed, I think because he does see school as a status thing.
And anyway, I'm kind of glad he didn't get in. He's already younger and smaller than his classmates and way ahead of the rest of his class academically, and while he does pretty well socially, I don't want that to be one more thing that marks him as different and could cause him trouble with the other kids. I want him to be challenged academically at school, but I also want him to be as happy/content as possible too.
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Comment by mightyninjamom on May 28, 2010 at 7:34am -
FP - I'm kind of glad we moved when we did. It seems way less of a status-y thing down here than it was there! I have one particular friend who thought I was crazy for starting him in school as late as 4. Her unspoken criticism was along the lines of, "well, he'll never catch up now!"
I don't think it's wrong for just wishing for serenity for your child, especially if their 'gift' comes at such a steep price.
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MNM - Serenity would have been nice when I was a kid. I went to a college-prep private school, and both at school and at home talk about college began in kindergarten. By about third grade, my family was on me about working hard so I could go to Princeton like Brooke Shields. But I needed to work extra hard to lock a scholarship.
I totally gave up on school because the pressure was intense.
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Comment by kommishoner on May 28, 2010 at 8:31am -
Right on, FP. You know, I don't think any of this is helped much by the fact that having at least a bachelor's degree, preferably from a highly-ranked institution, raises one's earning potential significantly (while I know we have a lot of frustrated PhDs on here, and I'm a frustrated JD, I think we can agree that no degree almost always means low pay, even if having a degree does not always mean high pay). And there's more and more competition for spots in college, and more and more competition for scholarships, and as people become more well-versed in what privilege is and what it means, there's more recognition of how building up for that paid-for spot at HarYale or wherever starts in kindergarten or earlier. Kind of a "I know this is all part of a system of inequality, but we still live in that system and I still want my kid to have more opportunities than I did" kind of a thing.
And as public schools get their funding eviscerated, the pressure to get into "gifted" programs so that one's child can get even a more-than-just-the-state-test learning experience gets ratcheted up accordingly. So I guess I can see why an individual parent might buy into all this "gifted" crap for their otherwise ordinary kid, even if it doesn't make a whole lot of sense if you step back and take the long view about it. The life duet and I were both raised by public school teachers, so we feel really deeply committed to sending the little man to public school eventually. I hope we can keep a clear head about all this when the time comes. And there's always that great statistic to fall back on that says that more than any other indicator, a child's academic success depends upon whether they were raised in a house with books in it. And we've got books in spades, so I guess he'll be okay. ;)
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Comment by wookie on May 28, 2010 at 8:38am
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I think as a parent, hell, as a human for whom so much of my self-identity is based on the idea that I am "bright", it's only natural that I should somehow feel shortchanged or threatened if mah preshus baybees are not also regarded as bright. It's like we feel entitled to it somehow.
But while 80% of people see themselves as above average drivers, I bet a lot of people feel that way about their own smarts as well. And the numbers just don't add up on that.
I think I will take kommishoner's book theory as comfort :-)
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