Volume 11 Science for
All
Some people clearly are gifted;
they do some things better and more easily than other people. Of
course no one does everything better than everyone else. Some people,
however, manage to do many things very well. The Olympic athletes who
compete in the decathlon and pentathlon show exceptional skills in
several sports. Yet their scores in any one of those sports generally
lag behind those of frontrunners in the individual sports. Even being
a jack-of-all-trades is a "special talent."
Giftedness cannot be defined in a blanket way for the population at large. IQ tests, standardized tests, and statistical treatments may be convenient for sorting people into groups and avoiding the appearance of chaos and infinite individuality, but they are false indicators. They accomplish more harm than good both for the individual (especially if he or she is at the lower end of the distribution) and ultimately for society. In general, the only people they really benefit are those in personnel departments and school admissions offices.
Teachers must assume that each student who comes their way, no matter what age or grade level, is gifted or talented in some way. Whether we are teachers in a local Head Start program or in the most elite of graduate schools, we must not ask, Is this student gifted?" but rather, "In what areas is this student gifted, and how can she or he use the areas of my 'course' to express that giftedness, increase the vitality of the classroom environment, and work toward personal growth and maximization of individual potential?"
Teachers who espouse this view of giftedness can boost students' self-concepts. Rosenthal and Jacobson (Pygmalion in the Classroom: Teacher Expectation and Pupil's Intellectual Development, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968) have shown that students tend to behave according to the expectations of the people around them. When teachers treat students as 'gifted,' the youngsters tend to behave like gifted students. It is equally clear that students treated as stupid will behave that way.
A student may appear to be gifted mainly because she or he has already had practice in that specific area. Another student who initially seems less apt may, after becoming familiar with the task or area, perform better than the first student. It is a mistake to reward the first and take no notice of the latter, because without encouragement the late-bloomer may never exert the energies necessary to develop that particular potential.
The development of any part of a person's potential depends on two basic facts: aptitude and motivation. I believe that motivation is by far the more important. A third factor, the environment, is perhaps the equal of the other two. The environment can help the student by providing freedom to develop in a given direction and by offering appropriate encouragement, assistance, and necessary resources. However one must be watchful for conditions in the environment that push children further in a direction that they have temporarily or permanently abandoned, because failure to acknowledge changes in childrens' motivation can have a serious negative impact on their growth.