The Curse of the Gifted

It all starts with a simple test. Then maybe one more, then another the year after,until annually students in grades K-12 can be tested to see if they qualify for the ‘Gifted and Talented Program’. In the average GT program you could be identified in multiple subjects such as maths, reading, writing, science, and social studies along with skills like critical thinking and cognitive reading. A gifted student according to the state of Colorado are “Those persons between the ages of four and twenty-one whose aptitude or competence in abilities, talents, and potential for accomplishment in one or more domains are so exceptional or developmentally advanced that they require special provisions to meet their educational programming needs.”

The first problem with the program is the name itself, “Gifted and Talented”. This creates the implication that students in the program did not work hard to be smarter in any capacity than their peers, they simply had good luck in life and were blessed with a gift. This develops differently at each school level.

In elementary school, tell a child that they are inherently better than another student and they will become cocky, they will breeze past elementary level math or reading with no regards for collaboration with other students. In their mind they know they are better. They have an ALP (advanced learning plan) which has goals above that of their peers. 

Once you’re in this program you’re in for life, you may be retested to see if you suddenly became “gifted” in another subject, but no one is going to kick you out. So you go to middle school, get pulled out of class or lose homework time to go and write your advanced learning plan. You write down a goal you’ll have forgotten when they remember you need to revise it to get proper government funding. Then you cruise through middle school, any issues you have quickly get resolved or you simply skip learning that section of content. While a normal middle schooler is figuring out how they study for tests, the students who have been told their entire lives that they are so smart are taught to not bother to learn, especially for a test.   Neither they learn how to study nor have the emotional willingness to for help from their teachers when needed. After all, discipline and guidance are truly essential for future progress of students,  gifted or not. 

As a result, all those “smarter” kids begin to do significantly worse than their peers in high school. Why? Because they are not trained for hard work. They can’t study for an AP class and even are unaware about how to study at all. They don’t know how to express and advocate for themselves when they need help. They’re asked again to do ALPs over and over again, and yet do students see any of that funding translate in the support they receive? No one teaches the “smart” kids how to study, how to learn from mistakes and suddenly they’re just average.

So now there’s a group of students who have only ever gotten A’s, who suddenly start getting C’s and they don’t know what to do. They’re already perfectionists because the schools have told them their whole lives that they have to be. Students who are gifted and talented according to the Davidson institute experience anxiety in many different ways, but no one teaches them how to handle this. 

So how do we break the cycle of burn out and teach students to challenge themselves and to love learning? Have options for students to do an extra assignment,to work on problems above their skill level but don’t test them. Don’t label them into boxes where students learn that their only value is their GT identification. Students learn that they are money for their school and that’s the only support they will ever receive. While many can see advantages of GT identification for students, in actuality, it just helps students feel superior to their peers in an egotistical and anti-social way that doesn’t promote relationships. At its worst it hampers potential with anxiety and expectations and students never learn how to learn. And thus, how to move forward with new ways of identification and programs that support and challenge students who are academically ahead of their peers must be solved before more students fall into the same cycle.