Beautiful Minds

I think this was an interesting article. I'm not sure how passion could be measured accurately. I'm not sure what sort of scale could be used & some students are more reserved when expressing themselves, and may feel extremely passionate, yet not express it, but practicalities aside, I agree with the sentiment of redefining which students "deserve" such opportunities, expanding "merit" to include motivation, dedication, & passion, rather than raw ability alone.

In my own life, I became intensely interested in art when I was a freshman in high school, though I had limited ability at the time. I spent hours drawing after school everyday, and became quite good. It's been 10 years since then, and when others see my art, many comment that they have "no artistic ability," as though it was innate, and while many probably wouldn't value the skill enough to commit to developing it, I genuinely believe many of them would be capable, if they dedicated themselves to it. Whenever someone comments on my "natural ability," I think to myself, it sure took a lot of hardwork to be a "natural." "Talents" just seems so much more glamourous than "skills."

Natural ability is required in almost any area to reach greatness.

I've seen some very motivated people without natural ability, and they never seem to make it past "above average" skill.

I loved this article. I tend to believe that a person rarely experiences a burning passion for something UNLESS there is already an underlying pre-existing ability there, or maybe I just like to believe that...I wouldn't want to feel like I was wasting my time with my passions in life!

As the other commenter said, they discovered they did have artistic skills after developing a passion for art, yet they had to put a lot of work into it and didn't know they possessed those skills before...

The commenter seems to believe this was just as a result of hard work, but many may not have been able to yield those artistic results even with all that hard work, with or without the passion to go with it. It's a strange scenario.

Ultimately, I don't believe a burning passion randomly exists without ability to go with it. Naturally, I think our passions arise where we have at least some pre-existing ability or talent to go with it.

"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education alone will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan “press on” has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race."
-Calvin Coolidge

I totally agree with your ideas.

Passion is the fuel. It's such a fuel that even if there is no car at all, it will create the car itself and run it like a Ferrari. On the other hand; if you have a Ferrari and no fuel, your Ferrari is simply useless.

For better or worse, I lived through the broadening of the definition of "gifted". It really didn't do anything to improve the gifted program experience. Earlier on, when my school system used the traditional "IQ130" cut-off, it meant there were far fewer of us in the program. While this also meant very minimal staffing to support us, that staffing tended to be of higher quality. And, because there were fewer of us to work with, they were able to create *very* individualized programs to help us pursue our interests and talents. Unfortunately, as they broadened the definition, more kids were brought into the program. What had formerly been a program about individually customizing education to get the most for the identified individuals became a group-oriented program that did little to service *anyone* in the program.

Contributing to the dilution was the fact that more students meant they needed more staff. The harsh reality is, if you want to reach gifted students, you absolutely need gifted teachers/counselors/etc. Unfortunately, getting "bodies" to fill open slots meant that many of those "bodies" were well outside the realm of gifted.

In the end, as the program degenerated, I petitioned to remove myself from the program. The program had become less than worthless as, by that point, it compounded the frustration inherent in a least common denominator oriented education system.

I found this article very interesting in the fact that the author presents the definition of gifted as an IQ of 130 or above and any student with that qualifies is automatically entered into a gifted program. What school actually does IQ testing of it's students to determine IQ's? I'm not aware of one yet. Now to propose we include a child if they have a 'passion' for a specific area? How would that be measured? How much of a passion do they need to qualify? Would the subject matter of their 'passion' make a difference? I bet it would!

While I agree with the theory we can help gifted (even passionate) children become great with the proper tutoring - I can't help but feel it's still a matter of picking out the easiest and most appealing kids. The children that are the easiest to identify as being gifted and the most appealing - children that come from homes without conflicts, money issues, or abuse. The "easy" kids.

Even almost 20 years later - I feel like I fell thru the cracks. Am I gifted? I don't know. My IQ has never been tested. I messed around doing a stupid online test (not even being serious about it) and scored 126. Way back in the day of IOWA Basic Skills Tests in elementary school - I was in 5th or 6th grade reading at a college level. There was no testing of IQ's. I wasn't put into any special classes. I was able to maintain A's and B's w/o any effort and because of that lack of effort - I was deemed 'okay'. But I wasn't okay. My family life was a mess of verbal and emotional abuse and homework was NOT high priority. I would get in trouble for trying to do homework over housework. My parents didn't care if I did my homework because I got good grades.

I am 'good' at lots of things and that's a problem. I have no 'passion' about anything because my mother is a jealous person and 'competed' with me as I was growing up. It wasn't about me but her and Heaven forbid if you didn't let her win or be the 'best'. How can you be passionate about something when you aren't allowed to do it, your efforts are sabotaged, you're punished for it, or encouraged NOT to do it by your parents?

How can you be gifted when you aren't learning to the best of your capabilities? It hasn't even been a full year since my ADHD diagnosis. A lot of the things I HAD to do in school to learn - I now know were some coping skills I had taught myself. They didn't help me when it came to high school and I about didn't graduate.

One of the saddest moments for me was attending a parent/teacher conference for my son at the same elementary school I attended. His teacher was the same one I had as a 7th grader many years before when she was just beginning her teaching career. Her comment basically boiled down to a sort-of apology. She suspected I had a lot of home pressures and issues but did nothing because of her own uncertainty in being a new teacher. She is the only teacher who has ever hinted at the subject - even as generally as she did. All the other teachers 'should' have seen it. I knew these teachers for years and had a couple of them in different grades years apart. What is easier? Ignoring that funny feeling when you 'think' something is going on or just telling yourself that child is still pulling down good grades so therefore nothing is wrong?

So do I think I was missed? Yes and I think a lot more children that have TONS of potential are missed as well. It seems only the children that have a talent that is so obvious you can't miss it - are picked. The smart easy learners from a family environment that promotes learning, musical talents that are unmistakable, or however that talent manifests itself. A lot of the time it seems these talents are only recognized after being developed by the parent(s) to a certain extent (hard work vs natural born talent?) :)

It takes SOMEBODY to recognize a passion or 'gift' and either reach out or be available to that child. THAT is the part that needs to be addressed. I should have been easy enough to identify (for different things and reasons) but I wasn't. I am the classic "jack of all trades - master of none" type of person. I am 'good' at a lot of things, naturally without having to put a lot of effort into it. I could be great at any number of things - but I'm not. And that is why even being Gifted (maybe) - doesn't mean anything....

Being gifted in something is not so great if people around you keep on emphasizing how naturally talented you are in that field without ever praising passion/hard work. This teaches you that you are innately more talented than others in something, with the implication that it's okay to be lazy since you're always so successful, so smart. Unfortunately, someday as classes get harder others catch up to you and you start to fail or fall behind in your specialty you think maybe you weren't so gifted after all, so you give up. Give up without realizing that you also need passion & effort to succeed. Without realizing that all you needed to do to keep up was learn how to work hard and not be so afraid of failure. This phenomenon does happen to smart kids who get too much praise for innate ability and not enough for hard work, and tests have shown that these kids have more anxiety, give up more easily than others when faced with completing a challenging task where multiple attempts are required.