GIFTED, NOT GUARANTEED: Kate Wiedemann Secondary English Teacher
why gifted underachievers must matter more
The myth that gifted students will automatically emerge as ‘winners’ is unfounded and highlights a gap in Australian education’s approach to equity. LET ME OFFER A HYPOTHETICAL: Bella is a Year 9 student considered mildly gifted since early primary school. Witty in word-play, she makes deep inferences, joins concepts in insightful ways, and solves complex mathematical problems with gusto on the spot. Yet simultaneously, and increasingly since entering high school, her class assignments and exams are a pallid reflection of her conceptual abilities. She avoids homework, except for Maths. In other classes, she distracts herself by researching arcane subject matter that may have arisen in the learning. She avoids activities that practise skills. Her notes – when she takes or brings them – are disorganised or incomplete. She resists encouragement, reminders or punitive measures by instructors to engage in the work, yet claims she isn’t ‘very challenged’. Her marks – except for Maths – are slowly but steadily declining. Her other teachers have passed through phases of puzzlement and irritability to now shrug, saying: ‘She’s probably capable of much more but you can only lead a horse to water...,’ ‘Maybe she’s not really that gifted anyway...,’ ‘If she’s gifted, she’ll be fine in the end…’, ‘Look, I have more at-risk students to worry about…’. ‘They’ve got the winning hand’– the myth that giftedness guarantees ‘success’
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The Bella hypothetical is uncannily representative of the engrained myth that giftedness guarantees high achievement for students, a conception that ‘giftedness will out’ (Callahan 2017, p. 157). This assumption is the handmaiden of other categorical beliefs that has crystallised around the concepts of talent and giftedness, including the innateness and fixedness of giftedness; it’s not uncommon to hear the folkloric chestnut ‘you either have it or you don’t’ rolled out in educational settings (Callahan 2017, p. 153). After all, if we follow pioneering gifted educator Leta Hollingworth’s sentiment that every genius must have been a gifted child (Lo et al. 2019, p. 173), it is understandable that parents, students, and educators alike may fall victim to the inverse illogicism: the false reductive reasoning that all gifted learners are thus pre-destined to
realise their talents. By that faulty logic, up to 10 per cent of our students (the estimated proportion of students in a given cohort with potential or actual ability substantially beyond their years) would have a ‘winning advantage’ in school and life. None of these assumptions are supported by evidence. The reality, as highlighted by the significant prevalence of gifted underachievers in our classes, the comparative underenrolment of students in a designated gifted program, and the pointed under-representation of key demographics who are recognised as potentially gifted, shows there is no guarantee that giftedness translates to success in school, much less in life. In fact, the rate of gifted underachievers has been alarmingly assessed as high as 60 per cent (Ronskley-Pavia 2020, p. 1). Even without stark statistics and in the absence of a universally accepted definition of gifted underachievement (Reis & McCoach 2000, p. 114), teachers know underachievement of gifted (latently talented) students when they see it: students often test poorly; they achieve at or below grade-level expectations in one or all of the basic skills areas; their daily work is incomplete; there is a vast gap between qualitative levels of oral and written work; they often exhibit low self-esteem or evidence perfectionistic tendencies; and they can manifest complete disengagement or negative attitudes to schooling (Reis & McCoach 2000, p 114). The list is long, and checklists, such as Joanne Whitmore’s (1980) tool to identify gifted underachievers, have been helpful for educators for decades (Whitmore 1980). The harms of underachievement are also well-categorised for both gifted and typical students: students are less likely to be identified as gifted or receive important educational services (Snyder & Linnenbrink-Garcia 2013, p. 209); underachievement has negative implications for tertiary study and the workplace (Siegel & McCoach 2018, p. 558 ); it has been linked to depression and behavioural issues; and researchers have argued that ‘the consequences of underachievement represent a loss to society’ and ‘…underachievement may also hamper the individual’s life pursuit of self-actualization’ (Siegel & McCoach 2018, p. 559). Studies of gifted underachievers over a decade after school show their educational and occupational status ‘paralleled their grades in high school, rather than their abilities’ (Siegel & McCoach 2018, p. 562). The dramatic disparity between a student’s potential and their actual performance – and the misunderstanding that accompanies this – led pioneer psychologist, researcher and advocate of gifted educator Sylvia Rimm to label underachievement and disengagement nothing short of a ‘quiet crisis’ (Rimm 2018, p. 8). The issues that plague typical students who underachieve similarly manifest in students with extraordinary potential.
