Special Problems of the Gifted
To answer this question, I must clarify what I mean by “giftedness,” because the concept of giftedness is currently under challenge. The California Department of Education, in their draft of the Mathematics Framework for California Public Schools, K-12, asserts:
We reject ideas of natural gifts and talents…an important goal of this framework is to replace ideas of innate mathematics ‘talent’ and ‘giftedness’ with the recognition that every student is on a growth pathway…There is no cutoff determining when one child is ‘gifted’ and another is not.
Yet, teachers who work with children observe dramatic individual differences in the ability to learn to ideas, to understand metaphor, and to engage in mental activity for a sustained period of time. Ellen Winner provides a description that resonates with descriptions from others who study prodigies. (see Winner, Ellen. 2000. “The Origins and Ends of Giftedness,” American Psychologist. Vol. 55. No. 1. pp. 159–169. The quote is on pages. 162–3.)
Gifted children have a deep intrinsic motivation to master the domain in which they have high ability and are almost manic in their energy level. Often one cannot tear these children away from activities in their area of giftedness, whether they involve an instrument, a computer, a sketch pad, or a math book. These children have a powerful interest in the domain in which they have high ability, and they can focus so intently on work in this domain that they lose sense of the outside world. They combine an obsessive interest with an ability to learn easily in a given domain.
Gene Landrum, in his popular book Entrepreneurial Genius: The Power of Passion, writes about a gifted child named Jeff:
As a precocious toddler of 3, Jeff insisted that he should have a bed instead of a crib, but Jackie [his mother] denied his request. A short time later, his mother discovered him with screwdriver in hand, dismantling his crib and transforming it into a real bed. Jeff attended a Montessori pre-school where he became so engrossed in each project that he had to be picked up–chair and all–and moved to the next activity.
His elementary teachers in Houston, Texas, recognized immediately that Jeff was a gifted child. At age 8, he was enrolled in the pilot program for gifted students at River Oaks Elementary School. In one of his more ingenious moments, he and some fellow students used a modem to connect a teletype machine to a mainframe computer and used it to play a Star Trek game. On another occasion, he created a makeshift buzzer for his bedroom door to sound an alarm when his younger siblings trespassed on his territory.
Jeff became one of the prized exemplars for the gifted program at River Oaks. In 1977, his intelligence prompted author Julie Ray to feature Jeff as the subject of a chapter in a book she was writing, titled “Turning on Bright Minds: A Parent Looks at Gifted Education in Texas.” In it she described him as a bright student of “general intellectual excellence.” While at River Oaks, he saw his first Infinity Cube–a cube with motorized mirrors that could be adjusted to create multiple reflections that appear to extend to infinity. The visual magic of the Infinity Cube ignited Jeff’s imagination and he asked his mother to purchase the $20 item for him. When Jackie explained that this toy was too expensive, Jeff proceeded to purchase all the parts at a fraction of the price and assembled his own Infinity Cube. As Jeff commented at the time, “You have to be able to think…for yourself.”
You probably know Jeff as Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com, or as Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world. In either case, he is the kind of person who demonstrates that there is, indeed, a category of intelligence that can be described as “gifted.” However, giftedness comes at a cost. Biographer, Mark Leibovich wrote (see Leibovich, Mark. 2001. The New Imperialists: How Five Restless Kids Grew Up to Virtually Rule Your World, New York: Prentice Hall Press. p. 73.):
As a child and young adolescent, Jeff was bullied. He was neither shy about demonstrating his brilliance to people, nor about telling them if he believed they were not brilliant. One kid hit him in the head with a lunch box, drawing tears, but no blood. Jeff once called a big tough classmate “stupid,” and Stupid responded by punching him in the mouth and knocking him to the ground.
A chapter on the personalities and anomalies of the gifted in my upcoming book reveals that Steve Jobs, Elon Musk and many other gifted people were victims of bullies and felt excluded from groups. Some survived by building friendships with fellow nerds like Jobs and Wozniak, or as depicted by the characters in the television sitcom The Big Bang Theory. Why do the gifted have social difficulties?
As seen in the biographies of people like Bezos, Musk, Jobs and others, children who are gifted have different interests from most others and therefore cannot self-reference to understand how others feel. In their early relationships with others, they begin to realize that they don’t “fit in.” Their difference often results in their exclusion from groups. From an early age, they see themselves as “different” and the pain of exclusion makes them more desperate to become part of the group–a response that tends to alienate them even more. Sometimes, they fight back by flaunting their mental abilities or putting down others–a practice that visited grief on Bezos and Jobs.
In a nutshell, perhaps the greatest problem of giftedness or high intelligence is the feeling of isolation that comes from being different. In his final years, Albert Einstein was very lonely, and his isolation increased when one of his only friends Kurt Gödel (another gifted person) died from self-induced starvation. When asked whether he believed in immortality, Einstein responded, “No, and one lifetime is enough for me.”
