To be abnormal in a normal world
A paper for the 10-year jubilee of the Bavarian Centre for Gifted and Talented Children, 3-4 November 2018 at Freising, Germany
Prof. Dr. Roland S Persson Universität Jönköping, Schweden
Abstract
While true that gifted children certainly hold much promise for the future and need to be trained and stimulated accordingly, one aspect of preparation for adult and professional life that is often forgotten is that gifted children are, in fact, abnormal. That is, they are not like most others. This is a problem in any context from early education to adulthood including both professional life and a later academic life should the gifted child have chosen this as a possible future. The resistance from society which any intellectually gifted individual is highly likely to encounter because of their uniqueness is rarely, if ever, prepared for in gifted education programmes or in any school system. At a suitable age, children will need to understand why they do not always succeed as anticipated. They must learn how the social dynamics of professional life and careers work because of the human nature we all share, gifted or not. Understanding who you are and your function in a context are important determinants of mental health. This short presentation aims at demonstrating a few issues that gifted and particularly older children and their parents will need to know in this respect.
Introduction
"I'm just one hundred and one, five months and a day." "I can't believe that!" said Alice.
"Can't you?" the Queen said in a pitying tone. "Try again: draw a long breath and shut your eyes.”
Alice laughed. "There's no use trying," she said: "one can't believe impossible things." "I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
These are the words of Alice and the Queen of Hearts in Lewis Carroll’s world-famous children’s book Through the looking-glass from 1871. Those who have read of Alice’s adventures know that Alice was quite different in comparison to a typical child in Queen Victoria’s England. She hardly lived up to any of the expectations which contemporary society placed on her as a girl. She simply would not accept anything at face value and take it for granted. She had a mind of her own and followed it no matter what. Although fiction, Alice quite well represents what it was to simply “be different” in comparison to the
surrounding social context and therefore be seen as an eccentric, a rebel, or even a threat to the dominant social order. Gifted and talented children (and of course also adults) are similar to Alice. They experience the same reactions from their social context when they do things unexpectedly and differently, understand things no-one else understands and also know things that few believe they can even comprehend at their age. To deviate from the average norm in any society or culture usually spells trouble!
Are gifted children normal?
Consider that both gifted children and gifted adults often try to hide their extraordinary abilities, insights and knowledge to simply be able to fit in socially. They wish to be like everyone else as far as possible. All individuals, in fact, have an innate and largely unaware
drive to be similar to one another. We tend to conform automatically to the culture
surrounding us. Without thinking too much about it we dress like most others and certainly behave like most others do. Scholars term the process by which we adapt to society as
socialisation. All humans are socialised into their respective social context and culture, albeit
some do it better than others for a number of reasons. But what if you cannot be like most others no matter how hard you try? This is the dilemma of the gifted and talented and especially so for those who are extremely and intellectually gifted. In general, the more extreme you are the more difficult it will be to resemble everyone else and to pretend to be something that you are not.
In this way, the gifted are not “normal”. Since cultures differ in values and to a degree also in behaviour, whether something could be considered normal or abnormal is best defined by frequency of occurrence in any given population. Normal is what and how a majority of people behave, whereas abnormal (or not normal) are behaviour or attributes representing only a mere few in comparison to the majority. Importantly, being normal or abnormal in this sense has nothing to do with disease or disorder! It is, however, socially dysfunctional to be extremely “not average”.
We tend to shun to term anyone as abnormal since it usually carries a social stigma. But irrespective of this, when dealing with gifted children or adults, we need to be aware of what abnormal means. It will have a considerable social impact on their social life and career.
No-one I know off would question the extraordinary assets and potentials that the gifted and talented represent. But since around 1990—because of the emerging global knowledge economy—the notions of giftedness and talent have been tied almost inseparably to success. An increasing number of both scholars and educators now equal giftedness or being very talented with guaranteed success. Sadly, however, this is wishful thinking. The origin of this misconception is no doubt the ideology underlying the world-renowned American Dream which, in the light of science, is and remains only a dream; an idea that is not in any way supported by empirical evidence. However, it must be said also that whether you are a success or not tends to depend on how you are gifted. More on this later.
There are no guarantees
One of the pioneers of studying intellectually gifted individuals—American scholar Leta Hollingworth—made the following somewhat dark conclusion already in 1942:
“A lesson which many gifted persons never learn as long as they live is that human beings in general are inherently very different from themselves in thought, in action, in general intention, and in interests. Many a reformer has died at the hands of a mob, which he was trying to improve in the belief that other human beings can and should enjoy what he enjoys. This is one of the most painful and difficult lessons that each gifted child must learn, if personal development is to proceed successfully” More than 50 years later American researcher Ellinor Fiedler arrived at much the same conclusion:
“Along with the promise of potential come the problems of potential—problems that are often a direct effect of differing from the norm in ways that others are not
necessarily prepared to deal with”
Allow me also to quote a very bright and extremely gifted North African young man; a polyglot speaking many languages, including German, being a scholar in the making, who recently corresponded with me. He almost desperately sought an explanation why no-one seemed to appreciate his brilliance and insights. Yet he tried to make his career as student and scholar at the most prestigious universities that the world has to offer. He had on his own initiative read most of the literature on giftedness and gifted education but could not find an answer to the question which haunted him for years, namely why is brilliance not necessarily welcomed where it reasonably should be welcomed and even celebrated. The following is an excerpt of our correspondence, as he had read and reflected upon the answers which I provided:
I have seen that most people instill in the young the idea that everything is possible, thinking that, by doing so, they will encourage them to be active in the world. I think the idea is dangerous, as many empty ideals, because it distorts the image of life for
the young, who will associate their failures with insufficiency of the environment or lack of resources or… instead of seeing that life itself is a struggle to lift limitations and expand one’s sphere of activity ... To have a realistic view of one’s possibilities could be disheartening at first, but the initial pessimism can be followed with actions that are more adapted to “the real world” and therefore more efficient.
This is by no means the only example I have encountered during my almost 25 years of researching giftedness and talent, but it is perhaps the best example clearly demonstrating how fickle the promise of success and that ‘everything is possible with great talent’ is.
Some types of giftedness are more challenging
Needless to say, most will welcome a gifted athlete, a brilliant musician and also a fantastic author or actor of unprecedented wit and skill almost anywhere in the world. But as far as intellectually gifted individuals go general acceptance in society is never a given. In fact, they are very likely to encounter both resistance and suspicion. It is easy to explain why. They know things most others do not; they think faster and remember more. They solve problems others usually cannot solve and they propose brilliant solutions. However, insight,
knowledge, and generally not living up to what people in generally recognize and understand automatically triggers suspicion and a sense of threat. As Denise Shekerjian found out when interviewing about 40 American MacArthur Award Winners, much to her surprise, she found that almost all of them had had to struggle a great deal for recognition and acceptance. The award winners were simply too different than most others in society. Few would listen to them or take them seriously. People in general have an idea of what it is to be “creative.” But when they actually meet someone who really is they ignore them or discard them, because such individuals never behave as expected. This is also true of
recruiters looking for creatively talented individuals for certain jobs. As Shekerjian concluded “society shuns its heretics!” In other words, you really cannot be too different and expect to always be socially accepted. History, sadly, is full of examples.
Human nature at large
Why is it so difficult for an average population to accept anyone who is extremely different in comparison to the majority? The explanation is relatively simple but is usually ignored because it collides with most education policy and political ideology. Humankind is a social species. As such people exist in groups. That which makes groups stick together is mainly
similarity: having similar looks, values, identity, traditions and so on. Anyone deviating too
much from these risk aversive reactions from everyone else. Note that the same is true also of chimpanzees and spider monkeys. While anyone who contributes to group cohesion is likely be appreciated and even celebrated, anyone who might threaten cohesion and structure in the group will rather be met with suspicion. Groups differ in values, practices and tolerance, but all groups have limits for what is considered acceptable. The intellectually gifted individual is the one who is less likely to be able to successfully conform to all things average constituting the group. Add to this communication problems that go both ways. The average majority cannot comprehend what the gifted individual represents. He or she is just odd or considered eccentric at best. The gifted individual can understand the majority, but will be able to put this into practice only when realising that he or she must communicate on a level understandable and acceptable to them. In this light, it difficult to see how any
brilliant intellectually gifted child or adult could have guaranteed success anywhere.
As seen from the gifted individual’s perspective, and particularly the child’s, there are two dilemmas which will always be ever-present: He or she is unable to identify with most other children and will frequently wonder what is wrong with them. Nothing is of course “wrong”. They are just very different in comparison to most others. The other dilemma is the likelihood of being excluded by others on account of being too strange or because “you are not like us”. It is important to remember that every child, more or less, has a natural and
unaware drive to be like everyone else in their reference group. It is difficult for a child to
accept that they are not similar.
Both of these dilemmas pose a life-long challenge to the intellectually gifted. The reason is that any kind of recognized success hinges on social acceptance and inclusion into main society. Acceptance in turn always relates to the majority irrespective of own opinions or behaviours. This suggests that majority norms, understandings and average ability level must also always be accepted and never be challenged! Needless to say, the conditions for
success as defined by a majority of people, including most politicians, is difficult, if not impossible, for extremely gifted individuals to live up to or even accept. Intuitively perhaps they realise this quite early. As a result, they try to hide their skills and abilities for the only reason that they wish to not stick out too much.
The challenge for parents and teachers
While there is no way for the world around the gifted to ascend to their level of abstract thinking or fully understand their sensibility, the extremely intellectually gifted individual has no choice but to somehow learn how to interact with others outside his or her range of communication and understanding. This will be the greatest challenge of their lives. They will have to approach the ones who for many years perhaps, have shunned them, ridiculed them, ignored them and so on, accept their slower ways and more limited understanding. However, an understanding and wise teacher or parent might make a world of difference in this given that he or she, when suitable, and depending on need and a child’s maturity, can communicate to the child how the world of Homo Sapiens works and which the limits are that human nature inevitably imposes on anyone being “too different”!
In my experience, neither educators nor policy-makers or business people like to hear of limitations. Their modus operandi is nowadays that all things are always possible. But this is an illusion. It is certainly not consistent with the empirical evidence available. Talent and development are never prompted by nature or nurture! The two cannot be separated. Were all things possible by hard work and good teaching only there would exist neither genetics nor evolution. Consider that personality is determined by 30-60% genetics and 40-70% environmental adaptation. Intelligence (IQ), according the latest large-scale study, is determined genetically by 53%. The same goes for creativity. How environment and our genetics function together is a very complex matter which scholars are slowly unravelling. What we now know for certain is that the classical dichotomy of nature or nurture is a false one. The two always go together although ratios vary with type of ability, context and individual. Hence, no-one can become gifted by hard work and brilliant teaching and instruction in an optimal supportive environment only. That is impossible.
It is important to understand that when intellectually gifted individuals fail to reach their assumed success it is not necessarily due to the gifted individual! Limitations to what is
possible are rather dictated by Human Nature and the social dynamics that constitute Homo Sapiens and the evolutionary forces prompting her adaptation to environment for the survival of the species. You can work yourself to an early grave being extremely
hardworking, brilliant, and high-achieving but fail and still remain unaccepted by the average majority.
So, as a parent or teacher, when appropriate, you will need to emphasise not only possibilities of your gifted child, but you must most certainly also discuss feasibility and limitations, and be careful to explain why these exist and will not go away no matter how hard and skilled their effort and relentless their persistence. In fact, if taught to never give up no matter what, which tends to be suggested by the American Dream, mental health risks becoming an issue over time. It is one thing to be persistent and passionate about something but also be able to rationally assess feasibility pragmatically, and quite another to ignore both feasibility and rationality and never experience success despite a tremendous effort. The latter means ending up emotionally exhausted with clinical depression. As both teachers and parents we must, in fact, be sensible and realistic for the sake of your gifted child!
Research sources
• Baumeister, R. F. (2012). The theory of belonging. In P. A. M. Van Lange, A. W. Kruglanski & E. T. Higgins (Eds.), Handbook of theories of social psychology: Volume
two (pp. 121-140). London: Sage Publications.
• Brown, D. E. (1991). Human universals. New York: McGraw-Hill.
• Crocker, J., & Quinee, D. M. (2003). Social stigma and the Self: meanings, situations and Self-esteem. In F. H. Heatherton, R. E. Kleck, M. R. Hebl and J. G. Hull (eds.), The
social psychology of stigma (pp. 153-181). New York: The Guildford Press.
• Fiedler, E. D. (1999). Gifted children: the promise of potential/the problems of potential. In V. L. Schwean, & D. H. Saklofske (Eds.), Handbook of psychosocial
characteristics of exceptional children (pp. 401–442). New York: Kluwer Academic/
• Foust, R. C., Rudasill, K. M., & Callahan, C. M. (2006). An investigation into the gender and age differences in the social coping of academically advanced students. Journal
of Advanced Academics, 18(1), 60-80.
• Gerard, H. B. & Mathewson, G. C. (1966). The effect of severity of initiation on liking for a group: A replication. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. 2(3), 278-287. • Guth, L. M, & Roth, S. M. (2013). Genetic influence on athletic performance. Current
Opinion in Pediatrics, 25(6), 653-658.
• Hollingworth, L. S. (1942). Children above IQ 180: Their origin and development. New York: World Books.
• Hopkins, A (2001, January to April). Genes and training for athletic performance.
Sport Science, 5(1) http://www.sportsci.org/2001/1/index.html
• Kelly-Streznewski, M. (1999). Gifted grown-ups. The mixed blessings of extraordinary
potential. New York: John Wiley & Sons
• Norenzayan, A., & Heine, S. J. (2005). Psychological universals: what are they and how can we know? Psychological Bulletin, 131(5), 763-784.
• Persson, R. S. (2005). Voices in the wilderness: Counselling gifted students in a Swedish egalitarian setting. International Journal for the Advancement of Counselling. 27(2), 263-276.
• Persson, R. S. (2007). The myth of the antisocial genius: A survey study of the socio-emotional aspects of high-IQ individuals. Gifted and Talented International, 22(2), 19-34
• Persson, R. S. (2009). The unwanted gifted and talented. A sociobiological perspective of the social functions of giftedness. (pp. 913-924). In L. V. Shavinina (ed.), International handbook of giftedness. Dordrecht, NL: Springer-Science. • Persson. R. S. (2015). High ability and dreams of innovation and prosperity in the
emerging global knowledge economy; A critical analysis of changing orientations in research and practice. International Journal of Talent Development and Creativity,
2(2), 15-34.
• Persson, R. S. (2014). Through the looking-glass: understanding the social dynamics of human nature and gifted identity. In R. Klingner (Ed.), Make them shine:
identification and understanding of gifted children under consideration of their social and emotional needs. (pp. 37-76). Zurich, CH: LIT Verlag.
• Persson, R. S. (2016). Human Nature: the unpredictable variable in engineering the future. In D. Ambrose & R. J. Sternberg (Eds.), Giftedness and talent in the 21st century. Adapting to the turbulence of globalization (pp. 65-80). Rotterdam, NL: Sense Publishers.
• Persson, R. S. (2018). Evolved human giftedness: Reclaiming science from ideology,
dogmatism, and self-serving bias. Ulm, DE: International Center for Innovation in
Education (ICIE).
• Piffer, D., & Hur, Y. M. (2014). Heritability of creative achievement, Creativity
Research Journal, 26(2), 151-157.
• Plomin, Robert., DeFries, J. C., Knopik, Valerie. S., & Neiderhiser, Jenae, M. (2013).
Behavioral genetics (6th ed.) New York: Worth Publishers.
• Shakeshaft NG, Trzaskowski M, McMillan A, Rimfeld K, Krapohl E, et al. (2013) Strong Genetic Influence on a UK Nationwide Test of Educational Achievement at the End of Compulsory Education at Age 16. PLoS ONE 8(12): e80341.
• Shekerjian, D. (1990). Uncommon genius, How great ideas are born. New York: Viking. • Skolverket (2012:379). Högpresterande elever, höga prestationer och
undervisningen. Stockholm: Fritzes.
• Sniekers, S., Stringer, S., Watanabe, K., Jansen, P. R., et al., (2017). Genome-wide association meta-analysis of 78,308 individuals identifies new loci and genes influencing human intelligence. Nature Genetics (online), doi:10.1038/ng.3869 • Soboroff, S. D. (2012). Group size and the trust, cohesion, and commitment of group
members (PhD Thesis in sociology). Iowa City, IA: Graduate College, University of
Iowa.
• Stone-Potter, D., & Mattingly, D. J. (2010). Life, Death, and Entertainment in the
Roman Empire. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
• Thompson, W. R., & Rapkin. D. P. (1981). Collaboration, consensus, and détent: the external threat-bloc cohesion hypothesis. The Journal of Conflict Resolution, 25(4), 615-637.
• Witherspoon et al., (2007). Genetic similarities within and between human populations, Genetics, 176, 351-359.
