According to Jim: the chore of being counterintuitive.

Most everyone who has had a number of years to observe others has already formed a pretty clear portrait of talented children and adults. Yet, much of what we have observed ourselves may turn out to be mistaken or misinterpreted. The truth, in fact, may be "counterintuitive," that is, contrary to common observation.

Perhaps the most outstanding example of our daily perceptions being wrong is that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west every day. It is perfectly obvious to anyone that the sun circles the earth. We can see it with our own eyes! The truth turns out to be counterintuitive and quite hard to swallow.

There are several commonly held assumptions about giftedness where the truth appears to be counterintuitive. Here are just a few:

1. Gifted males are superior in mathematics; gifted females are superior in social skills.

2. Intelligence is inherited. Smart people have smart children.

3. Students who are accelerated will have socioemotional problems.

Since we all can observe the "truth" of each of these statements in our personal lives it may be distressing to find that the truth of these matters is at least partially counterintuitive.

A recent comprehensive literature review by Spelke (2005) in the American Psychologist points out that of the five basic cognitive skills lying at the heart of mathematics, none show a gender difference developmentally. But we can "see" the difference! Yes, perhaps this is the result of years of telling girls they were not good at math, and boys that math is a masculine thing. We tend to practice the skills that we are expected to be good at, and such practices and resulting rewards create differences. For those who doubt this conclusion I refer you to another obvious perception. Only a generation ago it was widely believed that girls could not play basketball. They throw the ball poorly, and can't run fast or shoot the ball through the basket. If you believed that and watched the Women's NCAA basketball tournament on TV it could ruin your whole day.

We can "see" that intelligence is inherited by observing who has the smart children. Well, the answer may well be counterintuitive, at least partly so. We have the Human Genome Project to thank for major advances in our understanding of genes and chromosomes and it seems clear now that the consistent and sequential heredity x environment interaction with a continuing responsive environment results in superior performance, and bright parents tend to create responsive environments (Bioinformation and the Human Genome Project, 2003). The increased interest in the preschool years comes, in part, from the realization that early events have multiplier effects that project powerfully into the future, both positive and negative.

Students who are accelerated surely will have socioemotional problems. Who hasn't observed a gifted person who was accelerated and had some adjustment problems? Well, Nick Colangelo and his colleagues (Colangelo, Assouline, & Gross, 2004) recently wrote a comprehensive review entitled A Nation Deceived pointing out that the research gives a clear positive advantage to acceleration and has done so over the years. The negative experience noted above turns out to be a rather rare occurrence.

Our job as educators of gifted students is to point out to our colleagues in education, and to the general public, the counterintuitive truths of these and many other matters (giftedness is linked to insanity, for example). We should not expect gratitude for our actions anymore than Galileo or Copernicus received gratitude for their counterintuitive truth. Indeed, we may be asked kindly to go away and not bother others with such strange tales. But we should persevere anyway since the truth, as best we can determine it, is an essential basis for good education.

REFERENCES

Bioinformation and the Human Genome Project. (2003). Biological Science Curriculum Study, Colorado Springs, CO: BSCS.

Colangelo, N., Assouline, S., & Gross, M. U. M. (2004). A nation deceived: How schools hold back America's brightest students. Iowa City: University of Iowa Belin-Blank Center for Gift ed Students.

Spelke, E. (2005). Sex differences in intrinsic aptitude for mathematics and science: A critical review. American Psychologist, 60, 950-958.