To be or to do: is a gifted child born or developed?

It is genuinely and rightly considered a virtue in a teacher to observe accurately the differences in ability among his pupils, and to discover the direction in which the nature of each particular pupil inclines him. There is an incredible amount of variability in talent, and the forms of minds are no less varied than the forms of bodies.

--Quintilian, The Ideal Education, c. 90 A.D.

Imagine the scenario: as students file into my 7th grade or college classroom, I require that they hand over to me verification of their individual IQs. Reading these, I seat the students accordingly--the highest IQs in the front rows, where they will hear everything 1 say and be able to converse with others of equal intellect, and the lowest IQs relegated to that wasteland of educational promise, the back of the class. No need to squander my own intellectual prowess and instructional magnificence on students who won't be able to do much with them anyway. If the people in my classes don't have the genetic wherewithal to compete with real brains, I'll do the best I can with their limited potential, but they certainly won't be the focus of my energies.

Absurd? You bet. But, in a way, so is the premise of this Point/Counterpoint proposition--"Is a gifted child born or developed?"--for if human beings were complete packages when they were born, where the role of development meant nothing at all, we would need neither teachers nor parents, but merely caregivers who provided only the most rudimentary accoutrements to keep our bodies alive. The brain would manage on its own, to the extent of its innate capacity. In effect, no amount of enrichment, exposure, or environmental stimulation would turn that intellectual sow's ear into a cherished silk purse. Conversely, those endowed with fine minds at birth would need little tutelage, for as surely as a seed planted in the ground will blossom into its full, innate potential, nothing can stop the gifted intellect from becoming strong.

So, is this Point]Counterpoint little more than another review of the age-old nature/nurture controversy? I certainly hope not, for the boards of this controversial argument have been trod by those much more schooled than I in the scientific dissection of the human mind. Instead, I believe this column asks a different, though relate& question: In our quest to serve the identified gifted students in our classrooms, have we diluted the concept of giftedness so much that the needs of truly gifted children remain unmet?

   So, who are the truly gifted?

      [Howard Gardner] ... never
   provides any empirical evidence
   for his esoteric and quite unrealistic
   notions. No wonder he
   gained high academic acclaim
   and a strong partisan following--you
   only have to attack the
   IQ to become famous and popular;
   however nonsensical the
   attack, and however weak the
   alleged evidence for your own
   systems! (Eysenck, 2000, p. 109)

The dumbing down of giftedness in our schools began when two major proponents of expanded concepts of intelligence, Joseph Renzulli and Howard Gardner, put forth ideas that were based more on political expediency than on scientific evidence. Believing that current efforts to identify giftedness in children were too limited by using IQ as a determining factor, each man went on to propose radical shifts in our thoughts about what intelligence is, what it looks like, and how it is measured. Renzulli (1978) conceptualized giftedness as a confluence of three traits (above average intelligence, creativity, and task commitment), al[ marks of high achievement in the adults whose lives he analyzed. What he has not done, though, is to show any correlation between these later life achievements and the childhood traits or experiences possessed by children of various IQs. Renzulli's work did allow more children to be identified for gifted services in schools, and this was assumed by many to be a good thing. Still, other than the "feel good" vibrations one gets when opening up the world of gifted child education to a broader band of students, there remains a gap in our knowledge base as to whether children whose IQs are above 130 are faring better now than they did when giftedness was seen as a statistical rarity, not a populist concept. Anecdotal evidence (the same type compiled by Renzulli in his "3 Ring" conception of giftedness) from researchers of high-IQ individuals (Gross, 1993; Morelock, 2000) shows glaringly just how apart many "truly" gifted students feel from their less-able counterparts.

Likewise, Gardner dismisses the importance of g, the underlying ability to reason logically and critically first coined by Charles Spearman in 1904, as anachronistic and spurious. In g's stead, Gardner invents an ever-increasing collection of independent "multiple intelligences." Gardner's work has been widely accepted as dogma by many, but it has also been critiqued negatively by respected psychologists, both directly and obliquely, as follows.

   Directly:

      Gardner wrote Frames of
   Mind in 1983, and Multiple
   Intelligences in 1993.... Both
   rely entirely on assertions
   ("What I say three times is
   true"), and give no evidence for
   the alleged independence of his
   alleged "frames of mind."
   (Eysenck, 2000, p. 206)

   Obliquely:

      We interpret the preponderance
   of evidence as overwhelmingly
   supporting the existence of
   some kind of general factor in
   human intelligence. Indeed, we
   are unable to find any convincing
   evidence at all that mitigates
   against this view. (Sternberg &
   Gardner, M. K., 1982, p. 250)

Renzulli's and Gardner's opinions--not theories--on intelligence and giftedness have bamboozled the field of gifted child education for the past generation. The result has been a watering down of options for students who had once been identified as gifted in the old-fashioned individually administered-IQ way. Instead, students are now selected as gifted on the basis of "validity challenged" group IQ measures and teacher recommendations of suspect quality. Ironically, an IQ of 130+ might no longer qualify a student as gifted, while a child with a 115 IQ and a lot of "task commitment" or "kinesthetic intelligence" might be selected instead. Indeed, in diluting the bathwater, we have also disposed of the baby!

Gifted programming, too, has changed in a negative direction, with fewer and fewer self-contained or "pullout" classes being offered, while a proliferation of differentiation strategies for use by all students within a regular classroom has emerged as the preferred format for serving gifted students in schools.

There goes that baby again, for instead of adding to our repertoire of options for meeting the needs of gifted students in our schools, we have eliminated the very programs that have served them well (Rogers, 2002)! Metaphorically speaking, the net for finding gifted children in our schools has been cast wider, but now, into more shallow waters. In doing so, proponents of these inclusive plans are ignoring mountains of evidence related to the genuine distinctions between those children who are "truly" gifted and those (... dare I say it?) who are not gifted.

Scientific Evidence on the Heritability of Intelligence

Although this Point/Counterpoint column is far too brief for a full discussion of both the historic and current evidence on the heritability of IQ, a few studies are worth mentioning. Francis Galton's work in the mid-1800's was among the first to examine the issue of nature versus nurture. By measuring the circumference of one's head, as well as investigating the family backgrounds of 1,000 eminent persons, Galton asserted that "there is no escape flora the conclusion that nature prevails enormously over nurture." (Galton, 1883). Interestingly, more modern scientific research evidence supports Galton's findings. Today, instead of measuring head circumference, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is able to measure actual brain size. There is a moderately high correlation (0.45) between brain size and IQ, leaving much room for other determinants of high intellect, but adding credence to Galton's 100+-year-old observations. Too, scientists have explored the correlation between measures of speech perception (Event-related perceptions, or ERPs) in infants and their later performance in school. As reported, "Auditory ERPs recorded within 36 hours of birth can be used to successfully discriminate, at well above chance levels, the reading performance of children 8 years later." (Molfese & Molfese, 1997). In studies conducted by other scientists, it was assumed that the influence of genetics on measured intelligence would diminish with age and more exposure to environmental influences. In fact, the opposite is true. As reported by Gottfredson (2003), the heritability of intelligence increases with age, from 20% in infancy, to 60% by adolescence, to 80% by adulthood. As she concludes, "This is a truly astonishing finding" (p. 33). Lastly, in the ever-popular studies of adoptive children, a repeated finding is that "with age, [adopted siblings] become less like their environmental siblings and parents but more like the biological ones they have never met. By adolescence, adoptive siblings are no more alike than strangers" (p. 33).

The evidence regarding the genetic influence of high IQ answers the question "To be or to do" most conclusively: giftedness, as measured by high IQ ("the single most valid indicator of potential in educational, occupational, economic and social endeavors" [Tannenbaum, 2003, p 49]) is definitely a "to be" phenomenon. To decide otherwise goes against conclusive--and growing--scientific findings conducted by individuals who have no vested interest in selling a trendy, inclusive view of giftedness to school personnel who have grown uncomfortable with handling the political fallout from declaring giftedness as a providence of the few, not the many.

Conclusion

Leta Hollingworth said it well:

Schools cannot equalize children; schools can only equalize opportunity. It may well be thought to be highly undemocratic to provide full opportunity for the exercise of their capabilities to some, while to others the same offering means only partial exercise of their powers. It is hard for a psychologist to define democracy, but perhaps one acceptable definition might be that it is a condition of affairs in which every human being has opportunity to live and work in accordance with inborn capacity for achievement. (1922, p. 29)

"Inborn capacity": a term describing the genesis of giftedness from a decidedly politically incorrect viewpoint. Still, just because the truth is inconvenient, it is still a reality. No one argues that height, hair color, facial features or personality quirks have some basis in biology. Yet when it comes to documenting the source of intelligence, many people cower from the truth--that the genetic predisposition to be smart is strong and real.

As we look ahead as to how we can best serve our world's gifted students, let us first look for multiple ways to identify their intellectual abilities. Let us recognize that although IQ tests are not going to measure the innate potential of some of our students, they will do well what they have done for more than 100 years: reveal the incredible intellectual abilities of many of our students. And once we discover that there are children whose IQ test scores place them in the top 1-5% of all people their age who have ever taken these tests, let us not ignore the real challenges this finding presents to parents, educators and the children themselves.

I have studied, counseled, taught, raised, and admired gifted children for 27 years. To tell me that their intellectual needs aren't unique, or that almost "everyone is gifted in some way," is more than a denial of reality, it is a decision of disrespect.

First and foremost, gifted children are children--always have been, always will be--but should we choose to ignore their innate capabilities and the impact of this intellectual acumen on the lives they lead now and will lead as adults, we are being naive, duplicitous and ignorant.

Giftedness is not simply what one does, it is who one is.

To be.

REFERENCES

Eysenck, H. (2000). Intelligence: A new look New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.

Gallon, F. (1883) Inquiries into human faculty and its development. London: Macmillan.

Gardner, H (1983). Frames of mind: The theory of multiple intelligences. New York: Basic Books.

Gardner, H. (1993). Multiple intelligence: The theory in practice. New York: Basic Books

Gottfredson, L. S. (2003) The science and politics of intelligence in gifted education. In N. Colangelo and G. Davis (Eds.) The handbook of gifted education (3rd ed.; pp. 24-40) Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Gross, M. (1993). Exceptionally gifted children. New York: Routledge.

Hollingworth, L. S. (1922) Provisions for intellectually superior children. In M. V. O'Shea (Ed.) The child, his nature, and his needs (pp. 10-32). New York: Arno Press.

Molfese, D. L., & Molfese. V. J. (1997) Discrimination of language skills at five years of age using event related potentials recorded at birth. Developmental Neuropsychology, 13(2). 135-156.

Morelock, M. J. (2000). A sociohistorical perspective on exceptionally high-IQ children. In R. C. Friedman & B. Shore (Eds.), Talents unfolding: Cognition and development (pp. 55-75). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Renzulli, J. S. (1978) What makes giftedness?: Reexamining a definition. Phi Delta Kappan, 60, 180-184.

Rogers, K. (2002) Re-Forming gifted education. Scottsdale, AZ: Great Potential Press.

Sternberg, R. J. and Gardner, M. K. (1982). A componential interpretation of the general factor in human intelligence. In H. J. Eysenck (Ed.), A model for intelligence (pp. 231-254). Berlin: Springer-Verlag.

Tannenbaum. A. J. (2003). Nature and nurture of giftedness. In N. Colangelo and G. Davis (Eds.), Handbook of gifted education (3rd ed.; pp. 45 59). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

James R. Delisle is a professor of education at Kent State University and a part-time teacher of gifted children in Twinsburg, Ohio. He has authored eleven books, including (with Judy Galbraith) the bestselling Gifted Kids' Survival Guide: A Teen Handbook (Free Spirit Publishing). E-mail: [e-mail]