[Oz-gifted] Re: oz-gifted Digest, Vol 25, Issue 10

[Carolyn]

"In fact, with all the enabling institutions, it was sometimes hard to tell exactly where and how the young scientists' drives originated. Over lunch, John Zhou's mother - whose husband left China after Tiananmen Square, with her following later - confessed that she had despaired that her bored sixth grader's energy was disappearing into computer games, only to be reassured when she succeeded in redirecting it into Web design, and he became a whirlwind of accomplishment (even setting up a site for a branch of his city's library). "I don't know if I was going to fall through the cracks, like my mother said," John said with a laugh. He was more inclined to credit the example of other purposeful kids as the real catalyst for his many endeavors."

Where are they? How many do you need for a quorum? Bugger no selective highschools here - mine have just learned from fellow inmates how to duck sport, make illegal cds, annoy the teacher and cheat on their essays..... chuck out compulsory schooling I say.

"Look at eminences in the past, and what stands out in their childhoods is an animus toward school, a tolerance for solitude and families with lots of books. What also stands out is families with "wobble" - which means stress and, often, risk-taking parents with strong opinions - rather than bastions of supportiveness where a child's giftedness is ever in self-conscious focus. Norbert Wiener, the founder of cybernetics and himself a prodigy who went to Tufts at 11 and Harvard at 15, wrote that prodigious children need to develop a "reasonably thick skin" - to feel they aren't demonized and will find a niche, but not to expect the world to supply a spotlight. Simonton speaks of the importance of being able to be "on the failure track for a while, take time off, take a real risk." Creativity and innovation, he says he is convinced, depend on "exposure to the unusual, to the diverse, to heterogeneity," which inspires a "recognition that there are a lot of different ways of looking at different things." There are also all kinds of ways that this "awareness that there's more than one possible world" can dawn. (The fact that it is built into the immigrant experience is one reason, on top of an ethos of incredibly hard work, that Simonton says he believes kids of recently arrived families so often dominate the ranks of the spectacularly talented.)

No one would recommend throwing more obstacles in highly gifted children's way."

yeah I would :D - the child as labrat - drive the "unnatural" selection of the child's talents - you need stress of some kind, just enough not to kill it :) hmmm and what each kid finds stressful will vary. Flunking an important test seems to be good for some and benign compared to say early death of a parent..... changing schools seems to work brilliantly but only for several months......any suggestions. i have 3 labrats

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