We Need a Social Model of Giftedness
And a lot more context around both giftedness and disability
I’m returning this week to the topics of giftedness and disability. When co-existing together this is called “twice-exceptionality.” The deeper I get into this work, the more I move away from the term exceptional, for similar reasons as to why “special needs” is a non-preferred term in disability spaces. We’re all unique. Both advanced intellectual needs and disabilities of all kinds are just that - human experiences that are better removed from the weight of being exceptional.
But whatever we call it, we especially need more discussion of disability (and disability justice!) in gifted and 2e spaces. When I’ve made this suggestion in the past, I sometimes hear that bringing in disability perspectives would be “too negative.” I’ve found the opposite to be true. Neurodivergent and disability spaces welcome people to bring all of themselves to the conversation and to think about the intrinsic value of being human, with acceptance and support for all human experiences.
Let’s Talk About Schoolhouse Giftedness
I took a simple intelligence test this week (the k-bit for my friends who know about psychometrics). It’s been a long time since I experienced the joy of flying through multiple-choice answers and tricky yet confined problem solving exercises. As Dr. Angela Lauria often says in the Autistic Culture podcast, I am a “linguistic Autistic” and words are my playground. I completed all of the 90 questions in less than half of the allotted time, missing only two items. I didn’t know the word halcyon out of context (but still got a thrill from needing to look up a new word after!) and by the end of the riddles section, my brain fatigued, and I did not connect the clues to find the word “audition.” The visual spatial puzzles, though not my area of strength, were manageable because they were multiple choice and my powers of deduction are strong.
So apparently I’m still “schoolhouse gifted,” something I haven’t been called to prove in a few years.
Shortly after, I went outside to reconfigure and reinstall my son’s car seat. Following step-by-step instructions, interpreting visual diagrams, and following through on a boring real world task… It’s three days later and that car seat is still not fully reinstalled.
Real world, rote, hands-on activities? That’s not exactly where my “giftedness” shines. And herein lies my problem with the construct. Like all humans, I have both strengths and challenges, and they’re all context dependent.
From a very young age, my interests and areas of high ability have aligned with schoolish values. I love words, playing with ideas, and manipulating numbers - in other words reading, writing, and math (though not necessarily as assigned in a classroom). I’m labeled “gifted” in part because I’m lucky. The things I’m naturally good at happened to be things that let me move effortlessly through at least the academic aspects of school.
The Social Model of Giftedness
It would have been a different experience for me if schools were designed around practical skills like changing a tire, building a shed, or remodeling a bathroom. Occasionally I can be drawn in to real world problems like these (out of necessity), but I have little natural skill for them - they don’t capture my imagination or my attention.
If we lived in a society that valued practical skills like these, I would no longer be considered “gifted.” This discovery was a shock to me when I finally left academia and entered the workforce in my early twenties. 18+ years of being highly successful in a classroom doesn’t always translate very well to navigating adult life. Hence the many, many memes around the experiences of being a “formerly gifted child.”
Giftedness is contextual, just like disability. We rarely talk about the “social model of giftedness” – but we should.
My ability in manipulating language, problem-solving, and numbers are real strengths. My lack of natural talent for visual spatial tasks, slowing down enough to read instructions, and persisting through boredom are also real challenges. We all have strengths and weaknesses.
Schoolhouse giftedness exists. As a result of asynchronous development, intellectually gifted kids have needs that conventional schools struggle to meet and that can even be difficult to meet at home. But I no longer think of being intellectually gifted as being inherently better than being gifted in a range of other talents like building things by hand, social awareness, or even moving through life with a lot of flexibility. Let’s celebrate all the things. All the complexities of human experience.
Growing up as a schooled kid I internalized a lot of messages about what skills and talents were valuable, and which ones were not. It has taken years and years of conscious effort to undo that conditioning. To examine Western prejudices around “blue collar” and “white collar” work. It’s all mixed up with capitalist-colonialist values that I didn’t even know I was learning, and taking on as my own, because they are in the air we breathe and the very fabric of conventional schooling.
Being identified as “gifted” wasn’t a panacea either. As a gifted child, there was no possibility in my mind for having any weaknesses at all, nonetheless disability. A system based on ranking and measuring children, as all conventional school systems are, can never help them to understand the beauty inherent across different human experiences. Nor how to value human life for it’s own sake.
Conventional schooling teaches instrumental value, rather than inherent value.
It’s not enough to learn about say, Pokémon, just for the joy of it. Activities have to be justified, dissected for how they might contribute to future earnings, always placed in the context of production.
The great irony, however, is that what our society identifies as giftedness often doesn’t actually lead to high earning power. Early outliers continue to be outliers as adults. Sometimes that translates into financial success and accumulating wealth (which is a whole ‘nother conversation), but often it doesn’t.
The Social Model of Disability
Disability also exists under far more guises than most people will ever consider. Needing glasses, allergies, anxiety, and depression can all be seen through the lens of disability - mismatches between a person and their environment. If we live long enough we will all experience disability and many of us already do without even knowing it. Disability is a natural part of life.
If I was born into a society that focused heavily on building, and drawing architectural plans was a key skill in school, I would have been identified as disabled at a young age. I have no natural drawing ability nor much interest in the area (in part thanks to aphantasia, but also because I don’t care, just like some kids don’t care to learn algebra). If I had been required to draw blueprints all day long I could have improved a bit overtime, but I very highly doubt I would have ever been considered gifted. It’s just not how my brain works. But many of our dyslexic kids? That’s a school in which they could use their advanced visual-spatial skills to shine. If reading text was not a high priority skill, dyslexic kids wouldn’t be seen through the lens of disability.
I talk to my kids a little bit about giftedness and disability, especially placing those in a social context, but mostly I talk to them about their own unique strength and challenges. I try to normalize that everyone has things that come easily to them and things that are harder.
Unschoolers aren’t confined to an artificially constructed world where certain activities are exulted while others are devalued. They can find joy in things like art, building, and playing video games, and delight in their abilities to do those things well without feeling the undo pressure of being “productive.”
(Side note, I really enjoyed this podcast episode from Virginia Sole-Smith of Burnt Toast this week, in which Ash Brandin called out how so-called educational apps are often designed for the adults who purchase them and thus end up centering perfunctory rote academic skills work, rather than being designed for joy and interest which increases internal motivation. Despite that latter thing being how people actually learn. I say give them Minecraft any day.)
When we reject the idea that getting an education is all about completing certain tasks on a certain timeline, it opens up the possibility that education is actually about knowing oneself and pursuing the things that bring us joy.
Really, what could be a better foundation for building an adult life? And not just an adult life, but a life that brings pleasure, interest, and challenge in the here and now. Unschooled kids are never told they must live for the future. Instead, unschooling instills in them the message that “You Are Enough.” It emphasizes the importance of their current passions, joys, and interests, affirming that these pursuits are meaningful and worthy.
Many find it hard to believe that children will find their path to a successful adult life solely by pursuing their interests with support. To me, it seems far riskier to lean so heavily into adult control of young people and then expect them to suddenly become self-directed adults.
I read this excerpt in a qualitative research textbook this week:
“Much of the theoretical literature in adult education, for example, states that adults are self-directed and therefore prefer to participate in planning, implementing. and evaluating their own learning. However, data-based studies of adult learners have revealed that some do not want — or know how — to take control of their own learning. Since these two notions are inconsistent, a problem arises. Is self-direction a pre-condition of adult learning, or is it one of the goals of an adult learning activity?”1
I’m not sure why the authors seem so confused. Children are naturally self-directed learners, until our schools train them not to be. After twelve or more years of hoop jumping, when we finally step into adult lives, many of us have floundered realizing there’s no easy “next step” on the conveyor belt. No one to tell us “just do this next, like all the other 18 or 22 or 30 year olds.”
Suddenly, and finally, it’s okay to specialize. We have to learn how to be self-directed all over again, and to take back the joy in learning and choosing that is rightfully ours.
Yes, it often feels like a leap of faith to be raising children outside of conventional schooling. In other ways though, it’s the most natural thing in the world. Starting from the premise of “do more of what you love,” as Dr. Jade Ann Rivera says, really does have magical outcomes. If we can trust the process, continue to show up as partners for our kids day after day, and let go of rigid timelines and ideas of success.
There can be a lot of barriers, like racism, sexism, ableism, and capitalism. It isn’t always easy for people to just do what they love and survive in this world. But if we can all get clear on that as being a guiding value, perhaps we can create a world where more people are able to do just that - more of what they love. We can start with the children.
That’s it for this week! I’d love to hear from you in the comments.
- Marni
Merriam, Sharan B., and Elizabeth J. Tisdell. Qualitative Research: A Guide to Design and Implementation. Fourth edition. San Francisco, CA: John Wiley & Sons, 2015. p. 75.
This was such an uplifting read! Thanks for writing more about giftedness, I agree the label is utterly unhelpful but I can also see how having a label can help is figure out the ways we are unique.
I am going through a process with my kids now to analyze what they are loving doing to try to figure out why they find it so enjoyable. What unique skills and values do they have that they can apply to anything they do in the future? Focusing on those skills and values will give them a leg up on being happy as they make choices and work to make enough money to do the things they want to do and have some financial security. There’s more to it, of course, but I’m not sure a lot of people really understand this idea. It’s a good place to start.