Imagine having your PhD while everyone else your age was starting college. Trying to date. Trying to have a conversation. Being social.

It is like a friend of my daughter’s who was admitted to the voice program at BYU as a freshman. Her peers are juniors and graduates. She just dropped out of school and is getting a day job until she can reorganize her mind and cope better.

Talented? Yes (nothing like listening to a group of young women when she was in the group, singing, you couldn’t tell she was there, but the blended voices sounded like seasoned professionals instead of kids, she was seamlessly supporting and moderating the other voices. Invisible unless you realized what was happening. How many sixteen year olds can do that flawlessly, with only one rehearsal?).

But what does that do for her within the walls of the world?

I worry about my child being able to relate to her peers. There is a point where you get too far out of touch.

Anyway, thanks for this discussion, it has helped me reflect.

I propose we institute a Gifted Sunday School class where the truly righteous and pure-in-heart can shine, to each other. You can be the first class president.

I probably agree with you, queuno, but I’m not sure what you mean by “people”–you wish students would give non-Ivy League schools as serious consideration as Harvard, for the sake of their own happiness? Or you wish employers would refrain from assuming a Harvard degree, for example, is superior to a BYU degree?

Thanks, ECS. I seem to have sunk into happy mediocrity as well–I’m content (most of the time) to do several things badly, and no one thing particularly well.

Nice comment, Kaimi. At the age of 13 I chose the viola for the same reason I think many violists come to it: I wanted to be different. But although I like its sound, it’s not a particularly good fit for me since most of its solo repertoire is confined to the 20th century, and my musical interests are rooted in the early 18th. A few years after I quit I took up the violin.

Grades present such tricky issues I’m not sure where to begin. Obviously, as you say, some evaluation is necessary and even valuable and can give indications for improvement (as painful as that may be). Grades, as imprecise and problematic as they are, can also serve as an important sorting mechanism–people who get a D in German 101 probably don’t want to sign up for German 102 the following semester. But I want to believe it’s possible for us not to base our identities around these sorting mechanisms–they’re simply evaluations of our knowledge and abilities at one time, and by one measure. What I see as problematic about “gifted” programs is the way they construct and reinforce a particular identity that centers on performance.

Many moons ago I “shopped” a course on Celtic paganism (attended the first week to decide whether or not to take it). The professor made it clear from the first lecture that he was on a crusade to single-handedly combat grade inflation, and that a B in his course was a “very good grade.” Most of the shoppers predictably disappeared after this lecture, but in spite of my reservations (I intended to apply to PhD programs and knew my grades mattered), I stayed in the course. And I’m glad I did. It was my first academic exposure to religious anthropology, and I loved it, and I’m glad I took that risk. I want to be willing to take academic risks.

But it is a risk. We all know that grades vary widely, that an A in one course is equivalent to a B in another. But admissions’ committees only have a limited, imperfect set of data regarding our abilities, knowledge, and willingness to work. I don’t have any grand solutions.

Such good points, Lynnette! Where are all the baby products that make your little darling more compassionate, I wonder?

Ziff, it’s an interesting and disturing possibility that people want, not money, but more money than other people.

I love your comment, Anna. (Those of us who are recovering success-mongers have to stick together!)

I like your points, Woodhead, although I’m still somewhat uncomfortable with the term “gifted.” Phrases like “musically inclined” or “canny about computers” sit better with me. I’m not convinced “gifted” is a fact so much as it is a status, and I think interest and investment in time and energy play a huge role in determining what we’re “gifted” at–hence, our abilities are not “gifts” exactly, since for the most part they were not given to us but required effort on our parts. As a result, they’re not stable either.

The adjective ‘gifted’ does not need to be judgemental. It can be a recognition of fact. We are fortunate in our ward to have several ‘gifted’ musicians. I say that as a recognition that their ability is better than mine. It does NOT mean they are better people than I.
I am a computer consultant, my ‘computer skills’ had better be ‘better’ than theirs – that is why they are paying me lots of money. Does this mean I am ‘better’ then them? NO. It merely means my skills in a specific area are better.
Am I ‘gifted’ in the sense my IQ is higher than most – OK. Does this make me a ‘better person’? No. In fact, a ‘non-gifted’ person who studied economics would be better in handling an economic problem than I. (But I’ll bet I could design a better network!)
Neither of us is ‘better’ or of greater worth than the other.
The term ‘gifted’ should not be a judgement of any other person’s ‘worth’ – ever.

Even as a small child I was driven by an intense desire to “succeed,” whatever that means. Then one evening during my junior year of college, in a horrifying moment I have since dubbed Depressing Epiphany #2, I suddenly realized that this was pride, pure and simple. Perhaps the objects of my pride were academic accolades rather than the riches and costly apparel of Book of Mormon peoples, but the pattern was exactly the same. Because of my hunger for recognition, my efforts were focused on impressions rather than reality, looking good rather than being good. Worse, I apparently cared about more about whether other people were clapping for me than whether I was serving them.

It was indescribably traumatic to realize this about myself. I was reeling for months afterward, and in some sense I don’t think I’ve ever recovered.

Would being brilliant by our current standards be just as desirable if, through some bizarre mutation, everyone else on the planet suddenly became even more brilliant?

I don’t have a source, but my memory is that psychologists have asked people a similar question about income and found that it’s the relative standing we care about more than the absolute. For example, most people respond that, given a fixed dollar value, they would rather make $80k in a context where everyone else makes $60k than make $100k in a context where everyone else makes $120k.

Of course, then I was reading the economist Steven Landsburg’s book More Sex is Safer Sex, and he pooh-poohs this idea. I don’t recall if he said that economists had found differently or if he was just saying that the result seemed unreasonable to him. Certainly, although he didn’t raise this point, you might question whether respondents in the psychological studies were influenced by being unable to imagine a world in which dollar values are constant but incomes change so much.

Anyway, this might be one more evidence that, as Kaimi suggests, we’re wired by evolution to view things in competitive terms.

I’m also intrigued by the question you raise about ultimate ends, which is also touched on in Stephen’s thought-provoking comment (#2). What exactly is the purpose of raising a brilliant child? Is it so that they will they be happier? Is it so that they will make the world a better place? I’m not a parent, but I can’t help noticing the prevalence of products promising to make your children smarter. And I’ve never seen an equivalent to “Baby Genius” products which promises to instill your child with compassion, or honesty. (Not that I’m thinking such things are best taught by CD-ROMs; just that it’s a telling indicator of what’s socially valued.)

Seriously though, I like the way Drew Carey gives points on Whose Line Is It anyway? Regardless of the outcome of the game, he always says “ten thousand points for everybody!”

It’s an interesting question. There’s a lot in your post; one thing it made me think about (and I think about this every now and then) is, why do we sort, and why do we use the criteria we use?

To some degree, we sort because we have to. I’ve got to give some of my students A’s, and some of them C’s. It’s built in to the school rules, because it’s what employers want.

And so, I’ve got to draw arbitrary lines. If you’re between 65 and 72 raw points, you’re a C. 73 to 78, a C+. On the edges, there’s far more intra- than there is inter-grade variation. The student with a 72 is far more similar to the student with a 73 than she is to the 65. And the 73 is closer to her than she is to the 78.

And of course, there are twenty different reasonable ways the exam could be graded to begin with. Not that these are completely arbitrary. An A to F shift is unlikely. A strong exam is likely to get a good grade from most professors. But different professors do grade differently. I might give an exam an 80, while one colleague would give the same exam a 75, and another would give it an 85. And then you look at the curve, and try to find natural dividing lines that give a reasonable average class grade, not too many As or Cs, and all of a sudden, the exact same exam could reasonably be called anything from a C to an A-minus. Depending on how it’s graded, and how classmates do, and how clusters of exams fall on the curve. (A tightly packed curve would have the A’s stopping in the 90′s, and so even the 85 wouldn’t get an A-minus. But a more loosely packed curve could move the A-minus line down quite a bit.)

So the lines of greatness are often really quite arbitrary. And they’re based on demand. Institutions _want_ sorting mechanisms. They want to be able to easily tell which students they should hire, or which undergrads to let into their law school. And they’ll gladly take a flawed sorting mechanism over no sorting mechanism.

(It’s possible for outliers with real market power to buck this demand. Yale famously doesn’t grade first-year students. But then, they’re Yale.)

Which is, I guess, a roundabout way of saying that you’re absolutely right. Basing one’s own self-worth or self-image on other-assigned grades is extremely risky. Ultimately, given the arbitrariness of grades, it sets a person up for a fall. I can see why students are paralyzed.

(At the same time, I appreciate the feedback that a grade gives; the motivation that it can provide. Many people are naturally lazy, and providing a grade helps focus attention on areas that need help.)

And your observation about needing to be not just brilliant, but _more brilliant_ — that’s brilliant. But seriously, you’re right, and the reality isn’t a pretty one. The benefit of being brilliant isn’t just being brilliant — it’s being _superior_, and thus able to outcompete your peers for things that you want. Your specifically more-than-them brilliance (or strength, or speed, or beauty, or creativity) allows you to beat those peers to a better job, a better grad school, better social opportunities, better dating and relationship opportunities. It’s the normal evolutionary instinct. And you get there not just by being good, but by being superior — better than your peers.

It’s fun to wish that things were different; that we were all just pursuing knowledge and pursuing our own interests. But a natural human impulse is to want more. The most driven students want a way to show their peers, employers, significant others, that they’re _more_ brilliant. They want to get in to selective schools. Meanwhile, the schools have an incentive to encourage this. Can you imagine the chaos if Harvard (or any other school) had to sort through ten thousand applications, ungraded, of people who were all just pursuing what they thought was interesting?

The school has to focus its limited resources on students it thinks will benefit it; students have to focus their own limited resources on schools they think will advance them. The same is true socially. You don’t date ten thousand people; you pre-judge and focus on a set of criteria that you think are reasonable (and so does everyone else).

This comment is way too long — I need to get my own damn blog, don’t I? In any case, K., I liked your post. It highlights questions for which there aren’t easy answers.

And by the way, what instrument(s) do you play? I have to say, I think you’re pretty cool, and I’ve never heard you play a note.