The Curious Case of the Gullible Gifted

In my position as a gifted specialist, I am quite used to fielding the myriad number of questions that parents and teachers may ask me throughout the course of any school year. In fact, a great deal of what I do day-to-day is educate those who work with gifted students about what kind of people these students (or, for parents, their kids) are. I’ve helped teachers understand what might motivate and affect a gifted child’s performance in the classroom (“So, if he’s so smart,” the teacher asks, “why doesn’t he just go ahead and get the morning bell work over with? I mean, he could do it in five minutes!”). I’ve helped parents figure out why their own child might give up on a task before she even attempts it (“Why does she become so frustrated and get so worked up about tackling any assignment other than a simple worksheet? These projects that the reading teacher is assigning this year are killing us!”).

In my position as a gifted specialist, I am quite used to fielding the myriad number of questions that parents and teachers may ask me throughout the course of any school year. In fact, a great deal of what I do day-to-day is educate those who work with gifted students about what kind of people these students (or, for parents, their kids) are. I’ve helped teachers understand what might motivate and affect a gifted child’s performance in the classroom (“So, if he’s so smart,” the teacher asks, “why doesn’t he just go ahead and get the morning bell work over with? I mean, he could do it in five minutes!”). I’ve helped parents figure out why their own child might give up on a task before she even attempts it (“Why does she become so frustrated and get so worked up about tackling any assignment other than a simple worksheet? These projects that the reading teacher is assigning this year are killing us!”).

And so this week it was no surprise when a student teacher, one very new to the field, approached me after a faculty meeting to get some help. His question was to the point and not a little ironic: “Why are gifted students so gullible?”

“We were just coming back in from recess and I had my water bottle with me,” he explained. “I was just goofing around with the kids as they got settled and I thought it’d be funny if I pretended to yell into the plastic bottle and then quickly put the top on it—you know, like I was trapping the scream inside it. So I did that and then I held it out in front of me like I was scared by what was inside. I told the kids they better watch out because if this accidentally got opened, there’d be this huge explosion of sound and the principal would probably come running in to see what was wrong. Everybody mostly laughed but—get this—Eleanor asked a second later, in front of the whole class, if that was true! I mean, isn’t she supposed to be gifted?”

“We were just coming back in from recess and I had my water bottle with me,” he explained. “I was just goofing around with the kids as they got settled and I thought it’d be funny if I pretended to yell into the plastic bottle and then quickly put the top on it—you know, like I was trapping the scream inside it. So I did that and then I held it out in front of me like I was scared by what was inside. I told the kids they better watch out because if this accidentally got opened, there’d be this huge explosion of sound and the principal would probably come running in to see what was wrong. Everybody mostly laughed but—get this—Eleanor asked a second later, in front of the whole class, if that was true! I mean, isn’t she supposed to be gifted?”

If we set aside for the moment this student teacher’s dubious tone (is that disdain? disbelief? or, alternatively, possible embarrassment for her?) it does seem a reasonable question: Why can gifted students be so credulous?

The answer is actually pretty straightforward but it’s worth noting that, like this student teacher, many adults are indeed caught offguard by a gifted student’s naiveté at times. Parents, teachers, and friends alike misconstrue these occasions as a demonstration of flawed, uncritical thinking—something that is most definitely not, they reason, the hallmark of the person known to possess intellectual gifts. But, in truth, it may be their own thinking that is flawed. Here’s why.

While it is true that gifted individuals tend to have an advanced level of information about a great many topics, we must keep in mind that they may still nonetheless have gaps in that knowledge. A young elementary gifted student may understand, for example, that: light travels faster than sound; that, unlike sound, light needs no medium through which to travel; that light is made up of particles while sound is merely the result of our ears interpreting vibrations; that both light and sound travels in waves. All of these demonstrate an understanding of the light and sound science curriculum at fairly complex level. But at the same time, it is also entirely possible that the child has never been taught (or figured out on her own) that neither can be “trapped.” Certainly this lack of information, this gap in understanding, is forgivable, but this missing piece may be the very cause of her subsequent comments or questions that sound, well... less than brilliant.

While it is true that gifted individuals tend to have an advanced level of information about a great many topics, we must keep in mind that they may still nonetheless have gaps in that knowledge. A young elementary gifted student may understand, for example, that: light travels faster than sound; that, unlike sound, light needs no medium through which to travel; that light is made up of particles while sound is merely the result of our ears interpreting vibrations; that both light and sound travels in waves. All of these demonstrate an understanding of the light and sound science curriculum at fairly complex level. But at the same time, it is also entirely possible that the child has never been taught (or figured out on her own) that neither can be “trapped.” Certainly this lack of information, this gap in understanding, is forgivable, but this missing piece may be the very cause of her subsequent comments or questions that sound, well... less than brilliant.

Alternatively, it is also possible that the gifted individual has extrapolated what she rightfully does know about a topic in order to make a leap that sounds, to others at least, illogical. Gifted students tend to make a great many intuitive leaps about topics, often connecting one or more ideas in ways that would never occur to the average person. They are able to conceptualize, synthesize, and generalize about these topics is ways that are most definitely clever and even usually correct. But not always. Eleanor may, for instance, recall that last week they learned about electricity her science class. At home that week, she asked her father who is an electrical contractor a great many more questions about the topic: what made for good and bad electrical conductors; the difference between series and parallel circuits; how dimmer switches worked differently than the standard “knife switch” she’d used in a lab one day. Certainly, her understandings about that topic were much deeper than her peers. Heck, she could even recall and explain what an electrical capacitor was! And so when that student teacher intimated that sound could be temporarily “stored” in a device, this made perfect sense to her—as a possibility, at the very least. That is until her classmates laughed and she saw the teacher smile too.

Alternatively, it is also possible that the gifted individual has extrapolated what she rightfully does know about a topic in order to make a leap that sounds, to others at least, illogical. Gifted students tend to make a great many intuitive leaps about topics, often connecting one or more ideas in ways that would never occur to the average person. They are able to conceptualize, synthesize, and generalize about these topics is ways that are most definitely clever and even usually correct. But not always. Eleanor may, for instance, recall that last week they learned about electricity her science class. At home that week, she asked her father who is an electrical contractor a great many more questions about the topic: what made for good and bad electrical conductors; the difference between series and parallel circuits; how dimmer switches worked differently than the standard “knife switch” she’d used in a lab one day. Certainly, her understandings about that topic were much deeper than her peers. Heck, she could even recall and explain what an electrical capacitor was! And so when that student teacher intimated that sound could be temporarily “stored” in a device, this made perfect sense to her—as a possibility, at the very least. That is until her classmates laughed and she saw the teacher smile too.

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Frankly, gaps in knowledge or inappropriate intuitive leaps have undoubtedly caused any of those reading this article right now trouble at some point or another. A salesman thinks that his strategy for gathering clients in a previous line of work will be just as effective as he begins sales for a new product—only it isn’t. A contractor bids on a piece of real estate—only to later realize that it isn’t zoned for what he proposed to do with that lot. Mistakes are made and the results range perhaps from hardly noticeable to something more consequential.

The same is true of the exceptional student who, on occasion and through no real fault of her own, looks less gifted than in front of her peers.