Maximizing Our Potential: What Do We Owe the 98%?

1. Maximizing Our Potential: What Do We Owe the 98%? Nancy Alvarado 2012 Mensa Annual Gathering

2. Where we stand • Gifted programs are being cut nationwide. • Including programs for arts & athletics • The rationale for education is: • All children deserve to be educated to their maximum potential… • Unless they are working at grade level… • Beyond that, their education depends on what their parents can afford.

3. National Association for Gifted Children • State of the Nation – a report on the status of gifted education nationwide. • Of 36 states reporting: • 10 provided $0 for gifted education 2010-11 • 4 more spent less than $1 million • 15 spent $10 million or more • 14 have reduced state funding since the last report • http://www.nagc.org/DataMapbyState.aspx

4. Times are Tough • Gifted education has never been a priority. • No Child Left Behind has made funding contingent on performance in ways that divert resources from gifted education. • Education for ALL children has increasingly focused on job skills training not other traditional goals of education.

5. Psychology examines giftedness Subotnik, Olszewski-Kubilius & Worrell (2011). Rethinking giftedness and gifted education: A proposed direction forward based on psychological science. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 12, 3-54. Rita Subotnik

6. Goals of Gifted Education • Self-actualization versus Eminence • Views of the gifted as qualitatively different stress developing the psyche. • Subotnik, Kassan et al, 1993 asked: “Can gifted children grown up claim to be gifted adults without displaying markers of distinction associated with their abilities?” • To be labeled “gifted”, adults must display eminence – society has a right to expect this return on their investment.

7. Eminence should be the goal • Subotnik et al. state: “Increasing the number of individuals who make pathbreaking, field-altering discoveries and creative contributions by their products, innovations, and performance is the aim of…gifted education.” • “The world needs more of such individuals...” • “Aspiring to fulfillment…will lead to… personal satisfaction… and unimaginable benefits to society.”

8. What is Eminence? • Contributing in a transcendent way to making societal life better and more beautiful. • Maximizing one’s lifetime contributions to society. • Outstanding accomplishment in the domain of talent is part of the self-actualization of gifted adults. • Gifted education should remove barriers to eminence.

9. As Sidney Harris said…

10. Easier said than done…ask the underpants gnomes Eminence http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/151040/the-underpants-business

11. Subotnik’s Model ?

12. Subotnik’s Model

13. Crucial Factors • Creativity (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990) • Little “C” – creativity in class or office that does not create novel products or new info. • Big “C” – groundbreaking, field and culture altering products or knowledge in broad contexts resulting in eminent productivity. • Motivation • Little “M” – small achievement related tasks and decisions that accumulate over time. • Big “M” – desire for fame, fortune, power.

14. Delimiters • Psychosocial Factors • Low motivation • Unproductive mindsets • Low level of psychological strength • Poor social skills • External and Chance Factors • Late entry into domain • Poor match between interests and opportunities

15. Enhancers • Psychosocial Factors • Optimal motivation (big and little “M”) • Opportunities taken • Productive mindsets • Developed psychological strength • Developed social skills • External and Chance Factors • Opportunities offered in/out of school • Financial resources & social/cultural capital

16. Subotnik’s Research Agenda

17. Questions for Mensans • Is eminence our Goal for ourselves and/or our kids? • Subotnik argues eminence leads to positive self-actualization and individual satisfaction. • What does failure to achieve eminence lead to? Do some find the contemplated cost-benefit tradeoffs unacceptable? • Does eminence require a buy-in to social values of a competitive culture?

18. Identity as a Gifted Adult • Does the Big-M motivation require an identity as a gifted or talented person? • When that identity is in conflict with other aspects of identity can eminence be achieved? • Is that identity fragile? • Dweck’s “fixed mindset” found in stereotype threat may apply to the gifted. • Is there a need to protect that identity.

19. Personal and Social Identities • Subotnik mentions BFLPE – big-fish little-pond effect. Does it hold in later life? • Cultural ecological theory (Ogbu, 2003) may apply to any group that defines academic achievement as “not for us.” • Family may be the basis for exclusion, not simply income, race or ethnicity.

20. Eminent People are Not Nice Single-minded control freak, would not let go of a problem, detail-minded, shouted down colleagues, changed his mind, brutal to others. No sloppy emotions or analog fuzziness, strong-willed, few friends, socially awkward.

21. Social Cost-Benefit Tradeoff

22. Social Difficulties in Highly Gifted • Young gifted children may seem quirky or awkward compared with their age peers. • Have encompassing interests that are different from age peers. • Have sensory issues due to Dabrowski's Overexcitabilities, similar to autistic children. • Have unusual vocabulary and mature sentence structures for their age. • Resent or even resist transitioning from an area of interest. • Enjoy exploring learning topics in more detail than their age peers.

23. The Autism Oddity • Increased diagnosis of Asperger’s Syndrome may mistakenly include gifted adults and children. • Some gifted adults self-diagnose. • Several of the descriptive symptoms of giftedness/autism overlap – obsessive interests, social problems, perseverance. • Focus needs to be on differentiating the two, not on the similarities.

24. How to Tell Autism from Giftedness • Asperger's kids have difficulty with social reciprocity whereas gifted kids enjoy sharing information. • A gifted child will link his or her multiple topics of interest to other areas of knowledge. • Gifted children are often more emotionally sensitive than same-age peers and will respond intensely to the emotions of others. • Gifted children have social difficulties with age peers but not those of similar intellectual ability.

25. Mensa’s Social Context • When gifted adults become socially normal in the context of Mensa, they do not fit diagnostic criteria for autism. • Mensa reinforces a social identity that accepts giftedness without compromise. • Focus on identity instead of productivity goals undermines eminence. • While Mensa does support Big “C” goals, it does not support Big “M” goals.