The notationally gifted

What is a notationally gifted child? Well, it is a child gifted in the use of common notation: that is words and numbers. It is, in fact, what most people commonly think of as gifted.

Yet, there is a problem with this idea of the gifted person as notationally gifted. You see, many gifted children and gifted adults are NOT notationally gifted, and yet are gifted in some definite, real, tangible sense. They may have a gift for music, or art, or may be particularly good with spatial thinking. They may be gifted socially - or may have the kind of inner wisdom that allows them to understand themselves very well (intrapersonal intelligence). These latter types might be good poets or writers, or other kinds of artists who draw on a knowledge of the self. They might even be gifted in a sense that most people don't even consider to be gifted: kinaesthetically gifted - that is, gifted in movement. Such people may be fine dancers or great athletes. They, too, possess a gift. Yet, none of these categories of people might show up on a conventional IQ test, as "gifted" - for they are not necessarily notationally gifted, as well.

So, the common idea of the gifted, which coincides with the concept of the "notationally gifted" is very limiting. It constrains our understanding of what a gifted person may be, and excludes, in fact, most gifted people. There are many more kinds of gifted people out there, than are described by the ability to use words and numbers well. Yet, the problem with most gifted programs and the thinking behind them, is that giftedness will manifest in a gift for words and numbers. This is not necessarily so. Such people are just a subset of the gifted people in the world.

I am not denying the importance of notational giftedness - for such gift is the foundation of effectiveness in the academic world and all its allied professions - but there is more to giftedness than that. We deprive the world of the gifts of the many and varied gifted, if we refuse to see the full range of gifted people among us. Some who are musically or artistically or kinaesthetically gifted, may also be notationally gifted, too. However, many of them will not be. Their gift will stand apart from the more common academic gifts. Let us not exclude them from the opportunities they need to grow just because they don't fit our common understanding of what a "gifted" person is. Picasso wasn't much of an everyday student - but in his art, he shone. I doubt whether he would have been identified as "gifted" by a program that used IQ tests alone to determine membership - but that he had a gift, is self-evident, to anyone who has seen his art. The same may be said by many thousands of unknown gifted people, out there in the world. Many of them will remain unidentified and unsupported, because the educational screening systems are using too narrow a criteria to define giftedness. Giftedness is not just about pure intellect (in a notational sense) - there are other kinds of thinker and other kinds of thinking. We lessen the world, if we ever forget that.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and no months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, four years and five months, and Tiarnan, twenty-two months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, gifted adults and gifted children in general. Thanks.)