Genius and academic success

Does genius connote academic success? Are geniuses always found at the top of classes?

Sometimes. Sometimes not. It depends upon the genius, and the subject. Contrary to common opinion genius does not necessarily mean academic success. Some geniuses just won't perform in a conventional academic setting.

There are reasons for this. Sometimes people of genius have a very narrow gift - such as Pablo Picasso's - or Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's - that would probably preclude much success outside their domain of mastery. Such geniuses cannot be expected to show universal academic success.

Other geniuses, however, are more universal - such as, of course, Leonardo da Vinci - who could, no doubt, have shone at any subject, at any time, given the chance.

I write on this subject, because of an internet searcher from Singapore who searched with the term: "Genius who fails exams". I am assuming that this is either a parent of a gifted child searching for related information to explain their experience with their child's failure - or a gifted child themselves (or one with a high opinion of themselves, anyway).

While academic success shows high intellectual performance, it does not indicate originality. So, performance in exams alone does not indicate genius (though it may indicate prodigiousness if taken at a young age). Correspondingly, failure in exams may indicate nothing more than a lack of interest on the part of the student. A very gifted child, especially a genius child, may find the school requirements too boring to engage with and may, therefore, underperform, to the point of failure. It is quite possible therefore for a genius child to actually be a failure in school. This, however, creates a very real problem of securing for the child the necessary growth opportunities to realize their gifts. It is best, therefore, if a genius child does not actually fail, because it tends to close doors that need to remain open. The child's path will be ever more difficult as a consequence of academic failure unless their gift is such that they can operate totally outside the mainstream of life and produce their wonderful results alone. In such a case, academia may, in fact, be a total irrelevance.

So, if your child is gifted, but not doing well in school, don't be disheartened. It doesn't show that your child is not, in fact, gifted. It shows that your child is not, in fact, engaged, by the school system. That is a different matter and probably needs a personal solution. Work with your child to find a way to engage them. It is more difficult for them later if you don't.

As I noted in another post, there is a penalty against the genius child built into exams. Generally speaking, original answers will be marked WRONG, rather than marked up. A child of great originality will do less well, therefore, than a dull child who gives the expected answers. Exams are full of flaws in their construction and methods...and this is just one more of them.

(If you would like to read of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged seven years and six months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, three, and Tiarnan, sixteen 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, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, the creatively gifted, gifted children and gifted adults in general. Thanks.)

Taking several IQ tests.

From some of the comments I see all over the internet, it is clear that some parents of gifted children - or non-gifted children - get their children to take several IQ tests. I even hear of children being tested every six months or so. Is this a useful practice and what are the dangers?

Well, IQ is supposed to be quite stable throughout life, that is, it shouldn't change much. So, it does seem unnecessary to keep on taking tests. In some cases the parents appear to have children who are less than official cut-offs for gifted programmes - perhaps they are hoping that a "good" test, will take them over the threshold. In others, there seems to be a perception that the child's progress needs to be tracked in this way.

Whatever the motivation for this repeated testing, there is a common danger, which posts also reveal. There is a tendency among some school systems and a large number of professionals to judge the child on the LOWEST test result. I find this absurd, for it has no sound reasoning behind it. They seem to think that the child's "true" ability is measured by their least performance. This doesn't make sense. There are many reasons why a child could under-perform on a particular day: tired, bored, unmotivated, resistant to the test, ill - etc. There are any number of reasons why under-performance could occur - but what reasons could there be for OVER-performance? What is going to make a child perform above the level of their intelligence? Nothing at all - unless they have done a particular test before, quite recently, in which case there will be an increase from familiarity with the test. (Which is why frequent testing on a particular instrument is frowned upon - and often discounted.) Apart from this possible influence, there is nothing that can make a child do better than they should have done - but there are many things that could make a child under-perform.

Given this background, it is clear that those practitioners and school systems that insist on judging a child on the lowest test result are guilty of an injustice. Their reasoning does not make sense. A child's true ability will be closer to the HIGHEST test result obtained - unless that test result was obtained from multiple testing of the same instrument in quick succession (which could raise it a little, but not much).

So, if you have more than one IQ test result and a school system is judging your child - point out the logic above. A child can easily under-perform - but there is just no way they can over-perform.

Then again, if they don't listen to you and you continue to test multiply it is clear that you will decrease the lowest test result obtained - because you will have more chance of catching your child on an off day. Thus the more frequently you test, the more results you will get - and the more chance you will have that one of them will be unusually low, for whatever reason. Ironically, therefore, those who test their child multiply are exposing their child to the risk of being underestimated.