| " I still prefer the term high-achiever to gifted. "
But that's apples and oranges. An intellectually gifted person can be a high or low achiever, class valedictorian or the student who didn't even bother to get a high school diploma, a doctor or a bank robber, imprisoned or running the state's prison system.
When used correctly, "gifted" refers to a person's intelligence and how their brain works, not whether or not they get straight As or are on track to go to grad school.
Frankly, I think that in most schools, students who are smart, but are not gifted are much more likely than are gifted students to get high grades. That's because the smart, but not gifted students, are more likely to be motivated by grades, not the stimulation that the course offers. They also are more likely to give teachers what they want. Because gifted people think differently, they may have such a different perspective that they get lower than deserved grades on their assignments even though they worked hard on them and what they wrote was accurate.
For instance, I can remember older S (verbally gifted) writing a story for class when he was 8-years old. He loved to write, worked hard on the story, and wrote a much longer story than the teacher requested. His story was creative and hilarious. The teacher's reaction? She sent him to the principal's office for using (correctly) the word "asinine" in the story. The principal told my S, "We don't use words like that in this school."
Understandably, my S was very discouraged. |