Linda Silverman & Malcolm Gladwell on the high aptitude personality

malcolm gladwell on outliers, linda silverman on giftedness, high ability, high aptitude personality

Dr. Linda Silverman on gifted children

“The natural trajectory of giftedness in childhood is not a six-figure salary, perfect happiness, and a guaranteed place in Who’s Who. It is the deepening of the personality, the strengthening of one’s value system, the creation of greater and greater challenges for oneself…becoming a better person and helping make this a better world.”

Malcolm Gladwell That quote by Dr. Linda Silverman, director of the Gifted Child Development Center, is a reminder that even for those who are gifted and talented, reaching for excellence and making positive contributions is not automatic or assured.

(The quote is from my article Reaching for Excellence: Gifted Students)

Outliers

Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point and Blink, describes in his new book Outliers: The Story of Success some of the personal and social aspects of how people become outstanding, “outliers” on the upper end of intelligence, ability and achievement curves.

More on the High Ability site.

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Douglas Eby

Also see article by Lynn Gottfredson: Intelligence and the American ambivalence toward talent
http://www.davidsongifted.org/db/Articles_id_10031.aspx
Anonymous

Intelligence, however, can’t be redistributed equally like money or property can be. “Equal opportunity to develop and use unequal talents leads to unequal outcomes,” Lynn Gottfredson observes. Socialists don’t like that or the gifted, remember.
EM

The premise of the so-called “American Dream” is that free enterprise is necessary to effectuate this dream. Indeed, the existence of the ‘dream’ is the rationale for free enterprise. More specifically, pursuit of the American Dream not only demands free enterprise, but (in theory) would be impossible under a collectivist economy, a socialistic way of life.

But therein lies the rub: there IS no American Dream. There never was.

There is only luck, timing and birthright. You have to be lucky, you have to be in the right place and at the right time. And you have to be born into the right family. None of these are your doing. Therefore, none of these are things you can control. And if that’s the case, no amount of hard-work will help. Not a bit.

Now, we have de-bunked the American Dream. And that means we have now removed the rationale for free enterprise. And if we have no reason to continue to allow free enterprise, socialism begins to look a lot more attractive.