Getting out of school alive

Getting out of school alive

by Douglas Eby

“I have never been a fan of learning in a classroom. Inside a laboratory or a garage, I always wanted to know more, but never inside a classroom...

"Due to my lack of enthusiasm for class work, it is a little surprising that I should have gone into physics.”

That is Caltech physicist Caolionn O'Connell, PhD [above] in her article Riding the Wave of E = mc2 [on the site for PBS program Einstein's Big Idea]. She says her high energy (particle) research is "much fun," and finds she “hasn’t done so bad for a girl who never liked class work.”

Speaking of Einstein: he was expelled from school [in 1894] for “undermining the authority of his teachers and being a disruptive influence.” A teacher described him as "mentally slow, unsociable and adrift forever in his foolish dreams."

One story of his early childhood indicates his divergent thinking, or something like that: when introduced to his newborn sister, he supposedly asked "Where are the wheels?"

Most public schools may not have advanced much since then for recognizing and nurturing people with exceptional talents. Aside from inadequate academic instruction for the many students at the upper end of the curve, a more important aspect may be the emotional undercurrents and attitudes we get in school about our identities and capabilities.

Our self concept, recognition of our talents, appreciation for divergent thinking, respect for high sensitivity or other aspects of being exceptional -- all of these can be guided and nurtured, or corroded and corrupted, by our school experiences, and stay with us as adults.

The book Genius Denied includes stories of students such as Wenyi, whose “school assembly, intended to honor many student accomplishments, became a rally for the football team... Wenyi had just won a national science award. The principal forgot to bring her plaque.”

In his article “The ‘Gifted and Talented’ Fraud” Ned Vare writes, “Despite their claims, [government schools] don't even recognize talents or gifts. ... The official egalitarian attitude says, ‘We want everyone to be the same,’ and, unfortunately for those who are gifted, same means mediocre. The truth is that ‘gifted and talented’ programs are fast-track indoctrination courses, not real academics.”

Maureen Neihart wrote in her article “Cause for Concern...” that gifted girls “typically do not fulfill their aspirations. One reason is that they are unwilling to take risks at critical junctures because of their reluctance to compromise relationships. Gifted minority students experience affiliation/achievement conflicts by associating certain attitudes or behaviors as a betrayal of their ethnic, social or racial culture.

"Both gifted females and minority students receive mixed messages: achieve, but don’t act white; compete, but be nice; get a good education, but don’t leave home; be ambitious, but don’t act like a man.”

Sally M. Reis comments in her article “Internal barriers...” that in addition to hiding their abilities, "some gifted and talented women begin to doubt that they really have abilities.

"Three out of four women [in our study] did not believe in their superior intelligence. If women do not recognize their potential, they usually will not fulfill it.”

That uncertainty of belief in her own talent is one of the key aspects of brilliant but unrecognized mathematician Catherine [played by Gwyneth Paltrow] in the film “Proof.”

These issues pertain for us of the male persuasion too, of course. My recollection of early school [decades ago], even much of college, was uninspired fact-transmitting instruction, with little if any inspiration. And getting moved a couple of grades ahead in primary school for “being too tall.”

Barbara Corcoran is one of the world's most successful real estate entrepreneurs; her New York City company The Corcoran Group had over $5 billion in sales in 2003. In Psychology Today [Dec 2005] she says, “My entire career has been one long attempt to prove to the world once and for all that I am not stupid.” She was dyslexic and could not read until seventh grade.

Her site bio [barbaracorcoran.com] says she got straight D’s in high school and college and had over twenty jobs by the time she was twenty-three.

She also says in the magazine article, “I don’t think you ever heal the wounds of your deficits as a kid. But it’s been my greatest advantage.”

We may think our school experience is something we have endured, survived and moved beyond - but it can be helpful to look at the legacy of that experience in our adult lives.