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.
