"Mindset is about trajectory, not starting point. Gifted is about the starting point."
I said this the other day on #gtchat when someone referenced Carol Dweck's theory of Mindset. Because I totally believe this is true. Gifted is about wiring, plain and simple. It's where you start out. Your mindset is what you do with it. Dweck's research supports that if you believe that you can change your intelligence level, you will do so. But believing that your intelligence is static will only cause you to lose ground. It's the hard-work theory, and it has a lot of merit. Because if you don't work hard, it really doesn't matter how smart you are. There is someone who may have a lesser IQ but is willing to work - and they will get the job every time. They will win the award. They will earn the research grant. Because excellence takes work.
I don't disagree with that at all.
But now we have Seth Godin, guru of life principles, saying that we're all gifted - all it takes is a little work. And that, my friends, is just not true.
He says,
"Actually, it goes the other way
Wouldn't it be great to be gifted? In fact...
It turns out that choices lead to habits.
Habits become talents.
Talents are labeled gifts.
You're not born this way, you get this way."
No Seth, gifted is born. It's not about being the smartest person in the class, it's about experiencing the world qualitatively differently than most people. Many of our most gifted individuals probably don't even look like they are gifted - they don't look like the high achievers of which you speak.
If you walked into a classroom with the teenlet in it, most likely you would not pick him out as the "gifted" one. You certainly wouldn't look at his work product and say he's gifted - most likely he wouldn't have any work product for you to see. He's not what most people think of when they think of the super-scholar IQ nerd. Yeah, his IQ is high, but "gifted" is his ability to manipulate mass amounts of information to create new ways of seeing things. "Gifted" is the ripples of intensity that turn to waves of emotion at the smallest unsettlement of his world. "Gifted" is the way he paces when he thinks, around and around and around until he stops, and you can see in his eyes that he's solved whatever problem he was working on. "Gifted" is being so aware of the problems in the world that they seem to big to fix, causing an existential crisis of middle age proportions when you're 5. "Gifted" is hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting, touching things that others just pass by. "Gifted" is being able to carry on a college-level conversation on underwater photosynthesis when you're 7 years old, but have emotional meltdowns like a 3 year old. "Gifted" is having adult thoughts, but not having the emotional maturity to deal with them.
Yes, maybe many readers of Godin's blog will rethink their lives and see how they can change their trajectory. I hope it works that way for those who need it.
But don't assume that because your trajectory has changed, that means your starting point was the same. Giftedness is about neurological wiring. It's not about elitism. It's not about being super talented at stuff (although many gifted people are quite talented because of their in-born sensitivities). It's not about grades or eminence or becoming a Nobel Prize winner - these are trajectory.
Mindset is about trajectory, not starting point. Giftedness is about the starting point.
Other responses to Godin's post:
Building Wing Span
Watch Out for Gifted People
Red, White & Grew
Gifted and Talented Ireland
Kate Arms-Roberts
Gifted Resources/Sprite's Site
Laughing at Chaos
Ramblings of a Gifted Teacher
Psychology Today/Creative Synthesis
