When Ava Echard was 5 years old, she took a test that placed her in a gifted and talented program; she was separated from the other kids in the class according to her "unique intelligence", which seemed to be higher than the others.
But then, one day Ava started questioning herself what did really mean being more intelligent than the others. It is really an innate and biological factor? Her own answer to this question is negative. She defends that intelligence has more to do with the circumstances of life than with the natural abilities of the person itself, that is to say, if you have an environment that promotes your development it may be easier for you to achieve this higher learning level in comparison of others that doesn't have the same learning opportunities. She mentions and gives evidence that demonstrates that race and income level strongly impact wether or not a child applies to a gifted and talented program. So, in this perspective, the concept of "gifted" as an innate quality is refuted.
In addition, she states that intelligence is not fix, it develops regarding the challenges that we face, and it can be expressed in a great variety of ways, hence it should be considered all the different kinds of intelligence that exist among students instead of focusing on the ones who scored higher on an IQ test. Finally, she adds that labeling students as "gifted" could be detrimental for them, as they can feel pressured to live up to the high standards that people expect of them.
So, in conclusion, she proposes not to separate kids with high capacities from the others by including their interests in the curriculum, investing money in creating extracurricular projects that explore real world applications and advanced topics and finally, promoting the development of curiosity, empathy and creativity instead of identifying kids as "gifted".
Comments