Gifted Children

About this book

Gifted children - children years ahead of their peers - have long inspired fascination, envy, fear, and rejection. Misconceptions about children with special abilities abound. In this fascinating book, Ellen Winner uncovers and explores nine myths about giftedness, and shows us what these children are really like. Using vivid case studies, Winner paints a complex picture of the gifted child. Here we meet David, a three-year-old who learned to read in two weeks; KyLee, a five-year-old who mastered on his own all of the math concepts expected by the end of elementary school; and Nadia, an autistic and retarded "savant" who nevertheless could draw like a Renaissance master. Winner uses her research with these and several other extraordinary children, as well as the latest biological and psychological evidence, to debunk the many myths about academic, musical, and artistic giftedness. For instance, one myth is that children with high IQs have a general intellectual power that makes them equally gifted in all school subjects. In fact, these children often have sharply uneven profiles; they may even be gifted in one academic area and learning disabled in another. Another myth is that parents of gifted children drive their children too hard and make them burn out. In reality, most parents of gifted children are allies, not slave drivers, and few gifts can develop without a parent or surrogate parent pushing behind the scenes. Gifted Children also looks at the role played by schools in fostering exceptional abilities. Winner castigates schools for wasting resources on weak educational programs for the moderately gifted. Instead, she advocates elevating standards for all children and focusing our resources for gifted education on those with extreme abilities - children who are left untouched by the kinds of minimal programs we have today.