ALVIN

Underachievement in Gifted Students

It is a warm, Saturday afternoon, and I am sitting in the library of a certain National school in the distant outskirts of Nairobi. I cast my eyes about and admire the impressive collection of books all around. In front of me, a quiet Form 2 student flips through an old textbook. “Which one is that?” I ask. With barely a glance in my direction, he shows me the cover, ‘Foundation Biology, Student’s book 4’ and returns his bored eyes back to it.

 

As part of my intermittent mentorship visits, I had come to this school, my alma mater, in the capacity of a young scientist: a graduate of Microbiology and now a post graduate fellow. To pass by the newly constructed library was only natural, for a library such as this was the place in which my passions were forged and my aspirations were created not too long ago.  The young student before me, an alumnus of my primary school, had also found himself in this top national school after being one of the best students in his province. However, barely a year later, his report cards were utterly unremarkable. He struggled to attain average grades, and his overall performance placed him within the third quartile.

 

But, it is only when one looks a little closer that they realize Alvin is no ordinary boy. First, the book he is reading so casually is 2 years too advanced for him. On close examination of the book’s cover, equations that are the mainstay of an undergraduate physics education become apparent.

“What is that?” I inquire, pointing at the scribbles.

“Oh, the macroscopic formulations of Maxwell’s equations” he states, almost as an obvious matter of fact. After a brief awkward silence, he becomes aware of his error and offers to explain. “Just some equations on dipoles and charges. They are in that book over there.” I do not bother to look at where he is pointing, I only marvel at him.

 

Many promising students with great academic potential often fail to perform at a level commensurate with their abilities. In order to understand why, we must first understand what it means to be gifted. I must admit, it is virtually impossible to define the entire spectrum of psychological constructs that characterize giftedness. However, there are key attributes that make giftedness almost impossible to miss: sharp logical reasoning, an advanced ability to understand and manipulate knowledge, excellent communication skills, a well-developed memory, deep imagination and creativity, insatiable curiosity and advanced interests. Although these characteristics may manifest in different ways in different students, it is the degree to which they are developed in the students that separates the gifted from those who are merely intelligent. It must be noted that many more facets of giftedness exist, and no single student demonstrates them all.

 

A gifted student can be quickly identified with their higher-than-average scores on an Intelligence Quotient (IQ) test. Typically, they fall within the top 2% of standardized IQ scores. However, IQ tests are an insufficient tool to either identify the full spectrum of giftedness or to gauge intelligence in general. The Sternberg’s Pentagonal Implicit Theory of Giftedness, one of the formal expositions available, uses 5 criteria to attempt to capture the essence of giftedness: the excellence criterion, or high ability in a particular area for one’s age; the rarity criterion, or uniqueness of the ability among peers; the productivity criterion that measures prolificacy or number of contributions, although learners are usually judged on potential rather than their productivity; the demonstrability criterion, which verifies the existence of this unique ability through tests and formal assessments; and the value criterion, which demands the area of skill must be valued by the society – a child who is an expert thief cannot necessarily be called gifted..

 

Underperformance in gifted students has been the subject of much inquiry and debate. Exemplary academic performance, after all, is not just a function of the student’s ability or study efforts. It is also dependent on the teachers’ inputs, modes of teaching, student’s attitudes and the school environment. Many factors must come together to provide the perfect environment that will allow them to reach their full potential. However, it is not uncommon for parents and teachers to attribute their “excellent students’ performance” purely to ‘hard work’ and discipline. Therefore, when promising students like Alvin do not perform well, it is easy to blame them. So, to get to the bottom of Alvin’s performance, I decide to peek a little deeper.

“You have exams next week, Alvin, and you are reading a form 4 book. Nothing will come in the exams from this book, why are you reading it?”

He pauses for a moment and lets out a sigh.

“I don’t know. I like it, I guess,” he says.

“What did you get in your last exam?” I probe.

“Ah, in Biology? I got everything. 98%! It should be 100% but I forgot to answer one question,” he declares with a broad smile.

“What about the others?”

“I didn’t do very well in Chem. and C.R.E, and History, or Georg’, or Swahili…but I got 96% in Physics, and 95% in Math.” In the subjects in which he failed, which were the majority, he barely got 50%, and yet he topped his class in those subjects in which he passed, with a 20 point dominance on the second best student in Mathematics.

“I don’t know why I have to do these C.R.E things,” he bemoaned as I asked about his measly 26% in the subject. Although compulsory subjects are aimed to provide a holistic education, Alvin claims they constrain him, bore him and waste his time. When I ask him if he has read his C.R.E. notes within the week, he says he doesn’t even know where his notebook is.

“Alvin, did you revise for these exams?” I ask.

“No, not really. I read Abbot (an advanced Physics text book, appropriate for form fours) and a few other books,”

“I don’t think that’s revising,” I opine. As I talk to him, I get the distinct feeling that the young lad has by far surpassed his non-gifted classmates in Math, Physics, and Biology, and does not feel the compulsion of healthy academic competition anymore. He has consequently adopted a relaxed approach to learning, which although may not be detrimental to his performance in the subjects that he has mastered, it is catastrophic for those he has not.

 

“Don’t you like Geography?” I continue. “It’s got all the cool stuff: tectonic plates, planets, evolution. I loved it!”

He sneers and cocks his head to the side as if he has been revolted. He scored a remarkable 18% in the subject. A little later, he tells me about how his Geography teacher likes to poke fun at him, calling him “Kajuaa”[knowitall]. I smile, but he is not amused. He claims that many teachers do it, but that this one is the worst. To me, the lad is being petty and immature about something his peers wouldn’t mind, but to him, he has been besmirched and is a victim of insult. In return, he therefore decided to cast out of his mind both the teacher and subject, and he claims he cannot wait to drop Geography at the end of his form 2 year. It is not lost on me that this student is going to make a life-changing decision to discard a beautiful subject, just because his teacher was unaware of how to cater to the emotional needs of his student.

 

“But you like Math right?” I ask, perhaps talking about a subject in which he excels would raise his spirits.

“Not really, maybe. I mean, it’s not bad.” Soon after, he starts to lament, quite eloquently, on the torture of endless repetition.

“Why do they make me do what I already know every day? Why can’t I learn something new while the rest practice?” To me, the teacher cannot be blamed for doing his duty of teaching his class, but to Alvin, he should. He believes he should be exempt from homework, group work, or even exams.

“These things are useless. Who doesn’t know volumes and perimeters?” he whines, almost in agony, but falls back to his somber mood soon enough.

It’s not long before I find myself in a heated debate with the 14 year-old about the existence of alien life, and I cannot help but wonder wherefrom he learnt The Drake equation – a probabilistic argument developed by Dr. Frank Drake to estimate the number of active, communicative extraterrestrial civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy.

“When do you read this stuff?” I ask in disbelief.

“All the time!” he announces with an element of pride. The young lad, by the ferocity of his curiosity, had clearly pursued his interests so much that he had forgotten all about his academics. Whatever good grades he got were an accident of his intellectual pleasures, rather than the product of a concerted effort to pass exams.

 

As I sit there with him, I am soon reminded of the advice we are quick to offer students, ‘You can be anything you want.’ Although this may seem like a sound piece of advice, it conceals within it a terrible trap for the gifted. Often, gifted students display multi-potentiality: they demonstrate high aptitudes and abilities in every area that they have interest. Unfortunately, attempting to maintain all these interests is impossible, and in the absence of targeted advice, this gift becomes a curse, and the lack of focus creates a destructive academic and emotional environment full of failure and disappointment. He expresses his frustration that the school’s Clubs and Societies only meet once a week, and all on the same day, yet he is member of the Math Club, Writers Club, Science Club, Art club and the Robotics Club, and he wants to attend all their sessions. I smile. I understand.

 

Indeed, due to their prowess, gifted students face numerous nuanced constraints to their academic performance that may not be obvious. Due to other secondary traits such as coyness and introversion, they are also vulnerable to social and emotional problems, and typically face difficulties with emotional, social and even intellectual adjustment. Unfortunately for Alvin, there is limited research on gifted students in Kenya. Consequently, information on the relationship between these factors and academic outcomes for the gifted students is scanty.

 

Although every student – struggling, average, talented or gifted – requires personalized support to reach the limits of their capacity, the limited resources at any school’s disposal can only permit the execution of a standard approach for all of them. Even National Schools lack provisions designed specifically for the gifted. The challenges facing gifted students are also not a priority issue among policy makers, despite the fact that it is the gifted and talented who eventually end up at the bleeding edge of science, technology, sports and even business. The overwhelming majority of teachers are also not sufficiently trained to identify and handle the specific needs of gifted students. These students are placed in the mainstream with the rest of the students, making it exceedingly difficult for teachers to recognize their unique needs and impossible for the students to exercise their full academic potential.

To compound the problem, in this country, there’s also a common myth that gifted learners have fewer problems than others and thus do not require extra attention from the teachers. This could not be further from the truth. As a result of their advanced intellectual capabilities, gifted students require even more attention and are more dependent upon the teacher. This is because they face even tougher academic challenges that are alien to their peers. The failure of the educational system to spot and suitably support these students therefore denies them a proper education, and this may have serious consequences even in their post-academic life.

 

As our chat comes to an end, I am more convinced that gifted students are very different from their non-gifted peers. They have different emotional, social and intellectual needs, which demand that they be treated and taught differently from the rest. Although a separate, often accelerated, methodology and pedagogy that is suitable to their needs is ideal, it is no more than a dream. Nigeria is ahead of the curve in this respect. In 1982, the Nigerian Federal Government set up a committee look into the plight the gifted. Four years later, the Minister of Education had already established the Gifted Education Programme, and today the country already boasts a number of institutions and programs specifically designed for gifted students.

 

“So, what do you want to be in future?” I ask.

“An astronaut!” he declares, beaming. “And I want to win the Field Medal!”

“You will,” I reply, but deep down I don’t believe it. This system of education has yielded neither astronauts nor field medalists. In the environment in which he has been condemned, he’d be lucky to merely grow into a functional adult.

The problems that learners encounter in school, if not addressed adequately, are likely to remain unresolved even they complete their higher education and may persist into later studies and in life. As the world grows harsher and gifted students are forced to come to terms with their precocity withering into an unremarkable adulthood, feelings of frustration and low self-esteem can be compounded, leading to further underachievement, depression and more serious disorders. Their high and often unattainable expectations and uneven social development puts them at high risk of calamitous disappointments. As I bid him goodbye, I hope that somehow, maybe, he will learn to adapt, find his path, survive, and if he is very lucky, even excel. We shall see.

V