Nature Of Giftedness

Related to intelligence, giftedness is an above-average ability or aptitude for learning and thinking. Oftentimes, young people with gifted intelligence have an asynchronous growth process between cognitive and physical growth. I liken this to the well-known story of the tortoise and the hare where a gifted child's mind is moving at the speed of the hare while their physical growth moves at a slower pace likened to the tortoise.


I think that what makes the nature of giftedness so ambiguous and questionable to some people, is that it requires an identification process. Seeing and proving giftedness may seem arbitrary to doubtful people. As I have recently learned, the process by which schools and educators identify students as gifted can be very vague. Students can be identified as gifted in a number of different ways that may never be the same for each child.

In my own prior experiences, those students labeled as "gifted" were the ones who were in the accelerated classes and who generally earned above-average grades in school. Giftedness, though, can be apparent in many different areas of a academia as well as in the performing arts and sports. Defining giftedness when considering its broadness becomes and almost impossible feat. Only with increased knowledge and awareness of truly gifted individuals can we begin to appropriately define what giftedness may be in the realm of intelligence.