Practise will make anyone better, it might even make you quite good, but it won't make you gifted
Agreed.
My concern with Gladwell is that his perspective has implied that, gee, everyone can be gifted if they just try hard enough. It disregards the concept of aptitude and innate ability as essential in the equation...
While
innate ability is a factor in ultimate level of achievement, there is much study and debate as to whether it is the largest factor or determining factor in one's achievements. Other factors under scrutiny of research include
opportunity, mindset, SES, ethnic/cultural disposition toward achievement, personality.
Coming full circle with the reasoning that achievement can be examined to retroactively declare the existence of giftedness, is a point used to justify hothousing and tiger parenting... essentially condoning these practices as a means to hone what can later, in retrospect, be dubbed innate giftedness. Possibly this is part of the slippery slope toward declaring that everyone is gifted: Each person finds a niche and a measure of success in life which then "proves" they were gifted all along? Possibly one's measure of success indicates the presence of other propelling factors such as opportunity, growth mindset, financial backing, environments/relationships supportive of achievement, and a buoyant/resilient personality, which took the person much farther than could have been predicted by any one factor (including intellectually gifted level of IQ) alone?
... but also sets up a lot of people for failure.
Some may say it sets a lot of people up to be among the
high achievers of average IQ, who outnumber gifted kids and fill the extra seats in "gifted" classes providing sufficient headcount so that classes will be held (as mentioned in the
study in
this thread):
Third, any remaining seats in the gifted classrooms (typically more than one-half the slots) are filled by non-gifted students in the school/grade cohort who scored highest in statewide achievement tests in the previous year (these are known as “high-achievers”).
There is a
vast difference between
identifying a person as gifted and
identifying a person as selected for a gifted program.
