Plus, people can be very talented in one or two areas, and at the average or above in others. In spite of incredible talent in one area, these people might have overall IQs below a magic cutoff number.
This is just my 2c; if I'm being rude, let me know and I won't write like this in the future....
Well Done Val!
The Full Scale IQ numbers can be very misleading because so many of us have a few monster strenths, or a few monster weaknesses, plus the IQ test makers themselves say that they don't intend for the IQ tests to be reliable at the Right Tail of the curve. On Modern IQ test things seem to break down around 130. We were just doing the Math and My son has a 44 point spread between his highest Subscale and his lowest subscale - I am so grateful that Davidson Young Scholars program doesn't insist that the Full Scale IQ be consistient with the strongest strengths.
I can imagine that there there are a few places in the US where folks with 120 IQ are average, and with 139 are well accomidated in regular school settings - but those places are few and far between. For better or for worse, that doesn't describe our local public school, or even the expensive private school down the road.
Giftedness is only a 'problem' when the person experiencing it is 'rare' - either at home in their family or at school or in their workplace, and the expectations are tightly geared to the mainstream. Since the more highly gifted kids are more rare, we forget that it isn't the level of giftedness itself that causes problems, but the rarity of that particular level in a particular setting and the lack of experience in meeting the needs a particular highly gifted child may have.
Val - thanks for getting me 'unflabergasted' and able to put some thoughts together!
Grintiy
