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Maybe inner drive develops at a different time or needs a tweak at the pre-teen years?

A number of top performers faced a very difficult time at some point in their lives.

Going into Hunter at 7th grade has got to be "traumatic" in some fashion.

Perhaps there has to be some sort of psychic trauma or stress to help the child to become more focused? A sort of near-death experience?

A kid has to take a test to get in and top scorers get a spot. So a child has to choose to take the test, or the parent pushes them to do so. Kids at Hunter take the test as a matter of course. Some don't make it into the high school, but not too many.

As for the kids that are not at Hunter and take the test, there is a different dynamic. And that dynamic probably plays itself out in other ways. The parents are obsessing about where the kid is going to go to middle school and high school and testing is big for both and highly competitive for the top schools. So if the child comes from this type of background, there is ambition and drive for the education built into the family dynamic. While parents of Hunter kids may be more laissez faire, like I would have been, ...maybe.

So I do not think it has to be near death experience. There was young boy from Harlem, a few years back, amazing kid. Had a part-time job, traveled more than hour from school each way. Got into 6 IVs, including Harvard. This was a kid that had a tough life but not near death -- not one they mentioned, just a tough life.

Psychic trauma and near death don't make for drive, struggle does.

Ren

I think this is more about self worth and this woman's assessment of her abilities surrounded by gifted students and an ambitious family. At every gifted school there will still be a range of giftedness and the students will know who are the pg+ versus the hg+. So the question then is how someone becomes a striver when they aren't the smartest person in the room. IMO, that is personality, values and also educational experiences rather than IQ. The value I think of a place like Hunter is that the kids are in a classroom of people who also have asynchronous development and where being smart is not a social impediment. So many of the posts here are about getting the appropriate learning setting despite the social levels. At Hunter or schools like it, the testing eliminates or diminishes the tension between those needs. My question to the mother is why she felt she wasn't smart, and whether she simply was not pg in a room full of pg's or she was pg yet still felt diminished for other reasons. Also it is entirely possible that she rejected striving because she was surrounded by it at home and at school. She chose to opt out, without her scores all you have is her perception. A friend tells the story of his 10 year reunion from a gifted high school , everybody thought they hadn't achieved and was worried about telling their classmates their story because they were sure they weren't as impressive as the next guy. They all were impressive, they just assumed the other was more because they were sure their classmates were all smarter. Didnt mean their accomplishments were any less impressive.

DeHe

DeHe,

Your comments are really interesting. DH tells about 1 fellow from his "group" at Harvard. Most went to law school or medical school. Two guys who didn't and sort of forged middle class, manager at Sears, kind of lives do not keep in contact. Even when pushed, they do not respond to emails. One came to a party of ours (had a semi-reunion) got really drunk and talked about how he was friends with Michael and Caroline Kennedy (they were in DH class) and now....

The guy made choices and has a nice life but when drunk lamented. On the other hand, another got divorced because his wife decided she wanted a Nobel prize instead of children. But then she married a guy who got the Nobel prize so she has little chance of getting it.

In this case, the woman did not opt out of striving. But she clearly measures her intelligence against her experience at Hunter. When I say her grandfather was a well known NY politician, he was an amazing man and maybe that was a tough yardstick but I really think it was the Hunter experience as she told me the story.

Ren

The stories you tell are so interesting in comparison. The Sears guy did strive up to a point (or had help getting into Harvard) but the woman didn't even apply. I don't know, I guess I am just more suspect of her rationale. She didn't feel over her head enough to either voluntarily leave or be asked to leave (granted that rarely happens) and Tufts is a wonderful school. So clearly she is quite bright but didn't in her mind live up to the dreaded potential of her at 4, the Harvard guy in a sense fulfilled his potential and then "wasted" it. The 2 seem so different in terms of ownership, he seems to be owning that he had the key and threw it away, she seems to be saying it was the schools fault she wasn't more. Maybe I am reading too much into it. I don't expect all kids at Hunter or Stuy to be Nobel prize winners but I know deciding somewhere between 7th and 12th that you aren't good enough because there seem to be smarter people who work
harder just gives away that potential so it just seems psychological rather than actually intellectual. Really interesting that both lament in terms of intelligence and opportunity, the guilt factor, you are bright, you must be more, what in that scenario could ever be enough, would the nobel be satisfying? Really speaks to our job as parents to make them feel that striving is worth it in and of itself and learning should always continue and that their self worth can't be dependent on comparisons or awards.

And the woman who got divorced, one has to hope that the first rationale was just an excuse to get out of a marriage she didn't want because throwing away a dream as a consequence of marriage seems so sad.

DeHe

Thanks for all your posts!
I just finished Garder. I'm shifting through the Bell Curve now and hope to find a copy N. J. Mackintosh as my middle ground but my library doen't have it.

You mean Dan Peralta. The kid is an amazing Classicist. His life reads like one trauma after another. He was predisposed to bury himself in something as a way to escape.

http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=2046122&page=1


I know two Nobel shortlisted men who suffered horrible injuries as children. They spent years reading as a result.

Milton became blind and was on the losing side of the English Civil War.

Patton had Dyslexia and nearly failed out of Westpoint.

I am not saying you need trauma, but the drive can spill over from mere survival to other areas.

I wonder if going into Hunter in 7th grade is like a mini-immigration experience? Wouldn't they have more to prove?

.

Agreed


Here is some research and thoughts on this topic of being driven: Angela Duckworth calls it Grit: Perseverance and passion for long-term goals. Duckworth Research & apers - Grit etc.

Agreed. plus there is also the possibility that someone will be driven to contribute in a way that happens one-on-one and/or is not public

also Grit - Can perseverance be taught? Tedtalk(video)