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What is it about my childhood, my education, my experience
that makes me wince? When I really think about it, it’s not what I expected
myself to say. It’s that I didn’t realize how incredibly helpful and healthy
anger can be. However, the education system doesn’t factor that in. You either
can or you cannot, they forget the process by which people learn, and grow, and
blossom is sometimes not enjoyable or easy. They tell people you are gifted,
thus you do this, or you simply aren’t, thus you are that. I’ve been in what
they call the “high end of the scale or gifted.” And I still haven’t decided if
that’s a blessing or a curse.
Gifted: “A special ability or capacity; natural endowment;
talent; something bestowed without any particular effort by the recipient or
without its being earned”
I don’t like being called that one bit. I’m not sure whose
idea it was to tell children that they have something more than others do, and
that not only are better but that they don’t have to work to be “better.” Not
only did I not have to work for it, but others just have a natural disposition
of being less “gifted.” When you really break down what that word implies, I
can’t help but wonder, who the fuck is giving out the gifts? Is it the man in
the sky? Is it my parents? Is it the amount of money I’ve had spent on me? It
is the amount of time I was forced to do busy work? Is it how many books I’ve
read? Is it how many places or languages I’ve been exposed to?
I attend a school that not only believes being “gifted” is a
real thing, but they are privately funded by two people who made it their lives
work to help “the extraordinarily gifted children.” Is this weird to anyone
else? Because what they actually did is created a school full of well
disciplined children whose parents are of higher class. They have taken the
good students out of public schools, and told them they are “gifted” and
segregated them. Don’t get my wrong, its incredible being at a school that is
at least attempting to be better. The idea is refreshing. However, I think
being labeled gifted has stunted my ability to cognitively learn and experience
the world around me.
Learning curves. I think when they talk about being gifted,
they are talking about children whose don’t have learning curves, they just get
the specific things they are testing them on not real learning involved.
For me, as you might expect, my learning curve has never
existed in an academia setting. It was always easy.
I never understood how to actually learn, until I started
learning from the world and not from a book. Whenever you start a new thing,
that you’re learning because it draws you, inspires you, there’s a learning
curve. You have to put in the time and the practice
to get better. Logical, right? Well I never knew that. I felt some incredible anger
when I started playing guitar and I wasn’t just good at it. I felt like less of
a person somehow, like I wasn’t good enough. Ah! This anger, deep anger, was
the best gift I could have ever goten. This is because I got frustrated enough
to actually learn. I sat down, and practiced for hours. My “better” ness than
others that played music had nothing to do with how gifted we were, but was directly correlated to the amount of time
spent practicing.
I don’t want to be “gifted” at anything. I don’t want the
compliments I get to imply that other people are in some way any less than I
am. Does it seem backwards to anyone else that the kids that have to work less
at school are rewarded more? And the kids that actually have to go through a learning process, which is full of anger
and frustration and wonderment, are constantly being insulted by others
rewards. For example I was always told I’m smarted than my older sister, who is
an athlete. This seems logical, she was ski racing and I was getting A’s. Well,
the thing about that is that she actually has study habits. If I don’t get
something right away, I have absolutely no idea how to approach it, because
“I’m gifted” and never had to put any particular effort into it. This means
that while I did better on paper, school actually made her a better person,
someone who had to create a better relationship to herself to learn. Where as I
just half ass school and do fine, even at a school specifically designed for
gifted children. Therefore, I’m getting less out.
So, this leads me to two conclusions for my own life. One,
the reason I don’t whole-heartedly commit myself to my school work is because
I’m deathly afraid of failing. Because if I fail, then who I am if I’m not
gifted? If I have to try, does that mean I’m less gifted, less awesome? This
seems to be why I’m writing this blog, instead of writing a paper on Shakepear
(who doesn’t make a damb bit of sense and I’m scared to admit it). Two, I no
longer want to be judged on how well I can play the game of academia. I want to
work, work hard, for skills and talents and hobbies and knowledge. I want to
change the way children are educated, and the way I educate myself. Eradicating
the notions we have that learning stops when school stops and that it’s easy to
be better. I want to give people good tools to do cool shit and feel empowered.
Stopping the game of making others succeed, only in comparison to the “less
gifted.” I want to empower people to struggle to find what they love, to battle
to master it, to get angry enough to be better only in comparison to
themselves, to do what makes them happy, actually happy.
If we are going to use the word gifted at all, I think the only way that is ethically acceptable is
to talk about how gifted we all are to have life. We have a breath moving
through us that keeps us alive, we are aware of ourselves and of eachother, we
get to share community and love and trust and stoke, we get to be better today
than we were yesterday, we get to have bodies that are made of atoms that aren’t
suppose to stay together, we get to find being that have souls made of the same
stuff as ours, we get to move, we get to live, wouldn’t you say thats gift enough? That our gifts should
connect us, not isolate us.
Constantly balancing my reality of expectation and “giftedness”
with the desire I have to share my experiences and listen, deeply listen to
others meaning, to be in the mountains, to move my body through space, to see
the magical depths of this life, to connect to the similarities I have to
everyone and everything around me, to be completely complete with that.