As a follow-up from my previous post on underachievement
among gifted students and in anticipation of noted psychologist, author, and
gifted education advocate Dr. Sylvia Rimm’s visit to Quest Academy on August 21,2014 (she will lead both teacher and parent sessions), we will outline several
defensive psychological defense patterns that gifted students exhibit. Dr. Rimm
has conducted and reviewed extensive research on this subject, also having
published and presented on this topic within the gifted education community.
Before looking at detailed patterns, we would be wise to
remind ourselves that causes for these psychological defense patterns can be
both external and internal, meaning that external environments such as home and
family or internal causes from within the child are the source of psychological
defensive patterns – patterns that often become so engrained that they are
difficult to reverse. Speaking of reversal, we would be equally wise to remind
ourselves that evaluation and therapeutic solutions require a team approach –
educators, counselors, psychologists, and parents are well-guided to work in
close collaboration.
According to Rimm, the most frequent characteristics of
underachievement one can observe on the surface include “disorganization,
uneven skills, lost, unfinished, or carelessly completed homework, missing
assignments, a barrage of excuses including forgetfulness, blame laid on
teachers, parents, or peers, and, most frequently, the description of school as
boring,” according to Rimm’s chapter on underachievement in the Handbook of Giftedness in Children.
In her book Why Bright Kids Get Poor Grades and What YouCan Do About It, Rimm asserts that defensive patterns can be classified as
dependent or dominant, or a combination of the two. When a child asks for more
help than she needs, she is seen as dependent, avoiding to work independently. Signs
of being overwhelmed such as frequent tears or complaining fit the
dependent category. On the other hand, dominant underachievers are more likely
to “argue with their teachers, blame them for their boredom, demand alternative
assignments, or claim that school is irrelevant or a waste of time." (Teachers
occasionally refer to these students as “lawyers”). In her book, Rimm lists
several manipulations by dependent and dominant underachievers:
Dependent: Help me; nag me; protect me; feel sorry
for me; love me; shelter me.
Dominant: Admire me, praise me, applaud me; do not
criticize me; disagree with me; give me; be mine; see my difference; how far
can I push?
At the root of underachievement most likely is a child’s
lack of an internal locus of control, meaning that an underachieving child
believes that success comes as a result of luck or the ease of a task but not
as the result of effort. “If the child sees no relationship between efforts and
outcome, he is unlikely to make effort,” according to Rimm (I often tell
parents that instead of proclaiming that we are proud of a child’s results on
tests and projects, the child may be better served by hearing how proud they
must be of themselves to have worked so hard to earn that result – also see my
previous post on Dr. Carol Dweck’s research on the growth mindset).
As concerns other underlying problems contributing to
underachievement, scholars point to competition – especially relevant in an
environment of gifted children, many of whom are highly competitive. It is a
student’s self-efficacy – “the belief in one’s own capabilities to carry
through a designated performance” – that is partially shaped when performance is
compared to those of others. “Comparative success established self-efficacy,
while early comparative failures diminished self-efficacy.” Should positive comparative
(i.e. competitive) success be stressed and recognized too much, children will
run the risk of a fear of losing their “winner” status by having too high
expectations set for them. Children whose academic performance measures do not
consistently compare well to others may pursue popularity, sports, music and
drama as alternatives or even worse “state no preference, only that they are
alternative kids or simply give up and remind parents and teachers of their
boredom or complain that they are expected to be perfect like a younger sister
or older brother.” Because gifted students understand that jealousy is not
considered good character, they rarely recognize their feelings about
competition.
Rimm also believes that school
environments, specifically the curriculum, the teacher, peer pressure, excessive
or misguided parental advocacy can be contributors to underachievement.
The Curriculum: An absolutely
central component to offer a gifted student a proper curriculum lies in the
notion of student boredom – research has shown that gifted students frequently
already know half the curriculum at the beginning of each year. Repetitive
curriculum (i.e. “I already know this!”) leads to student boredom – gifted students
report the following five C’s to define their optimal learning: 1) control; 2)
choice; 3) challenge; 4) complexity; and 5) caring.
The curriculum ideally should
support each individual student’s self-efficacy (belief in one’s own
capabilities). The circumstance of a gifted student investing little – if any –
effort but yet accomplishing good grades and significant praise is common and
quite frankly dangerously unproductive if not unhealthy. These students “learn
to define intelligence as ‘fast and easy’ and do not experience the effort
required of students with lesser abilities,” says Rimm. This will eventually
change – either by middle school or high school or college for profoundly
gifted students – and while some gifted students will accordingly adjust their
effort in achieving, some will not. “Rather than admit that work has become
more difficult and they must work harder, they hide their sense of inadequacy
for fear that they will no longer be considered intelligent.” In essence, they
may have lost their “sense of efficacy and no longer believe that hard work can
deliver them to success.”
The Teacher: Obviously, the
teacher is the central gatekeeper to adjust the curriculum to the abilities of
a student. The underachieving student’s display of disinterest, inattention,
and lack of producing work are attributes that do not fit a teacher’s
preference to “teach those who want to learn.” Great teachers first take a look
at their delivery of curriculum and their relationship with an underachieving
student – “a truly talented, insightful teacher manages to build an alliance
with a student who may have lost his or her sense of efficacy in the classroom.”
Peer Pressure: Popularity appears
to be the highest priority by the time students reach the middle grades. Rimm reports on a 2005 survey of over 5,000
students in 3rd through 8th grade that popularity ranked
highest among their worries, tied only with terrorism. Rimm reports that by
third grade, 15 percent of the students reported that they “worried a lot about
being popular with the opposite sex, and surprisingly, slightly more boys
worried than girls.” Due to this peer pressure, gifted students may
deliberately not turn in homework or refuse to study due to their preference
for average grades. “A discerning adult can often prevent that from becoming a
pattern, but once initiated, underachieving to be ‘cool’ can take on a life of
its own,” according to Rimm.
Parent Advocacy Gone Awry:
There is no doubt that parents should be able to communicate (and be heard) on
the needs of their gifted students, for it is indeed most plausible that parents
may indeed know more about specific skills their kids demonstrate. “Nevertheless,
it is possible that parents’ legitimate advocacy can initiate an underachieving
pattern. If the advocacy is conducted in a manner that shows disrespect for the
teacher, it empowers the student to believe they can challenge the teacher and
be victorious when they are expected to complete a task that they view as
unpleasant. Thus, the power granted to the student initially to provide
challenge can be easily misused by both parents and students if the student can
make an argument for the irrelevance of the curriculum and material.” Teachers
may be familiar with students who fervently argue that there is no useful role
for tedious learning material such as grammar.
Rimm also points to factors of
underachievement originating in the family. Specifically in the case of gifted
students, parents assume that due to their child’s adult-sounding vocabulary
and sophisticated insights, their child is capable of making independent decisions
early in life – often confounded by the parental encouragement to think for
themselves (and, therefore, think “differently than their parents”). It is as
if gifted children may potentially be “set up” to argue; and “the arguing by
over-empowered children easily becomes argument for the sake of winning rather
than intellectual discussion.” Rimm further states that “once power is granted,
it is not easily taken away. If children are accustomed to making decisions,
they will not accomplish challenging or unpleasant tasks that are not of their
own choosing.”
