so i was having some Deep Thoughts in the shower earlier (because who doesnât have Deep Thoughts in the shower?) and i kind of figured out why the word âgeniusâ bothers me so much. aside from being a ridiculously elitist word, itâs inaccurate. and itâs misleading.
when i was a kid, i read a lot - and i really mean a lot. in the bath, on the bus, after lights out, under the desk at school, everywhere. as a result, i developed literacy skills a lot earlier than most of my peers. and as a result of that, i was told constantly that i was âgiftedâ - put into special classes, sent to child psychologists, allowed to read books instead of doing actual homework, all the rest of it.
and it fucked me up.
why? because in the end, i really wasnât all that gifted. i was an average kid who just happened to be an early developer. so when i went to senior school, it was a massive blow. not only had the people around me caught up to me (and in most cases, surpassed me) but but iâd gone from being a big fish in a small pond to a medium-sized fush in a fucking enormous pond. additionally, because iâd spent my whole life thus far being told that i was Naturally Smart, iâd never actually learned how to do any work. iâd never needed to.
as a result, my grades plummeted. i developed anxiety. i procrastinated endlessly out of fear of not being âperfectâ. i was stuck in this weird place where i desperately needed to be better than everyone else, but actually having to revise and study felt like a kind of weakness. iâd lost the one thing that made me special. it wasnât enough to be sort-of good at stuff - i had to be the best. and because that clearly wasnât ever going to be possible, i just stopped trying.
hundreds of kids go through this. hundreds of kids are told they are geniuses, prodigies, gifted, and so on, just because they can do certain things that their peers canât. and itâs bullshit, because, ultimately, there is no such thing as a âgeniusâ. or rather there is, but itâs not a noun - itâs an adjective. (for example, you can be a genius at cooking, or at writing poetry, or at debating a point.) there are people who have excellent logical and critical thinking skills, which bumps up scores on an iq test (another grossly inaccurate way of measuring intelligence), but who canât write an essay to save their lives. there are people who can successfully argue their way out of any situation and write a kickass final paper, but can barely do their times tables. these are skill sets. the word genius has become an almost mythical term - a separate class of beings who can do incredible, inexplicable things like multiplying four-digit numbers in their heads or solving rubikâs cubes in the time it takes to fry an egg. sure, these are pretty cool talents, but why should possessing them automatically elevate the person to a higher level than the rest of us? why are they more respected than being hardworking, or kindhearted?
so hereâs a concept: letâs stop praising kids for the stuff that theyâre naturally good at, and start praising them for what they arenât. praise them for working hard. or for getting a good mark in a subject they hate. teach them that itâs okay to not be good at stuff, so long as you try. because - and i wish my parents had told me this when i was younger - intelligence really isnât everything.
