I was born in Montreal, but lived in Saudi Arabia between the ages of 4 and 10. There, I attended a British International school, where I was, at least to the best of my knowledge, a fairly average student. Terms like “Giftedness” were simply not part of the vocabulary at that school. Every student had an individual education plan, and small class sizes meant that teachers were able to let us all work at our own paces and select assignments that really interested us. There were certain things that we all had to do, of course, like learn our times tables and endure weekly spelling tests, but overall, there was a lot of room for students to focus on areas of the curriculum that they were particularly interested in.
When I returned to Canada in Grade 5, I found that I had already covered about 95% of the year’s curriculum in previous grades. I cannot say for sure whether this is simply because I was now at a public school, whether it was a difference between the British and Canadian systems, or even whether it was just because the teacher who I had my first year back was not very effective, but the point is that school suddenly became very easy for me. I did not have to study my spelling words, or do the maths homework in order to score perfect on my tests. It did not take very long for my parents and teachers to notice this, and I was referred to the school psychologist for IQ testing.
I remember completing the WISC test with Dr. Roberts when I was in Grade 6 (name has been changed). I struggled a bit with the questions that required me to put puzzles together (or at least I thought I was struggling, my scores were in the average range), but the vocabulary questions were a breeze. I specifically remember Dr. Roberts asking me to define “translucent” and me saying “Oh, that’s easy, that was one of my spelling words in year 2!" (year 2 is the same as grade 1). My verbal reasoning score was very high, and I ended up meeting criteria to be called “Gifted”. I carried the “Gifted” label with me the rest of the way through elementary and high school.
I do not doubt that being called “Gifted” resulted in a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. Teachers and other students now expected more from me, and I was determined to live up to the heightened expectations. This makes me wonder whether I became brighter over these years simply as an effect of being called “Gifted”, and not because I was different than any of the other students in any way. By the time I was in grade 8, my final year of elementary school, however, I was beginning to slack off. This pattern of behaviour was not specific to me, mind you, I had a group of friends who were also identified as “Gifted” and “more-able”, and we started to realize that we could get away with all kinds of things as a function of being labelled as “bright”. We could say that we were bored whenever we did not feel like participating in a class, and we would be excused to work on “enrichment” activities. I do believe that teachers had the best intentions when they created these programmes, but in Grade 8, we spent nearly every French period and about half of the maths periods making movies. Moving making was not an unhelpful skill to develop, but we definitely missed out on content from the courses that we were being excused from. Still, we all received A’s in both subjects, although I am sure that other students who received A’s in those classes did a lot more work and had much better understanding of the course content. Looking back on the whole situation, it was in no way fair, but that was how it was.
Our taking advantage of such freedoms definitely came back to bite us eventually, though. I was placed in the “cluster” Grade 9 math class for students with high maths abilities. I can honestly say that I struggled through the course; I did not have a good understanding of concepts, but somehow I managed to produce answers, time and time again, that were “close enough”. Being in this particular class, my teacher gave me the benefit of the doubt; I nearly always only lost fractions of marks, even if my answers were wrong, and I finished the course with a mid-ninety. Scraping by in such a way can only last so long, though, and by Grade 11 I was failing maths tests. My teachers and parents could not understand what had happened, after all, I was gifted, and had always done well, should these things not be easy for me?
I could not understand either. My teachers and parents were frustrated with me, and I was no less frustrated myself. By this time, achieving high grades was part of my identity. Furthermore, I was known as someone who did well without putting in a lot of time, and I essentially had no study habits whatsoever. I was extremely discouraged by my struggle in maths, and now science (mathematical concepts transferred over to physics, so I was newly having problems in science also), and did not see any other solution but to run from the problem. I dropped all of my maths and science courses, instead switching to an arts stream. Because I could avoid the dreaded maths concepts that I had never really sunk my teeth into, I began doing very well again and was content to go on like this for a while. But the question kept resurfacing in my mind — “If I am gifted, if my IQ falls in the 98th percentile, why can I not keep up with even the average student who takes science at my school?”.
Starting McGill was another rude awakening. Everyone around me now seemed to be smarter than me, and professors certainly did not care who came with a “Gifted” label, as I am sure many students did. It was towards the end of my first year at McGill that I really started questioning the IQ testing, the label I had held for so many years, and what it all really meant. I cannot help but think that IQ tests do not measure any innate ability, but just the level of past instruction on relevant activities. At the end of the day, I do not know whether being called gifted worked in my favour, or put me at a disadvantage, but I can definitely say that it had all kinds of unintended consequences on my identity, motivation, and performance. I fear that labelling students as gifted sets up unrealistic expectations. I also fear that students who do not quite make the cut (i.e. I have many friends who were “one point off”) will be lead to believe that they are not gifted, and therefore will never produce as much, or as well, as the gifted child (or many teachers are just slightly less likely to give these students benefit of the doubt). Of course as psychology students, we understand the concept of constructs and realize that the cut-off point for any label is arbitrary, but I worry that once the label is given, this is completely forgotten in practice. It is also bizarre to me that once you score above a certain level on one IQ test, you retain the label as long as you stay in the school board (I, at least, was never re-tested). All of these things contribute to me asking whether IQ tests really tell us anything useful, and even if they do, whether we are capable of using them responsibly in schools, so that they are interpreted in realistic and helpful ways. So far from my past experience, the answer, unfortunately, seems to be “no”.
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