philobiblius | Entries tagged with underachievement

This is a tardy entry to the Hoagies Gifted Education Page Blog Hop because the topic is gifted underachievement and how could I possibly not have procrastinated on it?!

Hoagies Blog Hope - Gifted Underachievement

Things I know about gifted underachievers:

The parents do not know their kids best, the bulk of the time.
The schools do not know the students best, the bulk of the time.
The kids do not know themselves best, the bulk of the time.

We mostly do not know these kids and neither do they usually know themselves. Sometimes the profile is familiar to a parent, because it fit them or one of their relatives, but that doesn’t mean that anybody figured out how to help that other person and it also doesn’t mean that what the parent thinks they needed is what the child or teen needs.

The schools have been failing underachievers of all stripes for as long as we’ve had schools. See below for more on that.

And if the youngster knew what was going on for them, their lives would be so much easier! Often they can identify a piece of it or maybe two, but it isn’t as simple as just getting more challenging work – or certainly not by the time that the dreaded underachiever label has been plastered on their forehead.

Things I know about not helping gifted underachievers:

A. Following the teachers’ advice on how to deal with the situation seldom makes things better.
B. Following the guidance counselor’s advice on how to deal with the situation seldom makes things better.
C. Following a psychologist’s or therapist’s advice on how to deal with the situation seldom makes things better.
D. Following a book’s advice on how to deal with the situation seldom makes things better.

Why not? Because teachers, guidance counselors, therapists, and psychologists have somewhere between zero and very little training in giftedness and their training in underachievement is weaker than that. They mostly are relying on word-of-mouth and instinct, and neither of those will cut it for either population, let alone the combination.

And stupidly enough, even when confronted with a gifted underachiever, they don’t go out and do the research that might inform them! They don’t.

What research tells us about the causes of underachievement among gifted students:

Merriam-Webster, Etymonline, and several other sources will tell you that “underachiever” came into the language in 1951 – 1953. They’re wrong. It was first used in 1939, as far as I can tell, in E.G. Williamson’s How to counsel students; a manual of techniques for clinical counselors. In it, he wrote:

There are so many factors which affect the correlation between test scores and marks that a prediction of individual scholastic success on the basis of test scores alone is far from perfect. The tendencies of able students to form habits of idleness and "getting by" are familiar phenomena. Other factors influencing this correlation are differences in efficiency in the use of mental ability, amount of remunerative work carried parallel to the academic load, amount of home duties, extent of indulgence in social activities, earnestness and perseverance, health disturbances, worries and emotional disturbances, early school training, degree of interest in academic work, and varying standards of scholarship in different schools.¹

That’s pretty comprehensive, especially for 1939. Add to it racial and ethnic complications, poverty issues, and undiagnosed/misdiagnosed disabilities/differences of one sort of another, and you’ve just about got them all, though probably not quite.

What research tells us about helping gifted underachievers:

Everything and nothing.

If you’ve read my work before, there is a good chance you have tripped across my complaints about the lack of clear definition of underachievement and this other quote from Williamson:

Since the correlation between aptitude and achievement is less than unity, we may expect to find individuals with a discrepancy between their ranks in these two variables. Just how great the discrepancy must be before it is indicative of a "problem" is a matter of conjecture at the present time. Statistics will identify students with such discrepancies but will not indicate the point at which maladjustment begins to operate. We need many more clinical observations before we can distinguish a "normal" from an "abnormal" or "problem" discrepancy.²

Eighty years later, we are no closer to an answer to that conjecture.

That means that whether you learn that there are 3, 4, of 5 types of gifted underachievers or what the six steps you must take to meet the needs of your underachiever will be, you are still almost certainly going to be behind the 8-ball, playing catch-up to a problem you wish you had seen coming.

Research tells us that sometimes it is a fit between the child and the teacher. But we also have learned that sometimes it isn’t – and we don’t know the percentages of which is which! Research tells us that sometimes a parenting style is a contributing factor. But we don’t then know why it was a problem for child X, but not Y or Z in the same family! This suggests that it is not simply the parenting style or, possibly, the parenting style at all!

There is very little replication of research with regard to gifted underachievers or underachievers at all, for that matter. This has been a constant complaint since at least 1965, but it isn’t as if Williamson wasn’t aware of the problem: “Additional studies must be made for each school and college to determine the amount of discrepancy for each school.” You and I both know that was never going to happen, but he couldn’t see how an individual school would otherwise know what kind of gap was indicative of a problem.

Thanks a bunch, Josh. Now what should be do?

Don’t blame your kid. There is a pretty good chance that if succeeding academically were a matter of volition, you would have a child who was succeeding academically.
Don’t blame the school or yourselves at this point, either. You lack data – and when you get the data, if you get the data, still don’t blame them or yourselves! Blame will not help make things better.
Talk to your child and the teacher(s) to see what kind of gap you are discussing. See what the teacher’s perception of the problem is. See what your child’s perception of the problem is. Listen.
Look at what else is going on in your child’s life. Is it full or overfull? Is your child still doing the stuff they love? Have the dropped anything else that is/was important to them? Is there a new thing (or person or activity) that is absorbing all the time and energy? Is there enough sleep happening and how are eating habits? Was there a building change? (yes, that is a documented disruption for some kids’ educations and lives!) Were they coasting and suddenly hit a topic they could not learn intuitively, but had no skills for learning something that required actual effort? (No, do not talk to me about Growth Mindset!)
Ask questions. Don’t assume you know any of the answers. Don’t assume that finding the answers will be quick, either. Be patient! Nothing happening around this at this point in time is going to ruin your child’s life. (I know. This is a nonstandard response, but you’re talking to somebody who had to go through his own life to learn that lesson, several times over. Feel free to ask me about it.)
There are books that have half a clue on the topic, depending on whether there is a learning disability (or some such) or not. The last books I liked a lot on gifted underachievers (sans LD issues) are from 1980 (Rand Whitmore) and 1991 (Supplee). The last book I liked (okay, the only book so far) on physically disabled gifted was 1983 (Maker and Rand Whitmore), though I am working on one almost as we speak. Other than that, I wouldn’t bother. They talk about the importance of having teachers whom the underachieving students feel respect them, among other things. Dr. Donna Ford has some books out for you to consider if it seems to be related to racial, ethnic, or multi-cultural issues in or out of the school.
Don’t just put the kid in harder courses unless you are ready for floundering. If they have not learned to work, then things that are challenging are almost certain to just make for frustration and an even greater disbelief in self.
Don’t conclude that because your child has a disability that therefore your child is not underachieving. That may be true, but one can also underachieve while also struggling with disability or health issues. (This is one of the things that is especially misunderstood by the vast bulk of therapy providers.)

Beyond that, I am not going to give you advice. Because of that long list of potential causes, you are going to need to figure it out or get help to figure it out – but pick your help carefully, please!

Below are some links to other pieces I have written (or gathered) on the topic:
https://philobiblius.dreamwidth.org/9270.html - from The High School Failures (1919).
https://philobiblius.dreamwidth.org/13416.html - A quote from H.H. Goddard in 1924.
https://philobiblius.dreamwidth.org/1152.html - from The Need for Special Education of Gifted Children in White House Conference on Child Health and Protection (1930).
https://philobiblius.dreamwidth.org/2394.html - 1940 research showing that “The fewer American (born) grandparents a pupil has, the higher his achievement ratio is likely to be."
https://philobiblius.dreamwidth.org/1357.html - A Note on the Definition of Underachievement, Milton Kornrich, in Underachievement by Milton Kornrich (ed), 1965.
http://www.joshshaine.com/insideout.html - Underachievement from the Inside Out, Josh Shaine (1999).
http://www.joshshaine.com/charlie.html - Patterns for Charlie, Frances Shaine (1999). (My mother, written at my behest.)
http://www.joshshaine.com/Interests/potential.html - From Overt Behavior to Developing Potential: The Gifted Underachiever, Josh Shaine (1999).
http://www.academia.edu/3769738/Underachieving_Gifted_and_Talented_Students_-_A_Narrative_Overview - Josh Shaine (2010). This is an academic paper, for all that it is written in a narrative format.

1. Williamson, E. G. 1900-1979. (1939). How to counsel students: a manual of techniques for clinical counselors. New York: McGraw-Hill book company, inc..
2. Ibid

This is a tardy entry to the Hoagies Gifted Pages Blog Hop!

Current Mood: amused
Current Location: Wrapped around my finger
Current Music: Under my thumb

"A fourteen-year-old boy was recently examined. He had been expelled from one school and was in great danger of having the same experience at another. When examined it was found that his intelligence was three years ahead of his age; and during all his school life he had been in grades and had been given work that was far too easy for him, so that he developed a contempt for the work assigned and incidentally for the teachers and school authorities who assigned it. This is likely to be the effect of failing to care for these children in accordance with their needs."
~H. H. Goddard, 1924 (in The Child, His Nature and His Needs)

Current Location: The Past
Current Music: Hey, Who Really Cares? by Linda Perhacs

The full title is The High School Failures: A Study of the School Records of Pupils Failing in Academic or Commercial High School Subjects.

“The recognition of individual differences urged in section 1 necessitates a differentiation and a flexibility of the high school curriculum that is limited only by the social and individual needs to be served, the size of the school, and the availability of means. The rigid inflexibility of the inherited course of study has contributed perhaps more than its full share to the waste product of the educational machinery. … ‘Specialization of instruction for different pupils within one class is needed as well as specialization of the curriculum for different classes.’ There must be less of the assumption that the pupils are made for the schools, whose regime they must fit or else fail repeatedly where they do not fit.”

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/15683/15683-h/15683-h.htm

From the dissertation of Francis P. O'Brien

The subquote is from Edward L. Thorndike, from his book Individuality (1911). The next line of that quote is "Since human nature does not all into sharply defined groups, we can generally never be sure of having a dozen pupols who need to be treated exactly alike."

Current Location: The Past
Current Music: Flowers are Red

Not "a," "an," or "the." Not even "el" or "de."

Articles as in journal or blog format.

What makes something a good article to you? Do you have standards you apply either consciously or, now that you are thinking of it, automatically?

Is there a consistent balance between statistics and discussion? Do you prefer opinion pieces? How much evidence needs to be present to support the author's conclusions before they become your conclusions, as well?

Do you find, as one person put it, that the sheer volume of references in a piece makes the author(s) better writers?

Please do share your thoughts. (and if you want to amplify the question, I would not mind that at all!)

Current Mood: curious

"The fewer American (born) grandparents a pupil has, the higher his achievement ratio is likely to be."

The time was 1940. The study was of 297 students across 4 (white) Baltimore high schools, each of whom had scored over 120 IQ on an Otis-Lennon (or other) IQ test. Of the 297 students, 125 had 4 American-born grandparents. 91 had none. 24 did not know where all of their grandparents had been born.

A similar split was seen in pupils whose dominant language at home was not English, though that was a bit more skewed by gender than the grandparent question was (with boys being higher than the girls among those with non-English speaking homes).

Achievement Ratio was a comparison between the IQ score and a performance measure.

"...the pupils who were deprived of privileges by their parents as a method of punishment had a lower mean achievement ratio than the pupils who were lectured or punished in any other way. Those pupils who received no punishment at all were ranked next in mean achievement ratio. Apparently, low achievement ratio is associated with being deprived of privileges, and high achievement ratio is associated with whipping and lecturing by parents."

Factors Associated with the Achievement of High School Pupils of Superior Intelligence(pp. 53-68) ~John W. Musselman, The Journal of Experimental Education (Vol. 11, No. 1, Sep., 1942).

Current Mood: thoughtful
Current Location: Baltimore, 70 years ago
Current Music: We Learned the Sea - Dar Williams

This is one of a series of pieces from the past that capture the state of the present all too well.

by Milton Kornrich, in Underachievement, which he edited in 1965.

One might suppose that a definition of academic underachievement is a simple matter. After all, intuitively, does not the term directly suggest that a student is functioning less well than he or she could? But what is the meaning of "less well" and "could?" Is it less well in terms of a standard established by the student ("I think I could do better"); by the student's parents ("We know he could do better"); by the student's teacher ("He has more ability than he shows"); or by an objective intelligence or aptitude test which predicts a certain level of performance? Some focus on the imperfectness of this prediction: "Underachievement and overachievement are concepts which demonstrate the inability to predict performance accurately due to the influence of factors other than general ability or past record." (Carlson and Fullmer, 1959) Finally, if the researcher decides how "less well" is to be determined, what techniques will be used to measure it?

There are numerous related problems that only a more ambitious paper (i.e. Davis, 1959; Farquhar) would review. The purpose of this brief communication is to stimulate the reader to consider and evaluate a sample of definitions, and to emphasize, perhaps unnecessarily, that the multitudinous definitions reflect our insufficient comprehension of a most significant and obviously highly overdetermined phenomenon.

( various definitions )

A definition that is rather broad and lacking in precision but which more than compensates for it in humor is offered by Russell: "In a very general sense, the 'underachiever' is the person who performs markedly below his capacities to learn, to make applications of learning, and to complete tasks. Speaking figuratively, he is the person who sits on his potential, resisting various motivational procedures to get him off his potential, and possibly needing an adroitly directed kick in that same potential." (Russell, 1958). The humor in Russell's definition appears to be the only indirect reference to the impatience and anger that the underachiever can arouse in us. Often, the underachiever's passive way of coping with hostility is stressed. If underachievement is a highly active* maneuver that indeed achieves something, and I believe it surely does, it would be fruitful for some investigator to describe the underachiever's impact on peers, parents, and teachers.

Newman's definition is thoughtful and novel: "It is our conclusion that a student's own sense of underachievement and voluntary participation in a project such as ours are the essential criteria for the identification and selection of underachievers. We would estimate that 25 per cent of Hofstra (University) students would meet such criteria. (Newman, undated).

Only recently have some investigators (e.g. Davis, 1959; Farquhar; Raph and Tannenbaum, 1961; Thordike, 1963) critically examined the voluminous underachievement literature to account for inconsistent findings, to suggest more sophisticated methodology, or even to challenge the concept of underachievement (Kowitz, 1965; Schwitzgebel, 1965). Perhaps, in Professor Thorndike's words, this effort "Will lead to fewer and better publications in the future." (Thorndike, 1963). It may eventually lead to fewer, less arbitrary definitions of underachievement.

(references to specifics available, but the fingers got tired)

Current Location: The Past
Current Music: W.F. Bach

As with many other aspects of education, the approach to gifted children goes through cycles. There is a push, currently, toward seeing giftedness only in the product of ones labors rather than in the individual that is reminiscent of the early days of Joseph Renzulli's Three Ring Conception of Giftedness, which posited the three components of gifted behavior to be "above average ability, above average creativity, and above average task commitment."

In "Rethinking Giftedness and Gifted Education: A Proposed Direction Forward Based on Psychological Science," Rena Subotnik and her co-authors have proposed a definition of giftedness that remarkably has absolutely nothing to do with a person:

Giftedness is the manifestation of performance that is clearly at the upper end of the distribution in a talent domain even relative to other high-functioning individuals in that domain.

No longer are we, the educators, seeking to nurture individuals. We are purely and simply seeking to turn out displays and products, albeit of the highest quality.

Let me set aside the broader issue of whether we wish to return our view of education to the factory model, and the pure linguistic issue of defining a person's attributes in terms of external valuation of their production.

Instead, I would like to focus on the implications for late bloomers and underachievers.

In a view that focuses on the child and the child's potential, there is purpose in looking at what blocks it, at what prevents that child from fulfillment. The child who is stuck is as worth our effort as the child who achieves. Giftedness is the high potential.

In a view that focuses on the fruits of a child's labors, there is no purpose in looking beyond whether the child produces or not. The child's fulfillment has no relevance to schooling or, dare I say it, upbringing. Giftedness is, somehow, in the product and not the child.
***********

I do not come at this from a detached point of view. My perspective is that of a classic underachiever whose parents, teachers, and counselors were quite frustrated; that of an adult who works with others who have been so labeled.

I have reason to believe that my efforts have made a difference in the lives of dozens of other underachievers, helping them to find their feet. Pardon me if I cannot see how declaring these children a waste of time and effort would make this a better world.

Current Mood: frustrated
Current Music: Colors are Red, Harry Chapin