Why there’s no such thing as a gifted child

This has to be paid placement for the book, shame on you Guardian.

Also it's laughable. Intelligence is basically something you're born with. Around half is inherited, the rest is, IMO, luck, but still determined very young or in the womb.

Giftedness is measurable young, possibly at the beginning of speech (gifted children almost always talk earlier than average). This raises doubt that it's something developed by training.

Some studies also, controversially, show that final IQ can't be easily manipulated by learning. That IQ is fixed at a young age and remains static through a wide variety of future up brining.

The article uses three terms: "gifted", "intelligence", and "high performance", but it seem to be as doing a rather poor job at distinguishing them in the beginning. The article seems to acknowledge that intelligence is a spectrum where people are born with everything from intellectual disability to intellectual giftedness, but then focus primarily on performance. A gifted child, as define by the article, is a high performing child.

Seems similar to people who would look at a tall child and proclaim that they will be high performing baseball player, and then get disappointed when they don't end up in major league. I find it rather obvious that most of the tallest children in the world won't end up as professional baseball players, similar to how most of the highest intellectual gifted children won't end up with a Nobel prize. Instead I predict that children on any extreme end of a spectrum will face a long list of unique challenges in a society which is designed for the median, resulting in a wide range of performance results.

Just recently did a hackathon for teenagers. The differences in abilities were krass.

And not just programming knowledge but also mental agility, self assurance, independence, problem solving and social as well as soft skills.

Some couldn't even speak up. Others seemed like born problem solvers - 16 yr olds you could directly employ. Some were a fountain of creativity. One kid had an ego so big, that made him unpopular with us grown ups but I have to admit, he'll have a great future at any start up. Probably his own.

Kids aren't born equal - but the role of psychology and possible neurochemical makeup is IMO under-appreciated in how we educate people.

> [Einstein] failed the general part of the entry test to Zurich Polytechnic

Yeah, let's leave unsaid the fact that he was 16 at that time.

It's amazing how far people will bullshit for their equality narrative.

The theoretical "IQ" represents just a maximum of an individual's potential intelligence. We don't always operate at that level, as many factors - such as hunger, lack of sleep, and frustration - may subtly and temporarily reduce the quality of our cognitive output.

What about this kid (supposedly 8 years old) teaching Haskell and uni level math? Sadly, non-english video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLLm8JaLqq8

> Even Einstein was unexceptional in his youth.

Citation needed.

IQ is 50-80% heritable.

There is such a thing as a gifted child.

"So, is there even such a thing as a gifted child? It is a highly contested area."

This seems to be at odds with your title, The Guardian.

This article is bullshit, and I can tell from experience because I learned to read all by myself when I was about three years old.

My IQ is also at least good enough to get through the official Mensa pre-test (which you need to take to know if you should even consider taking the official one).