Do Poor Grades Mean You Aren’t (or Weren’t) Really Gifted? And What’s Underachievement?
People collapse “grade getting” behaviors or going to college with intelligence. Don't!
First, when a child is clearly capable and smart — possibly gifted — it is common for both teachers and parents to see “bad grades” as either underachievement or maybe they have a disability. But is it that simple?
Interestingly enough, a great proportion of gifted adults who didn’t get good grades come to believe they aren’t all that smart. Or if they didn’t go to college, they must not be that smart. They couldn’t be gifted. Well, that’s simply not necessarily true and not a great way to evaluate whether or not a person might be gifted.
I started to see this issue of collapsing “grade getting” behaviors with intelligence during the time I was in my doctoral program. My first major writing project ever was my PhD dissertation [1]. I invited many people from near and far whom I either knew or suspected were highly intelligent. At least half the people I asked denied that they were gifted and cited their not doing well in school as the reason they knew this about themselves. Their responses were not usually correlated with their adult failures or successes, either.
In case readers here are interested and not sure about their intelligence level, look into taking the qualifying test with American Mensa or the Millers Analogies Test yourself. They are good and accessible proxies for an actual IQ test. Also, school children all take ability tests (with rare exception) and if you aren’t sure, ask your child’s school to show you your child’s results by the time your child is in 2nd or 3rd grade.
For an overview of what giftedness is, see What Is Gifted? [2].
Often others in our lives judge and evaluate us and leave a lasting impression on us. Two of the people who challenged me about any “being gifted” notions I might personally have about myself as a smart person were my father and his aunt — my favorite aunt, by the way — Aunt Helen.
My father thought I only got good grades (some of the time) because I studied so hard. My mother disavowed him of that notion by pointing out I was simply escaping to my room to be alone, write letters to my boyfriend, read what I wanted, etc. She was right. Dad also knew Mom didn’t get stellar grades in school, either, and he didn’t think of her as all that smart, either. As she was a housewife, it was hard to prove otherwise, I guess. She was wicked smart. She died in 2006 and Dad still hasn’t (by his own age of nearly 100) discovered or believed her intelligence was unusual. To say he wasn’t exactly kind and supportive of her would be an understatement.
My father hadn’t been a good student for most of his school years but found out he’d tested well when he entered the Marine Corps after high school graduation in June of 1942. As he just turned 99 recently (and is still quick-minded, lives on his own, etc.), I’ve been able to watch how he still tries to fit in and “prove himself” as being a smart person when he is around “successful” people who he assumes — for some reason foreign to me — are smarter than he is because they made a lot of money or have grand titles. Dad is, by the way, brilliant. People can sort-of-know that about themselves, but — at the same time — if when they were younger they get the wrong information about grades and test scores proving who is smart and who isn’t — their perceptions about themselves can still remain skewed.
As I was sharing with Aunt Helen back in the 1990s at the time I was working on my dissertation, somehow our conversation got to where she made the comment, “Well, you weren’t that smart.” Now, Aunt Helen was also smart and she knew it, and she’d been a good, dutiful student. My dear mother told me early and often that I shouldn’t focus too much on grades. Getting “good enough” grades was truly good enough because having a social life and activities and fitting in was just as important. Anyway, I chuckled — not derisively, of course — at Aunt Helen for saying that (I was in my forties and not insecure about my intellectual abilities) and she started to see that what I was talking about was true.
Okay, one more story: when I met my first adviser for my doctorate, Dr. Merwin (who retired before I finished the dissertation), he looked at my transcripts from college and my master’s program and asked, “What did you major in during your undergraduate studies, getting an MRS?” I quickly quipped, “No, bridge,” which is true. He was sexist, I played a lot of bridge during college, and we moved on.
So, why is there such a range of cooperation and behavior among the gifted when it comes to grade getting? Read this Medium story from me, free, called Personality, Gender, and School Behaviors [3]. It’s not as fun to read maybe, but it does go into more detail than I do here.
So, what is underachievement in school? The answer to that question is more complex than most people think. Although it is common to see underachievement as being about getting bad grades, someone who gets good grades may also be underachieving compared to what they could have learned if their schooling and other environments were a better “fit” for them.
Girls are more likely than boys — as a group — to cooperate and be “good students” even when the work is repetitive, uninteresting, or well below their intellectual ability to deal with it. Many “good students,” girls and boys, who are gifted coast, they get awards and kudos, and they may wonder later in life what they did all that for because it seldom predicts career success or happiness. [4]
Here’s the issue for “good students” who did what they were told, figured out how to please the teacher, and rarely got into any kind of trouble: they didn’t learn as much about how to think for themselves or “think outside the box” as they might have learned because they followed the rules so well that as adults they kept waiting for someone to tell them what to do!
In my book The 5 Levels of Gifted Children Grown Up: What They Tell Us (July, 2023), [5] most of the subjects in this longitudinal study who didn’t “do well” in school had varying interpretations of their poor school performance. Among those interpretations are these:
I’m not as smart as my parents think.
Something is wrong with me.
School was a waste of time and I only cooperated when I liked or respected the teacher.
I didn’t want to stand out as being the nerdy one so I worked to fit in and just enjoy myself with friends and other activities like sports, music, drama, etc.
Surely we need to look at how to find a better fit and environment for our smartest students rather than expect them to go along with what is provided regardless of their abilities.
Selected Resources
[1] Ruf, D. (1998). Environmental, Familial, and Personal Factors That Affect the Self-Actualization of Highly Gifted Adults: Case Studies. University of Minnesota. http://www.hiqdatabase.info/files/1998Ruf.pdf
[2] Ruf, D. (2022). What Is Gifted? https://deborahruf.medium.com/who-is-gifted-3ede9e2a4935?sk=721ed5eae1d02b2fefd6650a07573bd1
[3] Ruf, D. (May 16, 2023). Personality, Gender, and School Behaviors. https://deborahruf.medium.com/personality-gender-and-school-behaviors-68a45cb8f409?sk=42b62a00a63fcfaef226f53f3fe9180e
[4] Arnold, K. D. (1993). Academic achievement: A view from the top. The Illinois Valedictorian Project (Peer reviewed monograph and executive summary). North Central Regional Education Laboratory.
[5] Ruf, D. (July 2023). The 5 Levels of Gifted Children Grown Up: What They Tell Us. 5 LoG Press.
My current published books about the gifted:
The Five Levels of Gifted Children Grown Up: What They Tell Us (2023). https://www.amazon.com/Levels-Gifted-Children-Grown-Up/dp/B0C9SHFRLH or https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-5-levels-of-gifted-children-grown-up-phd-deborah-l-ruf/1143719859?ean=9798988323709. This is an 18-year longitudinal study follow-up about the original gifted child subjects in 5 Levels of Gifted: School Issues and Educational Options (2005, 2009).
Keys to Successfully Parenting the Gifted Child (2023). On Amazon, Keys to Successfully Parenting Gifted Children (2022, 2023) Print and ebook. The Nook version is also now on B&N. This is a short book 80 pages including pictures - that is a great starter for parents just wanting some answers … fast! The content was originally from a PowerPoint I created for the parents of gifted children presentations around the country. The contents zero in on some of the most important things about raising gifted children that parents want to know.
Losing Our Minds: Too Many Gifted Children Left Behind (Oct. 2024). The book provides a detailed analysis of the different levels of giftedness, the concept of "good fit" in educational settings, and the impact of various school environments on gifted children. It also includes personal stories and experiences of gifted children and adults, highlighting the challenges they face in finding appropriate educational and social environments. Available now on both Amazon and B&N. It is not the old purple book from 2005. Also, the Kindle and Nook versions are formatted so readers can click back and forth easily and find their place again. Follow this link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DL3BSC9X or this link: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/losing-our-minds-deborah-ruf/1146410968?ean=2940185888872
5 Levels of Gifted: School Issues and Educational Options in 2009. Here are links to the 5 Levels of Gifted book on Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/5-levels-of-gifted-deborah-ruf/1126358834 and Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Levels-Gifted-School-Educational-Options/dp/0910707987 or directly from the publisher: https://www.giftedunlimitedllc.com/store/p12/5_Levels_of_Gifted.html
Environmental, Familial, and Personal Factors That Affect the Self-Actualization of Highly Gifted Adults: Case Studies (D. Ruf, 1998) doctoral dissertation. Free PDF https://dabrowskicenter.org/ruf
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