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I was a good student. I wrote neatly and handed my work in on time. Sure, I got in trouble a few times in the early grades, like the time my teacher called home to tell my mother I was a liar. And I had a chronic tendency to get lost in a book during instruction time but in general I was so ridiculously conscientious about my work that teachers would put troublemakers next to my desk in hopes that I’d be a good influence.
For several years I was seated next to a kid named Bart. He was a wiry, high energy kid whose dryly witty asides made it ever more painful for me to pretend I wasn’t laughing. Sometimes he’d blurt out a particularly hilarious observation more loudly. Invariably the kids would laugh, the teacher would scold. Bart was smart, especially gifted in math, but it was hard to tell because he wasn’t very motivated about getting schoolwork finished. He didn’t pay much attention in class either, instead penciling sketches of race cars or caricatures of teachers. Like a lot of gifted kids, he just drifted through school.
When assignments were handed out, Bart would lean over to take a look. Sometimes he did the work, other times he’d say “This is stupid” and do little more than write his name and hurriedly scrawl whatever answers occurred to him on the page. I couldn’t imagine why he just didn’t, as our teachers would say, “apply himself.” All the adults in our lives reinforced the same narrow principle: Do the work, follow the rules, and you’ll grow up to be a success. If I was feeling particularly devout, I’d include Bart and a few other “troubled” kids in my prayers asking that they might have a decent future too.
Once, when we were in fifth grade, Bart and I had a real conversation, the sort that’s rare between boys and girls that age. It was brief and the exact language is lost to time, but he told me something I’d never even considered. Basically he said I was a dupe. School itself was a game and we were the pawns. Why did I play along?
It took me a long time to fully understand what he meant, but this changed my opinion of him completely. Bart was honest. He wasn’t an underachiever. He certainly wasn’t troubled. Instead, he did what interested and challenged him, tolerating as much as possible what didn’t. He used ironic humor to express his views of the institution trapping him. I realized he had far more integrity than anyone I knew. He was true to himself.
Our school district was large, so it wasn’t hard to lose track of Bart once we moved on to middle school and high school. I spent those years in clouds of existential angst. I read stacks of ever more complex books, tried to parse out the meaning in music lyrics, and stumbled (often literally) through adolescence.
Meanwhile Bart was doing far more interesting work of his own. His father, wisely, didn’t hassle him much about school. Instead he encouraged Bart’s fascination with computers. Well before the net was available to the public, teenaged Bart was already building search engines for IBM mainframes. Some say that it’s parents, more than teachers, who make the difference in advancing a gifted child’s interests. Bart’s dad seemed to understand that.
What Bart explained to me back when we were 10-year-olds had a profound effect on my worldview. But I hadn’t thought of him for years until a friend told me she’d run into him at our high school reunion. She said there was one guy who looked younger, more relaxed and happier than everyone else there. It was Bart. The rest of our classmates were loaded with financial obligations while Bart had happily retired at 40. He was engaged in charity work and enjoying life.
Bart changed his name to one more common to avoid the publicity common to wildly successful people, so I won’t reveal too many details about him here. What I can say is that Bart’s early work advanced the capabilities of search engines and his advancements are still in use today. This alone made him wealthy enough to retire at 20-something. But he went on to make significant advancements in physics, the space program, and health.
Underachiever indeed.
What children need is not new and better curricula but access to more and more of the real world; plenty of time and space to think over their experiences, and to use fantasy and play to make meaning out of them; and advice, road maps, guidebooks, to make it easier for them to get where they want to go (not where we think they ought to go), and to find out what they want to find out. ~John Holt
Laura Grace Weldon 
Interesting… Bart did what came naturally to him. The real hero of the piece for me is his father, who had the vision to see where it might lead.
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Absolutely agree!
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I love this story. I have always avoided institutional life even before I knew what it was. Imagine if we all had parents that encouraged us to follow our dreams at each age – how holistic our lives would be. Instead, most of us have or are parents that encourage our kids to follow our dreams for them – framed by by societal fears of failure (which reflect more on our own insecurity then our children’s futures).
thanks for sharing this.
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My son has taught music to middle and high school for eight years. He tells me that thee is a “five Year Hump” when many teachers quit out of frustration. He thought about it but found enough rewarding students to stay.
My point is: I often tried to encourage him, telling how important teachers are. He tells me in-turn that absolutely, it is the quality of the parenting which is the “sine que non” in his outstanding students. c
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Chills, Laura! CHILLS. I am married to a Bart, a guy who easily got As while driving his teachers and classmates berserk… until he graduated high school and was able to take classes that ignited his passion: engineering and medicine. He’s now a triple specialty MD and the most even keel guy I know. Now, together, we are raising a trio of Barts. 🙂 Thanks for this!
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I wonder if your husband’s experience would be different if he were entering kindergarten today. Would he be diagnosed or labeled? Would his “driving teachers berserk” tendencies result in so much punishment that he’d turn toward ever greater defiance and resistance? Would he (like so many gifted kids) drop out?
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Reblogged this on Good Parenting at Every Stage and commented:
What children need is not new and better curricula but access to more and more of the real world; plenty of time and space to think over their experiences, and to use fantasy and play to make meaning out of them; and advice, road maps, guidebooks, to make it easier for them to get where they want to go (not where we think they ought to go), and to find out what they want to find out. ~John Holt
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Perfect Holt quote. Thanks for reblogging, Vimala!
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I also wonder how many Barts were lost along the way. How many missed out on that supportive push and wish they could do it all over again. Happy for Bart; sad for many others.
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Yes, and how many Barts are getting lost today.
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I wish more parents and educators understood this issue. Thank you for bringing it to light.
Bart was one of the lucky ones. Many gifted kids are not so lucky because as a society, we too often want to stuff all kids into the same box we call school–many gifted kids, maybe even most, simply do not fit. I saw this in my youngest son–oh boy, did I ever experience this with my youngest–like the time he challenged one of his teachers on the fairness and accuracy of a one-question test and got the rest of her students to protest against the infamous one-question test!
I wrote about this idea in an article, “Gifted Underachievers: Underachieving or Refusing to Play the Game”.
If we label them as underachievers, then it suggests that as a student, the child has a deficit when really it is the schools that are underachieving when it comes to educating many of our gifted kids. I guess I could go on and on because this just hits right at the heart of an issue that hits home for me.
So thankful more are speaking out about this. Thank you!
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I heartily agree Celi. I know quite a few profoundly gifted people who were so damaged in childhood that they actually do all they can now to suppress their gifts.
Encouraging readers to check out the post Celi mentions, “Gifted Underachievers: Underachieving or Refusing to Play the Game.” http://crushingtallpoppies.com/2015/02/11/gifted-underachievers-underachieving-or-refusing-to-play-the-game/
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I agree with Celi’s comment. I see it as another version of the Blame Game. The best educators are those who enjoy learning from and about their students. The problems occur when egos get in the way and a top-down method takes place. When bottom – up methods take place more appropriate learning takes place. How can we help change this?
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Thanks for reposting older posts for those who may have missed it the first time. Just since I began to do ‘my own thing’—house husband etc. have I realized that I would do things completely differently if I had it to do over again. Knowing that Dr. Seuss didn’t write The Cat In The Hat until he was 57 years of age helps be to not regret but live in th present and smile for the future… Thanks, Laura. You’re still my number one!
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John, I’d do things differently too. My mother used to say, “Life is lived forwards, understood backwards.”
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As a former public school teacher, I couldn’t agree more with Bart. I have decided to homeschool my own kiddos, so they can learn through play and develop their own interests and purposes in life. Bart’s story just reaffirms I made the right choice.
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