When School Is Too Easy

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Most of my few memories of first grade were getting in trouble for not staying on task: I sharpened my pencil repeatedly, then because it was too sharp I scribbled on a paper towel. I made a little pool of glue on scrap paper and arranged crayon shavings (from my crayon sharpener) in the pool to create modern art. I even got my name on the board for talking out of turn. I was off to a rough start. That same year I was given an IQ test and qualified for the gifted program (LEAP) one half day per week in the library. However, I was not allowed to participate until my “work habits” improved.  They did, somewhat.

In fourth grade I started the ACTION gifted program once a week.  A dozen of us were bussed to a special classroom where we learned to type on a manual typewriter, transliterate our own haikus into Japanese characters and write books and illustrate them on DOS computers. High tech for the 80s.

Daniel remembers swearing off homework, resigned to stop wasting his time and learn for himself.  He enjoyed class but spent evenings reading the encyclopedia.  He got in trouble for talking and interrupting the teacher, but often he won them over with his impressive intellect.  Daniel got poor grades through high school but managed to be accepted into the university where his mom taught as a professor. He passed by the skin of his teeth with an English degree and then became a teacher.

We survived school fine. But we developed some bad habits along the way. I remember proudly putting homework off and completing it in another class while ignoring the lecture. I crammed for tests for a few minutes as the teacher was taking roll, and I hardly read any assigned books, but skimmed cliff’s notes instead.  And when I received As & Bs, it reinforced a divergent ambition to fake it with as little effort as possible.  Not the kind of person I’d like to hire!

I had bumped up against an academic glass ceiling. The common name for this obstacle is “age appropriate” or “grade level standards”. We measure all kinds of things against time: income, the trajectory of a projectile, the quality of a fine wine, the speed a child grows up (invariably, too fast!). Some of these always provide accurate predictions. It is possible to determine the exact force and angle of a bat to baseball to clear the Green Monster at Fenway Park. It is not possible, however, to predict how tall a random child will be at age 12. Nor can anyone say whether a child will be a strong reader by fourth grade. The range of reading capabilities is broad, but the average is a tiny, precise value easy to create “grade level” material for. Because of the average value’s minute exactitude, it actually describes no student at all!

It certainly didn’t describe me! I don’t quite know why, but reading exhausts me. It’s likely the strabismus of my left eye, rendering it blind to central vision (but otherwise fully capable). Did I fail to enjoy science and history because they were, at heart, reading classes? What if the skills of storytelling and scientific experiment had been liberated from the words on the page, presented on their own for me to experiment and discuss independent of my reading endurance? I can barely imagine what other worlds of opportunity remain sealed away as I grew to consider certain subjects boring, hard, or unrewarding.

Carol Dweck has identified a deep solution for gifted children who have become lazy, accustomed to learning being easy for them. These children, when faced with a big challenge that isn’t solved quickly, have an identity crisis. They fake disinterest, make an excuse, they cower from the opportunity. They exhibit a fixed mindset, “They believe that they're born with certain intelligence, skills and abilities that cannot change.” Her solution: growth mindset, in which “people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work—brains and talent are just the starting point.”

Fixed mindsets exist, however, because they work. They work in environments designed to teach and manage average children — of whom, again, there are precisely zero. Gifted children are outliers in their classroom, they have to make their own way. They can’t fit the assumptions their classroom was designed around, and as they grow, they build a model of how the world works. For them, classwork is always easy. The hard part is what to do with all those pesky extra minutes after completing the work, or with all those amazing questions that don’t fit the curriculum’s parameters. It can be demoralizing rather than invigorating to excel academically.

We’ve been thinking a lot about this for years. We have a student who got in trouble at previous schools for interrupting class because he knew all the answers but lacked the self-regulation skills to give other students a turn. We have another student who refuses to admit when he doesn’t know something. Both of these boys felt anxious when it took them more than a few minutes to complete an assignment. But they’re growing. They have to! They’re breaking down a fixed mindset that says it should always be easy for them. They are developing intellectual stamina for the first time. They are learning how to give effort even when they feel anxious or tired. Now that's the kind of person I’d like to hire!

Todd Rose, a researcher in developmental psychology, proposes that the classroom needs to be customizable to each student like a driver seat can be adjusted to nearly any size person. He proposes no more “grade level” expectations, rather teaching concepts and skills assuming some skills, such as reading, are not necessarily fully developed. He says to design the curriculum all the way to the edges of children’s skills, from undeveloped to fully mature.

If school is too easy for your child, here’s how to help them build intellectual stamina: give your child challenges well beyond their capabilities and see how far they can go. Cultivate relationships with grandparents, family members and friends who are experts in a field and who will gently share their knowledge with your child. Look for a school or program that encourages children to learn at their own pace, especially in Math, Language Immersion, Reading and Writing. Hire a tutor to work with your child individually on topics and skills that he or she is interested in. Whatever resources you have at hand, give your child the rich content, varied experiences, open challenges & quality feedback they need to thrive.

My father-in-law’s aphorism fits, “If you shoot for the moon, you’ll likely hit the light pole. But if you shoot for the light pole, you’ll hit your foot.”