Abstract
The focus of the field of giftedness is on the wrong thing. Instead of focusing on identifying who is gifted, the field should identify how people will deploy their gifts and educate students to deploy their gifts in ways that will make the world a better place. In this article, I present at least a partial taxonomy of how gifts can be deployed and discuss how the taxonomy can be used to shift the emphasis in the field. In particular, I discuss nine types of giftedness: Type 1—unidentified; Type 2—inert (largely undeployed) giftedness; Type 3—fully transactional giftedness (where one gives something back in return for getting something); Type 4—self-transformational giftedness (where one transforms oneself but not others); Type 5—other-transformational giftedness (where one transforms others but not oneself); Type 6—full transformational giftedness (where one transforms both oneself and others); Type 7—self-destructive giftedness (where one’s gifts are deployed self-destructively); Type 8—other-destructive giftedness (where one’s gifts are deployed toward destroying others); and Type 9—full pseudo-transformational giftedness (where one’s gifts are destructive of oneself and others).
Keywords
Introduction
The emphasis in the field of giftedness has been on whether someone is gifted, and if so, to what extent. That is the wrong emphasis.
The main argument of this article is that, although educators of the gifted often feel that our societies underemphasize giftedness and underserve the gifted, this is not the main problem the societies face. Rather, the main problem is the overemphasis on who happens to have the good luck to have been gifted without sufficient regard to what they do with their gifts. What matters to the world is not how many gifts, or how much of any one gift one comes into possession of, or even what kinds of gifts they are, but rather, how those gifts are deployed.
To the extent that we are interested in identification, we should not focus primarily on identifying who is gifted. Instead, we should be trying to identify who is gifted and will use their gifts for positive purposes—transformationally. To this end, I draw on a relatively new theory of transformational giftedness (Sternberg, 2020, 2021; Sternberg et al., 2021) and expand upon that theory.
Kinds of deployments of giftedness
I discuss four large categories of deployment of giftedness: Unidentified, Transactional Giftedness, Transformational Giftedness, and Pseudo-Transformational Giftedness. These categories are summarized, defined, and exemplified in Table 1.
Deployment of giftedness: four categories of utilization of gifts.
Type 1: Unidentified
The gifted individual is not identified as such (Individual 1 in Table 1). As a result, typically, neither the person nor society ever has the chance to benefit from the person’s gifts. Their gifts remain latent.
Transactional giftedness
In giftedness utilized transactionally, one is expected to give in exchange for getting. In transactional giftedness, one sometimes gets something in return, but not always, as in the case of inert giftedness.
Type 2: Inert giftedness
Inert giftedness is the possession of unusual and substantial resources that are under-utilized—the individual does not avail themselves of the opportunity to deploy their gifted level of resources in a way that makes much of a difference, either good or bad. Individual 2 (Table 1) did nothing with their resources and thus was inertly gifted. Like an inert element, inertly gifted individuals do not interact actively with their environment. They are brilliant but little comes of it. They take (they are identified and get resources) but do not give. Perhaps they join a high-IQ society but do little with their membership. Or perhaps they work their way through life without doing anything notable. In this case, they simply squandered their gifts.
Type 3: Fully transactional giftedness
Fully transactional giftedness is exhibited when an individual is identified as gifted, and in exchange, deploys those gifts in ways that, reciprocally, justify the label. For example, future income is often used as an indicator of success. Individual 3 (Table 1) invested their intellectual resources in carefully constructing an investment portfolio, and the returns were impressive. In exchange for their gifts, they produced income. They used their gifts in a way that might lead a psychometrician to say that the quantitative index of giftedness was successfully predictive.
Fully transactional giftedness is the kind of giftedness to which many societies today pay the most attention. A young person is identified as gifted, sometimes is given extra recognition and perhaps resources, and then is expected to achieve at a level that somehow justifies the label they have been given.
Transformational giftedness
Transformational giftedness is of three kinds—self-transformational, other-transformational, and fully transformational giftedness.
Type 4: Self-transformational giftedness
Individuals may use their gifts to transform their lives in ways that bring them satisfaction and happiness, as in the case of Individual 4 (in Table 1). They are not necessarily interested in sharing their transformation with others, nor do they withhold it from others. Instead, their goal was to achieve some self-actualization or fulfillment, or purpose in their lives (Kaufman, 2020; Maslow, 2014)
Type 5: Other-transformational giftedness
Other-transformational giftedness (Individual 5 in Table 1) is seen in gifted individuals who transform the lives of others to make their lives better but who do not do the same for their own life. They may live an ordinary, undistinguished life or even go down a path of self-destruction similar to that of self-destructively gifted people. Elvis Presley, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and so many others were gifted individuals who found themselves unable to cope with fame, fortune, or the consequences of their notoriety.
Type 6: Fully transformational giftedness
Fully transformationally gifted individuals, like Individual 6 in Table 1, deploy their gifts to make the world a better place. They seek to make a positive, meaningful, and potentially enduring difference to the world. Their gifts change the world and show how much difference even a single individual can make. They give back not because they are expected to but rather because they are passionate about doing so.
Pseudo-transformational giftedness
Pseudo-transformational giftedness is of three different kinds—self-destructive, other-destructive, and fully pseudo-transformational giftedness.
Type 7: Self-destructive giftedness
Self-destructive giftedness is the deployment of one’s gifts in ways that prove, in part, to be self-destructive or that fail to prevent self-destruction. Individual 7 (Table 1) is self-destructively gifted, throwing away their resources in casinos. They have a gift but not the emotional maturity or emotional intelligence to enable them to deploy that gift in a way that makes rather than breaks their life.
Type 8: Other-destructive giftedness
Some people use their gifts to destroy others, as in the case of Individual 8 (in Table 1). The individual destroys others, perhaps because it makes them feel good to do so, perhaps because they convince themselves of a noble cause, or perhaps because they do not care.
Type 9: Fully pseudo-transformational giftedness
The individual seeks to advance their own interests, and in the process, destroys not only others but themselves. In the short term, they may be rewarded. In the long term, they are remembered objectively as destructive, in the vein of Hitler or Stalin. They might become a minister or even the president of a country and then use whatever financial, intellectual, or other resources they have to undermine democracy and establish an autocracy with them, and likely their family and friends, as the primary beneficiaries. This has recently happened worldwide (Applebaum, 2020; Levitsky and Ziblatt, 2019).
Conclusion: Where should the focus be?
The gifted movement is much too concerned about who is gifted. Should we use this test or that test, this set of identification criteria, or that set of identification criteria? There are certainly many different conceptions of what these criteria should be and, therefore, should be identified (Cross and Olszewski-Kubilius, 2020; Sternberg and Ambrose, 2021). But perhaps the question of who is gifted is not the most critical question to ask. Instead, we should ask, who will transformationally deploy their giftedness to make the world, and hopefully, themselves, better? It might sound like one could not assess a proclivity toward transformational giftedness. However, a scale does now exist that is in the process of being validated (Sternberg, 2021).
The term “giftedness” can be useful, but it is far more useful if one specifies the type of giftedness to which one is referring. What, exactly, are we looking for when we label someone as “gifted?” Are we interested only or primarily in young people’s transactional skills for and in doing academic work? Can our society—our world—afford such a narrow vision at this point? I do not believe we should throw out our current system. But I suggest we need a system that seeks out those who will go beyond just transactionally doing what benefits their individual career or life. We need to think about transformational aspects of giftedness. And we need to be aware that some identified individuals will use, and right now, are using their gifts toward destructive ends. We need to identify types of giftedness, not just giftedness, in general.
The world today faces truly daunting problems—air pollution, water pollution, toxins in the environment, global climate change, weapons of mass destruction, cynical attempts to establish authoritarian states, racism, xenophobia, pandemics, bacterial resistance to antibiotics, obesity—to name just a few. Not only have intellectual (and financial and other) gifts proven inadequate to these challenges—they sometimes have contributed to them. Some people with gifts have used these gifts to behave in ways that are perceived as beneficial to themselves but toxic to others. We need to do much better. We should focus not merely on gifts but also on how these gifts are deployed. We need especially to develop fully transformational gifts to make the world a better place. The world needs positive and meaningful transformation, but it also needs gifted educators to be part of that transformation.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
