Reviewed by Amy Duncan

How blessed are “gifted” children? In her new book, author and New York Times writer Alissa Quart delves into the lives of “gifted” children and the adults who think they know what’s best for budding prodigies. With a journalist’s knack for asking the right questions and a touch of cynical wit, Quart reveals an adult culture that celebrates, authenticates, and markets giftedness in children. The adults’ efforts, she says, are often counterproductive.  

Quart’s journey features Baby Einstein marketers, psychometric experts, parents of competitive teen preachers and other adults drawn into the promise of children who can accomplish more than their generation dreamt possible. Readers meet a 4-year-old girl whose paintings sell for $1,000 apiece, a math whiz kid who works on Wall Street, and a teenage boy who thinks he can save even the author’s soul.

Can we even tell who is “gifted”? Quart propels the reader through statistical analyses and psychological reasoning about a system that is impure at best. And when it’s accurate (rarely), the system distills very few extremely “gifted” children from the masses of intelligent youth who are tested. In fact, says Quart, most precocious youth are highly skilled, but not the next Einstein (and Quart can’t resist reminding us that Einstein was a late bloomer). Culled, pressured and accelerated toward unattainable goals, the kids often snap.  Readers meet a violinist who won’t play anymore and find out that one of Quart’s subjects killed himself before she wrote the book.

Nevertheless, the book asks, isn’t a challenging education important for children who are ready to take it on? Quart finds herself on the campuses of elitist private schools and more egalitarian public schools with gifted programs. She questions teachers, parents, admissions officers and students: Is acceleration good for kids? Which ones? How do we give both high- and low-skilled children the attention they deserve?

In the end, Quart’s book targets neither the advocates for gifted education nor their detractors, but rather the zero-sum game played in American education — one that funds education for high-skilled students one decade and low-skilled students the next. Each child, she shows, is exceptionally deserving of funding, but only one child was ever baby Einstein.