Why are gifted children and adolescents often “inconvenient” in the schools?
You can be “inconvenient” in any number of ways, of course, but in relation to being academically gifted, it is not always appreciated amongst teachers or other students to be a “know-it-all”: one who usually has all the correct answers. Even though I think this is a universal problem, to some degree it is also one differentiated by culture. In school systems where children are expected to be more passive receivers of knowledge, it is not likely that any child being too independent of mind or action is much appreciated if diverting from expected behavior. In school systems where children are more active and learning is more of a cooperation between teachers and students, tolerance is likely to be greater. But being too extreme would be a problem there as well. Then, of course, there are school systems which do not recognize giftedness at all as a viable reason for an adapted curriculum, such as is the case in the Swedish and Norwegian school systems. In these environments teaching is c
