Gifted
by Tom Flynn
Dayday Films
Chris Evans, one of the Top Chrises in the world, has made some very interesting choices in projects. This is a tiny, independent movie about family and genius and how do you help a kid who is ridiculously smart also manage to be a happy and healthy kid?
Chris Evans plays Frank Adler, a guy who repairs boats in Florida while raising his seven-year-old niece, Mary. Mary gets sent to school to get some socialization and make friends, and after some hiccups, begins to do well… until her grandmother Evelyn (Frank’s mom, played by Lindsay Duncan) gets wind of her magnificent brain and math skills, and tries to take her away to make sure she reaches her potential. Frank is certain that his sister, Mary’s mother, would have wanted her to have a normal childhood, and things get ugly.
Yeah, I cried a little.
Mary is one of those smart, precocious kids you see all the time, and she could be super annoying, but McKenna Grace layers in enough charm and snark so that she can carry this role. She gets a chance to be a bratty little shit, and run around like a little perpetual motion machine on the beach, and love her one-eyed cat (his name is Fred, and he’s the best cat in the world), all while learning differential equations and doing what every kid is doing: figuring out who she is and what her place in the world is. Grace has an excellent, natural rapport with Evans, willing to use him as a jungle gym and yell and cajole and snuggle.
Quick note about the cat: He’s a very patient cat, and a very sweet cat who likes going on boat rides and hanging on the beach, and there is a moment where the cat is in peril, BUT HE SURVIVES. HE’S FINE.
This movie is about trying to figure out what to do with a kid who is super smart. How to mold them into decent human beings with empathy (even when they think their peers are annoying and slow) and at the same time, give them enough challenge to keep them interested in school. Mary’s first day in regular school didn’t go well, because she’s way beyond basic arithmetic, and things are rocky for a while while Mary and Mary’s teacher, Bonnie (Jenny Slate) work out their relationship. Things come to a head when Mary beats the shit out of an older kid who picked on one of her classmates. (She doesn’t say “Of course I stood up for the kid because my uncle is Captain America,” but the visual is there.)
While Mary has been raised and shaped by her uncle – a man with her best interests at heart, always being worried that he’s not enough for her – it’s her relationships with women that help finesse the edges. Roberta, her neighbor (played by Octavia Spencer, and I’ll get to this part), adores Mary like her own kid. Bonnie, who naturally falls for Frank’s forearms, also just wants to be the best teacher for Mary she can be. Her Grandmother (not “grandma,” never “grandma”) Evelyn, thinks that Mary’s mother’s math talent was ultimately wasted, and doesn’t want the same to happen to Mary. But it all comes down to Mary’s mother. She died long before this story began, but her ghost is in everyone’s mind, because they’re all wondering and interpreting the same question: what did she want for her kid?
I think this movie delivers an excellent message, that raising a kid who is a good person and good citizen and has a happy life should be the ultimate goal. “Best interests of the child” isn’t that easy to figure out, either. Sure, Grandmother has a big house and a piano and all of these things, but Frank understands Mary in a way that no one else does. Even if the kid is super smart, she still has the emotional maturity of a seven-year-old. So, even if you can explain why someone wants to take her away from the life she knows, there are levels at which she won’t understand it. “Grown ups decided this disruption to your life is the best thing for you” is hard, no matter how smart you are.
The main frustration I had with Gifted is the ultimate waste of Octavia Spencer. Her role is functionally a Mammy archetype, designed to support and raise the white leads, and there’s very little Roberta does besides give Frank advice and be a mother figure for Mary. She has no inner life. And Octavia Spencer is great, because she’s a fantastic actress and a goddamn professional and will ALWAYS elevate the work. But she gets a lot of these roles, and thank god she gets other, stronger roles like Dorothy Vaughan, because she deserves way better.
I really enjoyed this film, frustrations aside. I think that Evans has made a lot of interesting choices with his career beyond the MCU. I loved Jenny Slate in Parks and Recreation, so seeing her in a completely different role is great. I was actually surprised to see that Mckenna Grace plays the annoying kid in Designated Survivor (the Kiefer Sutherland political thriller drama on NBC), and on DS, I find her character to be insufferable, but here she’s a delight. Gifted is emotional and will hit you square in all your feels, so prepare to cry, and bring tissues to share.
Gifted is in theaters now and tickets (US) are available at Fandango and Moviefone.
So – no love story between Octavia Spencer and Chris Evans then?! Dammit. I love that romance trope (oh noes, I must raise this orphaned/motherless/fatherless tot with the help of my best friend/neighbour who is suddenly looking REALLY GOOD to me).
[trigger warnings: negligence; self-harm]
Okay, two major facts. The baseline definition of gifted is “needs education at above-grade level”. So instant kill shot re the uncle’s parenting; epic fail, putting Mary in a class with age peers.
Secondly, kids in the profoundly gifted subcategory (exactly where Mary seems to be) are at the highest risk of psychological damage when their development (intellectual AND social development, because the two are most often in sync) is not fostered at their speed; those risks include suicide risk.
Female researchers are up to speed with these issues. Linda Silverman (http://www.blogtalkradio.com/thecoffeeklatch/2013/01/10/bright-not-broken–dr-linda-silverman-giftedness-101). Miraca Gross. It does not surprise me that this film is headlined and “auteur’d” by men. Looks like it will be a setback for community awareness.
Both my sister and I were considered gifted as children, and we both ended up going to a school for gifted children and yeah, I can 100% confirm that gifted kids may be book smart and learn at an accelerated level but are not any more emotionally mature than other kids. We moved to a different country for a few years when I was about 7 or 8 and I had to switch to a school with non-gifted children, and honestly while my teachers there were great and just basically let me design my own courses (by giving me different reading or math material until they found what was challenging) getting along with other kids my age was not a problem because they were just kids?
So anyways the point of my ramble is that I have never seen or read something that I felt actually accurately portrayed how smart kids behave and despite a recommendation from this site I’m still immensely skeptical.
I’m gifted. Not profoundly gifted. I WAS more emotionally mature than kids the same age. For instance, at age age, I noticed that kids took advantage of the weaker kids, made them be the chaser in games all the game. Then the weaker kids would quit. So I invented games with built-in rest-stop options and stationary chasers. I had second-graders and huge fifth-graders playing these games. My games were popular.
And then there’s the negatives. A kid plagiarized a story I wrote in second grade. Kids tried to copy my math answers and got abusive if I blocked their view — the teacher SAID to.
age seven, not “age age”. This is agitating.
Looks good. Glad about Fred, because I would have been pissed if something bad happened to him.
Given the solid research that girls are systematically turned off math precisely in elementary school, I have to question the message of a film that suggests that a math prodigy’s highest good is to run around on the beach and cuddle cats. (If Mary were ten years older would we enthusiastically endorse running around on the beach and cuddling boys over academic work? Maybe, but that worries me.) There’s a fine line between wanting a kid to be able to relate to her peers and not be too socially isolated and wanting squelch the intellectual activities that give her joy because its not the social norm.
I’m further troubled that it’s a little girl who’s supposed to be happier not being a prodigy but “fitting in.” Contrast that with “Searching for Bobby Fischer” which is also about concerned parents of a gifted little boy worrying that he is being pushed too hard….the boy in question finds his own pair of mentors, and the only question is how to not destroy his joy in his gift, not how to make him “normal.” He’s shown as becoming a kinder and better person THROUGH EXERCISING his exceptional talents, not by suppressing them.
I believe in the good intentions of the uncle, but that’s what makes them insidious: “I just want her to be happy” (and how can she be happy without having a boyfriend/wearing makeup/being nice) is a lot more likely to mold a kid than out and out conscious and abusive sexism. I’m with Zyva, well intentioned or not, epic fail (and typical of the anti-intellectualism of our culture, with maybe a pinch of sexism thrown in for good measure).
@Zyva, I am so with you on this. I was gifted and in both regular classes and gifted classes. We actually had a support group of gifted students dealing with depression or anxiety issues which I was in. If I was just thrown in with students of the same age instead of also having lessons above class level and a chance to be with a group of kids who were like me, I am not sure I would have made it. With one exception, the friends I’ve retained since school (and there are several) are the kids who were in gifted with me. Because of my experiences, I have a really hard time watching any movie or tv show that portrays gifted kids. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen one get it right. I might watch this when it comes out on dvd simply because I watch almost everything, but I don’t have high hopes even after this review.
I don’t have kids, never went beyond AP classes myself, but you have all opened my eyes to issues I’d never thought of. Thank you for this discussion.
Hollywood screenwriters could learn a lot from SBTB! Thank you for the eye-opening comments and the link.
@Rebecca and @CelineB, MUCH appreciated.
I guess the negative stereotypes about the gifted (apparently) in this movie set me off extra hard because I copped anti-intellectualism (“Tall Poppy Syndrome”) based on American media early – even though I’m Australian.
Namely, I got compared to Janine from the Babysitters Club stories. (No match. I was actually taught not to correct people’s grammar when I was very small. …But also not to echo incorrect grammar back; that last part doesn’t satisfy poppy-lopping types.)
The very title of the Babysitter book is “Claudia and MEAN Janine” (my emphasis). Yet it was my accuser who was the meanest girl in the year level, hands down (especially thumbs). Imagine my rage when I discovered – on GoogleBooks, sampling decades later – that if I HAD been Janine, I would have been safely out of elementary school by that age! (Only really needed to escape the last three years. I scored quite a bit of the “differentiation” people largely just do lip service…until fourth grade. By chance. System-wide, the coverage is patchy to non-existent.)
There’s a real disconnect here. Researchers like Silverman say that gifted kids are so honest and trusting – at least in the beginning – they are GULLIBLE. Nature’s gentlemen and gentlewomen, like Edgar in King Lear “whose nature is so far from doing harms/That [s/]he suspects none”. So why do people leap to conclusions like kids in those stories where there’s a lady who lives by herself (preferably in a scary-looking house on a hill, for good measure). The local kids decide she’s a witch or something. Just because she is slightly removed from them – at a minimum, has no kids and no kid visitors their age. And at least in those stories, occasionally a wiser head (usually older and wiser) pipes up to say that it’s unfair to judge someone wicked until proven innocent, on no evidence.
Nobody speaks up for gifted kids but gifted adults. Usually, the mom. I figure it’s no coincidence that the mom is dead in this film, and everyone is free to project their wrong-headed beliefs (polarized into “down to earth is best” versus “social status and success is everything”, by the looks of it) into that should-be supportive space.
@Zyva – you make me doubly grateful to have grown up in New York City, where weirdo is pretty much the default, so pressure to conform is minimal (at least in public schools – I don’t know the private system). I think what irked me was the implication that it’s the male caregiver who has the privileged knowledge that “down to earth is best” while the (potential) female caregiver gets slammed with the “social status and success is everything” stereotype. Because a woman who is ambitious and stands up for the intellectual ambitions of a young girl is at best wrong-headed and at worst an evil bitch. That, combined with the (spoilery) fate of Mary’s mother in the film seems to send the message that Mary needs to be “saved” from her talent by a good hearted man instead of pushed to excel by a cold woman (who is probably one of those feminist types).
Again, if we projected this story forward ten years to be about a 17 year old going off to college instead of a 7 year old, and the good hearted father/boyfriend exclaimed that she should just get to have fun and join a sorority and go to parties like other girls her age and not have to worry her pretty head about STUDYING all the time we’d all be cringing and waiting for Mary to stand up to him and rebel. But here’s the thing…if she gets the message when she’s seven by the time she’s seventeen there’s not going to be any rebellion, because she won’t even apply to MIT, because the people she loves and trusts will have told her a long time ago that she’ll be happier at FSU, cheering for her handsome football player boyfriend. (No disrespect to FSU there for the many students who pick it for financial or other reasons. But it’s not the place for a math prodigy.) The “progressive” cover of the cute single-dad vibe of this movie seems to be hiding a pretty toxic message, all the worse for probably being unintentional. (And I speak with bitterness as a former college counselor for high school students.)
I was bullied by “gifted” people my whole life. Here in America gifted people are taught to think they are better than us normal people (although technically I was special ed. and don’t get me started on how gifted people treat special ed.). Being gifted is privilege like being white. They don’t need added privilege, they need to learn how to relate to normal people.
Maybe if the Gifted could talk and relate to normal people, they would be able to convince them to be believe in climate change, vaccinate their children, not vote for Brexit or Donald Trump, etc.
People can be both gifted and have special ed needs. I have that on both sides of my family. Giftedness (maths/spatial, mainly) and Autism/ASD on one side. Giftedness (huge audio memory), dyslexia and ADHD on the other. Let’s not be simplistic.
And even plain gifted people don’t have to save the world to justify skipping grades, or whatever they need. That SAVES MONEY.
That’s not true where I live. Where I grew up, science education was different for Gifted kids. Our tax dollars went to funding expensive labs for the smart kids, whereas the average student (I was in some regular ed classes despite being one of the “dumb” kids) didn’t see a bunsen burner and now we wonder why so many people “don’t trust science”. It’s been given to elites. So yes it is costing money… and our environment.
If gifted people are so smart, why shouldn’t they have to save the world? Isn’t the point of this movie they should just get to exist as normal people and isn’t that what’s making people so upset?
“if she gets the message when she’s seven by the time she’s seventeen there’s not going to be any rebellion, because she won’t even apply to MIT, because the people she loves and trusts will have told her a long time ago that she’ll be happier at FSU, cheering for her handsome football player boyfriend. (No disrespect to FSU there for the many students who pick it for financial or other reasons. But it’s not the place for a math prodigy.)”
The place for a math prodigy is anywhere the math prodigy wants to be. Everyone has more than one side to them. If this is what makes them happy, isn’t that the right answer? It goes against the feminist philosophy of this site , that women, even math prodigies, can’t choose to be stay-at-mommies (or FSU cheerleaders) if that’s what they want.
I disagree with the idea that the film would tell her not to go to college if she was 17. My guess is the philosophy of the film makers is age appropriateness what is good for 7 is not necessarily good for 17. (I don’t know any of the film makers. That’s just a guess.)
@Rebecca. I was born a Melburnian. Melbourne is variety-friendly, it was the moving to the country thing (mostly – visits back to the inner suburb under the custody agreement). You know Fernand Braudel’s “centre versus periphery” theory, especially the bit about distancing yourself from the “centre”/city being like going back in time? Probably, unless there’s an Anglophone source more popular in the states. Anyway, that theory is pretty accurate, in my experience.
Re gendered attitudes to development. Silverman documents men’s tendency to underestimate their gifted kids, perhaps be skeptical of their giftedness, but either strongly imply or outright states that the reason their estimates are inaccurate is because they are not doing much of the caregiving, especially the emotional labour. It’s unnerving to see this underinformed attitude extrapolated onto a fictional primary caregiver.
Truly knowledgeable guys don’t mess up. My math-qualified dad believed me when I said my fourth grade teacher (also the head of math) was going at a snail’s pace, and leaving me with nothing to do. Before the whole fourth grade crashed on the optional-but-popular ICAS/UNSW math tests; the results only arrived at the entire of the year.
This “force kids to coast” policy, (or “stagnation” as I said in elementary) is not great for anyone. The private school kids (20% in my day, 30% of kids now) are 2 or 3 years ahead, on average, by age 15. Many kids suffer when reality bites, at the start of high school, at crunch time when they’re tested to qualify for senior high pathways (Year 9/Year 10 – final year is Year 12). High disengagement rates at that time = surveyed kids compare school to prison a lot.
According to Silverman, the “masculine” view of giftedness is the one focused on performance and future success/”eminence”, while the “feminine” view is child-centered, focused on meeting immediate needs, following the kid’s nonstandard social and intellectual development.
[Linda Silverman, Giftedness 101; referencing Leta Hollingworth, Annemarie Roeper, Joanne Whitmore, Barbara Clark; Deirdre Lovecky, Bobbie Gilman, Nancy Robinson.]
Basically, Mom has to form a book club with the kid, that type of thing.
I was bullied too; but I was bullied for being gifted so it goes both ways. I, and my fellow gifted kids, were constantly taught in our gifted classes that just because other students learn differently or at different pace doesn’t mean they are dumb. We were specifically taught that bullying was wrong especially bullying due to the fact that we were ‘smarter’ than the other kids. Painting any one group of people, in this case gifted kids, as being bad people who don’t deserve as much attention or resources as other kids is wrong.
I’m not going to pass judgement on the treatment of giftedness in the movie without seeing it. When I grew up, there was a strong trend towards the acceleration of gifted children, which meant that I had my MA by twenty.
Nowadays, schools have really pulled away from the model of acceleration, especially when it means that children get pulled out of their age groups and isolated by skipping grades. There’s a very gifted child at my kids’ elementary school who’s doing some college courses in mathematics – but she’s still getting to do sock hops and PE and gardening in our little school with kids her own age. For HER, this model where schooling with her age group is integrated with work appropriate to her intellectual levels seems to be working. At some point, she may have to pull away from her age group, but right now, she’s still just a little girl.
It’s scapegoating. Scapegoating gifted kids for broader-picture problems, primarily inequality in education, is VERY popular in Australia. One of our public TV channels went on a fishing expedition of that kind, baiting gifted schools, over Easter. Because a festival is more festive with scapegoating? Anyway, total replay for me.
@Tam, you make a very good point. The movie may go deeper into the issue than the previews and reviews suggest. If that’s the case then I’m all for it. I just have a hard time getting excited about it since movies so rarely give a in-depth, nuanced look into giftedness (or any issue really).
@Anonymous – I think there might be a little US cultural context in order for Zyva, to explain your point about funding. I’m not sure what state you’re in, but in New York at least “special education” technically refers to programs for BOTH gifted and talented AND learning disabled students, although you’re right that “special ed” is used among the general public (and sadly sometimes among students themselves) only to refer to LD students. The important thing to remember is that the broader definition of “special ed” DOES receive (sometimes quite extensive) extra funding, on the principle that these are students who need extra resources, either to catch up or to be challenged.
Unfortunately, whether those resources go equally to gifted and to learning disabled students frequently has to do with the long history of the US attempting to segregate by race. Due a number of factors (that are a whole other story) including unconscious testing biases on the part of teachers and socio-economic backgrounds of students, white students are far more likely to be classified as “gifted” and students of color are far more likely to be classified as “learning disabled” and shunted into programs as such. There are many places where “magnet schools” or “gifted and talented programs” are in effect islands of white flight within the public school system, while the majority of students are students of color. They ARE well funded, and they DO provide a good education to the lucky students who get in….but they are also essentially a continuation of separate and unequal education. Was that what you meant when you spoke about “white privilege” and “gifted privilege,” Anonymous? Again, I don’t know what state you’re in, or how segregated your school district is, but it wouldn’t surprise me if the well funded schools were also ones with savage racial disparities.
It is obviously wrong that certain parents have seized on gifted and talented programs as a way of perpetuating educational inequality in our schools. But with that, I think eliminating gifted education entirely (if that’s what you’re proposing, Anonymous?) is throwing the baby out with the bath water. I have very mixed feelings about academic tracking for a lot of reasons, but after many years experience as a teacher I have to say that I do think it has some advantages. It’s really hard to watch basically good kids fidgeting and becoming disruptive in class because they’re bored out of their skulls, or alternately because they’re so hopelessly behind that acting out is their only way to slow the class down.
That said, I think we should clear up the difference between the VAST majority of kids in “gifted” programs, who may have somewhat above average intelligence, and the very few kids who are genuinely “prodigies.” Kids who enter Harvard at 15 writing math statistics papers like Tom Lehrer (in the 1940s) or Milo Beckman (in the 2000s) are extremely rare phenomena who may appear only once or twice in a generation. If the movie is talking about the latter category (a seven year old already doing calculus), then we’re really not talking about teaching a bright kid to treat those who have to work a little bit harder to master the same material with respect. We’re talking about an adult mind trapped in a child’s body. There’s a reason we look askance at 20 year olds who want to spend all their time on the playground with little kids. It’s because the way most adults think, and thus the games that amuse them, and the things they find moving or frightening or joyful are simply different because of their ability for abstract thought. So when you say that “the place for a math prodigy is anywhere the math prodigy wants to be” I would answer that a true prodigy (and I repeat, this is NOT the same as “a smart kid who gets 100% on all her tests”) wants to be around people who share her interests and values, not in a place where she constantly has to struggle to relate. Saying “everyone has more than one side to them” is a platitude that denies that for a very small group of people with very unusual brain chemistry (whom I doubt have ever formed a large enough group at any one time and place to be bullies) there is ONE side of them that is so hugely over-developed and out of sync that it dominates their daily experience, at least during childhood and adolescence.
The irony is that this those prodigies who survive adolescence and make it into adulthood actually do end up managing to relate pretty well. (Again, I’d refer you to Tom Lehrer, who had a very successful career as a song writer and entertainer in addition to teaching mathematics.) Once prodigies’ bodies catch up with their brains they obviously find it easier to be around people their own age. But forcing them to effectively live in hiding throughout their childhood with the promise that eventually the constant strain of hiding who they are will become second nature strikes me as sheer cruelty.
My concern about sexism in the movie has to do with that the handful of math prodigies I can name (including the two above) are all male, and that when there IS a fictional representation of a female prodigy, the emphasis is on her being as normal as possible. As I said above, I think this forms a toxic contrast with “Searching for Bobby Fischer” where the young boy who is a chess prodigy is repeatedly offered the opportunity to stop playing, but eventually decides that he WANTS to play, and learns BY PLAYING how to relate to other kids in a kind and supportive way. I don’t disagree that it’s good for children of all types to be respectful and kind to each other. But it worries me that the only way a girl can be respectful and kind is by denying her gifts, while a boy is allowed to be respectful and kind AND gifted.
Sorry for the length of this post. Anonymous raised a bunch of issues that I thought should be separated out and dealt with individually.
I think Rebecca makes several good points. First I’d agree that there definitely is a prejudice in IQ tests and the education system towards minorities and students who come from families with lower incomes. Maybe schools in more affluent areas do treat gifted programs as a way to promote educational inequality. I do not live in that type of area (it’s basically a lower middle class/working class suburb of a medium size city). In fact, in my state we currently have a governor who doesn’t want to fund education at all. Gifted was one of the first things that was proposed to be cut because it’s assumed that gifted students will do well no matter what even though that is not the case at all. It was seen as a easy, uncontroversial way to cut funds from schools without citizens making a fuss because it affects a group seen as privileged. Where you live in the US definitely makes a difference in your education experience. That’s why it’s important to not overgeneralize too much.
Second, Rebecca’s right that there is a difference between being gifted and being a prodigy (like the girl in this movie). Gifted programs alone are probably not enough for prodigies. At least the one I was in wouldn’t be. However, being in the program and getting an IEP could help a prodigy work out an education plan that works for them (attending college courses for example). Socialization for prodigies is even harder for regular gifted students because the disparity between intellectual/emotional maturity is more exaggerated. If this movie actually does deal with the problem of socializing a prodigy in a nuanced, realistic way, I’d love to see it. From the reviews I’ve read, it doesn’t seem like it will address it to my satisfaction. The more I’ve discussed it, the more it’s made me want to see it so I can actually get into specifics about what works and doesn’t. Sadly, I probably won’t get the opportunity to see it until it’s on dvd.
The debate is more clearly about fixed ideas/pernicious myths in Australia, because there is less money at stake (primary funding is per-student, needs-based funding is chronically under-resourced) and racial minorities are smaller (Indigenous Australians make up 3% of the population).
People are dead set against early IQ-testing and acceleration, even via cross-grade classes, and yet that is the least biased and most cost-effective policy. Then they proceed to complain that “selective” schools (the main feature in New South Wales), and “selective” programs/accelerated classes (both feature heavily in Victoria) and even “good” public schools popular with non-locals are “private education in disguise”.
(Apparently, it totally doesn’t save the situation that selective programs actually favour people of colour in Australia. Mostly from other parts of the Asian Region. No, it’s all “our (Anglo) kids are saying, ‘math is too hard for me, I’m not Chinese’” and “people who can’t make it in without expensive cramming aren’t really gifted”.)
I could not afford private education. But I OWN my time. I was never compliant with the “legal” owners – neither whichever parent, per family law; nor teachers, per compulsory education law – if they wanted to misuse, or outright waste, my time.
My father started school 13 months younger than me, back when the cut-off date was earlier in the year. My mother was quietly accelerated in elementary school. It was a one room country school, like something out of “Anne of Green Gables”, so it was simple. The teacher just gave her the next year’s “Reader” (textbook).
That was all cost-free. But powerful people would rather cost me and SO many others time and energy that belongs to the no-one but the kid in question. Rip-off merchants, they are.
I am also “gifted” but not a prodigy, and agree with a lot of the points above. Just want to say, though, that the college classes + sock hops model, if it can be worked out, beats bumping the kid up a grade all hollow–because if you advance a kid one or two years, they’re not in with gifted kids, they’re in with normal kids who are bigger than they are.
I actually had BOTH the problem of being bullied (for lack of social skills, mostly) AND the elitism problem Anonymous talks about–it took me until I was in my early 20s to realize that being book-smart didn’t make me better than other people. I will say that most of the kids in the gifted classes at my schools were much nicer, less elitist people than me and my closest friends.
I also still have a hard time figuring out how to talk about test scores and such with peers. I usually joke about being a genius as a way to neither apologize for my intelligence nor use it to make others feel lesser.
I had the opportunity to see the movie a few weeks ago. I’m not going to try to country any of the arguments on whether it portrays prodigy kids the “right” way to not. I found the comment string a bit TL;DR after a long day.
The uncle doesn’t forbid her from mathing, and mathing at a very high level. He’s just trying to make sure she steps away from the books and gets out in the sun. And he does have reasons for what he does.
I agree with Redheadedgirl’s review. It wasn’t perfect, but it got me in the feels. And the ovaries. Because Chris Evans with a kid. Holy shit.
I had special times like these on holidays, at the beach, flying kites, whatever, with my interstate cousins and my Granpa. Could have had more if I’ve been allowed to accelerate younger, because uni summer holiday is three months, not one. But my Granpa died when I was 17, halfway through senior year. And…He didn’t love me less because I was so different from him. Not the life of the party by any stretch. Fantastic grandpa. Just rotten to lose him.
@Zyva – sorry about your Granpa. Mine died when I was 17 and about to start my senior year of high school too. There are still times when I think how much something would have made him laugh and miss him.
Thanks for outlining the funding/administrative situation of public education in Australia. It’s always interesting to see how the same political footballs get kicked in different places (at least to me). CelineB is right that since education is a competency of the states in the US where you live makes a huge difference, so it’s hard to generalize here. (Re: the movie, I admit I’d be less skeptical if it took place anywhere other than Florida. I’ve had both students and colleagues from Florida and their educational system has a reputation for what might kindly be called a lack of rigor.)
Totally hear you about the center/periphery thing. (I know Braudel mostly from his stuff on medieval trade, but that’s because I’m weird and interested in medieval stuff.) That’s so cool that you’re from Melbourne! (This is embarrassing to admit, but I’ve learned to think of Melbourne as “the big city” recently from watching the “Dr. Blake Mysteries” where it’s where characters seem to get put on a bus when the actors want to leave the series. It’s also sort of implicitly contrasted with provincial Ballarat. I know things must have changed hugely since the 60s when the series takes place, but somehow it’s made both more real to me.) Australia is on my bucket list, though it’s a LONG flight. Thanks again for sharing about your home.
@Rebecca: thank you; and sorry that you lost a dear family member early likewise.
Hmm…Maybe you’d be interested in dipping into the latest Aussie inquiry into gifted education, focusing on my home state? The case studies are SO on point. https://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/images/stories/committees/etc/Past_Inquiries/EGTS_Inquiry/Final_Report/Gifted_and_Talented_Final_Report.pdf
…I see. I guess Florida has a rep kind of like Queensland’s then. (They taught fractions, or was it algebra, very late. Nominally, now we all do, under the national curriculum, but many private schools secretly stream/track math class, so yeah, on a systemic scale, a bit of a false facade.)
Cool. Did not know about the medieval trade analysis. Only strong recall I have in the area is of the femme sole legal concept, ie trader wives and widows controlling business empires.
I dissed Darwin in my head in the past: ‘not enough city lights for a city’. I didn’t start out as openminded as a New Yorker taking an interest in Melbourne. Kudos. And no worries, the city thing was super confusing for me at first… since, within cooeee of Melbourne, there are two uses of ‘city’. There’s ‘going to the city’, ‘X went to live in the city’ ( = anywhere in Greater Melbourne), and then there’s “the City”, aka the CBD, central business district, ie downtown.
I was into James Aldridge, Swan Hill setting. When people went off to Bendigo, the regional capital, I had no idea where that was on the map, but at least there was never any city/City confusion, argh.
Hope you get your wishes/list realized, no trouble. Probably better after the railway upgrade.
Entertaining and thought-provoking movie. More Chris Evans please.
Have skimmed the comment thread and, well, a lot of these comments seem to be based on just about everything EXCEPT having seen the movie. So while I think some good points were made, I am not sure they are germane to the review. I was “gifted” myself but my experience is irrelevant because the small-town schools I went to had no gifted program. I’ve never heard of a small-town public school that DID have a gifted program. My high school did not offer calculus and the idea of having been able to study it in first or second grade is ludicrous.
I also have not seen the movie but now I am interested. One thing that I think has been missed in this discussion is that Mary is seven. In the United States, your seven-year-old has to be in school or you are in deep shit with Child Protective Services. And in the United States, unless you have a lot of disposable income and time (to take your child to school, because she cannot ride on the public school bus to a private school), public school is your only option.
In most states, advancing more than one grade, in a public school, is actively not allowed. And as someone noted above, if you are advanced a grade, you are not necessarily then going to classes with more advanced students; you are simply going to classes with bigger, older students. And in America, the smart little kid is not generally popular with its older peers, so this wouldn’t necessarily be a good strategy for teaching the kid social skills.
Heck, in America, the smart kid is not generally popular AT ALL. We have the most anti-intellectual public conversation right now that I have ever seen, or ever hope to see in a “first world” country.
So, given that this story appears to deal with a smart female seven year old in small-town America with bio parents absent either through death or abandonment (because where is the father?), and given the profound challenges facing single parents of any gender in America, and given the even more profound challenges facing a male parent who is not the biological parent of a female child … I tend to come down in favor of cutting this movie some slack.
The blockbuster Harlequin line is sold in Oceania with “Australian Author” or “New Zealand Author” labels. Because local flavour and authenticity is a selling point.
That led me to hazard a guess that the authenticity – or inauthenticity, as the prima facie case may be – of a film with “Gifted” right there in the title would matter to romance consumers internationally.
However that particular pie chart crumbles…, delayed release dates overseas don’t give you a free kick from those most affected – gifted people across the globe – if you give reason to suspect that you’re fostering dehumanising Mean Janine lite stereotypes. Shame on you if you catch me by surprise once; shame on me if I sit and watch people perpetrate a shame job on the next generation. Complete with endorsements from trusted sources, just to make us feel more alone and freakish.
Overall, I enjoyed this movie except for one plot point that drove me bonkers…the portrayal of Frank. Math is the focus of the movie and yet, Frank’s math background and that he was instrumental in Mary’s abilities was not apparent. It seemed as though the movie wanted to portray frank as “the philosopher” who compromised his past life in order to give Mary the life her mother never realized; a childhood of innocence, freedom, and unstructured learning coupled with Frank’s virtuous teachings. I assume the idea here was to differentiate, no pun intended, the character of Frank from that of his sister and mother. However, I feel that this would have been accomplished even if Frank’s math background and his mathematical influence on Mary had been revealed and ultimately, I feel these points would have made Frank a stronger character.
In the movie, we are told that Mary was a “baby” when her mother Dianne dies. We are also told that Mary is currently 7 years old and that Frank has been raising her for the last 6 1/2 years. Thus, Mary was no older than 1 1/2 at the time of her Mother’s passing and “baby” insinuates that she was most likely younger. This is the only information we are given as an audience to deduce that Frank was instrumental in teaching Mary mathematics. In the movie’s defense, it is made apparent that Mary had read about and presumably studied mathematics by herself. However, Frank would have had to provide Mary with this material and thus, this shows that Frank had decided to nurture and influence Mary’s math abilities. It is a reality that mastering calculus and differential equations is possible by the age of 7 or younger. However, I do not believe it is possible without instruction. While there have been some children who have taught themselves advanced mathematics from the basics on up, they were still taught the basics. The movie does hint at Frank’s math background when Frank explains how Mary was able to solve a 2X3 digit multiplication problem in her head using the Trachtenberg method and that he learned it himself when he was 8 years old. To me, this quote implies Frank taught this method to Mary at a younger age then he had learned it. However, this quote gets blurred in the movie when Mary’s teacher, referring to this quote and speaking to Frank, says “you lied to me.” However, it was not Frank’s quote that was a “lie”, but the quote’s attempt to downplay Mary’s abilities. Frank also states, “our family has a history with those schools.” While we are made to believe that Frank is referring to his mother and sister here, he could be referring to himself as well. Lastly, Mary was home schooled until first-grade and I doubt righteous Frank just threw Mary into a room with a book everyday so he could go have drinks and pick up girls at the bar.
So what made me go bonkers? …There is a scene during the custody battle for Mary when Frank is being questioned by a lawyer over his ability to raise Mary. At one point, the lawyer states that “with you”, referring to Frank, “Mary is learning at the first-grade level.” Frank does not say anything to defend himself against this comment which makes it appear that Frank agrees with the lawyer’s assertion. While it is true that Mary is in first grade by Frank’s choosing, Mary is not learning at the first-grade level. In math, she could test out of all math courses required for a bachelor’s degree in engineering or mathematics. As I previously explained, when I watched this movie it was evident to me that Frank has a math background and was instrumental in Mary’s math abilities. However, my interpretation of Frank isn’t what is important to this part in the movie. What is important is that Frank was a professor, Mary was raised by Frank since she was a baby and Frank home-schooled Mary until she was 7. Everything Mary has become is due to Frank. Plus, Mary doesn’t just excel in Math, she obviously reads at an accelerated level as well since she finished a book called “Transitions in Advanced Algebra” by Charles Zimmer, which I am assuming would probably be a little too complex for Mary’s classmates, lol! While I say this sarcastically, I can only guess at the book’s contents based on the fact Professor Shanklin was impressed Mary finished it. Since the book is fictional, maybe the book is just filled with oversized numbers and math symbols that must cut out and glue into place. Mary also probably gets an earful of philosophy each day. After all, Frank does give Mary Descartes’ “Discourse on the Method” to read at the end of the movie. Anyways, in conclusion, I found it highly unbelievable that Frank would say nothing to the court after the lawyer’s assertion and therefore, I am still pissed off. But, like I said, overall it was a great movie.
Any in-depth, detailed analysis of this film from this quarter will have to wait until the Australian release. In the meantime, my working hypothesis is that the flaw in this film boils down to lateral violence / internalized stereotypes and discrimination WITHIN gifted families / families with gifted members.
The screenwriter publicly labelled his own sister “egghead”: http://www.tampabay.com/things-to-do/movies/movie-planner-meet-gifted-screenwriter-from-st-pete-plus-the-fate-of-the/2320021. Clear indicator right here.
And it looks like they brought in the “sensitivity readers” too late in production: http://www.us.mensa.org/featured-content/film-producer-seeks-honest-portrayal-of-growing-up-gifted/
On this topic, there is a very edifying article on the development of gifted identity available for free at http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15332276.2016.1194675.
(A heads up: the modelling borrows heavily from LGBTQ studies, I dunno how aptly. Experts in gifted development usually draw on a more general development theory, Kazimierz Dąbrowski’s “positive disintegration”/ multi-level personality integration theory (eg Linda Silverman does).)
I collected some material on double discrimination against gifted minorities, (and forces against high achievement more generally) to use as a prism through which to analyse Octavia Spencer’s part.
Experts include Joy Lawson Davis (http://scottbarrykaufman.com/podcast/joy-lawson-davis-on-reducing-racial-inequalities-in-gifted-education/), Donna Y. Ford, Theresa Perry, Claude Steele (identified “stereotype threat”) and Asa Hilliard III.
(btw I was only able to afford/‘shelve’ the smaller primers, rather than the weighty tomes. American readers may be more fortunate in their access options.)
Saw the film. Ugh.
Nuanced spectrum of polarised into violently opposed extremes? Check.
>>Extract >> >
EVELYN: And what do you think [Mary’s mother] would say if she saw how her child is living now? Do you honestly think she’d be pleased ?
FRANK: That she’s living a somewhat normal life? Yes.
EVELYN: She’s not normal, and treating her as such is negligence on a grand scale. I know your heart’s in the right place on this, but you are denying the girl her potential – you are. I can provide for her, I can enrich her life.
FRANK: Oh, come on, Evelyn, you’re going to take that girl, you’re going to bury her in tutors, then you’re going to loan her out to some think tank where she can talk nontrivial zeros with a bunch of old Russian guys for the rest of her life.
EVELYN: And you’d bury her under a rock? I don’t expect you to understand the price you have to pay for greatness – …
Bury her in tutors (no social life) vs bury her under a rock (‘normal life’ = priority to social life)…
Wow. I thought ‘work-life balance’ was aspired to all over the Anglosphere. But apparently you can have a ‘work versus life’ WWW-style deathmatch – in some quarters. Namely La-La Land.
Honour-bound to preface the next extract with this caveat:
Very few of Frank’s ‘observations’ are on point. Most draw on pernicious myths about gifted people which (speciously) justify their mistreatment .
>>>Extract>>>
PRINCIPAL: Miss Stevenson believes that your child is exceptional and has talents that our curriculum can’t begin to challenge. It just so happens that I am good friends with the headmaster of the Oakes Academy for Gifted Education. He’s always said that if I find that one in a million…
Frank: And the one in a million has a $30,000 tuition.
PRINCIPAL: Mr Adler, I can get your daughter a scholarship, full ride. I wouldn’t say it if I couldn’t do it.
FRANK: I realize putting that girl in that setting, 99 times out of 100, is what you do. It’s the Oakes. It’s a great school, I looked into it. … This family has a history with those schools. And I think that the last thing that little girl needs is reinforcement that she’s different. Trust me, she knows. So… I think Mary, I think she’s gotta be here. [The bully-busting incident] Today’s a bad ending. You can’t hit people. But a 12-year-old believes a 7-year-old and she stands up! Do you know how important it is to me that she did that? Do you know how proud I am of her? Aren’t you?
PRINCIPAL: Mr Adler, your daughter shattered a young boy’s…
FRANK: …You can’t hit people. That will be made very clear, I get that, but Mrs Davis, if we separate our leaders, if we segregate them from people like you and me, you get congressmen. So I’m sorry, I wish I could take your offer, but Mary stays, unless you kick her out.
PRINCIPAL: This is a mistake. We’ll never be able to raise this child to the level of scholarship she deserves .
FRANK: Well, just dumb her down into a decent human being. Everybody wins.
>>>End Extract>>>
THIS is where the reviewer gets the ‘decent human being’ (excuse for a) moral to the story. The SMART Bitches, Trashy Books reviewer. Seriously. Standard-bearing. Holding up. THIS piece of stuff and nonsense: “ Dumb her down into a decent human being.”
And that doesn’t even bother me as much as Mary quoting Frank: “Nobody likes a smartass.”
WRONG. Sigh.. Do ‘normal’ kids seriously not nickname the group of gifted kids ‘the smartass class’ in America? Because I never thought snide little Australians were the only ones who were poetic that way.
…But a 12-year-old BULLIES a 7-year-old…
Quote from the movie Gifted:
Mary Adler: [riding to school] What is *this* book?
Frank Adler: “Discourse on Method.” Rene Descartes.
Mary Adler: What’s it about?
Frank Adler: Existence.
Mary Adler: Existence?
Frank Adler: Yup. “I think, therefore I am”.
Mary Adler: Well, of course you are. That’s obvious… I think about Fred, therefore, I am.
Frank Adler: Cogito ergo Fred?
On May 13 2017, DEC says:
“Mary also probably gets an earful of philosophy each day. After all, Frank does give Mary Descartes’ “Discourse on the Method” to read at the end of the movie.”
Rene Descartes was not only a philosopher; he was also a mathematician. One of Descartes’ most enduring legacies in the field of mathematics was his development of Cartesian or analytic geometry, which uses algebra to describe geometry. He “invented the convention of representing unknowns in equations by x, y, and z. He also “pioneered the standard notation” that uses superscripts to show the powers or exponents.
Descartes’ work provided the basis for the calculus developed by Newton and Leibniz, who applied infinitesimal calculus to the tangent line problem, thus permitting the evolution of that branch of modern mathematics. His rule of signs is also a commonly used method to determine the number of positive and negative roots of a polynomial.