Society too often treats unusual kids badly
Some of what happens to them clearly is a collision of talent with time and circumstance
By Carl Heintze
I have a granddaughter who reads things like the dictionary for fun. She soaks up facts like a sponge. She knows more about the causes of the Civil War than I do. Now and then, she frightens me with her knowledge. I think she also, sometimes, makes teachers wonder what to do with her.
In short, she's unusual. She pals around with a group of other kids who are different, too, They tend to stay away from the pack and go off by themselves. Sometimes I worry about that.
And then, I think of the two Steves, Wozniak and Jobs, of Steven Spielberg, of Bill Gates, of all those kids who seem off somewhere where the rest of the world is not, who are chasing their own version of the dream that suddenly bursts unto the public horizon and changes the world.
I don't know if my granddaughter will do this or not. Not unnaturally, I like to think she might. I hope I'll be around when she does, although that's asking a lot of time and the rest of the world. The world has not been kind to those who are called nerds, those children who, often obsessively, follow narrow pathways which lead to high, bright.summits
I've often wondered why this is. How, for instance, Bill Gates never finished Harvard, and yet managed to be, not only an immensely talented manager, but, the richest man in the world. Or, why Steve Jobs built a simple computer into success not once, but twice? Or, how did Steven Spielberg with all his childhood fantasies of film become one of the most successful movie producers in history?
Clearly, not all nerdish children do this well, but a lot of them do. They see a set of facts and follow them as far as they can; they are driven, but they manage to bring others along with them. They work wonders, even if it sometimes seems they'll never go anywhere. Some of what happens to them clearly is a collision of talent with time and circumstance.
The two Steves, for instance, happened to arrive on the computer scene at just the right time, as technology was developed that they used to their advantage. They took it and ran with it. It didn't hurt that along the way they met up with talented and thoughtful venture cabalists, successful public relations and advertising specialists.
But, even so, what they accomplished would not have been accomplished without their own private dream, their own peculiar drive. They made the personal computer what it is. Without them it would not have been.
I don't know much about making movies, but certainly the Spielberg story is one in which the producer-director arrived in Hollywood at just the right time, found the right people and made the right movies for the times. A good deal of Spielberg's movies depend on development of the right technology, too. Certainly, that's the case with the George Lucas films, which followed a similar pattern and are technological triumphs.
So time and circumstance--the idea of being in just the right place at the right time. But, just as clearly, that's not all of it.
The success of all the people I've mentioned depends on some imponderable, something you could call talent, something which I find indefinable. Just as Charles Darwin turned what seemed to be a pointless voyage around the world into The Origin of Species, so the wunderkind of yesteryear are the moguls and magnates of today.
With all this in mind, you'd think we would cherish, protect and foster those kids who read dictionaries for pleasure, make home movies for fun, or tinker with electronics in the garage, to the exclusion of everything else.
But it isn't always so. Children, like adults, tend to think of those who are different as, well, those who are different. Being unusual all too often means being socially outcast, and that is a tough road to follow.
At its worst, it turns into a Columbine High School massacre. The kids with high IQs and the low social skills tend to cling together in self-defense. They don't want to deal with the trivial or mundane. They want to be inspired by what they can see, even if the rest of us cannot.
Of course, it would be a lousy world if everyone did this. We need the average, run-of-the-mill regulars, too. But it seems to me we ought to cherish those who are different, and find more ways for them to succeed. We ought to lend them a hand instead of the back of it.
Ignoring them may spur them on, but it also may lay them as sacrifices on the altar of the mundane.
Sunnyvale, California Since 1994
