Hothouse Kids: How the Pressure to Succeed Threatens Childhood

Having argued a "brilliant case"—in the words of the New York Times—in her critically acclaimed first book Branded, Alissa Quart now turns her sharp eye to another important phenomenon in American children's lives: the overbearing and often damaging pressure to be "gifted" that is being foisted on so many children today.

A "giftedness industrial complex" has popularized the notion that with the right early enrichment education and the right variety of skills training beginning early enough, a child can be made gifted and isn't just born that way. A complex of education specialists, special schools, after school programs, IQ testing companies, children's toy companies and competition programmers have pushed the idea that gifted learners should be made into rounded talents — transformed into little Renaissance people — by being taught a whole gamut of skills, from increasingly obscure academic training to sports and the performance arts. But there is either no evidence, or scant evidence, that any of this early training actually builds kids' abilities, and some quite troubling evidence that the over-busy schedules so many of these kids are on, and the lack of free playtime, as well as the pressures to achieve at a high level, can have serious longer term consequences, including feelings of failure later in life, low self-esteem, performance anxiety and early "burn out." Meanwhile, truly superior learners — whether labeled "gifted" or not — do need targeted enriched education in the areas they are strongest in, or they generally become frustrated and disengaged from the teaching they are getting. The overarching question for parents and educators that Quart probes into is: how much enriched education is the right amount, and of what kinds, and how much is too much?