Why Some Smart Kids Quit?

“She was so smart; everything came so easy to her. Too easy, really..” That’s the complaint I hear when intelligent, promising young people just go off the rails around the end of high school (years 11 and 12) or senior high.

What happened? Why should a person who is naturally bright, talented and intelligent all of a sudden just throw in the towel?

Here’s a theory. First, let me give you a formula to explain it, then we shall break it down: intelligence + effort = capacity

Your child’s capacity (their natural ability) is off the scale. While other kids have to get parents to show them, review notes, study hard and even get coaching, these talented protégés are coasting on their ability to grasp concepts at an amazing rate. We applaud such precociousness with accolades, prizes, ribbons and embarrassing exhibitions of their prowess. Things come so effortlessly to them that a certain mythology of the “photographic memory” and the “young genius” develops, adding to the mystique of these gifted individuals. They revel in that, and while their peers are spending increasingly inordinate time studying, finishing off homework, and researching concepts that they didn’t quite learn in class, these “geniuses” are slacking off, handing in work late, cramming the night before and boasting of their lack of preparation. After all, they don’t need to work hard; it just comes naturally to them.

One day, their capacity is intersected by the difficulty of the work they are learning. In other words, their capacity or natural ability is not sufficient to unravel the complexity of the curriculum that they are faced with. This is crunch time, or reality check! Their peers, with years of experience in working hard for their marks, continue plodding with their habit of hard work = results. These smart young minds haven’t created that habit. Difficulty is new to them, study and revision, research and analysis, none of these disciplines are well developed, because they didn’t need them.

So now, at the crossroads of difficulty meeting capacity, they have two choices: They either increase their capacity through a habit that is foreign to them (effort) or they quit. Unfortunately, many a promising young person takes the easy road. Without challenging themselves to aspire to greater heights, they live on the laurels of past success.

If you had to chart this phenomenon, you would see the child’s capacity as a straight horizontal line cruising through prep and primary school. The capacity increases slightly in high school, but not sufficiently to deal with the trials of academic demand of the material that is being covered. At some point, these two lines will intersect, the options are either to increase capacity through effort, or quit. The flip side of effort required is difficulty. In the face of difficulty, most students who have faced this contest know how to overcome it: “When we encounter difficulty, we exert more effort. This brings about success.” This resistance has been faced before, and with a well-developed habit of success, the student rises up to meet the challenge. Not through conscious discipline, but through an autonomous response to academic challenges.

Intelligence + Effort = Capacity

 The good news is that it is never too late to develop a new habit. Capacity is like potential, unless it is increased through effort, practice, rehearsal and action, it remains an intangible.

This is an excerpt from one of the twelve modules in the "Leadership Mastery Course" by Mario Cortés which is based on Emotional Intelligence. To contact BizNet Australia Pty Ltd email: [email protected] or www.biznetau.com