I was hanging out in the biography section of Borders, banished there because History was M’s section, when the book caught my eye. Red and white cover — curiously several books I’ve bought recently are red and white. And the title? “wis·en·heim·er: A Childhood Subject to Debate” by Mark Oppenheimer. Hmm. Interesting. I pulled it from the shelf. It had me from the first sentence of the flyleaf: “Have you ever met a child who talked like an adult? Who knew big words and how to use them?”
Hell yes.
It continues, “Was he a charmer or an insufferable smart aleck–or maybe both? … Frank and comical, Wisenheimer chronicles the travails of a hyperarticulate child who finds salvation in the heady world of competitive oratory.”
“Hyperarticulate.” I love that.
Needless to say, I bought the book. And I have to say: Wow. It has to be one of the best depictions I have ever read of what it’s like to be a verbally gifted kid. It’s also painfully honest about the less than lovely parts of that gift. (There is one particularly awful incident.) What makes it so special, in my opinion, is that Oppenheimer not only has the ability to tap directly into his childhood and teen experiences and vividly give voice to that gifted kid, but now, a parent himself, he can muse on what it what it must have been like to parent a kid like himself. Chapters II and III gripped me. I found myself nodding and nodding and nodding.
Compared with other kids in my gifted classes I was nothing remarkable. Yet the average adult, if introduced to two smart nine-year-olds, a girl who can do geometry and a boy who uses words like dissembled and eviscerated, find the boy more astonishing. At that age, speaking well is a better party trick. But my gift, my verbiage, presented a unique problem: you can have the words but without the wisdom they don’t count for much. There are nine-year-olds who can do post-collegiate mathematics, and nine-year-olds whose music virtuosity does not betray their age, but there has never been the nine-year-old who wrote accomplished adult poetry or a moving novel. If your gift is for words, you can write stuff that’s good given your age, but not stuff that’s good, period.
I felt this constraint, keenly. I even think that, if asked I could have described what I was feeling: that someday I could be a fine wordsmith, but for the time being I just had all these words and no place to take them. So I did what millions of boys before me–and girls too, but not as frequently as boys–had done. I began to think of myself, around fourth grade, as a master of words. I became a wiseacre.
His humorous description of his family life and their liberal social milieu, while perhaps a bit more “out there” did, I confess, sound rather familiar.
It was especially hard for my parents to convince me there were boundaries to how I could talk, because they surrounded themselves with people who thought talking and arguing were really good things.
Chapter II opens with this sentence: “From the beginning, I had a hard time with teachers, and teachers had a hard time with me. “ From there he describes his experience of attending a Montessori school that clearly wasn’t a fit for him.
It wasn’t just that the school’s theoretical matrix encouraged neglect of verbal kids, but also that the teachers had no interest in teaching language arts. … The math and science kids thrived, one of them, the redoubtable Eli Brandt, used the school’s freed to start simple algebra when he was eight. He’s now a Google software engineer. My gifts, however, seemed to be held against me. The school sold itself as a place where students could be individuals, but my endless quarreling, my hunger to challenge my teachers, wasn’t seen as a good urge that needed proper channeling; rather it was treated as a rebellion against the harmony that the school was supposed to embody.
It’s one thing to have a child to speak about unhappiness with school. But no matter how empathetic one is, there still is that little voice thinking, “Yeah, but he’s a kid. It can’t really be that bad” It’s a totally other thing to hear that alienation filtered through the words and perspective of a thirty-something Yale professor. Yeah, it can be that bad.
And his description of his “thing” with his teacher Lisa. Whoa. Just whoa. His description of how this spilled into his relationship with his brother. Again, close to the bone. Switch genders and it could have been a scene from our house. A pivotal passage (starting page 34) is when he finally tells his parents it’s just too much, that they just don’t understand how deeply different he feels. I don’t have space (nor the right) t0 reproduce it here, but let’s just say that for parents of profoundly gifted kids, it is very likely a conversation, a moment, that you have lived.
The second half book moves on to describe how Oppenheimer stumbles into — and eventually triumphs in — the world of competitive debate. In 7th grade he moves to a private school where the high school allows middle schoolers to participate on the debate team. “We were not a student body with brilliant futures,” he writes, “But the other ten students who joined the debate team that fall — all from the high school — were among the most interesting characters on campus.” “Interesting.” Ah yes. Oppenheimer is about ten years younger than me, which makes the book a double pleasure. Not only does he write authentically about the life and mores of homo teenagerus — a stage I am experiencing firsthand as a parent — but he nails the details of place and time, namely what it was like to be a teen in Connecticut in the 1980s, when things were still a little, shall we say, “looser.” (Full disclosure, that’s where I grew up.)
In debate, Oppenheimer “finds his people,” so important for highly gifted kids; at the prep school Loomis Chaffee, he soars. As a parent about to see her child off to boarding school, an entirely new world for all of us, it was fun to read a “teen’s eye account” of that adventure. This second half of the memoir immerses the reader into the world of competitive debate and although there is a fair amount of debate arcana, there is also enough description of the colorful characters and humorous situations to see the reader through.
So would I recommend it? Absolutely. An Amazon reader reviewer huffs that “It was a bad choice for a graduation gift.” Oh please. I would disagree. I think mature and savvy teens–especially ones with a love of words (I’m looking at you, C.) would enjoy it. I know I did.
Wow! From what you’ve posted, that sounds like an apt portrayal of verbal giftedness in childhood. Growing up, my diction usually surprised adults more than my knowledge of math and science, much as that first quote noted. I will have to read that sometime…
Hi There,
Thank you for this recommendation. I now know how to use the two gift cards my younger one has received. He is my verbal word lover…and I think when I was young, I loved using new words..and this is in an Indian school where basic English was practiced strictly. I always came up with new sophisticated substitutes for plain English words, and I thoroughly enjoyed the confused faces of many teachers and friends. I was always with a dictionary, and was great at debate, but became a scientist.
I guess I would have never taken the lit or writing or law career being in India, as that was not something considered an elite job. Things have changed now. I am probably not giving my younger one enough of resources to encourage his verbal gifts, but his math and science gifts are getting a lot more polishing…..And my mathy dd tells me that she has been flooded with lots of thoughts to put on paper, and that she would like to restart writing…..hmm..
I should read this book…
-Subadra
Thanks for blogging about this book. It is now on my Amazon wishlist.
I also enjoyed watching the video on Amazon which the author talks a little about himself and the book.
Granted high-level maths and a really nice rendition of Chopin’s 4 th sonata require a lot of skill, I’m not sure they require wisdom. Developing an original mathematical proof or writing a new sonata requires a lot more depth of experience and internal resources, and I think would be a fairer comparison with a moving novel or adult-standard poetry.
It sounds like what Oppenheimer needed, and found, was the writing equivalent of doing calculus. That’s what debating is – it doesn’t demand originality or deep wisdom, but it can pass as an adult-level skill, and is a pathway to greater skill.
My DD’s solution is to write in the style of a favourite author. It’s always amusing, doesn’t betray her youth, and sometimes, just in short bursts, she achieves something surprisingly elegant, even beautiful.
It’s another neat way to fill that gap between a party-trick and a mature skill.
Alex, sounds like you’ve found a great outlet for your daughter!
[...] for channeling verbal giftedness into meaningful pursuits. Thanks so much to SwitchedOnMom at The More Child for the excellent review of this [...]
This book reminded me once again of Leta Hollingworth’s long-ago summing up:
“Of all the special problems of general conduct which the most intelligent children face, I will mention five, which beset them in early years and may lead to habits subversive of fine leadership: (1) to find enough hard and interesting work at school; (2) to suffer fools gladly; (3) to keep from becoming negativistic toward authority; (4) to keep from becoming hermits; (5) to avoid the formation of habits of extreme chicanery (Hollingworth, 1942, p. 299)”
Thanks for that quote, Helen. We’re still working on a few of them (#2 and #3 come to mind
) but I’m feeling pretty good about #1, 4 and 5.
Not related to this post, but here’s hoping that C has a wonderful year at her new school and that you all adjust well to having her away! Good luck to her.
Thanks so much Meg! The Big Drive Up is just around the corner, and I’ll be blogging about it.
Based mainly on this blog post, I checked the book out of the library, though I’m generally not fond of biographies or memoirs. Both my son and I read it and found it a fairly good read. Neither of us felt enormous identification with the author, who seemed a bit of a one-note student, but the writing was decent.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for this recommendation. Believing this book to be only about the inner life of a verbal prodigy, I started reading your review with the one thought my mind keeps playing in “repeat” mode: verbally gifted people, children, university students ans just plain adults, are heavily discriminated against. Ever seen an industry-sponsored program for linguistics majors? Ever seen the term “gifted” attributed to that guy who travels araound the world, making himself understood in any language and being given the honorable permission to write on his exotic excentrism in a local newspaper? I have just ordered this book from the UK (closest English-speaking exclave to my native Germany) and am already sure it will be one of the few pleasures of feeling myself really understood.
To finish, did you ever notice how “we” are being discriminated by linking our type of intelligence to the “cultural” and “crystallized” dimension. I am sure – I KNOW – there is more to that. So please, keep on lobbying!
Thanks for the kind note, Xerox. I hope you enjoy the book. Are you at all connected with the group Hochbegabt?
@SwitchedOn:
Given that “Hochbegabt” ist the general term for “giftedness” in German, I’m not sure what group you mean. Actually, I participate in quite a few online forums dealing with giftedness or bringing together gifted people.
I quit Mensa this year, though, because I didn’t like their German section to go too much into political lobbying.
I haven’t been on Twitter for awhile for GT stuff–just not enough bandwidth/time–but when I am I followe @hochbegabt, a prolific tweeter. I assumed it was an organization, but looking at the Twitter account, who knows. http://twitter.com/hochbegabt.
[...] 6, 2010 by SwitchedOnMom The gods must be listening. No sooner do I blog about the debate memoir Weisenheimer and the special challenges that verbally gifted kids face, than an announcement goes out that a [...]
will have to check this out. it sounds sooo much like my 6yo dd. i mentioned to my dh a few weeks ago that we should start looking for a way to involve her in debate as an outlet for her verbal abilities. unfortunately, it looks like she’ll have to be quite a bit older for the local opportunities.