Individual Differences

Kids Who Are Different

Copyright © 1982 by Digby Wolfe

Here’s to the kids who are different,
The kids who don’t always get A’s,
The kids who have ears twice the size of their peers,
And noses that go on for days . . .
Here’s to the kids who are different,
The kids they call crazy or dumb,
The kids who don’t fit, with the guts and the grit,
Who dance to a different drum . . .
Here’s to the kids who are different,
The kids with the mischievous streak,
For when they have grown, as history’s shown,
It’s their difference that makes them unique.

Who Are the Gifted?

by Milton E. Larson

Creative and imaginative people are often not recognized by their contemporaries. In fact, often they are not recognized in school by their teachers either. History is full of illustrations. Consider some of these:

Einstein was four years old before he could speak and seven before he could read.
Isaac Newton did poorly in grade school.
Beethoven’s music teacher once said of him, “As a composer, he is hopeless.”
When Thomas Edison was a boy his teachers told him he was too stupid to learn anything.
F.W. Woolworth got a job in a dry goods store when he was 21 but his employers would not let him wait on a customer because he, “didn’t have enough sense.”
A newspaper editor fired Walt Disney because he had, “no good ideas.”
Caruso’s music teacher told him, “You can’t sing, you have no voice at all.”
The director of the Imperial Opera in Vienna told Madame Schumann Heink that she would never be a singer and advised her to buy a sewing machine.
Leo Tolstoy flunked out of college.
Wernher von Braun flunked 9th grade algebra.
Admiral Richard E. Byrd had been retired from the Navy as, “unfit for service,” until he flew over both poles.
Louis Pasteur was rated as mediocre in chemistry when he attended the Royal College.
Abraham Lincoln entered the Black Hawk War as a captain and came out as a private.
Louisa May Alcott was told by an editor that she could never write anything that had popular appeal.
Fred Waring was once rejected from high school chorus.
Winston Churchill failed the sixth grade.

Probably these people were identified as low achievers in school or as misfits on their jobs because of problems of relevance.
[Setbacks may be inspirational springboards toward success—e.g., Fred Waring became known as “America’s Singing Master” and “The Man Who Taught America How to Sing” — JW.]