Justin's Genius

When giftedness is ignored or inflated, the results can be equally tragic.

By James R. Delisle

Giftedness has long been an enigma. In the early part of the 20th century, when giftedness was equated with genius, an IQ of 140 was all that was required to earn the label of "gifted." Then, as education and psychology became more enmeshed with equity and political correctness, the notion of giftedness grew fuzzier. First, Joseph Renzulli, whose work helped propel the field of gifted child education in the 1970s, concluded that a high IQ and giftedness were related, but separate, entities. Then, in 1983, Howard Gardner proposed that people were "multiply intelligent" in so many ways that the term "gifted" seemed to become anachronistic, an artifact of a time when it was still OK to believe in the merits of the bell curve. It's no wonder that minds reeled: Giftedness, that long-held concept of high intelligence as measured by an IQ score, was on the chopping block as a psychological construct. Now, everyone was gifted at something, it seemed, and no one was more intelligent than anyone else—we just showed our smarts in different ways.

And then along came Justin Chapman. At the age of 6, Justin was tested as having an IQ of 298—the highest ever recorded—and a math SAT score of 800. He spoke at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at age 5, interviewed Gov. George E. Pataki of New York on age discrimination at age 7 ("Shouldn't I be able to vote because of my abilities, not how long I've been alive?"), and mesmerized a nation with his uncanny ability to understand complex concepts that even adults found difficult to master. Some called him an angel (as in the biblical sense), a messenger from another time to deliver us from evil. Others were simply awed by Justin's genius.

Me? I knew Justin only...