单选题 Given the lack of fit between gifted students and their schools, it is not surprising that such students often have little good to say about their school experience. In one study of 400 adults who had achieved distinction in all areas of life, researchers found that three-fifths of these individuals either did badly in school or were unhappy in school. Few Macarthur Prize fellows, winners of the Macarthur Award for creative accomplishment, had good things to say about their pre-collegiate schooling if they had not been placed in advanced programs.
Anecdotal reports support this. Pablo Picasso, Charles Darwin, Mark Twain, Oliver Goldsmith, and William Butler Yeats all disliked school. So did Winston Churchill, who almost failed out of Harrow, an elite British school. About Oliver Goldsmith, one of his teachers remarked, "Never was so dull a boy." Often these children realize that they know more than their teachers, and their teachers often feel that these children are arrogant, inattentive, or unmotivated.
Some of these gifted people may have done poorly in school because their gifts were not scholastic. Maybe we can account for Picasso in this way. But most fared poorly in school not because they lacked ability but because they found school unchallenging and consequently lost interest. Yeats described the lack of fit between his mind and school: "Because I had found it difficult to attend to anything less interesting than my own thoughts, I was difficult to teach."
As noted earlier, gifted children of all kinds tend to be strong-willed nonconformists. Nonconformity and stubbornness ( and Yeats level of arrogance and self-absorption) are likely to lead to conflicts with teachers.
When highly gifted students in any domain talk about what was important to the development of their abilities, they are far more likely to mention their families than their schools or teachers. A writing prodigy studied by David Feldman and Lynn Goldsmith was taught far more about writing by his journalist father than his English teacher. High-IQ children, in Australia studied by Miraca Gross had much more positive feelings about their families than their schools. About half of the mathematicians studied by Benjamin Bloom had little good to say about school. They all did well in school and took honors classes when available, and some skipped grades.

单选题 Why is it not surprising that gifted students often have little good to say about their school experience?
A. Because they dislike the scholastic knowledge.
B. Because they don't believe in each other.
C. Because they don't feel suited for their schools.
D. Because most of them did badly in schools.

单选题 The author quotes the remarks of one of Oliver Goldsmiths' teachers ______.
A. to provide support for his argument
B. to illustrate the strong will of some gifted children
C. to explain how dull students can also be successful
D. to show how poor Oliver's performance was at school

单选题 Pablo Picasso is listed among the many gifted children who ______.
A. paid no attention to their teachers in class
B. contradicted their teachers much too often
C. could not cope with their studies at school successfully
D. behaved arrogantly and stubbornly in the presence of their teachers

单选题 The root cause of many gifted students having bad memories of their school years is that ______.
A. their nonconformity brought them a lot of trouble
B. they were seldom praised by their teachers
C. school courses failed to inspire or motivate them
D. teachers were usually far stricter than their parents

单选题 Many gifted people attributed their success ______.
A. less to parental help and their education at home
B. less to school instruction and training
C. more to their parents' encouragement than to school training
D. less to their systematic education than to their talent