The Trouble with Talent

Why telling kids they are talented can be terrible for everyone…but it doesn’t have to be

If someone possessed a great and beautiful gift, the likes of which the world had never witnessed, but nobody ever witnessed it, would it be a talent?

What if the person performed their talent, but was never paid or celebrated?

Would they still be talented if others failed to see?

I hate the word talent. It makes me cringe. See, as both a teacher and a parent I see kids suffer by being told they are talented and by hearing others praised for being so.

The issue, see, is that “Language,” as author Will Willingham writes, “tells a thing that it is.”

And yet, so many beautiful and amazing things exist in the world–dwelling between ephemeral dueling poles of impossibility and imagination–without the flawed and flimsy use of language to ascribe its meaning.

So what does language mean and how do the words we use shift over time?

I think about this often because I am a father and a teacher. When I see my children and my students, I use language to affirm them. I use language to guide them. I use language to teach them. And often, when a child hears praiseworthy language from an adult (whether it is directed at them or a classmate), they associate it with a tricky word in today’s landscape.

The word talent.

The word “talent” hasn’t always been so binary (Just picture yourself, a middle schooler trying something out and asking, “Am I good at this, or bad at this?” “Am I skilled or unskilled?” “Am I talented or untalented?”)

To the people of Greece, the word talent once meant “bearing” or “suffering.” This made sense to them as the Proto-Indo-European root tele- means “to lift, support, weigh.”

Accordingly, it made sense that the word talantos was often used to refer to something very heavy. For the Greeks of the 11th Century, the word usually referred to a big pile of money. In fact, talantos is known to specifically have referred to the weight of 6,000 denarii, or about 57 pounds of silver coins.

Wow. Having a talent in ancient Greece would be like scoring enough tokens for a lifetime of unlimited skeeball at the arcade!

No matter how you slice it, though, very few folks in 12th Century Greece would have had exposure to such wealth.

Very few would be considered…talented (taking the noun and turning it into an adjective).

But by the 21th Century, the word talent began to refer, not just to the pile of money one had accumulated, but the actions and mindsets that enabled them to accrue such wealth. If you were talented, it meant you must possess some quality or essence that had led you to such an impressive pile of coinage.

Suddenly, history begins to show the use of words like, “inclination, leaning, will, desire” being used to describe talantos. Folks who were talented were people who desired things, were inclined toward action and innovation. Sure, there was the metaphorical “bearing and suffering” of carrying around a huge weight that was required too. In essence, it became a sort of equation.

(Desire + Will + Inclination) x (willingness to suffer for that Desire) = TALENT

By the 15th Century, however, that notion of talent developed from figurative use of the word in the sense of “money.” Instead, it was being used as “special natural ability, aptitude, or gift.” It was still a type of wealth, but it now had to do with something natural and bestowed upon some, but not on others.

Personally, I like the equation from the 12th Century better. In my own life, I get the most meaning and richness from moments of

Desire, inclination, and a willingness to suffer and toil to achieve.

I am most fulfilled when I am doing things I love and things that make me feel alive. I would say most folks we might see as “talented” would say the same.

But I also think we are too limited in our use of the word talent.

Hard work and the willingness to bear weight is really important in recognizing what we bring to the world around us.

There is nobody exactly like any one of us. That part within us that speaks to this unique essence is called many things by many different groups.

In Icelandic, it is innsæi (the sea within). In Spanish, the word is alma (soul). In Hindi, it is atman (life force). In Anishinaabe, it is uhpowee (the force which causes mushrooms to push up from the earth overnight). In Zulu, it is ubuntu (Desmond Tutu translates it as, “I am because you are, and because you are, I also am”). In France, they speak of one’s r’aison d’être (reason for being). In Japan, they refer to a person’s ikigai (loosely translated as “that thing which gets you out of bed in the morning” or a life’s purpose).

Each of these languages has a different meaning to the sense of that thing that compels you to carry weight (because the process of bringing true and rigorous beauty to the world is not easy…one must often suffer, sweat, and toil, even if that suffering fulfills them) and bring treasure (whether 57 pounds of it, or simply the beauty of it, or the experience of it for your own reward) into existence.

Educator Rick Ackerly (one of my favorite authors on the topic of teaching) has this to say about the role of talent–or as he calls it genius–in humans. He describes, “…an inner motive, a voice, that prompts and propels her to engage in the world around her, integrate the discontinuities within herself, gracefully harmonize her relationships with those around her, and to make something of herself.”

This is the essence of the unique and ineffable talent within each of us. This is where the magic of who we are lives. There is a deep and beautiful will, capable of bearing a great and heavy weight on its shoulders, and bringing magic into the world.

Sometimes it whispers. Sometimes it sings. Sometimes it says nothing at all. But as William Willingham suggests, when we put language to it,

when we tell it,

You

YES, YOU.

YOU!

You are a talent…a talent of immeasurable value.

And with the dawn of a new school year, our job is to tell that thing that it is.