So what IS an Icarus Indomitus?

Note (22 December 2009): "Icarus Indomitus" was the original name of this blog.

The story of Icarus is probably the best-known of all the Greek myths.  A young boy, wearing wings his father built for him, flew too high; the heat of the sun melted his wings, and he fell to his death.  He was reckless.  He was prideful.  He refused to listen.  In fact, Icarus is generally portrayed as a bit of a moron.  So why would I name a blog about gifted & talented issues after him?  And what's this "Indomitus" business?  Isn't that Latin, not Greek?

Icarus died for ignoring the commands of his elders.  He was too adventurous, too curious, too passionate.  He did not do as he was told.

If he wasn't a gifted child, he would certainly have felt a great affinity for them.

Around the world, there are young Icaruses who fly too high for the comfort of the adults in their lives.  I'm talking about the child who arrives in kindergarten able to read and is told she has to go back to learning her letters; the child who is reprimanded for reading about quantum physics while he is meant to be practicing long division; the child who should be spending her school days with children three years her senior, but is told she wouldn't survive among them.

Adults tell gifted children it is wrong to fly higher than anyone else.  Is it jealousy?  Fear?  I wonder.  And then when they do try to fly too high, adults pull them down.

"Indomitus" is indeed Latin (my Latin is better than my Greek, and anyway, I like the alliteration).  It means "untamed" or "unconquerable".  The Icarus Indomitus is, therefore, the gifted child who will not be pulled down from his rightly earned heights.  Who will not do as he is told when the person giving the command is his intellectual and moral inferior.  Who is adventurous enough and curious enough to fly to places undreamt-of by most, though he may go alone and be punished for the transgression.  These children may be some of the most difficult to teach and to raise.

Which only means there is something vastly, perhaps irreversibly wrong with the way we view and treat them.

Gifted children should be untamed, should be free to explore and fly and be.  Childhood is the time for passions and adventures, before the loss of spirit and wonder that comes with adulthood.  Icarus Indomitus is my own little philosophical concept: the child who flies as high as she wishes, unfettered by adult society's strange notions of propriety, and in fact aided by adults who believe in the right of such a child to flourish and grow in his own manner, in his own time, to his own ends.

That is what this blog is here to advocate.  In the coming months, as I begin my Masters program in Gifted Education, I plan to write weekly (ish) entries about teaching, mentoring, and raising gifted children.  I hope I'll be able to offer some insights, and receive some in return.