Customer Reviews

Smart Girls: A New Psychology of Girls, Women, and Giftedness (Revised Edition)

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I bought this book because of the rave reviews and I was disappointed. About halfway through, I started skimming. Most of the book is comprised of tedious overviews of the author's study of her classmates and several other studies conducted decades ago.

Near the end, I found one chapter - 10 pages - devoted to what I was hoping the book was all about: How to help my two young gifted girls as they grow up. It's a good chapter.

As for the rest, I wish I had those few hours of my life back.

The author also selected several biographies of successful gifted women, and all but two were women who had the benefit of growing up in wealthy families and/or attending fine schools. And we can assume, from the biographies she selected, that a "successful" gifted girl is defined as one who grows up to be a liberal activist and/or lead an extraordinarily unusual lifestyle. And one who has developed what she calls "thorns and shells" - a sharp tongue and a hard outer shell against the world. I don't agree.

She seems to think very little of homemakers, teachers, librarians, nurses and those she says have "disposible careers." These gifted women have apparently betrayed humanity by not becoming scientists, administrators, famous writers and artists, doctors - and rich.

Behind everything the author discusses is her belief "that the rarer the talent, the greater the responsibility of the (sic) both the individual and society to develop that talent." This attitude puts unfair pressure on gifted people. The author is against contentment and finds a host of reasons to blame a patriarchal society for sucking the will from our talented women and girls (though I know many gifted men who have the same problems she claims are specifically female, such as unsupportive parents or making decisions based on relationships rather than on ambition).

On one hand, she claims that the best thing a gifted girl can do is to become self-actualized, but on the other hand, that self-actualization better contain a high salary, titles and degrees, high career goals, children later in life or not at all, and public recognition.

The issues of talented girls and women are crucial, and this book gives new insights and practical ideas for parents, teachers and counselors. Smart Girls describes a twenty year study of gifted girls, and also looks at biographies of eminent women and the research about talented girls and women. Dr. Kerr describes internal and external barriers to women's achievement, characteristics that help them overcome these barriers, and programs and parenting styles that work to help them. Mary Pipher, the author of Reviving Ophelia, said "Barbara Kerr explores the common experiences of girls who grew into strong women...and she found they had in common time by themselves, the ability to fall in love iwth an idea, a refusal to acknowledge gender limitations, and what she calls 'protective coating'." Kathleen Noble, author of The Sound of the Silver Horn, said, "Those of us who teach, parent, counsel and champion talented girls and women will find Smart Girls to be a most valuable, encouraging and readable resource." I agree! Every parent, teacher or counselor of bright girls needs to read this book. It is a must for your bookshelf!

As I am a "gifted girl" in adolescence, my mother is forever buying books about how to identify and parent them. When she came home with this one and didn't begin it within the day, I began it for her -- having this insatiable urge to read any book I see lying around for too long, and also because I enjoy reading things that usually do not describe me or my experiences very accurately. However, this book fit me almost to the T. I was amazed at how well it described me, both as I used to be and as I see myself in the future, not to mention my inner thoughts and feelings about being a gifted girl. Whether you are a parent looking for a tool to help you with your gifted daughter(s), or an adolescent girl like me who enjoys reading gender-related psychology, this book will be invaluable to understanding what it means to be a "gifted girl."

As a gifted woman who was identified as gifted at a young age, I read this book and found myself identifying with many of the items discussed in this book. I found it very enlightening and I realized that I could see my myself and my gifted female friends in all of the stereotypes described in this book. I would definitely recommend this book to mothers of gifted girls.

I bought this book because I am very interested in the different ways in which males & females deal with challenges, both at school, & as adults in the workplace. I saw myself in this book many times, in Kerr's descriptions of herself and her classmates. I now realize the traits I need to foster to keep me successful in life, & to nurture my ambition. I learned that ambition is not a "non-feminine" trait, & I now understand why I felt my failures were personal failures & why successes were just "luck", because this is what society in America reinforces. Also, the biographies of successful (prominent) women were excellent. We need more role models & Kerr provides them. Thanks very much to Barbara Kerr for writing this important book!!!

Just as most of the other reviewers mention that they recognize themselves--so did I. From falling into the trap at college of the "dating/love/find-a-husband" culture so prevalent at MSU to the lack of self-esteem I suffered from for speaking my intelligent mind, I see myself and even my young gifted daughter in this book. Buy this book and begin to find the answers for yourself and your young ones. A good beginning place with resources to further your research.

This book was an eye-opener to me about my daughters and about myself. I bought it to help with my daughters, bu the way Barbara Kerr writes has spoken to my soul, and helped me understand myself.

Kerr was a member of one of the first congregated gifted cohorts in the United States - a program that was launched, unsurprisingly, as a response to the Russian launch of Sputnik. (Aha, I've characterized my own U.S. GATE experience in the 80s as 'Soviet'. Now I know why.) Kerr's class was roughly half boys and half girls. It should come as no surprise that by their ten-year reunion the women had achieved less education and career eminence than the men. A few of her women colleagues cornered her and demanded that she, as a psychologist, study why.

What Kerr found is there's a cliff at about fifth grade where many high potential girls fall off (if they're ever identified in the first place.) This is the gateway to puberty when even their previously-supportive parents change their tunes to emphasize boys, clothes, and dominant culture. Many girls drop out of gifted programs or purposefully underachieve at this age and never recover.

According to Kerr, by high school our concerns have been steered so far away from hard academics that we often lack the resources to finish four years of math and science. This places the majority of us in 'soft subjects' at less competitive colleges and universities. In university the situation doesn't improve, writes Kerr. At the co-eds professors call on men more often, men speak up more in class, and a particular phenomenon comes into full effect: that is that university women will allow men to dominate because we've been taught overall to value intimacy over victory.

In her treatment of women's careers after college Kerr's work is extensive but too simplistically categorical. For example, in a chapter entitled, "Is self-actualization optional?" she rebuffs cultural feminists who consider success in the domestic sphere or social careers to be on par with success in law or the sciences. Cultural feminists, in turn, have found Kerr's less-than-nuanced characterization of 'soft subjects' and 'disposable careers' a tremendous fault with the book, and I have to agree.

It's still a relevant discussion. Recently there's been a change of direction for the National Association for Gifted Children that has advocates in an uproar: an official shift from 'gifted identification' to 'talent development' (i.e. achievement-based services, which in our current system always favor white, upper class male math achievement.) In this anachronistic approach to the education of high-potential learners, eminence supplants life satisfaction as the ultimate goal. So we've come full circle. In the Great Recession, as in Kerr's Cold-War-infused 1994 book, our talents belong to the state, and our state wants us in STEM. Kerr espoused this viewpoint so thoroughly that she held up the biographies of nine eminent women: Curie, Roosevelt, Angelou, Mead, Sills, O'Keeffe, Stein, Hepburn, and Menchu in an attempt to scientifically prove what made them eminent, presumably so we could copy them. Curiously, contrary to her own 'eminence' argument, eight of her nine eminent women represent the humanities and social sciences.

Nevertheless, some useful tidbits to take from this book: Women's colleges can be an excellent choice for high-potential girls, and mentorship is the single most important career development tool for women. Kerr's final chapters are an inquiry into career counselling services for gifted girls plus an informal Q & A about gifted girls that are both super reads. These in and of themselves would be the making of a superb resource.

Should you read this book, I recommend reading Chapter 13 first. It is important to know where Kerr is coming from while reading the rest. Understanding her views will help you retain the good information she provides and discard the biased interpretation and spin she puts on it.

As another reviewer states, Kerr doesn't think much of gifted women who become stay-at-home mothers. She views this as a waste of talent and claims that they have been caught up in romance. She discounts that some women view being a SAHM as important for their children and make an intellectual choice to stay home.

Kerr also plays both sides of the fence in regards to gender strengths and weaknesses. Girls succeed in linguistic giftedness because of whom girls innately are, but don't match boys in mathematical giftedness because they are oppressed by patriarchal society into believing they aren't good at math.

Having three gifted girls, I was hoping for great information on how to encourage them to use their talents. There is some of that, but you have to wade through the rhetoric to find it. This book would have been so much better if the author could have disassociated from her bias.

Barbara Kerr's book is of interest to me because of research I did for my book, Where Have All the Smart Women Gone? I did a study of 34 gifted women who had the following in common: a college education, between the ages of 30-50, and identified as gifted by their school systems. We met in focus groups and talked about the gifted label, achievement, and families. The good news was that all of them were grateful for gifted programs. So if you are reading this as a parent of a gifted girl, or are a gifted woman yourself, please buy both books! Kerr is one of the key voices about gifted women, and her book is well worth the read.