Anecdotal （ 名人轶事 ） reports support this. Pablo Picasso， Charles Darwin， Mark Twain， Oliver Gold smith， 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 Yeatss level of arrogance and self-absorption） are like ly 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 （神童） 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.
