In memory of underachieving geniuses of my childhood

What you need to know:

  • Meaningful education. I suspect that there are very many children who are struggling in Uganda’s traditional school system, without access to meaningful education and other opportunities that maximise their intellectual and creative potential.

Dear Tingasiga;
One of my primary school classmates at Kihanga Boys Primary School in Mparo, Rukiga was a fearless high-risk taker who was forever in trouble with school authorities. Rwangakubohwa (not his real name) was a hyperactive, impulsive, defiant and bullying type that terrorised us without any provocation. However, he was a very inventive boy, with a great gift for producing beautiful crafts. He was a promising athlete and very skilled soccer player. Rwangakubohwa was expelled from school in Primary Six. He then vanished. My efforts to track him down over the years have been unsuccessful. My former classmates agree that he was a bright boy that lived in the wrong place at the wrong time.

At Kigezi High School Primary in Kabaare, I was privileged to meet a boy called John Busingye (not his real name.) He was an older and more sophisticated version of Rwangakubohwa, as gifted in sports as he was with his hands. A native of Rwakaraaba, a Kabaare suburb that was home to the more socially sophisticated citizens, Busingye was a natural leader of our class. He was handsome, obsessively clean, witty and stubborn. He often told riveting stories of his exploits in town, and knew things about cinema and the outside world that were still foreign to us.
Busigye’s control of a soccer ball, with which he danced and teased his way towards the opponent’s goal, was always an astonishing display of agility and superior eye-foot coordination. His voice was an essential anchor to the tenors in our school choir in which I sang alto. Yet that same choir boy was capable of inflicting pain on anyone who crossed him. We feared him as much as we admired him.

However, Busingye’s academic grades were always at variance with his evident abilities. Whereas he passed well enough to be admitted with us to Kigezi High School Junior in 1965, his adolescent escapades precluded him from paying attention to studies that were more demanding than the case had been in the lower school. He failed the Junior School Leaving Examinations, ending his academic career after only eight years of formal education. He joined the Uganda Army.

I do not know how long Busingye served in the military, but by the time we met again in the early 1990s, he was a shocking sight to one who remembered the dapper teenager from Rwakaraaba. He was living in a tiny room in the old slum on Kampala’s Mulago Hill. The ravages of excessive drinking, hard living and malnutrition were painfully evident. However, his brilliant mind was still at it, his wit as sharp as ever, unafraid to challenge the utterances of those of us who had had the great fortune of obtaining higher education. Busingye died more than 20 years ago.
Just up the road from our home in Mparo lived a boy who was a genius, in my opinion. Gahwera (not his real name) was arguably the most gifted in a family of intellectually gifted people. For example, while still in his teens, he disassembled a relative’s transistor radio, causing shock to the owner and all present.

Gahwera calmly explained to them that he simply wanted to look inside and figure out how it worked. To the relief of everyone, he reassembled the radio as though he had had training by the manufacturer. He was teaching himself. The radio incident was one of many scientific explorations that earned Gahwera the reputation of being a “trouble-maker”, “naughty”, “crazy” and such.

In fact, had he lived in a society that recognised and nurtured genius, Gahwera may well have been one of the great inventors and innovators of the 20th Century. I often think of Rwangakubohwa, Busigye and Gahwera, good examples of our lost intellectual treasures, victims of a culture with no room for variation from a narrow path prescribed for growing children.
We were all expected to think, learn and act the same way. Our interests were prescribed by our parents and teachers. Those with behaviours that did not fit the presumed “normal” were declared to be “bad kids.” Spanking, shaming, threatening and ridiculing them were the futile remedies.

Clearly, children’s learning styles and behaviours are as varied as those of adults. There are children with learning and behavioural disabilities that do not lend themselves to easy correction. Some manifest social deviance and conduct disorders that point to predictably difficult adulthood. However, very many children are lost to the world because society fails to identify their unique needs for custom-tailored education and behaviour support. Rwangakubohwa, Busingye and Gahwera were probably among them.
I suspect that there are very many children who are struggling in Uganda’s traditional school system, without access to meaningful education and other opportunities that maximise their intellectual and creative potential.

Here in North America, between five and 10 per cent of children are categorised as “gifted.” Whereas there is no consensus on the definition of giftedness, it is generally agreed that one’s intelligent quotient (IQ) or one’s performance on standard school examinations is not a sufficient measure. An individual’s intellectual ability, level of task commitment (perseverance, hard work, intrinsic motivation, and self-efficacy) and creativity are important considerations.

One wonders how many of our peers were forced off the academic wagon in spite of their outstanding talents, creative and leadership capabilities, and commitment to endeavours that did not necessarily fit the mainstream. They became gifted underachievers, even failures, not because of their intrinsic weaknesses, but because society was ill prepared for them. Many were subjected to an unchallenging curriculum, resulting in boredom and drifting from traditional restrictive paths.

We now know that when such children are offered an appropriate and stimulating academic environment, they perform better than their peers. Equally important is the need to recognise those who are gifted, but underachieve because they are burdened with clinical anxiety, depression, poor self-regulation, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, specific learning disabilities and other mental health challenges.
Parents and teachers are uniquely placed to recognise these gifted children and to offer them education opportunities that focus on their strengths and interests, utilizing the vast knowledge and experience that have come to light since the days of Rwangakubohwa, Busingye and Gahwera.