Rare, Valuable, and Lost

Last week a tree was cut down in Seat­tle and is prob­a­bly now sit­ting in someone’s liv­ing room, wrapped in lights, fes­tooned with glit­ter­ing orna­ments, and draped in tin­sel. This would not be much of a story, espe­cially in Decem­ber, except for the fact that the tree in ques­tion was an exceed­ingly rare spec­i­men of Ketelee­ria eve­ly­ni­ana, a conifer native to China, that had been trans­planted ten years ago to the Wash­ing­ton Park Arbore­tum. The staff arrived on Decem­ber 9 to dis­cover that overnight some­one, pre­sum­ably look­ing for a free hol­i­day dec­o­ra­tion, had removed the tree.

Asked about its appear­ance dur­ing an inter­view on NPR, the plant col­lec­tions man­ager for the Arbore­tum, Ran­dall Hitchin, said, “In gen­eral aspect, it looks like a conifer: tall, dark green, sym­met­ri­cal.” Sort of like your run-​​of-​​the-​​mill Christ­mas tree? “In the dark,” Hitchin replied.

Gifted chil­dren can be like the K. eve­ly­ni­ana. To an untrained eye, or to those who don’t know the dif­fer­ence (or care to know, as in the case of the tree thief), most gifted kids look like your typ­i­cal, run-​​of-​​the-​​mill kid. In a class­room of stu­dents, it is often easy to miss the unique qual­i­ties that make them stand out, that make them rare specimens.

Gifted stu­dents, like the rare tree in Seat­tle, have unique needs. They have an often unap­pre­ci­ated value that can seem sur­pris­ing to some: in their attempt to save sixty or sev­enty dol­lars, the arbo­real ban­dits destroyed a $10,000 treasure.

But the real issue isn’t that we so often miss the value of our gifted stu­dents. It isn’t that we have a few rare gems to pick out from among the ordi­nary stones. The issue is that we even con­sider any child to be a “typ­i­cal” or “aver­age” one. Every sin­gle per­son in every sin­gle class­room is a $10,000 trea­sure. Every stu­dent has unique inter­ests, abil­i­ties, needs, and tal­ents. Every child deserves to be nur­tured, respected, and cared for.

So why do gifted stu­dents deserve spe­cial treat­ment, then? They don’t. What they do deserve is to be treated as the indi­vid­u­als they are. They deserve to be taught at their level, at their pace, respect­ing and nur­tur­ing their unique qual­i­ties. Just like every other child in the classroom. If we don’t, we run the risk of allow­ing some­one to come in and destroy our own rare trees.

The staff at the Arbore­tum are still mourn­ing their loss because the tree is irreplaceable.

So are our children.