Maye Musk realized early on that her son Elon had a very high IQ. According to Elon Musk’s biographer, Walter Isaacson, she wanted Elon to be enrolled in nursery school at the age of three. Despite being advised against this decision by the principal of the school, she succeeded. Maye believed that her son needed intellectual stimulation. “I really have this genius child,” she concluded. (Walter Isaacson, Elon Musk, page 16)
In my experience, if a parent tells us their child has much higher intellectual capacities than any other child, we often tend to be skeptical. I remember the father of one of my grade one students stating that his son read newspapers and encyclopedias fluently. My first thought was, “That’s great, but can he understand?” I thanked the father for his input and assured him that I would test his child with the Reading Running Records, the assessment tool used in primary grades to evaluate students’ reading and comprehension levels. I stressed “comprehension” as an important part of reading skills.
As a Special Education specialist and a regular teacher trained in Reading and Comprehension at the University of Toronto, I felt well-prepared to conduct the reading assessment. However, since I have retired, I have had time to reflect on some assessment techniques. I have come to the conclusion that there is a big difference between what a child thinks and understands and what he or she is capable of expressing and explaining in their spoken language.
Elon Musk used to tune out his preschool teacher, who was raising her voice at him and getting more and more frustrated with his lack of response. Walter Isaacson wrote about the three-year-old Elon:
He spent most of his time in a trance, not listening, one of his teachers explained. “He looks out of the window all the time, and when I tell him to pay attention, he says, ‘The leaves are turning brown now.’ (Walter Isaacson, Elon Musk, page 17)
Elon’s teachers tried convincing his parents that he was developmentally delayed because his reactions differed significantly from their regular students. Today, nobody doubts the genius mind of Elon Musk. Consequently, his story may help us, as teachers, to be more cautious when evaluating our students.
My student couldn’t answer comprehension questions during the reading assessment. His answers seemed unrelated to the topic, almost as if he was trying to change our conversation to something that his mind was preoccupied with at that moment.
Usually, he avoided interactions with his classmates and often sat alone in a quiet part of the classroom, reading a book he brought from home. I let him do it, but at the same time, I encouraged him to talk about his interests, hoping that such practice would improve his expressive language skills.
His parents didn’t want the school to assess his social difficulties. They wanted to avoid any diagnosis, such as autism or other neurodivergent conditions, that would lead to labelling his neurological type and development. His mother said during one of the meetings with a team of specialists in psychology and education, “I’ve got this son and nothing I can do but let him develop without unnecessary interventions or labels.”
Since that meeting, I have learned that we must be flexible and listen attentively to our students’ parents when forming our opinions about their children’s abilities. The mother of my student was determined to protect her son from placing any labels on his developing intellect.
According to some interviews, Elon Musk is aware that he might be on the spectrum of autism. I didn’t find any evidence that he was officially diagnosed with autism in his early childhood, and, from my point of view, it probably wouldn’t make any difference.
Another confirmed genius, Albert Einstein, as a young child had a habit of quietly practising sentences before saying them out loud. Walter Isaacson, who is an author of Einstein’s biography as well, wrote:
His slow development was combined with a cheeky rebelliousness toward authority, which led one schoolmaster to send him packing and another to amuse history by declaring that he would never amount to much. These traits made Albert Einstein the patron saint of distracted school kids everywhere. But they also help to make him, or so he later surmised, the most creative scientific genius of modern times. (Walter Isaacson, Einstein, His Life and Universe, page 40)
Young Albert’s parents were worried about his development, but interestingly enough, his grandparents were convinced that he was clever and endearing. (Walter Isaacson, Einstein, His Life and Universe, page 41)
Tests for primary grades are designed to assess neurotypical students. If a child thinks in pictures and not words as Einstein did, comprehension questions at the end of the reading passage might not be the best tool to assess such a child’s ability to understand. Perhaps asking a student who is having difficulties with expressive language to draw pictures after reading and then talk about it would let us evaluate young minds with more accuracy.
We will not know for many years if we have a genius in our classroom. It takes a few decades for children to become active members of our society. Of course, not every genius becomes well-known or famous like Einstein or Musk. Some people with high IQs might live very ordinary lives. Regardless of their successes or failures, all children have the same right to be treated as individuals who should be fairly evaluated, getting all possible help that would allow them to meet their highest potential.
I might not know if I made mistakes with my student, in evaluating him how I was trained or trying to convince his parents about the benefits of psychological evaluation. I do know, though, that critical thinking concerning different forms of assessment in primary grades can increase our chances of supporting children with high IQs, neurodivergent students, and pupils with many other special needs. The best start is to have meaningful conversations with our students’ families, who may know much more about their children’s abilities than any sophisticated test can tell.
References
Walter Isaacson, Elon Musk, Simon & Schuster, 2023
Walter Isaacson, Einstein, His Life and Universe, Thomson Gale with Simon & Schuster, 2007
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Anna Nike Leskowsky
Anna Nike Leskowsky is a retired elementary school teacher. Her journalistic and creative writings have been featured in Canadian magazines, papers, and college textbooks. Anna Lives in Toronto.
This article is featured in Canadian Teacher Magazine’s Winter 2025 issue.
