Though they have the potential to excel in many fields, we’re neglecting a large body of students with a unique set of skills.
Between two and three million students possess strong spatial talents—the types of valuable aptitudes that help engineers and scientists imagine new technological innovations, architects visualize innovative structures, and carpenters conceive of complex builds.
Yet even though spatial skills and reasoning can be measured with paper-and-pencil tests that gauge kids’ abilities to mentally rotate and visualize objects in three dimensions, we aren’t consistently doing that. And so spatially gifted students often struggle in school, don’t receive the specialized attention they need, and are generally overlooked by gifted and talented programs, according to research published earlier this year by The British Psychological Society.