It’s the joke of the moment, all those parents who think their kids are HPI when they suck in class. How funny and how ridiculous they are! Typical parental blindness. “Do you realize Martine? Her kid is repeating seventh grade and she says he’s HPI? Haha, pour me a drink. »
Before the advent of Caroline Goldman, these jokes slipped on me. I thought: these are people who see the world in a binary way! Good student, intelligent; bad student, stupid. Or here are people who think that the cloud of vanity that has passed over France has spared only them. But in the spring, the psychologist, who sees benevolent education as the source of all evil, began to say that “HPI” and “ADHD” were (frequently) only poorly limited children, and I broke down. I compulsively tweeted, then compulsively deleted my tweets.
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After my “time out”
Back from vacation, my “time out” to me, I offer you a point of high intellectual potential. Here are some truths:
- The HPI is a psychometric reality. They are beings whose IQ is greater than 130. They constitute 2.3% of the population.
- It is true, and Franck Ramus, researcher in cognitive sciences, repeats it sufficiently, that it is not proven that the HPI present more difficulties at school than the others. On the contrary, they would be best in class. They don’t seem to be any more unhappy either.
- It is also true that society has entered into what could be called a diagnostic mania and that it raises ethical and moral questions to label our children in this way.
- True finally that this madness of the diagnosis feeds a business and that this business makes live charlatans ready to say to any idiot that it is HPI against 500 euros.
But once we’ve said that, it would be a shame not to understand that something wonderful is happening in France. The really excellent news is that the diagnostic box has replaced the garbage box for children who are poorly adapted to school. Among them, HPI.
Are our children all HPI? Investigation into a contemporary obsession
Half HPI
HPIs are not particularly bad students, but bad students can be HPIs. And the better we identify learning disabilities, the more dys or ADHD children we come across with disparate intelligence. It is as if the brain were compensating for weaknesses with strengths. Some areas are overinvested (logic, abstraction) while others are paralyzed (visuo-spatial ability). Some IQ test scores exceed 130 while others fall below 100. We are faced with profiles with gaps, bizarre. In neuropediatric jargon, they are called “neuroatypical” or “heterogeneous HPI”. These are the ones your uncle makes fun of. The bad smart students of my college years. Which ended in scrap.
« HPI hahahah! »
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Let’s be nice. Let’s try to understand this 146-year-old uncle. In a sense, he is right. Are we still HPI if we are so heterogeneously? Being half HPI makes no sense. It’s like being half-brave or half-outspoken. A semantic aberration. Let’s give the uncle another point: some parents brag about the HPI diagnosis (glory) and hide the various problems that led the child to the doctor. Finally, let’s admit that these heterogeneous HPI profiles explode in a certain medium. In this sense, the sociologist Wilfried Lignier is not wrong when he writes: “Your child is not HPI, he is just rich. » Because obviously, the bourgeois class is the one who has the time and the means to investigate multi-dys or hyperactive children and to accompany them in their school career while the less privileged continue to suffer in a hostile environment. Because as Pierre Lemaitre wrote in “l’Obs”:
“Some do not know how to draw a triangle, but are capable of remarkable mathematical demonstrations orally. But in school, what you can’t write doesn’t count. »
“A normative system is obviously essential for mass education. It is unthinkable to practice individual pedagogy for 12 million children! However, it is hard to believe that the education system is so incapable of making room for those who need it”continues Lemaitre.
In the life of a dyspraxic child, by Pierre Lemaitre
In the absence of deep reflection from National Education on the reception of these children with differently connected brains, teachers continue to teach as before, while adapting to the particular needs of such and such. But sometimes, so-and-so plus so-and-so represents a third of the class. It’s a nightmare. Other teachers prefer to resist any change and still tear pages from dyspraxic children’s notebooks.
The “Famous Triad”
I write this thinking of my eldest son who had a neuropsychological assessment last year after several requests from National Education (the school tears its hair out in front of these students asking for educational accommodations, but it is the first to ask for tests as soon as there is the slightest problem of fluidity in learning). A first alert was given in kindergarten. The teacher was worried about my son bumping into everything. He was the Pierre Richard of the middle section. He couldn’t draw a circle, but he was “class engine” orally.
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Later, in elementary school, he shone in mental arithmetic, but the circles were always beyond his reach. And of course, it wasn’t just that, we don’t care about circles, it’s useless, but the writing, the geometry were already a problem. His mistress was afraid that by dint of collapsing in writing, he would develop a school phobia. She advised us to “balance sheet”. In February 2022, we gave in to the famous neuropsy tests not reimbursed by Social Security (at the public hospital, the wait was more than a year) and a neuropediatrician diagnosed him HPI-ADHD-Dyspraxic. “The Famous Triad”, did she say. Three labels for the price of one.
The dyspraxic life
I spare you the thousand questions that such a diagnosis generated in a psychoanalysis enthusiast. The neuropediatrician spoke of my son’s brain as of an equipped car. Airbags, yes. Air conditioning, no. But is ADHD a matter of dopamine receptors or psychic defense against anxiety or both? Is it due to a particular chemistry of the brain or to an ineffective repression? Is it biological, affective, psychological, all three? Can ADHD evolve favorably? What is the role of heredity, environmental factors, education (attachment)? And why medicate a perfectly functioning child outside of school? As for my son’s dysgraphia, stemming from his dyspraxia, was it a reaction to his parents’ obsession with writing or a neurodevelopmental disorder (whose existence is doubted par Caroline Goldman) ?
I don’t know, and anyone who claims to have the answers with certainty terrifies me. I navigate between approaches with pragmatism. My son is seeing a psychologist and he is training on the computer for entering college. I’m moving forward hoping that the school system judging it in writing isn’t going to grind it down. Or that the child is not going to scuttle himself.
For or against the “time out”? “These positions are based on dogma”
It’s counter-intuitive, but some IQ curves are a rollercoaster ride. On my son’s balance sheet, it is written that his profile is that of a child to “strongly heterogeneous high intellectual potential”. But to those around me, I just say that he is dyspraxic. Anxious, sensitive, strong in mathematics and clumsy. To be honest, that’s enough for me and I understand the annoyance aroused by the term HPI which relegates other children to the status of low intellectual potential (when they have nothing less). But these mockeries don’t make anyone taller, they sound conservative, they go with little music these days, they’re part of a general backlash aimed at the rights of weaker people.
“Do you realize Martine, her son is HPI, but he makes spelling mistakes! »
Yes Martine, but both can be true!
