Are We Failing Our Geniuses?

[Posteritatis]

From Time (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1653653-1,00.html), we've got an article on the state - or, more appropriately, the lack thereof - of gifted education in the United States these days:

The system failed Annalisee, but could any system be designed to accommodate her rare gifts? Actually, it would have been fairly simple (and virtually cost-free) to let her skip grades, but the lack of awareness about the benefits of grade skipping is emblematic of a larger problem: our education system has little idea how to cultivate its most promising students. Since well before the Bush Administration began using the impossibly sunny term "no child left behind," those who write education policy in the U.S. have worried most about kids at the bottom, stragglers of impoverished means or IQs. But surprisingly, gifted students drop out at the same rates as nongifted kids--about 5% of both populations leave school early. Later in life, according to the scholarly Handbook of Gifted Education, up to one-fifth of dropouts test in the gifted range. Earlier this year, Patrick Gonzales of the U.S. Department of Education presented a paper showing that the highest-achieving students in six other countries, including Japan, Hungary and Singapore, scored significantly higher in math than their bright U.S. counterparts, who scored about the same as the Estonians. Which all suggests we may be squandering a national resource: our best young minds.

In 2004-05, the most recent academic year for which the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) has data, U.S. universities awarded 43,354 doctorates--more than ever during the 50 years NORC has gathered the data. But the rate of increase in the number of U.S. doctorates has fallen dramatically since 1970, when it hit nearly 15% for the year; for more than a decade, the number of doctorates has grown less than 3.5% a year. The staggering late-1960s growth in Ph.D.s followed a period of increased attention on gifted kids after Sputnik. Now we're coasting.

To some extent, complacency is built into the system. American schools spend more than $8 billion a year educating the mentally retarded. Spending on the gifted isn't even tabulated in some states, but by the most generous calculation, we spend no more than $800 million on gifted programs. But it can't make sense to spend 10 times as much to try to bring low-achieving students to mere proficiency as we do to nurture those with the greatest potential.

It's a pretty long article, but IMHO it's worth the read.

[ulysses]

1. want to serve gifted kids better?

Rid yourself of education laws that all but require that students with special needs (both ends of the spectrum) be driven out or, at best, ignored.

[nashville_brook]

28. "mainstreaming" is the problem -- we'd be better off "driven out" to an ability-appropriate

school.

as it is, "mainstreaming" forces gifted out in the worst way. the article says just as many high IQs drop out as those on the lower end of the spectrum.

But surprisingly, gifted students drop out at the same rates as nongifted kids--about 5% of both populations leave school early.

by the looks of this thread, DU is home to many smart kids who got "left behind" -- or up and left the rest behind on their/our own.

[BadgerLaw2010]

33. Internet tends towards self-selection of peer groups.

It has been great because people who are inquisitive and "different" can go looking until they find a home. Science fiction message boards are a good example. 50% of the population is engineers or science majors, probably 10-20% are Aspergers Syndrome and the average IQ is something like 120.

Not your average high school classroom, where statistically, you might have two or three, and you might have two or three people with IQ's over 140 in an entire high school class.

[Jed Dilligan]

49. Good description of me

"up and left"

I left HS at 16 and was one of those 43,000 PhD's in 2005.

[goddess40]

74. you're right

the reason districts don't like to skip kids through the grades isn't because they are worried the kid can't handle it, the reason is because it costs them money, for every year a kids gets pushed ahead is a year they don't get paid for them in there system.

At a meeting for our gifted son with NLD we had an administrator tell us a gifted kid can't have learning disabilities - every jaw in the room dropped. The district officials couldn't even contain their shock at the ignorance of one of there own.

[angrycarpenter]

2. damn right we are

Let me tell you my own story in brief.

In 1976 I was in 6th grade and had just been tested at IQ 185 so I was assigned to the gifted program. This involved A 45 minute bus ride to the county tech school one day A week. I was expected to go to this place and keep the grades in my regular classes steady. The class was a JOKE. Half the time it involved college students giving us psychological tests on which to base their own papers. The other half was basically playing with puzzles and games. Worthless. No steady teacher, No structure whatsoever.

In the meantime back at everyday school things were not well either. By being singled out as A "genius" I was unmercifully tormented by the other kids. I went to A small rural football school and some days I got beaten 3 or 4 times before I could get home. My teachers did not like having to take the trouble of making sure the assignments I missed were made up or tests retook and started bitching openly in class to the point That I went to the guidance counselor and asked to go back to the normal curriculum. The label "gifted" followed me until I graduated.

As the official nerd in A hick school I was subjected to some pretty horrible treatment at the hands of the football jocks. The teachers, who were allowed to paddle in front of the class and did with frightening regularity, Were unimaginative hicks themselves and did nothing to protect my 98 pound frame from the brutality of the football team that they worshiped like gods. Really the only thing I learned at that school was how to take A punch.

I turned into A bitter loner weirdo who spent hours reading and dreaming of revenge instead of having fun. I all but quit participating in school, doing the minimum to pass to the next grade so that my time in hell would be over. In 1980 I moved to Florida with my parents and went to work right out of high school and never spoke to anyone from that town ever again

I'm still kind of bitter about it sometimes. Sometimes I wake with my fists clenched, having had A dream where I was back there again being made to crawl by man-sized boys with pea-brains. I almost weep for the kids who are still going through the same or worse from A school system that does not know what to do with them and A society that hates them and will beat them down to their level out of sheer spite.

[artemisia1]

7. My experience was similiar...

My experience was similar. The "Mentally Gifted Minor" program (MGM) ACTUALLY set me and my sister back because we missed half of three days per week going to a nearly worthless class that did NOT cover such basic survival skills as Arithmatic, Spelling, Grammar, etc.

The only EFFECTIVE "special program" that I ever participated in was offered by the local community college - without local school involvement. Saturday school taught by GREAT teachers with WELL planned lessons.

[Posteritatis]

11. Keeps seeming like the gifted programs were designed by the opposite end of the spectrum

I've only heard a few people who've had consistently good experiences with the things such as they are; most of the stuff's closer to the guy you're responding to or other such silliness.

I'm starting to think that I was lucky. My neck of the woods merely hated the entire concept of "gifted" students, and refused to support the existence of programs for them at all.

Any of you guys remember that cliche from the eighties (and probably beforehand) where students were getting pressured by peers to lower their grades (regardless of how they acted otherwise) or Face The Consequences ("I like you, but you're doing too well in school. I can't hang out with you unless your average is a sixty")? We actually had that when I was in K-6. Argh.

[goddess40]

75. my son's GT program didn't continue after 5th grade

when he got to middle school it was as if he hadn't been to the magnet program. He sat through many of the same lessons over the three years in middle school. Bored kids either tune out or act out.

The districts cure was to discontinue the gifted program and replace it with a pull-out program.

[Posteritatis]

89. I never got why GT programs tend only to be a couple years in elementary

I'd almost rather they just not have the things at all, if the alternative is having them quarter-assed and then spending a few years making the kid un-learn everything.

What's a pull-out program? I think that's the first time I've heard the term.

[Greyhound]

78. Sorry, it all sounds too familiar. Thankfully I grew when I hit 12 and we

moved often so I didn't get it as long as it sounds like you did.

I learned to fit in, how to fight dirty, and how to hide my IQ, so I always got the "underachiever" label.

"A school system that does not know what to do with them and a society that hates them and will beat them down to their level out of sheer spite", pretty much sums it up.

[susanna]

3. Gad.

I was in a "gifted" program in the 70s. They didn't know what to do then, either.

"Gifted" kids get shuttled through the system, that's not new. I'm surprised at this article, actually. This has been going on for just about forever.

[porphyrian]

4. When they're trying to dumb down the populace, smart kids are just a pain in the ass.

Why would they care about gifted students when they don't give a shit about anyone else?

[Johonny]

5. hard to take serious

any article that talks about intelligence and IQ tests as a measure there of...

[Mythsaje]

9. It's a limited measuring stick, but it is still a measuring stick...

The standard IQ test only measures a few facets of intelligence--spatial reasoning, pattern recognition, and sequencing. If not for my limitations in sequencing, I'd probably test higher than 129. On the other hand, it doesn't do a damn thing for conceptual intelligence, language, social intelligence, musical talent, etc...

Either way, our schools don't know how to teach kids to take advantage of their strengths and compensate for their weaknesses.

[BadgerLaw2010]

34. Having seen desperate people struggle through an LSAT prep course, I disagree.

I took the LSAT prep course at my parent's urging to find out what I would be expected to do and to shore up my score. I was undoubtably the smartest person in the room except for the teacher (teacher was required to be 99th percentile on the LSAT to have the job), and scored accordingly on the tests.

There were people there who would have given anything to be able to do what I did. Scores in the mid 160's or higher on the LSAT are your ticket to top-tier law schools and gigantic increases in your lifetime earnings. If it was possible to sell LSAT scores (it used to be), the going rate for something that would get you a seat would be something like $100,000.

My classmates probably would have paid it. Two examples: One was a single mother who really wanted to make a lot more money for her kids. She tried, she really did. She even came in early and stayed late, worked 1-on-1 with the teacher, etc.

She couldn't do it. She just couldn't complete the test fast enough. LSAT pacing is based off above-average intelligence (probably at least a 110 to finish it) under pressure, and she just couldn't do it.

The other example was someone who was under tremendous pressure to break 160, for the reason I've explained above. That score is worth serious money, and his parents knew it. Not only did he need to do it for himself, he needed to do it for his parents. His life would have been so much happier and easier if he could just do it.

He couldn't. He maxed out in mid-150's, every single time, no matter how much work he put in. He ultimately put off his test. I don't think that's going to help him when he does take it. You can learn tricks for some sections, but miracles of elevating your score a full 10 points consistently just don't happen that often. If they did, people would pay more for these prep courses.

There's nothing inherently wrong with the LSAT. It's possible - in the quantum mechanics sense - for everyone taking it to score perfectly. Most of these people viciously, desperately want to do as well as they can.

But still, only 10% score above 160. And these are people who graduated college in good enough standing to at least think about going to law school.

[The Vinyl Ripper]

6. "Gifted" kids

Ask very awkward questions.

Questions that are often better left unasked.

Remember how it felt to dislike bush in 2002?

[Mythsaje]

8. School bored the SHIT out of me...

I learned more in my 2 week GED prep class than I did my last two years in high school.

[Posteritatis]

10. I only felt I started learning in tenth grade..

And even then only from a couple of teachers. A couple of years ago, I got to spend about a year working with the department of education here fiddling with the global history and geography curricula, given relative carte blanche while adding a unit on various contemporary problems (gender equality, development issues, child soldiers, globalization, etc).

For the first few months I kept butting heads with the folks in the chain above me; they kept complaining that my materials were deviating from the standard curriculum, and that I clearly wasn't a graduate of the high schools here. I mentioned I was, and they asked who my history teachers were, in a we-must-kill-these-deviants tone of voice. When I mentioned the two history teachers I had, they instantly shut up and let me do my thing. "Oh. Them. Uh, never mind us."

Turns out I got hella lucky; the two I studied under were well-regarded enough in the local educational community that they were pretty much told they could feel free to ignore the curriculum at will, because it was assumed they could do a better job.

(I got lucky again a few years after graduating; one of my university profs was the favorite prof of one of those two teachers. Score.)

Everything before then, though? Ugh. This neck of the woods was actively hostile to gifted students all through the time I was in the system.

[Mythsaje]

14. I really wanted to be a teacher...

Problem was I just can't do sequencing, so algebra is more or less beyond my capabilities. I can do basic math in my head, parse a sentence in seconds, grasp the basic theories behind gravity, genetics, and many different kinds of science, but I just can't do the math. And college level math classes were required for me to get a basic AA degree. I could specialize, and get one in, say, business, but that wasn't what I really wanted.

Maybe someday if I'm successful enough I can teaching a writing class at the community college. That would be something, at least.

[DemBones DemBones]

19. Maybe you've just never had a good math teacher.

I used to help my homeroom students with their algebra and chemistry and they'd say "You explained this better than Mr. X." I would say, "No, I just explained it differently."

After several such occurrences, I figured out that math teachers were always good at math, which I wasn't. Therefore, they were less able to understand why kids weren't understanding what was so clear to them. I remember in school that if someone said they didn't understand, math teachers generally just gave the same explanation.

If I explained something to students and they said they didn't get it, I'd say, "OK, erase that from your mind and let's look at it another way." I'd had a lot of experience in looking at problems in different ways!

I thought about adding math certification to my biology/chemistry/and physical sciences certification but I'd have had to get an entire degree in math to do it. Yet they allow people with two or three science credits to teach science. Go figure. I only wanted to teach first year algebra, where the kids have the most problems and usually don't take more math.

[Mythsaje]

26. I'm not sure that's it.

I've discussed this with other teachers, actually. Other math teachers have said the same thing. LOL I'm just really, really bad at sequencing. Those stupid sequencing questions on an IQ test really mess with me too. You know, the "what's the next number in this series?" questions. My brain just doesn't seem to work that way.

I was fine until I hit polynomials and I hit a brick wall. I could follow well enough in class, but, on my own, I could never get the right answer. Even if I worked backward from where I already had the answer.

[The Straight Story]

15. I got my GED as well

I spent much of my time from 13-18 at the library learning as much as I could about everything.

I was not a genius, just driven to learn and I loved it. School seemed too slow a learning pace.

I got bored, dropped out, and went and took the GED one day. Passed it and moved on.

[B Calm]

77. 1967 the Vietnam War was in full swing. I knew I was going to be

drafted, so I dropped out of school and lived it up for a year before signing up for four years in the Navy. I had an IQ of 113, not a genius by any means, but smart enough to finish high school. I ended up getting my GED in the Navy..

[whoneedstickets]

12. Yeah, i'm feeling a little let down....

..but my humility is helping me to overcome it.

[WillyT]

29. LOL !!!

I was gonna post that.

:evilgrin:

[smiley_glad_hands]

13. Emotional Quotient is a better measure

of how successful one will be in life. I never tested for gifted, but I basically coasted through school.

[DarkTirade]

16. My school sure as hell failed me.

But then again, I lived in a state that had a Bush as a governor for several years...

[DarkTirade]

17. Seriously though

My entire high school was geared towards one thing, and one thing only. Getting kids into college. It didn't prepare them for college. It didn't teach them things they needed to know in college or the real world. It was just set up so that ANYONE could sign up for an honors class, and the honors classes were dumbed down enough that ANYONE could pass them, making sure that the kids whose parents wanted to pay for their college would be ensured a pretty transcript.

It was not a challenge. Honors English in 11th grade was a repeat of the lessons I'd learned back in middle school. And it wasn't just a single repeat... they'd spend weeks repeating the same lessons. Over and over again. We kept pace with the regular classes AND the remedial classes. The only difference was that we would have a 15 question quiz when the regular class would have a 10 question quiz. Seriously, what does that say to you when the Honors classes are kept at the same pace as the Remedial ones?

The only classes that challenged me(or anyone else for that matter) at all were the gifted ones... and my school got rid of the gifted program halfway through my time there. They realized that they got more money from the state for AP classes than gifted ones. So my choices were either Honors classes, in which I would be bored out of my skull and would feel insulted by the fact that we were all treated like imbiciles(and to be fair, some of the students were. But that's because they would let anyone in, whether they were honors material or not. They just wanted to let the kids have pretty transcripts when they went to college.), or AP classes, in which I MIGHT learn something, but more than likely they'd just keep us busy with a little extra homework and that was it. The only classes where I learned ANYTHING new were the science classes. And my freshman english class, but that was just because I happened to get a good teacher, and it was before they got rid of the gifted program. Unfortunately the sophmore gifted english teacher wasn't so great, and I didn't learn bupkis there. (Well, I learned how to get As on all of my poems. If they made no sense, she thought they were 'deep' and 'esoteric'. So I wrote about monkeys.)

[DemBones DemBones]

18. Grade skipping is problematic because it

puts the gifted kid in with much older kids. Early in my second grade year, the teacher and principal talked to my mother about putting me in fifth grade but she wouldn't do it and I think she was right. Instead, I'd finish the day's work quickly and my teacher would let me go to the library, get a book, and come back and read at my desk. I loved it!

After second grade, I was bored in school a good bit but I'd just daydream when the teacher was going over something I already knew. There were no gifted programs back then.

My daughter was in gifted programs all through school and about all it did for her was make her very tired of logic puzzles. (My regular students liked logic puzzles because they'd never done them before.) Being in the gifted program caused her a lot of grief, from students and teachers. I was shocked when I taught public school by how many teachers intensely dislike gifted students. The comments they'd make were unreal.

The best thing the public schools did for my daughter is provide a summer program for gifted kids. There's competition to get a spot. In academic areas, you take tests, in visual arts, you show a portfolio of your work, in theater, you present a monologue from a drama and one from a comedy, etc. If you're accepted, you will be one of 600-700 gifted kids from all over the state, staying at a state university, taking classes in your area. Your parents only have to get you there and get you home, room and board and classes are all free. It was a great experience for her. She found her people for the first time and knew she wasn't the only freak in the world. But she was 16 by then, which is a long time to feel like a freak. It's too bad there weren't summer programs for younger gifted kids. That would be better than having them during the school year.

I wasn't taunted much in school for being smart and I think it helped a lot that I wasn't in a gifted program in a regular school, because my daughter was taunted a lot, as are most kids in a gifted program. It helped me, too, that the schools I attended were much more challenging academically than hers.

It's a sad thing that our society doesn't value intelligence more. The attitude that gifted kids will get along fine is so wrong. They can get very bored and lose interest in school. I had several gifted students who dropped out before graduating.

I strongly believe that summer programs for gifted kids or, better yet, schools just for gifted kids are the best ways for the gifted to have their education enriched.

[BadgerLaw2010]

I really should have skipped, but I was slow to develop physically

Not that my age peers treated me any better than those older than me would have. Dork, freak, nerd, *assbeating goes here*, etc.

Now as a young adult, I'm perfectly fine, 6' and 160 lbs in great physical shape, but I was a slow grower, chronically underweight and went through puberty later than average.

[DemBones DemBones]

79. I was small, only weighed 42 pounds in second grade.

In fact, I weighed 42 pounds until sometime in 5th grade.

My mother took me to the doctor who said I was fine and I would start growing eventually, which I did, of course.

Being a girl, I didn't get the assbeatings. I didn't get much namecalling, either, or I just ignored it. I was tough early on because I had to be. My dad was career military and by the second grade I was in my fifth school in five cities, four states.

[nashville_brook]

47. We need *Freak School*

If we must put up the privatization and DIY-ization of public school, then we might as well DEMAND cooler/better schools. Smart kids deserve better. It's a rights issue. Christians get all sorts of economic help in this area and Christians only *imagine* they are discriminated against. I'd put the school-yard suffering of geek up against a Baptist anyday.

We demand better. We demand Freak School!

Freak School could be a "faith based initiative" approach to funding, but doesn't have to be: cooperative, seek out themselves: a school to learn useful cool stuff like film making, drama, writing, or edge science/engineering.

Macintosh, Microsoft and Super Target would be sponsors providing materials and space. There would be a reality-show, and spin-off education networks. Freak School graduates get summer jobs with sponsors, and compete for scholarships to university, or start-up money for a business. There could also be a spin-off reality show. How could this not be successful?


Freak School would focus on life skills in addition to academic and vocational, encouraging students to work in the kitchen as well as helping repair and add-to the facility. Freak School could focus on healthy living, using organic foods and teaching life-long recreational skills like backpacking and sailing or paddling.

Freak School could also have a "distance-learning" program, where rural kids can take classes on the internet or via webinar and attend weekly gatherings where distance learners meet other Freak School students and go camping, kayaking or museum crawling. There could be an a la carte program where enrichment classes are taught.

Who's with me? :evilgrin:

[porphyrian]

65. Aw, I thought you meant a school for recreational drug use.

I was hoping to get work in the Hallucinogenics Department. ;)

Your idea beats the shit out of what we have, though.

[nashville_brook]

88. that's called college

:)

[porphyrian]

94. I knew I kept re-enrolling for something...

;)

[kineneb]

67. I would have benefited by skipping a grade

I was 6" taller than most of the kids in my grade, all the way through 8th grade. The teachers recommended skipping, but my grandmother said no. I always have wished she had agreed; I would have gotten out earlier and into college, where I finally felt at home. I didn't beat up, but I was teased and tormented by my classmates, because I was "different".

[DemBones DemBones]

80. Yeah, it would have worked well for you, but I was tiny until I was nearly 11,

actually weighed 42 pounds for three years.

It would have been cool to skip either 7th or 8th grade, or both. By that time I was as tall as I was going to get, like most girls are.

My daughter skipped a grade and was always picked on for being younger, as well as for being smarter. At least it got her out of school earlier!

[goddess40]

76. It wouldn't be as big an issue it the school dealt with it correctly

first, of all they should have a comprehensive anti-bullying program.
second, they should only advance kids that really need to be advanced - we had one girl advance because her friend was and her parents really pushed the issue.
third, all the staff need to be on board with the issue, if not they can work for a different district.

[DemBones DemBones]

81. It's a big "if" for a school to have and make work

a comprehensive anti-bullying policy. It has to start from the beginning and a lot of first graders are already bullies from being in day care for years.

Anyway, when I was a kid, nobody even thought of such a thing. Parents simply told their kids to fight back against bullies. I shudder to think of how 11 year-old girls would have treated a 7 year-old girl in their class. No doubt the teacher would have protected me somewhat but then I'd have been a despised "teacher's pet." That's always an issue for a smart kid, anyway.

[goddess40]

85. It starts as soon as you put kids together

and by not doing anything about it, it grows.

Parents telling their kids to fight back is some of the worst advice out there, but I sure can understand that it comes from extreme frustration. Parents need to advocate for their kids until the school would rather deal with the issue then see those parents coming through the front door yet again.

[tblue37]

20. On my _Teacher, Teacher_ website I have an article

entitled "We Don' Need No Stinkin' Gifted Programs!" It is about the shortchanging of our best and brightest students, and how many of them end up falling by the wayside. People assume the gifted kids don't need encouragement or guidance, but 1/3 (!!!) of the students at our local alternative high school (where they send problem kids at risk of failure) were among the most highly gifted in our school district. My own son, now a successful adult, was among them. Here is the link if you would like to read it:
http://www.teacherblue.homestead.com/gifted.html

[nashville_brook]

98. OMG -- one THIRD of kids in "alternative school" are gifted. that shows you right there

what we are doing to our best and brightest -- giving them educations in juvenile delinquency. it's basically a crime to be too smart or too talented when the world can barely deal with mediocrity.

i'm off to read your article!

[undergroundpanther]

21. system sure failed me

The bullying sent me over the edge .I went to a mental hospital high school quietly dropped out,Later after I was out of the loon bin I got a GED on my own, even while suffering side effects during the test, and missing Live Aid on TV, I scored the top 1 percent in the state.
But I also felt sadness when I saw the test I realized I could have passed this test in 4th grade maybe even the third.
And if I did take it in third or fourth grade would I have been moved out of that school into a better learning environment that was NOT full of bullies and boring me to tears? No.

There was NO PLACE for people like me.
Intelligence feels like a curse sometimes.
Here's something I wrote about it.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=276x3903

[undergroundpanther]

22. So is it a cheetah?

A Speech Given at the Hollingworth Conference for the Highly Gifted, 1992

It's a tough time to raise, teach or be a highly gifted child. As the term "gifted" and the unusual intellectual capacity to which that term refers become more and more politically incorrect, the educational establishment changes terminology and focus.

Giftedness, a global, integrative mental capacity, may be dismissed, replaced by fragmented "talents" which seem less threatening and theoretically easier for schools to deal with. Instead of an internal developmental reality that affects every aspect of a child's life, "intellectual talent" is more and more perceived as synonymous with (and limited to) academic achievement.

The child who does well in school, gets good grades, wins awards and "performs" beyond the norms for his or her age is considered talented. The child who does not, no matter what his or her innate intellectual capacities or developmental level, is less and less likely to be identified, less and less to be served.

A cheetah metaphor can help us to see the problem with achievement-oriented thinking. The cheetah is the fastest animal on earth. When we think of a cheetah, we are likely to think first of its speed. It's flashy. It's impressive. It's unique. And it makes identification incredibly easy. Since cheetahs are the only animals that can run 70 mph, if you clock an animal running 70 mph, it must be a cheetah!

But cheetahs are not always running. In fact, they are able to maintain top speed only for a limited time, after which they need a considerable period of rest.

It's not difficult to identify a cheetah when it isn't running, provided we know its other characteristics. It is gold with black spots, like a leopard, but it also has unique black "tear marks" beneath its eyes. Its head is small, its body lean, its legs unusually long--all bodily characteristics critical to a runner. And the cheetah is the only member of the cat family that has non-retractable claws. Other cats retract their claws to keep them sharp, like carving knives kept in a sheath; the cheetah's claws are designed, not for cutting, but for traction. This is an animal biologically designed to run.

Its chief food is the antelope, itself a prodigious runner. The antelope is not large or heavy, so the cheetah doesn't need strength and bulk to overpower it. Only speed. On the open plains of its natural habitat, the cheetah is capable of catching an antelope simply by running it down.

While body design in nature is utilitarian, it also creates a powerful internal drive. The cheetah needs to run!

Despite design and need, however, certain conditions are necessary for it to attain its famous 70 mph top speed. It must be fully grown. It must be healthy, fit and rested. It must have plenty of room to run. Besides that, it is best motivated to run all out when it is hungry and there are antelope to chase.

If a cheetah is confined to a 10x12 foot cage, though it may pace or fling itself against the bars in restless frustration, it won't run 70 mph.

Is it still a cheetah?

If a cheetah has only 20 mph rabbits to chase for food, it won't run 70 mph while hunting. If it did, it would flash past its prey and go hungry! Though it might well run on its own for exercise, recreation or fulfillment of its internal drive, when given only rabbits to eat, the hunting cheetah will only run fast enough to catch a rabbit.

Is it still a cheetah?

If a cheetah is fed Zoo Chow, it may not run at all.

Is it still a cheetah?

If a cheetah is sick or if its legs have been broken, it won't even walk.

Is it still a cheetah?

And finally, if the cheetah is only six weeks old, it can't yet run 70 mph.

Is it, then, only a potential cheetah?

A school system that defines giftedness (or talent) as behavior, achievement and performance is as compromised in its ability to recognize its highly gifted students and to give them what they need as a zoo would be to recognize and provide for its cheetahs if it looked only for speed.

When a cheetah does run 70 mph, it isn't a particularly "achieving" cheetah. Though it is doing what no other cat can do, it is behaving normally for a cheetah.

To lions, tigers, leopards--to any of the other big cats--the cheetah's biological attributes would seem to be deformities. Far from the "best cat," the cheetah would seem to be barely a cat at all. It is not heavy enough to bring down a wildebeest; its non-retractable claws cannot be kept sharp enough to tear the wildebeest's thick hide. Given the cheetah's tendency to activity, cats who spend most of their time sleeping in the sun might well label the cheetah hyperactive.

Like cheetahs, highly gifted children can be easy to identify. If a child teaches herself Greek at age five, reads at the eighth grade level at age six or does algebra in second grade, we can safely assume that this child is a highly gifted child. Though the world may see these activities as "achievements," she is not an "achieving" child so much as a child who is operating normally according to her own biological design, her innate mental capacity. Such a child has clearly been given room to "run" and something to run for. She is healthy and fit and has not had her capacities crippled. It doesn't take great knowledge about the characteristics of highly gifted children to recognize this child.

However, schools are to extraordinarily intelligent children what zoos are to cheetahs. Many schools provide a 10x12 foot cage, giving the unusual mind no room to get up to speed. Many highly gifted children sit in the classroom the way big cats sit in their cages, dull-eyed and silent. Some, unable to resist the urge from inside even though they can't exercise it, pace the bars, snarl and lash out at their keepers, or throw themselves against the bars until they do themselves damage.

Even open and enlightened schools are likely to create an environment that, like the cheetah enclosures in enlightened zoos, allow some moderate running, but no room for the growing cheetah to develop the necessary muscles and stamina to become a 70 mph runner. Children in cages or enclosures, no matter how bright, are unlikely to appear highly gifted; kept from exercising their minds for too long, these children may never be able to reach the level of mental functioning for which they were designed.

A zoo, however much room it provides for its cheetahs, does not feed them antelope, challenging them either to run full out or go hungry. Schools similarly provide too little challenge for the development of extraordinary minds. Even a gifted program may provide only the intellectual equivalent of 20 mph rabbits (while sometimes labeling children suspected of extreme intelligence "underachievers" for not putting on top speed to catch those rabbits!). Without special programming, schools provide the academic equivalent of Zoo Chow, food that requires no effort whatsoever. Some children refuse to take in such uninteresting, dead nourishment at all.

To develop not just the physical ability, but also the strategy to catch antelope in the wild, a cheetah must have antelopes to chase, room to chase them and a cheetah role model to show them how to do it. Without instruction and practice, they are unlikely to be able to learn essential survival skills.

A recent nature documentary about cheetahs in lion country showed a curious fact of life in the wild. Lions kill cheetah cubs. They don't eat them, they just kill them. In fact, they appear to work rather hard to find them in order to kill them (though cheetahs can't possibly threaten the continued survival of lions). Is this maliciousness? Recreation? No one knows. We only know that lions do it. Cheetah mothers must hide their dens and go to great efforts to protect their cubs, coming and going from the den only under deep cover, in the dead of night or when lions are far away. Highly gifted children and their families often feel like cheetahs in lion country.

In some schools, brilliant children are asked to do what they were never designed to do (like cheetahs asked to tear open a wildebeest hide with their claws--after all, the lions can do it!) while the attributes that are a natural aspect of unusual mental capacity--intensity, passion, high energy, independence, moral reasoning, curiosity, humor, unusual interests and insistence on truth and accuracy--are considered problems that need fixing. Brilliant children may feel surrounded by lions who make fun of them or shun them for their differences, who may even break their legs or drug them to keep them moving more slowly, in time with the lions' pace. Is it any wonder they would try to escape? Or put on a lion suit to keep from being noticed? Or fight back?

This metaphor, like any metaphor, eventually breaks down. Highly gifted children don't have body markings and non-retractable claws by which to be identified when not performing. Furthermore, the cheetah's ability to run 70 mph is a single trait readily measured. Highly gifted children are very different from each other, so there is no single ability to look for, even when they are performing. Besides that, a child's greatest gifts could be outside the academic world's definition of achievement and so go unrecognized alogether. While this truth can save some children from being wantonly killed by marauding lions, it also keeps them from being recognized for what they are--children with deep and powerful innate differences as all-encompassing as the differences between cheetahs and other big cats. That they may not be instantly recognizable does not mean that there is no means of identifying them. It means that more time and effort are required to do it. Educators can learn the attributes of unusual intelligence and observe closely enough to see those attributes in individual children. They can recognize not only that highly gifted children can do many things which other children cannot, but that there are tasks which other children can do that the highly gifted cannot.

Every organism has an internal drive to fulfill its biological design. The same is true for unusually bright children. From time to time the bars need to be removed, the enclosures broadened. Zoo Chow, easy and cheap as it is, must give way, at least some of the time, to lively, challenging mental prey.

More than this, schools need to believe that it is important to make the effort, that these children not only have the needs of all other children to be protected and properly cared for, but that they have as much right as others to have their special needs met.

Biodiversity is a fundamental principle of life on our planet. It allows life to adapt and to change. In our culture, highly gifted children, like cheetahs, are endangered. Like cheetahs, they are here for a reason; they fill a particular niche in the design of life. Zoos, whatever their limitations, may be critical to the continued survival of cheetahs; many are doing their best to offer their captives what they will need to eventually survive in the wild. Schools can do the same for their highly gifted children.

Unless we make a commitment to saving these children, we will continue to lose them, as well as whatever unique benefit their existence might provide for the human species of which they are an essential part.

[Hydra]

23. Good speech

Makes very good points...but alas, it is difficult to convey an experience to one not having it.

[Hekate]

82. Thanks for bringing back that EXCELLENT essay. My cheetah dropped out of high school too.

It about broke our hearts. Her brother was headed in the same direction, so we spent his college money sending him to a private high school that challenged and engaged him.

Our problem was that Mr. H and I had no idea what we were dealing with in the California public school system 15 years ago. When our daughter was bored in first grade (she finished her work before anyone else and would wander around the classroom, to the annoyance of the teacher) the principal informed me that "segregating" bright children into classes with their peers would give them swelled heads and they wouldn't be able to relate to other kids. When our daughter stopped attending classes in 10th grade, NO ONE CALLED US because she wasn't causing any trouble.

Both Mr. H and I went through public schools all the way from Kindergarten on through University. He grew up in New York City, and I grew up on Oahu.

As Baby Boomers in a country that had been stung by the Soviet Union's success with Sputnik, we were both identified as gifted very early on and tracked into classes with our peers. Both of us were worked hard by our teachers and had to compete with other kids who were as bright or brighter than we were. We did not think we were "better than other people" and we surely were not bored. After high school we each worked our way through college.

What makes me crazy about the current state of public education in the US is that IT DOESN'T HAVE TO BE THIS BAD, AND IN FACT IT CAN BE EXCELLENT.

Public education has been dumbed down and starved for funds by people who don't believe in public education. Vouchers are not the "cure", they will only make it worse. Public education needs money, lots of it, and it needs focus.

Public education needs to recognize once again that not everyone will or should go to college and that college entrance is not the only marker of success. We need Vocational Ed classes so young people can GET JOBS WITH A FUTURE. People who graduated from my high school in the non-college-prep tracks often left with skills that enabled them to start lifelong careers that over time allowed them to support their families. There's nothing wrong and everything right with that picture. These were not dumb kids, they were kids with different talents than mine, and they grew into adults doing the kinds of jobs that keep society running.

It's just so wrong to pretend that kids who have gifts at the far end of the spectrum will somehow make it on their own. They can't. They are KIDS and need adults to provide them with the right curriculum -- all week, not just one day a week -- to help them achieve their potential. Otherwise they risk falling into despair because they don't fit in and come to believe something is wrong with THEM.

Hekate

[Hydra]

24. They don't want geniuses

I was lucky in school. I have very deep instincts, which I am trying to continue to cultivate. Those instincts led me to be lazy and athletic during my young life.

Everyone saw that I was getting it, but my teachers were mad that I wasn't doing the homework and focusing more on my artwork(that was so soothing). I frequently got the "You aren't working to your potential, so I'm going to give you a lower mark." When I was younger, I blessedly didn't care, and went outside to play instead.

Once I started having to work for it, they were a bit happier, but still "you aren't using your full potential" and still found the homework repetitive and boring, so didn't do it much.

Now I see how close I was to the meatgrinder, and I kinda wish I slacked a bit more. Now that I'm out of my cage, I have many places more to run.

[porphyrian]

25. Oh man, did I get sick of hearing "you aren't using your full potential" in school.

As it is, public education does nothing more than teach to the lowest common denominator (which is quite low) and train unquestioning consumer/producers. All of the colleges I've started and dropped out of were basically the same, but with bigger football teams and a bill you have to pay. I only wish I didn't despise the pursuit of money as I do. Broke sucks.

[BadgerLaw2010]

31. When I did use my full potential, most of my primary/secondary teachers didn't know how to grade it.

Yes, I'm being "lazy" or "bored" or reading something else during class (or writing something or designing something) but this material is not challenging to me. Therefore, my brain deems it uninteresting.

If I actually was chronically lazy or stupid, I'd fail AP classes instead of getting 4's and 5's on the exams.

As I said in my big post, I didn't suddenly gain brainpower when I was taking an IQ test, a Midwest Talent Search ACT, an AP class or the LSAT.

[porphyrian]

45. Yeah, I tested well, too, which pissed everyone off because I didn't do homework.

Eventually, I stopped caring about the tests as well and just made smart-ass comments for answers.

I think the problem may be that all too often people of average intelligence are deciding what to with students of above-average intelligence. For example, one of the schools I attended simply gave gifted students more work (of the same level) to complete. By high school, I just stopped going to it and only put forth the minimum effort to get out.

[Hydra]

40. Watch money as debt

it's on google video. Why pursue something that doesn't exist?

[porphyrian]

46. I'll have to check it out. Thanks. - n/t

[Posteritatis]

60. "Maybe if you'd let me use it we wouldn't have a problem!" :P

I turned out alright, but as I said elsewhere in this thread I was goddamned lucky with a few teachers.

[porphyrian]

62. Yeah, I got lucky with a few good teachers, too.

I managed to graduate before public education in Florida became nothing but year-long training for taking the FCAT, so I had some teachers that both could and were allowed to teach. It's still amazing given that we have so many retirees who don't want to pay taxes in the first place, then don't want what they do pay to go towards anything but prisons and their own health care. I generalize, of course.

[Posteritatis]

64. I JUST barely missed the standardized-test crazy here

I'm lucky in that regard too. They switched over the year after I graduated. Apparently it was a complete debacle; the dipshits decided that reducing English exams to scantron tests was somehow a good idea. Let's play Spot the Flaw.

The failure rates for the course doubled or tripled that year because of it. As far as I can tell, they ran screaming from the idea a semester or two afterwards, and the teachers have some freedom to, y'know, actually test their students on what they've learned now.

[kineneb]

68. yup, got the same comments.

and I was bored out of my mind. The schools never figured out that I was not a "verbal" person, and did much better in math, science, spacial relations, and outside of school, in music. To this day, although I can do it, I hate writing papers. That is one of the reasons that I never wrote my master's thesis.

[porphyrian]

71. I've got weird issues with math, myself.

Some of it, like algebra, I can do rather easily. But I have some weird mental blocks with some of it. My amateur analysis of my problem is that my right brain, rather than my left, does (or tries to do) parts of it, leading to strange results. I enjoy puzzle solving in general, but I can't stand rote memorization, especially of things I don't normally use and can easily look up if I have to. Language and writing, on the other hand, come pretty easily for me, but I understand excelling in some things and feeling inadequate in others.

And I find it interesting that even though you may not be "verbal," you are good at music and math, which are both like languages in their ability to convey information, but different.

[Posteritatis]

92. I can't be sure if my own were with the teachers or not

I was great a math until tenth grade, at which point my average in it dropped from the high nineties to the low sixties and stayed there through graduation, which was my lowest grade by a very large margin and a pretty constant source of stress. I'd wanted to go into CS, but in hindsight I'm actually glad I didn't because of where I have ended up.

The thing is? I was taking physics classes at the same time - which used the exact same math as the math classes I was attending - and my grades in those were 20-25% higher at all times.

I wonder if I just had a block where I couldn't do it unless I could See A Point to the problem or what, but that always kinda baffled me.

[porphyrian]

93. Yeah, that's weird too.

Maybe it was applying the math to another problem-solving event that made it make sense to you. I don't know. But, as you can see from just our three examples, our talents and flaws vary enough to make it difficult to lump into a legislator-created recipe for public education, which is likely one of the reasons why we're left to fend for ourselves.

[DemBones DemBones]

84. Yes! And only now do I have The Answer:

"The only people who are always at their best are the mediocre."

:evilgrin:

[porphyrian]

86. Heh, heh, yeah, that's good. - n/t

[nashville_brook]

96. damn that's good!

[susanna]

72. Egads, the "you're not performing up to your potential"

was the kiss of death for me. When I was a kid, most any adult who said it to me immediately went to the bottom of my (long) list.

on edit: spelling

[book_worm]

27. We're failing all our children.

[BadgerLaw2010]

30. This mirrors more of my experience than I care to recall

Long time lurker, but this hits home.

I had more than my share of developmental problems - including being an Aspie before anyone in public schools understood what that was - but I was always reading at several grade levels above my level and I broke the bank on standardized tests. Iowa Tests, Cognative Abilities Tests, Midwest Talent Search (ACT given to kids), etc. My first MTS ACT was in the college admission range. No one gave me a straight IQ estimate until I was a young adult and my family paid for a test, but it's somewhere in the "line" of the bell curve, .1% range.

(As an important aside, both my parents are extremely intelligent in their own right, which certianly helped me get through the mess I'm describing below. Otherwise, I think I would have been screwed.)

Nothing quite as extreme as what's in this article, but still, far above normal and far above most everyone in my grade. Wisconsin public schools are very good in a national sense, but they still had no idea what to do with me.

I did the "gifted and talented" thing, which was a bunch of reading projects, which is one area where I certainly didn't need the stimulus; most things in the G&T workroom were below my reading level.

I was placed in accelerated math in grade school, which consisted of a bunch of timed multiplication table tests, which was stupid and also more for the "math" perspective, where most of my skills were in language comprehension and usage and reasoning - the areas I dominated the Midwest TS's ACTs were everything but math. I was bored and uncooperative and got dropped back to mainstream.

I wrote a paper in middle school on naval warfare in WWII that was lacking in citations because I took the "don't cite common knowledge in the field" bit to mean not citing things that my English teacher had no clue about. This was meant to be an entry-level research paper training exercise, bascailly. I got accused of plagerism for that one.

The books I was working from were professional level stuff, scholor and historian research. I'm not sure if my teacher could even read one of them. Probably not. Hence the "field cite" issue.

I got picked on plenty and generally didn't get alone with teachers or peers in middle school, which is a bad place to be a nerd with a slight social disability. In response, I got some extra study hall period before the school day meant to help kids organize themselves. This didn't help.

In high school, I started off mainstream due to my poor middle school test grades. I had to fight and claw my way to get into AP classes. I didn't bother to take notes in my 10th grade Western Civ class, was called out by the teacher for it, then yelled at her that I was getting A's in her class anyway, if she'd just look at her book.

By the way, why is the solution to "advanced math" to just throw more hours of homework per day at people? Somehow if you drown someone in menial work, that makes them smarter and challenges their abilities. Okay...

Funny thing happened in high school and then in college: The tougher the subject matter was, the better I did. Someone with bad middle school grades shouldn't easily digest AP classes and exams. Due to a personal emergency at the end of my junior year (in HS), I had to teach myself trig and organic chemistry, something that neither of my teachers felt I had a chance of doing. I taught myself them pretty well; my organic chem grades actually surpassing most of the class that learned it normally.

In college, same thing. I couldn't stand the freshman-level Western Civ class (which I still had to take despite AP'ing out of my Soph history core requirements, go figure), but I handily dealt with three of the most challenging semseters outside of engineering - two Constitutional Law classes and an International Law class. My first practice LSAT put my raw ability range in the 160's, which is where I scored when I took it for real.

I start at University of Wisconsin Law School in two weeks.

Am I a super-genius like the kids in the article? No. But the disconnect between all objective measures of my raw ability - and what I did when presented with truly difficult subject matter- on one hand, and how I did in "mainstream" or easy stuff in school shouldn't happen. I didn't suddenly gain 40+ IQ points when I started taking AP classes.

[nashville_brook]

38. similar bored experience in FL during the late 70s early 80s. my solution -->>

smoke lots of pot and do art. art was an excellent place for me in public school. you can be self-directed and not shunned for it.

i was a rebellious underachiever in academic areas and an overachiever in self-directed stuff -- like i used to make and sell things in jr high and high school. when i got older i did little service-type businesses.

i spent a lot of time in the guidance office. i had been in that 99th percentile since 2nd grade and i had a guidance counselor recommend that i drop out in the 10th grade. i was lucky to move to a different (less right wing) high school where a majority of the kids were from families of Phd chemical engineers. i graduated and went on to college, thank fucking god.

in college i found teachers were dying to work with self-directed students -- but i BARELY made it there. i could have easily fallen thru the cracks.

[DU GrovelBot]

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[LeftyMom]

35. The school district here only has self-contained gifted programs for 3-6th grade

And only 30 seats per grade. Which was inadequate back when I was a kid, let alone now with twice the population and still more houses going up.

[nashville_brook]

36. the 2000 campaign against Gore -- vote for Bush b/c "you'd like to drink a BEER with him"

the 2000 election a referendum on smart vs dumb -- it was a high school student council election in every way. who would you rather drink with? who's the smarty pants? who's the party of partying? then, the Brooks Bros "riot" that until then, could only occur in your smallish suburban high school where your mom has been in the PTA for 10+ years. then the rich, stupid jock gets his parents' friends to fix the decision by the "grown-ups" b/c the jocky minions wouldn't allow a proper recount.

are we failing our geniuses? have we ever not?

[warren pease]

37. "Rarely is the question asked...

...is our children learning?" GWB, 1/11/2000 (Edited to add quote source.)

That may be all anyone needs to know about the state of public education today and the pathetically inadequate "accelerated learning" programs that seem designed to kill any spark of real intelligence -- evinced by such things as critical thinking skills, imagination, handling abstract concepts and so forth -- before the kid can become a real pain in the ass in a dummied-down society.

Me, I skated through high school and the first four years of college, except for college-level math, which I had to really work at for a change. And I found that I didn't know how to work at something that had come so easily throughout my life. Fortunately, I had friends who took the time to show me a few things and I passed math classes with room to spare.

But it was weird to realize that I had only learned how to skim, memorize, synthesize and regurgitate pre-packaged info-bites. I had never learned how to learn, since that had never been an objective in any school or class I'd ever attended. I assume the same thing is still going on, which really bodes ill for a society that's already trailing most of the world badly in everything but war spending, gas consumption and old time religion.

And another thought: Can you imagine what this thread would look like on FR: the official pity party for double screwn morans who would kill for a 70 IQ, if they had that many fingers and toes to count on.

And a final thought from the little emperor: “You teach a child to read, and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test.” Damn skippy, bubba.


wp

[nashville_brook]

51. what's tragic is that our smartest kids' experience of school is soul-crushing bullshit

lesson learned: don't bother. fly under the radar.

what a loss.

[warren pease]

53. Yeah, agreed...

...I know that, in high school, we (the assholes and/or jocks) bullied the hell out of the really smart kids -- the ones who took most of their books home every night, dressed "weird," got straight A's, had poor social skills... the usual gamut of crimes against teenaged orthodoxy committed by kids who were too "abnormal" to fly under the radar

I get an alumni newsletter every now and then and a lot of these kids became people who are making an actual difference. Doctors, environmental and medical researchers, a climatologist who works, writes and speaks tirelessly against the economic forces causing the impending global meltdown, another who's running a small philanthropic NGO that buys anti-AIDS drugs at bulk rates from enlightened countries, "moves" them into the US and distributes them for free among the poor and uninsured AIDS patients of the SF Bay Area.

Thank the deities we didn't warp these kids beyond recovery, although I suspect some still have "issues" from the good old days. But they're sure as hell doing more valuable work than I am at the moment, unless you count writing critical essays for places like Online Journal. Still, criticizing from the outside is always easier than making a fundamental difference in peoples' lives the way these people are.

So mea bloody culpa and a pox on any educational system that tolerates this kind of "hazing" behavior because it's just another case of "boys being boys."


wp

[nashville_brook]

90. i'm a geek groupie -- wouldn't have called it that in high school, b/c i was too

socially blind to realize that was my thing. i wasn't socially awkward -- just blind. had just as many social contacts in the jock groups as in the nerd/freak groups, but had more fun with the freaks.

what i've found as a 40-something is that my nerdy friends have indeed carried baggage into adulthood. it's almost 100 percent social. men who thought they were nerds in HS still have a little inferiority complex with women as adults. it's been a hallmark of many relationships that my SOs can't accept their attractiveness. even nerds who became popular musicians (especially these guys). you'd think being a rock star would put an end to the "i'm not good enough" recording in their heads -- but it plays on.

as a matter of fact, i'm finding that the more someone was vexed in HS, the more they strive to *achieve* in adulthood. but no matter how great the achievement, they can't accept their greatness. god, it sucks.

[rockymountaindem]

39. Looking over this thread, it seems that we here sympathize with gifted kids being left out

If this is the case, then why the hostility often seen on this site to homeschooling? Especially in elementary grades, if a parent wants to, say, teach their second grader out of a fourth grade math book at home, why stop them? I understand that in high school, a home environment can't duplicate that of a high school with lab facilities, a band, etc. but in early years I don't see what a homeschooled student is missing out on in the educational sense from being homeschooled.

[Hydra]

44. I'm not against it

in fact, I advocate it to people who have school aged kids.

Why are people here against it? My guess is the religious wackos that want to homeschool their kids so that they can completely indoctrinate them in "Bible based society." While I agree that such a thing is not healthy, they can send them to private schools and indoctrinate them during evenings and weekends, so the kids will get to that place one way or another.

My biggest problem with normal schools vs. homeschooling is that normal schools don't enforce the rules against physical violence evenly. If the nerd hits the jock, the nerd is suspended. If the Jock hits the nerd, "Boys will be boys." That kind of social darwinism based on popularity or how much money the parents have is not what I would want my kids to be taught, were I a parent.

Even without the kid to kid violence, scarier things are starting to peak out of the cracks. Strip searches on suspicion of stolen items ring any bells?

Overall, I think our system is broken, and probably deliberately so. Smart children don't grow up to be happy little slaves.

[porphyrian]

52. What you're seeing here is probably a backlash against the fundamentalist Christian homeschooling.

My friends are all having kids now, so I've been privy to some exploration of the home schooling option. What we found is that a bunch of the material available is of the "4000 year old planet" variety of Christian fundamentalism, which is actually antithetical to education (unless taught as an example of cultist culture or some such). I think that is probably what people here are reacting to, not necessarily home schooling in general.

Personally, assuming the child gets adequate socialization and exposure to races/classes/cultures they'll likely encounter in life, I don't have a problem with it. You certainly can't do much worse than our current public education system.

[rockymountaindem]

55. I agree with you in part

some of the opposition to homeschooling I see around here is based on the notion that most homeschoolers are fundamentalists who don't want their kids to learn about real science and history. However, whenever the issue of homeschooling arises, a great deal of DUers start jumping up and down shouting about how a homeschooled kid will never be able to adjust to society, become helplessly dependent on their parents, and won't know how to handle criticism. To me, that seems to be the major contributing factor to anti-homeschool sentiment at DU. People seem to forget that even if a kid is homeschooled, he or she is still living in society and can take part in little league sports, play at the park, join a youth group, or hang out with kids in their neighborhood. Besides, elementary school may or may not reflect the "real world" anyway.

[porphyrian]

59. Lots of people here, myself included, have knee-jerk reactions based on their personal experiences.

Or to things they otherwise feel strongly about. There is also the element of people being the least comfortable with things they don't really understand. I just add my two cents to be on record and don't really worry about what others think about it. Sometimes I get something out of what they say, sometimes vice versa. Sometimes neither. Anyway, you have to decide whether it's worth the effort to try to change minds here about something you know or whether you just want to speak your mind. It usually turns out to be some of both, in my experience. Don't let it bother you too much, if it does.

[nashville_brook]

97. i worked in xtian publishing for a while...ugh...there's a UNIVERSE of $$-making

in xtian publishing that isn't explored secularly because the infrastructure is long-established. what is now homeschooling material is repurposed/expanded "vacation bible school" crap.

it would be GREAT to be able to purchase advanced, college-prep and research-oriented homeschool material. i'd totally be into that. would love to know if there's any publishers doing this. my guess is no.

[porphyrian]

99. Scary, and right, probably not, but let us know if you hear anything. - n/t

[ulysses]

57. as someone who has had kneejerk reactions to homeschooling at times,

I'll just say this - if you know what you're doing, then more power to you. I do have concerns about socialization, etc, but it's your kid, so I'll leave that up to you.

That said, not everyone who homeschools does know what they're doing. Homeschooling without a clue, or accompanying your promotion of homeschooling with harebrained accusations about public ed (not saying that all who advocate for homeschooling do this) will draw a comment from me, yes.

[Posteritatis]

61. My problem's ideological homeschooling

Which may or may not be more common than the type you mention - I don't have the data - but by God is it ever louder. I can understand it being conflated with homeschooling in general, even though I know that's an unfair thing to do to it.

A few of my friends have been 'generically' homeschooled; most of them are vastly more intelligent people, better humans than I by a significant factor. Their existence took the legs out from under my distrust of homeschooling in and of itself. If someone wants to homeschool their kids because their schools aren't cutting it and they can do better, then I practically consider it a moral responsibility on their part to do so.

What bothers me is, as I said, homeschooling for ideological purposes - not to improve kids' learning, but to protect them from thoughts. If someone doesn't want their kid in school to prevent them from learning about something, or asking questions about something, or being exposed to a type of people (I'm thinking, say, "minority" type of people here, not "armed crackhead" type), or whatever, they have my contempt rather than my admiration.

Simply put, if someone's homeschooling to put more thoughts into a kid's head, I'm all for that. If they're doing it to make sure fewer thoughts get in? Fuck that noise.

[LWolf]

41. Yes.

Get rid of one-size-fits-all standards, curriculum, programs, instruction, tests, etc..

Support and fund individualized education for all, so that the needs of all will be met.

Just moving gifted kids into their own school, class, program, etc.. does not meet their needs. While they need to interact intellectually with each other, gifted children have asymmetrical development. They develop physically on par with their peers, are academically/intellectually advanced, and tend to be way behind socially. To truly meet their needs, they have to be with all people, not just other gifted people. They can't, though, be isolated in classrooms with no others at their intellectual level, either. This asymmetrical development is part of what leads to gifted kids that drop out of high school or college, that never go on to fulfill their potential in school or in life.

To truly do the job right, we make sure that the system values and serves all, not just one, population. That includes the gifted. I'd like to see funding for individualized ed, so that when someone's needs aren't met, we don't have to figure out how to qualify them for special ed, for resource, for the gifted program, or for some other limited population that gets extra resources and services. We should have resources and services for all needs without the narrow funding-related cutoffs, and our system should be flexible enough to value individual differences and meet individual needs.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

42. How can you arbitrarily say we should spend as much on gifted programs as on those for disabled?

It'd be difficult to determine what an "appropriate ratio" in dollars would be IMHO. I don't know that one tenth is necessarily bad. I DO know that the fact that our culture values MBAs and lawyers, in general, a lot more than scientists, and I consider THAT bad.

If you let a gifted high schooler, or even junior high student have access to the classes, libraries and resources at their state university, this might well satisfy the upper limit of what would be necessary to let them realize their potential as long as they had appropriate instructor guidance.

I would suspect that it would take less money and resources to help a "gifted" student reach their potential than to help a handicapped student reach theirs. There's really no ceiling you can put on what we ought to spend on a gifted child, should they all be given Cray supercomputers? :shrug:

This from someone who participated in one of the leading national "gifted" programs through junior high and high school, take it for what it's worth.

[EFerrari]

43. I'm no genius but if I hadn't been able to go register at our jr college

instead of at my high school when I turned sixteen, I would have dropped out because I was bored out of my mind and couldn't stand one more day of it.

[trudyco]

48. What geniuses? I think every child should be given an IEP -

Individual Education Plan. I think IQ is WAYYY overrated. Of the kids in our Talented and Gifted (8?) class only 1 is truly gifted - that is the regular program is so boring to them that they need to be challenged in a separate class. The rest are higher on the IQ, but, most importantly, they are type A personalities. Our Talented and Gifted class becomes a competitive hotbed. They are taught that to win or get a perfect score is everything. Boys are driven to tears.

What does that teach?

I have one child who is superior to gifted but because of learning disabilities will never score that on IQ tests. She is not allowed into the Talented and Gifted program. She has learned to just coast because she can easily get "B's" and why sweat it?
Who says smart people are only the ones who can take timed tests well? That misses a lot of talented people. That's why I don't think much of international test scores, either. What counts is what the country produces. Innovates. Not who can take a test.

I say this as a "gifted" person who scored very well on timed tests. Good teachers would handle us "gifted" kids by sticking us in the back of the room or in the library and just let us come up with our own curriculum. It worked well for me, though I wish more teachers had done that. Talented and Gifted is mostly a waste of money.

I saw many "geniuses" wasted at college. They were challenged intellectually at college but they had no EQ - they didn't know how to fit in. Many of them lingered at college as long as possible. They didn't know what to do with their lives. Several, I swear, were depressed. What a waste of incredible talent.

I don't think it's a matter of the Learning Disabled getting too much of the pie, either. The schools don't know how to teach them. The money is wasted. Some really dumb people are picking out curriculum. Schools don't want to acknowledge that physical limitations (auditory, visual, sensory integration) affect learning (unless its blindness or deafness or being in a wheelchair). They don't want to look at the 30+ years of research on how cognitive skills can be TAUGHT to most kids, if they haven't picked it up naturally.

I'm not sure if it's a conspiracy. I think it's business making money off the education system and nobody at the federal level having the balls to push back the moneymakers and the unions and come up with a good program.

I don't know what to say about the bullying. You would think today that the child can press charges.

[nashville_brook]

50. our education system has been dismantled -- it doesn't work for anyone

EQ and emotional life skills can be taught to everyone. everyone deals with depression (personally or being affected by someone else's depression). it's not just for "geniuses." and yuck -- the word "genius" needs to be put to rest. you're not genius until you contribute something. "advanced" is probably a better word, but still groan-inducing.

i agree there are a lot non-gifted in (and competing to get in) gifted classes and it's bullshit. you might as well "go off into a corner by yourself" and read, if again, you're having to sit in a class of automatons.

[The Vinyl Ripper]

54. I'm struck by how many times on this thread...

I have read "success" as being "making a lot of money".

Personally I think that is where a lot of the problems with the American educational system come from.

In America one is only "successful" if one has or makes a lot of money.

Not everyone is motivated by money and I would be willing to wager that the "gifted" tend to be less motivated by money than the average person.

[Hydra]

87. I need money to live

but beyond that, it's an idle consideration. My toys are concepts, my dreams my entertainment, nature my playground. I need enough money to have access to those things, but "chasing the dream" doesn't interest me.

[The Vinyl Ripper]

91. Exactly my point..

Those who live the life of the mind are less easily distracted by mundane toys.

There is a term in Science Fiction (the written kind) fandom for those who are not fen.

The term is 'Danes which is short for Mundanes, those who only live in the here and the now.

[distantearlywarning]

56. I ended up with a drug problem.

Mainly because I was both bored and bullied in public school.

If I had a gifted child today I wouldn't put them through that. I'd homeschool.

[treestar]

58. It doesn't fail anybody exceptional

It fails the average, the middle.

There are special education programs for both the exceptional and those with disabilities and a lot of energy goes into that.

[The Vinyl Ripper]

63. It's pretty clear that you didn't read the thread..

Since your point has been proven wrong by many personal stories.

[treestar]

66. However, a thread is not evidence

And you can look at any state's law and find plenty of accomodation for special ed needs for those with learning disabilities.

[The Vinyl Ripper]

73. But this thread is not about those with *disabilities*..

It is about those with *hyperabilities*, something much harder for the educational system as currently constituted to deal with.

Why are an equal number of hyperabled kids dropping out of school as disabled kids?

[nashville_brook]

95. imagine having to learn at a pace designed for 40-80 IQs --

that's what it feels like to be stuck in normal classes with an IQ over 150

[slowry]

69. first outside inside last

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we are foiling our geniuses

[Jamastiene]

70. Yes, y'all are.

I should be going to a 4 year institution (no, not Dorothea Dix) instead of getting a second A.A.S. :sarcasm: Well, technically, I am a genius, just barely. Anyhow, yes, I would say gifted kids are expected to wait for everyone else around them to catch up. It gets boring. Next thing you know, the genius kid is in trouble somehow.

I messed up bad in high school because I just didn't have the patience to wait for "Johnny" to take an hour to read one paragraph. I would miss that class any time I knew the teacher as going to make us read aloud from the literature book. It irked me that I learned to read despite being sick most of my life, yet others simply came to class and were passed. :wtf: Why was he in high school if he could read no better than that? Even moderately bright kids are getting shafted considering the fact that kids who cannot even read are getting high school diplomas simply for showing up every day. It's fucking ridiculous.

[nashville_brook]

100. get thy butt to a 4-year school -- any 4-year school -- and make it your home until you graduate

the only reason i went to 4-year college was b/c i was lucky enough to get away from the family of origin and get *socialized* to the culture of college. the town where i grew up (right wing beach resort) is full of gifted kids who never made it to college b/c the CULTURE was that only jocks went off to school (mostly to play sports, of course). i know that sounds ridiculous, but it's the god-honest truth. smart kids went to the local community college if they were lucky enough to pursue that on their own.

most of my friends wanted nothing to do with *more* school. high school sucked bad enough -- they couldn't imagine submitting to more of the same. but, my experience of college was that i could finally turn on to ideas in the way that made me happy -- and for the first time, excellence was rewarded instead of punished.

i was too poor to go very far to school and my grades sucked b/c of the usual giftedness boredom. i went to a state college (east tenn state) that was cheap enough that i could afford (barely) to live off campus year-round and make college my life. it wouldn't have worked any other way.

it was a constant struggle, but i wouldn't change a thing. once you are there, let yourself study what interests you. don't worry about getting a job -- just having a BS is enough -- learn how to think critically in the field that you LOVE.

[DemBones DemBones]

83. An old friend of mine has always said that

a lot of the problems in the US come from the fact that a lot of people came here because they were losers in their home countries. It wasn't necessarily their fault that they were losers, often someone had changed the rules. Some were sent here in lieu of being sent to debtors' prisons, just as others were sent to Australia.

Yes, I know a lot of people came here because they saw greater opportunities here but how many came here because there were great intellectual centers here, great educational opportunities? Right.

Consequently, there has always been an anti-intellectual element in the US and I'm afraid schools aren't going to improve without changing that deep-seated attitude. Our public schools were intended to train kids to be good workers, not good thinkers.

[artemisia1]

101. kick. /nt