Reply to Gifted programs, options

Forum Index » DC Public and Public Charter Schools

Reply to "Gifted programs, options "

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote]Public schools don't only teach academics; they teach kids how to manage relationships with diverse groups of kids and adults, and that's something you can't get with homeschooling or segregated programs for gifted kids.[/quote]

Public gifted programs often have student bodies which are diverse in every way except IQ and even then there's a range. I think adults who attended such programs are, in the aggregate, every bit as good at managing relationships with other adults as adults who attended regular schools in which they were always the best at anything academic--and often at other things as well.

Too often, profoundly gifted kids are well aware of how "special" they are at a very early age. So are other kids and especially teachers. Often they don't meet anyone as smart as they are until they go to college--and sometimes not even then. Too often, the result is that these people get all their self-worth from their aptitudes rather than from their achievements. They don't learn to work at anything--because everything comes so easily.

we had a kid in our neighborhood who was the superstar of the local public elementary. Then he got into a selective high school where he was above-average but not at the very top of the class. He spent the first semester of 9th grade throwing up almost every time he got a test back with less than an A and that wasn't unusual. He was studying every waking minute but for the first time he had classmates who were smarter than he was. His whole identity was based on being the smartest person in the room--and suddenly he no longer was. It was really hard on him emotionally.

Eventually he settled in --and he began to make friends, real friends. He didn't have close friends in elementary and middle school. I don't mean he couldn't get along with his classmates; he did. But he really didn't share his intellectual interests with them--and they were well aware that he was much smarter than he was. That changed in high school.

I don't think it's necessary to be in a segregated gifted classroom for that to happen. As long as a profoundly gifted kid has some kids who can compete with him/her, all is well. But there are lots of cases in which the truly profoundly gifted kid has no intellectual equal and IMO that isn't good for kids. 
[/quote]

The Terman case from California where groups of highly gifted public school kids statewide, identified and provided with strong GT support from the 1920s to the 1950s, were followed from elementary school into old age provides great insight.  What researchers have found with the Terman kids is that being told that they were highly gifted from a young age encouraged them to make conservative choices academically and professionally later on, so as not to disappoint the adults who'd put great faith in their abilities. In a nutshell, they became accountants and dentists rather than entrepreneurs. None of the Terman kids has won a Nobel Prize or become a self-made billionaire.  Meanwhile, a group of Cal public school kids including Steve Spielberg, George Lucas, a bunch of prominent scientists and many Silicon Valley exs were passed over by the Terman selection committee, not considered remotely gifted as kids, yet went on to do unbelievable things.  https://www.nytimes.com/1984/04/23/style/study-of-gifted-from-childhood-to-old-age.html

[/quote]

The article doesn't say that. Do you have other references?[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics