Reply to My 4 Yr Old Son's FSIQ is 131, Now What?

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Reply to "My 4 Yr Old Son's FSIQ is 131, Now What?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

Really, I just don't agree. I've been working with lower achieving and special needs children for over 30 years and have been in all kinds of settings--rural, inner city, private, suburban. We're spending mind-boggling amounts of money (and I'm glad we are) trying to help the non-gifted low-SES children. While I do very much want them to succeed in school and enter the job market with the skills they need, we should not think that gifted students (both low and high-SES) will get it on their own. They deserve to have their skills and abilities nurtured. If anything, lower SES children who show potential and do well in school have to deal with some very difficult pressures--and even prejudices--from within their own communities. [/quote]

I'm not sure what you think we agree or disagree on.  I completely agree that non-gifted, low-SES children should get lots of support.  Also, I completely agree that gifted low-SES children should get lots of support because they may face greater challenges (as a PP just pointed out, based on her own experience).

The argument I'm making is different.  Let me try to restate it differently:  if you make "giftedness" itself a criteria for allocating money, as somebody here argued, then you risk benefiting more high-SES children than low-SES gifted children. For all the reasons I and others have said: giftedness is correlated with an enriched, high-SES environment. We need to face the budget realities:  it's a fact that the pot of education money is fairly fixed, because the tea-baggers aren't going to let Congress provide any more money for education.  Therefore, from this limited pot of money, diverting money to gifted kids means that the education money is taken away from low-SES kids in order to benefit a group of gifted kids who are predominately (if not exclusively) high-SES.

I'm arguing the extreme here, just to get my point across.  I actually think gifted kids should get support too, and an appropriate education that meets their needs.

But I have little patience for the melodramatic "it's a tragedy we don't support gifted kids" when supporting them means, in the current context of fixed budgets, that money gets taken away from low-SES kids of all IQ levels. I also agree with the poster who said that high IQ doesn't automatically translate to "tomorrow's future leaders" and, in fact, it's not clear what IQ tests measure.[/quote]

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