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Location: Was Midvalley Oregon; Now Eastside Seattle area
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BTW, except for boxers and professional wrestlers, you just don't see nor hear about athletes with poor social skills. Perhaps they just get the clock knocked out of them early on and they become just normal sociopaths in their later years .
OP made generalized observations and assumed it is true observation and a truer assumption. Were they?
Last edited by leastprime; 07-19-2018 at 10:16 AM..
....I suspect he's the kind of kid a lot of people are thinking about when they are posting in this thread.
I suspect you are right but gifted kids encompass a spectrum when it comes to social skills, just like non gifted kids. So while I agree that there are students who are gifted and have poor social skills, I don't agree that they are the norm.
I think it can be very difficult to be someone who wants to learn stuck in an environment were learning is not valued. That is a big reason that we moved our kids to private school. I think the biggest difference (around here) is that the private schools create an environment where learning is valued more by the students so it is easier to fit in socially.
Unfortunately, the public schools around here don't value learning quite as much. The curriculum for gifted students in public schools concentrates on MORE work, not DIFFERENT work for the best students. Nobody just wants to do more work. I think it makes kids check out because they want to LEARN more, not just do more work.
We will have to agree to disagree on what the OP meant.
Hopefully the OP will come back and explain what he meant.
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I don't see gifted students and gifted athletes as completely separate from one another.
The OP was specifically contrasting gifted students and gifted athletes. Yes, I do realize that those categories are not mutually exclusive, so there would be a 3rd category, somebody who is both a gifted student and a gifted athlete. The OP did not address that 3rd category, so the purpose of the thread is to contrast the first two categories.
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Nor do I agree that gifted students have to have poor social skills. My sons had friends who were athletes and friends who were not athletes. Their friends from band and their academic classmates did not have poor social skills. Students who participate in Mock Trial, Debate, Marching Band, Model UN, National History Day and other academic activities tend to be very social and well adjusted.
Again, I think that the OP's use of the word "gifted" implied being perceived as having poor social skills. But, again, we would have to ask the OP what he meant. I say "perceived" as having poor social skills, since what is considered good vs bad social skills is completely arbitrary.
To give an example not involving school: a few years ago, I was in a car accident. The woman at the car rental company was trying to make small talk with me, but I was not interested. People would say that I had bad social skills for failing to make small talk with her. But nobody would ever say that she had poor social skills for failing to realize that I was not interested in making small talk with her, and failing to realize that somebody renting a car after an accident is going to act very different than somebody renting a car for their dream vacation.
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This set of friends includes students who are graduates of or students at Notre Dame, Columbia, Harvard, Yale, Penn, Vanderbilt, Duke, Johns Hopkins, U of FL, U of Chicago and other highly ranked colleges. They were mostly serious student, had a nice social group. They were clean cut kids but they did not have poor social skills. I don't doubt there are some gifted students who do have poor social skills but I don't agree that those two traits need to go together.
Again, I think that the OP was referring specifically to students who are perceived, whether fairly or not, of having poor social skills. Again, hopefully the OP will come back to clarify what he meant or did not mean.
I also wonder if things are different now than they were in the past. Like I said before, I would always get in trouble for asking questions that were beyond the curriculum. If I were a student nowadays, I wonder if I would just look things up on the internet that I was curious about, rather than asking about it in class.
I also wonder if things are different now than they were in the past. Like I said before, I would always get in trouble for asking questions that were beyond the curriculum. If I were a student nowadays, I wonder if I would just look things up on the internet that I was curious about, rather than asking about it in class.
Yes. At least going by my son. At least as of now, I've got a kid who loves to learn but doesn't like school. He spends a lot of time watching and reading math and science stuff online and has learned way more than he's learned in school.
But I am hoping some of this was more about middle school rather than just school in general and that as he starts high school next month, things will improve.
Yes. At least going by my son. At least as of now, I've got a kid who loves to learn but doesn't like school. He spends a lot of time watching and reading math and science stuff online and has learned way more than he's learned in school.
But I am hoping some of this was more about middle school rather than just school in general and that as he starts high school next month, things will improve.
This is why we should have had a National Recommended Reading List decades ago. How do you find a good explanation of something you are curious about when you don't know any about the subject to begin with?
Personally, I think exceptionally gifted students are often out of synch socially. As I mentioned up thread somewhere, I think there is a big difference between the (relatively) larger group of very smart, hardworking kids who put in the effort to get straight As and go to top schools and the smaller group of kids who might be called highly or profoundly gifted. Not necessarily prodigies who go to college at age 12, but still, something different from "the smart kids." I was one of "the smart kids" and while I had a gifted label in school, I see a big difference between me and my son, who is somewhere in that exceptionally gifted category at least in math. It's not that I was bad at math, I was actually on the math team all though junior and high school. But nothing like he is. And yes, he has social struggles because he is so different from most kids and frankly, doesn't have as much patience and diplomacy as he needs to handle interactions, although that's improving with age and maturity. I suspect he's the kind of kid a lot of people are thinking about when they are posting in this thread.
Spot on. There are smart kids, who are high-achieving generally speaking. To the right in the bell curve in learning, but not far outside the normal distribution, or not outside it at all. I also used to be one of those kids and I think it used to be harder years ago to be one of them than it is now. I also got into trouble for reading ahead, and I was expected to tutor the low-achieving kids during class, while the teacher addressed the rest of the students in the middle. I don't think it's like that, at least as often, these days.
But gifted kids, or the highly/exceptionally/profoundly gifted, fall into a different category and things are still very different and often unusually difficult for them. Being far outside the norm always is, but they are expected to be fine on their own (in many situations, and even according to many posters here), even though they do have their own special needs.
OK, I know the OP is coming back tonight to (hopefully) explain himself a little better, but I have some things I want to say right now.
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Originally Posted by mitsguy2001
He was comparing gifted students to gifted athletes, so it was clear that by "gifted students", he was referring to non-athletes. Also, the whole premise is that "gifted students", whether rightly or wrongly, are labeled as having poor social skills.
If you don't agree, then the OP will have to define exactly what he meant or didn't mean.
My school did not have a test for the gifted and talented program, it was entirely up to the whim of our 2nd grade teacher. She chose the quiet and compliant students, mostly girls. The quiet, compliant students are clearly not who the OP was talking about. If you weren't selected in 2nd grade, there was no other way into the program.
Again, we will have to defer to the OP as far as what we are defining as "gifted".
He was comparing gifted students vs gifted athletes, so it was very obvious that he used the term "gifted students" is limited to non-athletes.
Any time there is a resource where demand exceeds supply (in this case, seats at a college, and possibly scholarships), an method used to determine who gets the resource (whether academics, athletics, financial need, random lottery, etc) is going to seem unfair and arbitrary to those who lose, and people are going to resent whoever gets a resource that they don't get.
There are a few people on here who agree with that premise. Most do not. Take my husband. Please! (J/K for that last) He's a quiet type, and when he was younger, from what I hear, shy. But that doesn't mean "lacking in social skills". I didn't know him back then, but by all accounts, he knew how to behave appropriately.
Again, you don't know what the OP meant. And now you're dumping on girls, too?
That sounds rather odd. I take it that was just elementary school? My kids' school dropped TAG for elementary school altogether when my oldest was in kindergarten, but I recall the K teacher saying they didn't make decisions about TAG until 3rd grade.
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Originally Posted by Momma_bear
We will have to agree to disagree on what the OP meant. I don't see gifted students and gifted athletes as completely separate from one another. Nor do I agree that gifted students have to have poor social skills. My sons had friends who were athletes and friends who were not athletes. Their friends from band and their academic classmates did not have poor social skills. Students who participate in Mock Trial, Debate, Marching Band, Model UN, National History Day and other academic activities tend to be very social and well adjusted.
This set of friends includes students who are graduates of or students at Notre Dame, Columbia, Harvard, Yale, Penn, Vanderbilt, Duke, Johns Hopkins, U of FL, U of Chicago and other highly ranked colleges. They were mostly serious student, had a nice social group. They were clean cut kids but they did not have poor social skills. I don't doubt there are some gifted students who do have poor social skills but I don't agree that those two traits need to go together.
ITA. Even back in my day (Class of 1967), the people who got elected to student council and class offices were among the better students anyway., if not the top 10%, which some were. I can't tell you who the captain of the football team was, but I can tell you who our class president was.
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Originally Posted by PriscillaVanilla
I've seen a wide spectrum, but even athletes with poor social skills had plenty of friends and a social life. Their athletic ability cancelled out any poor social skills they had.
There has been a problem in my city for years with professional athletes sleeping with lots of women and spreading diseases around. And a friend of mine had a minor daughter (age 17) who was taken advantage of by a pro athlete in my city recently. These athletes seem to think they can get away with anything. They've been worshipped their whole lives.
Or maybe they got to be top athletes because they had decent social skills. You know, like show up for practices, cooperate for the team, etc.
We are not talking about professional athletes here.
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Originally Posted by emm74
Personally, I think exceptionally gifted students are often out of synch socially. As I mentioned up thread somewhere, I think there is a big difference between the (relatively) larger group of very smart, hardworking kids who put in the effort to get straight As and go to top schools and the smaller group of kids who might be called highly or profoundly gifted. Not necessarily prodigies who go to college at age 12, but still, something different from "the smart kids." I was one of "the smart kids" and while I had a gifted label in school, I see a big difference between me and my son, who is somewhere in that exceptionally gifted category at least in math. It's not that I was bad at math, I was actually on the math team all though junior and high school. But nothing like he is. And yes, he has social struggles because he is so different from most kids and frankly, doesn't have as much patience and diplomacy as he needs to handle interactions, although that's improving with age and maturity. I suspect he's the kind of kid a lot of people are thinking about when they are posting in this thread.
Such kids would number 2 or 3 per hundred kids or so, from statistics I've seen. I dunno. In a big HS, that would number 10-15 kids. From previous discussions with this OP and his right-hand man here, I think he's talking about all the "smart kids". Your son's skills are improving as he gets older. That's the way it works. My daughters were more quiet and shy in elementary school and middle school than in HS.
Quote:
Originally Posted by leastprime
BTW, except for boxers and professional wrestlers, you just don't see nor hear about athletes with poor social skills. Perhaps they just get the clock knocked out of them early on and they become just normal sociopaths in their later years .
OP made generalized observations and assumed it is true observation and a truer assumption. Were they?
I can't wait till he tells us.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mitsguy2001
I also wonder if things are different now than they were in the past. Like I said before, I would always get in trouble for asking questions that were beyond the curriculum. If I were a student nowadays, I wonder if I would just look things up on the internet that I was curious about, rather than asking about it in class.
OK, back to my husband. I figured by HS he probably knew more than his teachers about certain topics. He confirmed that with me. He said, however, he never got in trouble for it, and I think by then, he was probably speaking up for himself and saying "No that's not how it is".
Quote:
Originally Posted by emm74
Yes. At least going by my son. At least as of now, I've got a kid who loves to learn but doesn't like school. He spends a lot of time watching and reading math and science stuff online and has learned way more than he's learned in school.
But I am hoping some of this was more about middle school rather than just school in general and that as he starts high school next month, things will improve.
Middle school is a horrible time for most kids. I hated "jr. high" as it was called then. My brother was more popular than me, and an athlete, so I was surprised to find out in adulthood that he hated it too.
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Originally Posted by psikeyhackr
This is why we should have had a National Recommended Reading List decades ago. How do you find a good explanation of something you are curious about when you don't know any about the subject to begin with?
I think such lists went out with the dodo bird. A good way to get a kid to hate reading is to make him/her read something he hates. I'm not saying don't broaden their horizons, but do give them some choices. That's what my kids' school, out in white-bread mid-America suburbia did.
Such kids would number 2 or 3 per hundred kids or so, from statistics I've seen. I dunno. In a big HS, that would number 10-15 kids. From previous discussions with this OP and his right-hand man here, I think he's talking about all the "smart kids". Your son's skills are improving as he gets older. That's the way it works. My daughters were more quiet and shy in elementary school and middle school than in HS.
And don't these kids, few as they might number, deserve opportunities to learn in public school? (Note: if they skip grades, they actually save the school district money!) Also the original point of this is that these kids don't tend to get as much recognition/praise/adulation *in general* compared to similarly exceptionally gifted athletes.
And no, that's not how it works re: social skills for many of these kids. You're not listening to what many of us are saying. Yes, social skills mature with age. Of course on some level some interactions get easier with age and experience, like they do for everyone. But often kids who think on this other level *have a very hard time relating to other kids.* Also, sometimes (or often) they are flat-out judged if they are grade skippers. Perhaps more by adults than other kids ((and reading this forum, such a fact surprises me less and less). They are in a unique position and it's not an easy one to navigate. That is the point.
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