With a High IQ Comes Need for Special Education (logic, classrooms, students)

[jps-teacher]

Originally Posted by lhpartridge

My son calls it being "deep in shallow water". He dropped out at age 16, after never being able to adjust to school.

Ivory would tell you your son is not "really" gifted, then - or there was "something else wrong with him."

I would tell you I sympathize deeply - with both of you.

[Ivorytickler]

Originally Posted by TKramar

Being smarter than everyone else, and not being challenged is a disability in and of itself.

Why not challenge yourself?

I have to disagree. The, truely, smart people I know have challenged themselves when the world didn't challenge them. Why shouldn't it be the responsibility of the smart child to find their challenge?

My best friend in high school turned every paper she wrote into a project including lab reports. My daughter goes deeper into every subject given to her. She's gone to her teachers, on her own to ask for deeper work when she feels the work is beneath her.

I have to question the true intelligence of a child who chooses to rot on the vine rather than challenge themselves. If you need others to challenge you and make you think, how smart are you really? Quitting because you weren't challenged is a cop out. You can challenge yourself in most classes.

I can tell the truely intelligent kids in my classes from the average who just think they're smart by the quality of their work. By the depth of the answers to questions both in labs and in class. It's not up to me to figure out how to challenge your child. That is up to your child.

[TKramar]

You do the challenging stuff outside of school...but they don't challenge you. And you may find that things you thought would challenge you come easy anyhow.

If I'm the lead dog, why would I not want to remain lead dog?

[flik_becky]

Originally Posted by Ivorytickler

Why not challenge yourself?

I have to disagree. The, truely, smart people I know have challenged themselves when the world didn't challenge them. Why shouldn't it be the responsibility of the smart child to find their challenge?

My best friend in high school turned every paper she wrote into a project including lab reports. My daughter goes deeper into every subject given to her. She's gone to her teachers, on her own to ask for deeper work when she feels the work is beneath her.

I have to question the true intelligence of a child who chooses to rot on the vine rather than challenge themselves. If you need others to challenge you and make you think, how smart are you really? Quitting because you weren't challenged is a cop out. You can challenge yourself in most classes.

I can tell the truely intelligent kids in my classes from the average who just think they're smart by the quality of their work. By the depth of the answers to questions both in labs and in class. It's not up to me to figure out how to challenge your child. That is up to your child.

BLAME THE CHILD! BLAME THE CHILD! BRING OUT YOUR PITCHFORKS AND TORCHES! Let us MAKE kids take responsibility for themselves! ADULTS no longer take ANY responsibility in that! BUT let us first pull aside those gifted kids, the ones that everything comes narturally to and tell them that they have to go MORE in depth than the other kids...but don't specify how much further in depth and that NO MATTER how hard they try it will NEVER be good enough.

"SHEESH!" say the below average kids, "I get off easy because I'm graded on my natural lack of ability!"

"AMAZING!" say the average kids, "All I have to do is put in a big word or two and these people are off my back!"

"HOLY CRAP!" say the gifted kids, "RUN! HIDE! OE.....just pretend to be average...it is easier....make sure you get a couple wrong on EVERY test, average a B on your assignments or these people are going to find us and come after us like we are some intelligent alien life form capable of answering the questions regarding the depths of the cosmos and risk public humilation and some degrading, demoralizing, unexceptable, unmoral, and unethical backlash just cause we are different."

(Notice how the gifted kid has a higher sense of the morals and appropriatness of this behavior.)

[Aconite]

Originally Posted by TKramar

You do the challenging stuff outside of school...but they don't challenge you. And you may find that things you thought would challenge you come easy anyhow.

If I'm the lead dog, why would I not want to remain lead dog?

Because even if you're the lead dog, you're still harnessed. And if the guy with the whip is pointing you in a direction you don't particularly care to go, the view still stinks.

[Aconite]

Originally Posted by flik_becky

Originally Posted by Ivorytickler
Why not challenge yourself?

I have to disagree. The, truely, smart people I know have challenged themselves when the world didn't challenge them. Why shouldn't it be the responsibility of the smart child to find their challenge?

I've no problem with asking our brightest children to design their own challenges. But in that case, why are we handicapping them by refusing to let them actually pursue those challenges for seven hours or more a day?

[Ivorytickler]

Originally Posted by TKramar

You do the challenging stuff outside of school...but they don't challenge you. And you may find that things you thought would challenge you come easy anyhow.

If I'm the lead dog, why would I not want to remain lead dog?

Because the view stinks from behind

Why wouldn't you want to remain the lead dog? Both my daughter and my best friends who have high IQ's like being the lead dog. My daughter challenges herself to stay the lead dog.

[TKramar]

But I AM the lead dog--I'm asking why I'd want to give up my spot.

[Ivorytickler]

Originally Posted by Aconite

I've no problem with asking our brightest children to design their own challenges. But in that case, why are we handicapping them by refusing to let them actually pursue those challenges for seven hours or more a day?

Because some direction is needed and you do have to prove you learned the basics. Few children have the wherwithal to be able to 100% guide their own educations. Most adults don't. The problem with being your own teacher is you a limited by the inexperience of your teacher.

Pulling them out of one school environment for another is just a horse of a different color. It's still someone else telling you what to learn.

I'm in favor of schools because they can offer so many different subjects for kids to study. There's no reason for them to be bored.

[Charles Wallace]

Originally Posted by Ivorytickler

There's no reason for them to be bored.

I'm going to try one more time.
Let's say you have a child who enters first grade. If she is an average child, first grade will be a good experience. Almost all of it will be at her level of challenge, although occasionally some concepts will be very easy and some concepts will be quite hard.

What would be the experience of a reasonably well-educated 12-year-old in that same class, provided that she or he was required to do the same work?