With a High IQ Comes Need for Special Education (graduates, grade, cost)

[Aconite]

Originally Posted by flik_becky

Wingfoot: All a really gifted child really needs is a library card and a bit of guidance.


OUCH! That is a huge misconception. A library card and a bit of guidance is for those who want to put for the bare minimum of effort for the everyday needs of their child. The link that Aconite offered really has a lot of great material to better help you understand the stuggles that gifted kids have. Did you know that gifted teens are 400% more likely to commit suicide? There is a huge disconnect in our society and if you really believe that the point of education is for citizenship, then you will also recognize that a huge part of that would be tolerance, exceptance and understanding of how, why, and what makes people different. Instead, it alienates this kids, puts them down, and holds them back.

I'm of two minds here. I agree, basically, with what you've said Becky. There are definitely different tasks and joys and challenges in dealing with gifted kids (and ftr, I agree strongly with the idea of "from those to whom much is given, much is expected", at least on an intellectual level; that's why gifted ed must be structured differently from gen ed, IMO).

OTOH, my dd is a natural unschooler-- and the most important items in her education are a library card, a bit of guidance...and enough time to utilize both. So I can't discount wingfoot out of hand, from a homeschooler's POV.
OTOH (yes, that makes three hands, I know) we're talking mainly about public school, which is a hoofed ungulate of a different color. Because you're teaching herds of children, rather than individual children, the set-up is necessarily more complicated. Throw those gifted kids into a setting with mostly gen ed kids, some intellectually challenged SpEd kids, and the sweathogs, and it becomes almost Rube Goldberg-esque.

[flik_becky]

Originally Posted by Sandpointian

Get her tested. There is a well-respected program at Davidson (North Carolina) for the exceptionally gifted (I think 4 SD above the mean, or the top 3 thousandths of the top percent). I may be off on that...but regardless in the upper extremities of the right tail.)

Other gifted programs, such as that at Duke are less restrictive, but still require an IQ test. Then there is EPGY based at Stanford, which gets better every year. My daughter take classes through them (ironically one is talking algebra II right now! BTW, I highly recommend the math text books by Margaret Lial).

Best of luck!
S.

We live up in the subarctic of the country. There are some good schools about 2 hours south of us. They even have high schools just for kids who are gifted in art. It is pretty cool. I can not commute this daily and can not do as a friend did who sent his 16 year old to live in a dorm for that school. His was a free public school for her (the art one) that had a very low cost for students who stayed there. DD would have to stay with the relative and take the city transit to and from school. I'm not so sure I'm cool with that under the age of 14 or so. I've been looking at online school options instead and have found one free public gifted school but I'm afraid that you get what you pay for in that respect.

I really wanted to when she was a toddler. My whole family was really for getting her diagnosised with ADHD/ADD or getting therapy for her not speaking around anyone or getting her help for being retarded or putting her in a day care, even though one of us were always there to take care of her, to push her social skills. At first I thought something was wrong but when I figured it out, everyone was really blunt with me about how I was in horrid denial. I wanted the tests to prove them wrong but DH was adament that is not what those tests are for and if I was really interested in finding out to help her, then that is why they should be done. Since I was not, he pushed back on that issue. He understands we'll have to do it in the future but for now, we're both on the same boat with keeping her out of the spotlight, letting her grow up with more time just being a kid for at least as long as I can possibily teach her, and scew everyone else if they want to think that. Since then, most of my family has come around but go on in the same manner about my son. DH says I should blow it off and have a little more of an attitude about how the kids will prove them wrong someday and how we'll end up with the next Einstein. Of course he doesn't really believe that, he's trying to make me feel better but it doesn't. It still sucks that my family does this. Anyway, point is, DD will need a test eventually. I know her IQ must be up there. Not Einstein high but still high enough. I think knowing would help in proper school placement.

[flik_becky]

Originally Posted by Aconite

I'm of two minds here. I agree, basically, with what you've said Becky. There are definitely different tasks and joys and challenges in dealing with gifted kids (and ftr, I agree strongly with the idea of "from those to whom much is given, much is expected", at least on an intellectual level; that's why gifted ed must be structured differently from gen ed, IMO).

OTOH, my dd is a natural unschooler-- and the most important items in her education are a library card, a bit of guidance...and enough time to utilize both. So I can't discount wingfoot out of hand, from a homeschooler's POV.
OTOH (yes, that makes three hands, I know) we're talking mainly about public school, which is a hoofed ungulate of a different color. Because you're teaching herds of children, rather than individual children, the set-up is necessarily more complicated. Throw those gifted kids into a setting with mostly gen ed kids, some intellectually challenged SpEd kids, and the sweathogs, and it becomes almost Rube Goldberg-esque.

I agree 100%. I was focusing on that one word "all."

[flik_becky]

Originally Posted by Ivorytickler

Another reason not to have gifted programs. One of the things kids need to learn in school is how to function as part of a group in spite of their differences. How to take their own education into their own hands and make it work for them. If someone else is spoon feeding you your entire life, spoon feeding is all you'll ever be able to manage.

While I support things like advancing gifted kids into classes that are more of a challenge (so they don't grow up expecting everything to be easy), they need to learn how to challenge themselves as well and they need to learn their gifts don't entitle them to special treatment. If anyone is required to step up to the plate and take charge, it should be the gifted.

OK Ivory. Let us say that you hate football. Since much of America enjoys it, does that mean we should FORCE you to watch every game because that is what everyone else does? Not at all.

Do you think that being part of a society full of mostly average people would not do that? Force them to be part of a group whether they like it or not?

Explain to me why gifted kids are 400% more likely to commit suicide?

What you are saying here is that gifted kids need to find a way to fit in with average kids of their age. That would require them to hide their gifts and they take on alternative personalities to be percieved as normal. If this works, they become afraid to take off their masks and be themselves. This is not a good path for gifted kids.

Gifted kids recognize when they are developmentally out of synch with same age peers.

A gifted six-year-old first grader may have reached the level of development (normally reached between the ages of eight and nine) at which she especially likes games with complex rules. She plays the simpler games the other six-year-olds like to play on the playground, and then she suggests that they play one of her favorites. The other children refuse.

How do you think they will see this? You seem to think that they will get some sort of complex from it, that they will think that they are somehow better than the other kids. Rather, they will see that the other kids do not like them. Enough times of that and they begin to think that they are not likeable.

To describe how she felt, the words from a 16 year old girl who has tried for years to do what describe as what they should do, conform.

People say I should be proud of what I have accomplished, but to me it is not what I have accomplished; it is who I am... I learn the way I was born learning, and I have tried, repeatedly, painfully and unsuccessfully, to train myself out of it.

There is another story about a gifted fourth grader named Leon. There was a big bully in his class named Michael. The teacher spent a lot of time dealing with Michael and little time was spent on teaching and learning. On the playground, Michael beat up on younger students. The parents were coming to the principle but nothing was being done about it. Leon decides to write a letter about the issues the students are facing and gets 130 other students to sign this petition.

The principle responded with an assembly...to point out how Leon was to "subvert his authority" and manipulate the other children into signing a "pointless and destructive letter." Leon was crushed and pretty devastated to have been so disrespectfully treated publically. Unbeknown to the principle, he had been convincing a group of boys who wanted to gang up and teach the kid a lesson to not meet violence with violence, that this letter was a more democratic way to deal with it. Leon was 9 years old.

reference:
SENG: Articles & Resources - The "me" behind the mask: Intellectually gifted students and the search for identity

At the core of the experience is the gifted teen's absolute need for knowledge for communion and for expression. The analysis revealed that the gifted adolescent is at risk for varying degrees of depression when any or all of these needs are stymied. In particular, meeting communion needs - for meaningful spiritual and emotional exchange - proved problematic for the gifted teen who is often isolated because of extraordinary innate cognitive and emotional complexity.

The Tripartite Needs System of the Gifted Child explains that gifted kids have three main needs when it comes to social, emotional and mental health. They are: the need for knowledge, the need for communion and hte need for expression.

The need for knowledge explains that they need to understand things beyond the averages persons willingness to simply infer or believe. They break this up into three things: The knowledge of needing to understand where they fit into the bigger picture, the need to understand physical and spiritual phenomena, and a need to be understood by others (which under the plan that you explain, can not happen).

The need for communion is as simple as needed someone who can listen and feel a common connection and a deeper exchange with other people. (This is why they feel so isolated with average kids.)

The need for expression is as simple as being able to communicate in nonverbal way with music, art, ect.

reference:
SENG: Articles & Resources - Bright star -- black sky: A phenomenological study of depression as a window into the psyche of the gifted adolescent

Of the 40 subjects, currently aged between 6 and 17, 31 have been retained, by their schools, with age-peers of average ability or have been permitted a token grade-skip of a single year. The curriculum with which these children are presented requires them to underachieve by a margin of several years; a discrepancy of 5 years between a student's tested achievement in math or reading, and the level at which he or she is permitted to work in class, is not uncommon, and the study has recorded discrepancies of up to 9 years. An added complication, however, is that the majority of the 31 "non-accelerants" (so termed because this study has shown that acceleration by only one year makes little or no difference to extremely gifted students either academically or socially) also choose to underachieve deliberately in an attempt to gain social acceptance by their classmates.

As this article states, the kids with the highest IQ's feel the greatest amount of emotional distress. The kids in the group who were allowed to accel stopped or greatly reduced the amount of purposeful underachieving and were able to work and socialize with the kids much older with them.
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The ideal goal here for gifted kids is to make sure that the emotional, social, and mental long term health is being taken care of THROUGH proper accleration and placed BEFORE the wrong, mythical, uneducated, and devasting thinking of those with the same thoughts as you.

[beachmouse]

Originally Posted by flik_becky

What you are saying here is that gifted kids need to find a way to fit in with average kids of their age. That would require them to hide their gifts and they take on alternative personalities to be percieved as normal. If this works, they become afraid to take off their masks and be themselves. This is not a good path for gifted kids.

And who says that gifted kids should have to use the school day as a way of 'fitting in' with peers? For me, that's what swim team (or gymnastics lessons or any number of outside school activities) was for.

[toobusytoday]

I think that fitting in with one's peers is a needed life skill for everyone. It's not about pretending to be someone they are not. It's about finding commonalities.

[flik_becky]

Originally Posted by beachmouse

And who says that gifted kids should have to use the school day as a way of 'fitting in' with peers? For me, that's what swim team (or gymnastics lessons or any number of outside school activities) was for.

People who aregue that kids should not be advanced to where they really are academically argue that kids need to learn how to fit in with peers their age. Unfotunately, we're setting them up for failure in both areas, forcing them to under achieve and leave them with a very poor self image. The reason that gifted kids often grow up to be just average adults is because the training they had all through school and from their parents dictate they be "normal" rather than exceptional so that spills into adulthood.

[Ivorytickler]

Originally Posted by toobusytoday

I think that fitting in with one's peers is a needed life skill for everyone. It's not about pretending to be someone they are not. It's about finding commonalities.

This is why I support a tracked system but not, necessarily, giving more to any one group. To each the same but with them grouped by ability. That alone would result in gifted kids getting a lot more education than regular ed or special ed kids. I don't like the disproportionate time we spend on the struggling student now. Unfortunately, it's time at the expense of both regular ed and gifted kids.

While I don't see gifted kids as needing a special education, I also don't see education serving them at all if they are held hostage by the limits of others and they are in a mixed ability classroom. We could solve so much of what ails education if we tracked our kids.

[cdc3217]

Originally Posted by beachmouse

And who says that gifted kids should have to use the school day as a way of 'fitting in' with peers? For me, that's what swim team (or gymnastics lessons or any number of outside school activities) was for.

I think the idea is fitting in cognitively - working as a group at a level where the participants are close enough in ability that they can raise the level of discourse to be stimulating and illuminating for the participants - in other words, a classroom where the gifted students actually learn.

[Mathguy]

My oldest (and soon my youngest) are in accelerated and enhanced learning programs that are excellent. Mathematically they are both in the top fraction of a percent.

I grew up in a small town and never had the access to enrichment classes like they have so I'm happy.

Still, it's *sports* *sports* *sports* around here.....great, that's ok we will just give those 6-figure math jobs to some visa applicants from the pacific rim instead.