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Just to reiterate, gifted does not equal smart or mature. Lump them together, and it changes the entire political conversation about these programs or lack thereof.
The thing with current standards is that there really isn't much incentive for the gifted kids to give much back to society. At best, they're ignored in favor of the teacher who needs to get the lower achievers in a class into position to pass NCLB tests. As worst, they're treated as annoyances by teachers (your fourth grade teacher is not going to like you when you make her look like an idiot in front of her classroom because she doesn't know that Singapore is a country) or pressed into roles as unpaid teacher's aides expected to help with the instruction of their classmates.
I think he did have a good point that the gifted kids need to end up in hard situations where they couldn't just pull the right answer out of the air like they usually do, not because they need to learn humility (Most of the gifted kids I knew weren't arrogant; they just tended to wander off into their own interests instead of sticking with the group) but because eventually you are going to get to a point where you are facing failure in something and you need to have developed some sort of tools how to deal with it. I'm one of those people who never had to study until grad school, and when I found myself in a situation where I couldn't just have it all work out with minimal effort, I was clueless about the steps I needed to take to fix it. Got my degree on schedule, but the first year was very messy and unpleasant until I figured that out.
That is actually a big reason why we choose to homeschool. Our daughter corrects adults and excitedly takes over the conversation to go deeper on the subject. Most people are annoyed and think she should run along with the other kids but the last couple years, we've been building strong freindships with another bunch of people who really have a lot of respect for her. Her confidence is soring and she feels pretty darn good when she decides she's done fishing with the boys, done listening to the girls talk about their newest doll, done playing checkers with the a 12 year old girl and is accepted into adult converstion. Their eyes twinkle when she wants to learn a new word one of them has spewed out and they go out of the they way to give her some and one friend likes to tease her since she asks often and she's never had a reason to disblieve what people tell her...such as the term 'assersize'---he's sitting on his butt and this is a form of exercise he does. He enjoyed convincing her that it is a real word among other other things. She enjoys that someone actually had a funny joke that she had to think about for a minute since her sense of humor is more advanced. It fed her more than the usual "pull my finger" stuff. She feels good that someone takes the time and treats her with such respect.
It has been proven through multiple studies that gifted kids who are encouraged to follow those different interests and are allowed to find a group of people that share that interest fair better off in the long hall emotionally and socially.
Just a general question. Would it behoove one to know their own IQ if they have been tested? Or is the actual number best left alone. I.E. would it make you want to do better if you knew your IQ was high and therefore made you want to work harder to prove yourself, or would it stagnate you and create some weird ego about yourself?
Thoughts?
I have one word for you....Mensa. Here is how I can best explain it. I'm making up a hypothetical character her and will call my made up person gifted guy, GG for short.
1. GG knows he has a high IQ but the only people he is ever around have an average IQ. They do not understand why he cares about quantum physics or talking about the latest scientific advance. These subjects really get him excited like football to others and he can't wait to share what's going on in his head with his group like they talk about football. Let us say this group cares about this person and they feel they need to help him. They spend time telling GG that there is no need for that knowledge, that it is useless to him, that he needs to lighten up, and that no one else wants to talk about it. It would be best for him to conform. Imagine how you felt if you really enjoyed something a lot and all your friends berated you for it?
2. So let us say that GG is a kid. The parents get him tested and constantly brag about him. He always does well academically but is so afraid of failing and letting down that image his parents have protraited for him, he is constantly stressed out and fearful of making mistakes. Even the slightest mistake makes him feel like an utter failure.
3. So let us say that GG has spent his entire life being berated and put down for his unusual interests and picked on for being different. He's had enough and he's got two goals on his mind...showing up at his 10 year reunion to brag about how rich he has become and how he's 5 years from retirement...showing up at his high school reunion with a really hot wife to show off.
I can understand where an ego can come from...and how many times do people THINK that someone has an ego because they just do not like being proven wrong or just because GG regularly uses bigger words, he's just trying to show off. (Heck, my daughter is a gorgeous little girl and if I dare put her hair up in curls for fun around some people, they think that somehow I''m bragging when all I'm doing is being like any other mother. I would say that it must feel like that.)
4. BUT let us talk about another scenario...GG is a gifted very young child and everyone close to the parents tells them that there is something wrong with him, that he needs therapy or drugs or something because he doesn't play with his toys in the typical fashion and he prefers to not play with kids his age, he doesn't talk around anyone and he seems withdrawn, hyperactive, and isolates himself. When the parents try to tell everyone, "But yesterday, 3 year old GG modeled the lifecyle of butterflies out of playdo and used the words lifecycle, mated, and metamophasis to describe it," they think the parents made it up or taught them a trick or two. How much do you think the parent has to deal with before finally throwing their hands up in the air and getting the tests done to shut everyone up?
I have not tested my kids. DD is 7 years old and is somewhere between 6 and 12 grade with all her subjects. I can not put her in public school, many teachers have even said that there is no place in public school for, that socially she'll just feel like an outcast and the schools would never allow her to excel at her own pace. We will most likely finish the year this year somewhere in or completing Algebra II. She will be 8 years old. This means I only have a couple more years I can really teach her before I HAVE to find a more qualified alternative. In order to properly place her, she will have to be tested.
I've taken tests, and once, from the encouragement of someone else, took the Mensa pretest with placed me in the catagory of being highly likely to pass the real tests. After doing some research about their members, it felt to like a fraternity/sorority where everyone argued how much more intelligent a 141 IQ score is over a 140. I did not feel so great about the club so I did not pursue it. It wouldn't make me feel any different about myself. I treat everyone that I meet like an equal to me, not intimidated by cops, not rolling my eyes at the handicap guy that knows me by name and who teases his wife about leaving her for me whenever I run into him. I don't compare neices and nephews to my kids. I feel bad for them when they tell horror stories about school and praise them when I hear they did something well. The only thing I've ever run into is that my kids don't understand why kids are different than they are because they think that their parents must be bad for not teaching thems something. We often talk about how everyone is different, everyone learns at different rates (like any public shool would support that), and that everyone is talented in their own way. That is what will keep them from getting that ego.
Is there any evidence that gifted programs benefit society? Do gifted people who went through such programs contribute more back to society than gifted people who did not?
The problem is the gift is all about the individual. Most often they are the only ones to benefit from the gift. Why does society owe them more when they were already born with more than the next person over?
On the flip side, society does benefit from special education or vocational ed programs because they allow those who struggle or those who are simply not college bound to contribute to society in ways they could not without the programs. The gifted will contribute to their own success with or without our help and we really don't gain anything by spending extra effort, money and time on them. They are gifted after all.
FTR, there are those who would argue that I am gifted. No gifted programs here and I managed to be successful without them. I can't see how I would have contributed more to society had I had one. I was already handed way more than the next person in ability and things like my full paid scholarship to college. As a result, I've incurred more of a debt to society but I really don't contribute more than the next person over. The university handed me that scholarship but I'm really not sure why. While it enabled me to be more successful I don't think it netted for the university or society what was paid into it by others.
Does not being a burden on society account for anything? Can you even give examples or supporting referances to this? How are gifted individuals a burden on society? Sure if they were failed by the schools and their hopes, dreams and confidence crushed by expectations that were pointless to them. But of successful gifted kids, how is it they are a burden on society? They are the ones makes making all the discoveries that the teachers will later be teaching in colleges and high schools.
Hawkings, Einstein, Galileo, and Da Vinci have given WAY more to humanity over all than they probably gave to their society at the time of their peak greatness. Amazingly, these people are highly become respected long after their deaths despite their weaknesses physically, emotionally, and socially and their lives and life work are studied for hundreds of years.
Not really. Knowing or not knowing doesn't change who you are. There is a range of ability associated with any IQ number. I refuse to have my dd tested because I don't want added expectations put on her or for anyone to think she's already gone beyond her potential. Her potential is her potential and it's not that closely linked to her IQ.
I don't know the actual number for my IQ but I know that from the day my test scores came in I was expected to have all the answers and no questions only I was the kid with all the questions and no answers. I still have more questions than answers.
This biggest failure we have as a society for to our gifted members. Everything thinks they have all the answers since all the average stuff is simple to them but in reality, they need people who think like them to stretch that imagination and help grow that knowledge.
Exactly what I was thinking. My mother, the woman who dropped out of school at 16 because she was pregnant, who even suggested that I drop out of school and homeschool myself so I could take care of her youngest kids, wasn't a dumb woman. She was average but she did not love education. She resents it. It was no predicition for my knowledge or skills or how I have done the very opposite with my own children to step and make sure they did not suffer in schools as I did from lack of fitting in for those weird ideas I had...like telling my first grade teacher that I thought dinosaurs were related to birds before anything like that was published and of course I was wrong, dumb, ect for it. My social and financial status are different. The choices I made were different. She had little impact on that.
Just to reiterate, gifted does not equal smart or mature. Lump them together, and it changes the entire political conversation about these programs or lack thereof.
S.
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.
1) Secondary graduation rates are higher, college attendance rates are higher, and college graduation rates are higher.
2) Anecdotal, rather than evidentiary: kids who have been in programs that served them well are more likely to want to give back to those programs and/or the schools/organizations that sponsor them. This comes from 3 such programs I've seen over the last 30 years.
It's not about owing them more. It is about giving them the same thing - an education that is appropriate for them.
And the argument from the article (did you read the article this time?) is not about society's owing them anything - it is about giving them a better education for society's benefit - not anything about doing it for the student!
Can you say myth?
Sure you can.
The facts don't support you - but this has been pointed out to you in several other places. A disproportionately high percentage of high ability students drop out of school, don't go to college, or drop out of college. Much of this is due to inappropriate education.
Some of the gifted will contribute to their own success - but since the whole point of the articlewas that they are not contributing to society's success, the rest of your argument is totally off base. We really do gain something by spending extra effort, money, and time on them.
The irony of this is that it is the exact reverse of your argument about why you matter more to smarter students - you have said repeatedly that "I can do more with them" and "I have greater impact when I am teaching better students!"
But here you are insisting that giving them more, better, or more appropriate education does nothing! To quote you,
I accept both of those statements at face value.
UGH. You do love to just lump things together. Yes, I can do more with the G&T kids. The argument here isn't whether I can do more with them it's whether or not it's worth it to put the extra effort in to do so. In other words, we've moved on to a different argument!
Please keep the arguments straight. That's best done by not borrowing from other threads on other topics. Just because I CAN do something doesn't mean I SHOULD.
My previous arguments were that all kids deserve the same effort and that would require tracking. I was arguing against a system that holds some kids back because it's forced to pace with slower kids not in favor of special programs to push them even farther. Here we're talking about special programs that cost more and require more energy than we'd be giving the other kids. I'm, morally, opposed to giving some kids extra because they were born with more in the first place. However, I'm in favor of giving all kids equal amounts of education which would require a tracked system to serve all well.
Keep the arguments straight please. You just muddy the water dragging in statements made about other issues in other contexts into this one or any other debate.
As usual, sticking to debating the topic not the poster works best. Please stick to the topic at hand and leave my statements about other things where they belong, which would be within the context in which they were said. I shouldn't be wasting a post explaining the differences between my argument here and there. We're talking two different issues.
I have not tested my kids. DD is 7 years old and is somewhere between 6 and 12 grade with all her subjects. I can not put her in public school, many teachers have even said that there is no place in public school for, that socially she'll just feel like an outcast and the schools would never allow her to excel at her own pace. We will most likely finish the year this year somewhere in or completing Algebra II. She will be 8 years old. This means I only have a couple more years I can really teach her before I HAVE to find a more qualified alternative. In order to properly place her, she will have to be tested.
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.
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Here is how I can best explain it. I'm making up a hypothetical character her and will call my made up person gifted guy, GG for short.
