Actually, I agree with you completely on this point. GATE programs often do nothing more than enrichment that any kid would benefit from, and that should be available for anyone. Educational priorities can get very screwed up (we have to take away recess to raise test scores! only gifted kids deserve fun artsy things! we can’t read anything interesting until everyone can read!), to the point that things are done completely backwards.
I would say that actual giftedness is something different again. Kids often enjoy GATE programs simply because there’s more to do (less boredom) and they have the company of other kids who think like them, not because the actual content is very different from what other kids could enjoy too.
I could say more but I have to go feed my kids before they eat each other.
In our school district testing is started from either a teacher or parent recommendation, or from high test scores. The testing is done at the end of second grade, since most kids have evened out in development by then. The testing has a psychological aspect, and there is a definite goal to separate gifted from merely bright. There have been lots of studies on the characteristics of gifted kids.
There are two brands of giftedness recognized - math and english, and kids don’t have to be both. I haven’t noticed any special emphasis on arts or creativity, though I might guess that in districts where arts education has been cut due to funding issues maybe some of the resource for gifted education could be used there. My high school had a creative writing class, and entry to that was based on writing samples. Honors Art classes were based on artistic merit in 10th grade art. Kids in gifted programs had no head start, which I think is proper. My wife just read something, in some research she is doing, that shows that after you hit an IQ of 120 or so, there is no correlation between artistic ability or creativity and IQ.
Along a similar topic, and I don’t want to necessarily hijack this, but there are ways to pick out math and music savants and physically gifted kids from a sample group of children. That’s relatively easy to do. My problem is that there are so many other ways to be gifted, and that we don’t even ascribe the “gifted” status to them until it could be too late to coltivate these gifts. For example, what about kids that are gifted when it comes to medicine or law or philosophy? If a kid started showing some of those traits when they were kids, chances are that they’d get branded as “weird”, even by their parents.
Well, those aren’t one gift are they? They’re a combination of ability and training. Someone who would be a singularly skilled doctor if trained as one would probably have other “gifts”, such as high consentration, interest in biologi, inate proffessional atidute, ability to cope with tragidy well, that sort of thing (not to mention skill with languages, good comunication, and the genereal ability to study for hours and assimilate a large amount of info). You can’t just be born with a gift for medicine as such, far as I can tell. Same with the others.
That’s why I think “magnet” schools are such a good idea – seems like someone who’s passionate about X ought to be given the opportunity to study it, regardless of whether they’re labelled “gifted”. Who’s to say that hard work isn’t as important as innate talent? Isn’t that how it is in real life? Wasn’t that how apprenticeships used to work? The ones who don’t care enough to identify a passion can go somewhere else & let everyone else stay focussed. And the kids who can’t cut it, whether through lack of ability or effort, might need to find a different area of interest.
Until some asshole parent calls his lawyer, anyway, but that’s another thread.
When I was a kid, I thought the activities we did in our gifted program were things everyone ought to be exposed to - like giving speeches, doing our own research, lots of creative writing and reading some really good books (must’ve been the “right-brain” group). Some students did leave each year, though, evidently it was too intense for them. I loved it - although once we hit 7th grade, all bets were off; we behaved abominably.
This thread came to mind today when I was talking to someone whose friend had lost a young son. Three of their kids have some kind of genetic defect, and won’t live long enough to graduate from high school. Fretting about this giftedness business is a luxury; my real gratitude is that my children are healthy.
Me: Identified gifted upon entering elementary school, technically “twice-exceptional,” but never pursued accomodations for my spatial issues (math was a struggle, but I still passed the AP Calc exam, by God!). I studied gifted education in college and wrote an Honors thesis in the area.
It is always difficult to talk about gifted students as a group, but here goes: I have seen lots of people talk about potential issues with authority, and while that is certainly a common issue with gifted children, some gifted children who are quite deferential. I believe that the child’s relationship with authority depends on how his or her sense of natural justice expresses itself. Researchshows that certain types of gifted students develop an other-centered conception of justice at a very early age, when most of their peers are still (reasonably and in keeping with normal development) self-centered. The sense of the other is often melodramatic because the child lacks perspective and it is by no means perfect. This other-regarding confers an ability and desire to think about what other people might do or how they might react or feel in a situation. If a gifted student with this ability is very troubled or feels him/herself an outcast, s/he might use these instincts for evil, not good. In myself and my friends, I have seen this behavior manifest itself in a variety of ways:
A refusal to admit [usually emotional] pain or frustration borne out of a well-meaning desire to protect loved ones from “feeling bad.” Starting from my earliest days at school, I never told my parents when people were mean to me, or when I was feeling sad about making friends at school, because I didn’t think there was anything they could really do to solve the problem, and I knew it would make them feel bad for me. I did not sustain too much damage from holding this in, but I think it is clear how this could adversely affect others.
Contempt for individuals who bring down punishments upon the group with their actions–to the young child with a developed sense of fairness, having the whole class punished because of one or two people is an outrage. The child is often very confused, and the explanations that adults provide are usually grounded in the “you will respect my authoritah” argument. I will be honest; my personal anger at being punished for things that other people did sowed the seeds of righteous (and overblown) contempt for my peers that endured into my college years.
Following that, do not be surprised if a gifted child who develops this sense of justice very early prefers to hang out with an older group of friends. Monitor things carefully, of course, but do not forbid such friendships outright.
These kids tend to be really sensitive. I cried a lot in nursery school, and when I was in the early grades, I would beg to leave the room if things were too loud or if other students were misbehaving. I could not bear the thought of being yelled at for things I didn’t do, so I would actively seek to withdraw myself if I felt that the teacher was about to chastise the class as a whole. My cousin–who is me, except male–had crying fits spurred by frustration over injustices until he was in the third grade.
This sense of justice is well-meaning, but flawed, and you will have to learn how to “take your child down a notch.” If the child is praised for this sense of justice (or for any type of giftedness, really) without restraint, then you risk creating an arrogant, distant and even cruel human being who refuses to accept or deal with the weaknesses of others while remaining blind to his or her own faults.
There is also the issue of where/how your child is gifted. Most school systems are set up to accomodate (or can improvise to accomodate) talented children in math and science, as the curriculum has a logical progression and it is easier to work with a moderate number of students at a time. These students also tend to produce nice projects and can compete in clearly defined competitions and bring positive press to their school/district. Some school districts have magnet programs for children who are gifted in the fine arts, but there is often an issue of expense (lessons, etc.) for the family. Students who are verbally gifted and incline toward humanistic subjects and languages, where curriculum progression is not clearly defined and “outputs” are difficult to extract provide their own set of difficulties, and “average” schools can sometimes have difficulties finding something to do with these children. There are the long-standing debates over inclusion (which most gifted advocacy groups view with suspicion and researchers also question, arguing that it could work, but given the limitations of most schools, probably won’t), early graduation, and grade-skipping that you should be prepared to consider as well.