The problem of giftedness

[DSeid]

@Voyager

… Now, when I entered first grade, I couldn’t really read, and didn’t struggle with but was at the Dick and Jane level at the beginning. Sometime in there I jumped five or six grade levels, and that summer I was reading full Jules Verne books. (I’m an excellent example of why you shouldn’t sort kids when they are 5.) …

I have four kids. My first did exactly what you did, starting first grade worried that all his friends were reading and he couldn’t. Then it was like an Amish house raising … there must have been structures there that just needed to all come together, because suddenly he was reading anything. Really literally overnight. The next was more linear in his progress, the third very precocious, reading well and before 4, and the last a bit slower to master reading and at 10 still not loving it although she can read well enough. More anecdotes as to why sorting too early, or using a static achievement measurement at any one point in time is to be avoided.

@monstro

… I remember being “dropped” into the gifted class sporadically when the kids needed my “free-lance” work, starting back as early as the third grade. At least in elementary school, I was always the resident artist of our grade, so …

… DSeid, I’m glad we’re on the same page about something for a change!

First off, it sounds like your school was particularly egregious in using so-called gifted ed as a means to keep advantaged students from bolting. Using you as resource to service that population, rather than giving you opportunity to further expand your artistry for its own sake, strikes me as very very wrong at a nauseating level.

Second of all - I knew we could!

@Stink Fish Pot

First, for those of you that thought my reply was too long and didn’t read, I sincerely understand.

Realize that the number of comments that said it was equalled one, someone who apparently accurately described himself as having a problem with focus and attention.

… IMO, all children in some way may benefit from a cultural experience. Some kids will never “get it”, including potentially some at the top of the intellect scale as well as the lower kids.

My experience is that all IQ levels and ability levels have an equal potential to benefit from cultural programming even if they get different things out of it. I don’t get music theory at all,was kicked out of elementary school band because I was that bad, and would not enjoy a concert at any intellectual level, but can enjoy the music anyway, for example. Everyone should have the chance to be exposed to it.

@CitizenPained

Education programs today (as they’re taught in teaching colleges) are about enrichment, hands-on, thinking outside the box, individualized education, etc.

So the kindergarten that you with the face described is, well, kindergarten. At least, all that I’ve seen in the Denver metro area.

Well this will be a digression perhaps but I have parented a long time. My oldest is 25 and youngest is turning 10. I also am in pediatrics so hear about the classrooms on an ongoing basis. And the ideal as taught in teaching colleges is farther and farther from reality in most schools. Schools are increasingly concerned on how they are graded, and they are graded based on how their kids test. From Kindergarten on preparing for the test, and only teaching it if it will be on the test, has become the focus. A few years back my eldest had no pressure for not reading by the start of first grade. For my youngest there was an expectation that she should be reading before getting into Kindergarten so they can start right off getting the kids to work. And now Kindergartens are full of worksheets and fewer manipulatives. Holding kids back a year was discouraged in the past, now it is subtly encouraged. And better a faux gifted program than having your brighter (read better on the test scores) third move into a private school or even out of district (which parents with resources will do if they think a better education for their kid is to be had a few miles away).

[monstro]

@DSeid

First off, it sounds like your school was particularly egregious in using so-called gifted ed as a means to keep advantaged students from bolting. Using you as resource to service that population, rather than giving you opportunity to further expand your artistry for its own sake, strikes me as very very wrong at a nauseating level.

It was nauseating, and that’s why I’m so uncomfortable with the whole notion of arbitrary “giftedness”. you with the face and I (twin sisters, for full disclosure) were and are not genuises…so I’m not saying that we were teh gifted or The Truly Gifted. Only that the way the program worked at our schools, those kids assigned to the gifted program were no different fundamentally than we were. Yet they were treated with things that everyone, not just the smarty-pants crew, could have benefited from. It wasn’t for lack of resources that we were deprived of those activities. I sincerely believe it was the whole “But Johnny’s special!” attitude that created two separate tracks.

My parents, despite being educated, did not take us to museums for whatever reason. Even as an adult, I have never visited the biggest art museum of my hometown–the High Museum of Atlanta. However, every year the gifted kids went there. Now I just told you that I was the resident artist, and I’m not just saying that to brag. The fifth graders published the school paper, but even when I was in the third grade, I was “hired” to do all the drawings for it. To an eight-year-old, that was OMG MAJOR! And yet no one (except for one teacher) stopped to think, “Hey, this kid is obviously talented in the visual arts and exceptionally creative. She’s always checking out science books from the library. And she makes fantastic grades as well. Why don’t we give her a chance to be in the gifted program just to see if things work out?” Instead, it all fell down to the percentile cut-off. You had to be in at least the 95th percentile on the big standardized test to gain entry into the program. (I hope I’m remembering correctly…it was a long time ago). One year, in the fourth grade, I tested at the 93rd percentile and that’s when my mother came to the school to beg for an exception. But they were all like, “No can do, ma’am. She’s just not smart enough.” Sometimes I think that thought motivated me to get my PhD. The old “I’ll show them” factor.

I think the activities and assignments offered to the gifted kids should have been extended to the regular population. For instance, the teacher could have said, “Hey, the gifted teacher is calling for students who want to enter the science fair. If you want to do a science project, here’s the sign up sheet.” How would that have harmed the gifted kids? If the gifted kids were going to the High Museum, a certain number of extra seats could have been reserved for either regular kids who wanted to go or those who the teacher felt would really benefit. I guess what I’m saying is, I don’t know why the door to those opportunities was padlocked the way it was. It’s not even a question of fairness, but of reasoning.

I don’t know why my test performances are so uneven, by the way. I did well on the PSAT and lousy on the SAT. The first time I took the GRE, it was such an embarrassment that I kept my score a secret to anyone who asked. The second time I took it, just a month later, a mentoring professor thought the scoring had been done incorrectly because he thought the score was too high (I wish I was joking. And man, did that nearly kill my respect for him). I don’t know if the test scores of the gifted kids were monitored every year to see how consistent they were. However, I don’t remember any of them being pulled out of the program unless they were becoming serious disciplinary problems or their grades were atrocious (and they had to be really bad).

[you_with_the_face]

@Stink Fish Pot

The way I read your suggestion, you are thinking 3-4 year period of everyone being “gifted” and start weeding kids out after that. OK, let’s say you have a district with 60 kids in each grade, so two classes of 30. Now, buy the tickets to every cultural event the school wants to take the kids to… add transportation and food costs, as well as any added security to make sure the kids alll get hope safely.

If cost is an issue, monstro’s idea would take of care of that. Have a list of several enrichments activities charted out for the year (museum trips, science projects, book writing, Latin, drama, etc) and then rotate kids in and out of those activities so that all of them get a worthwhile exposure. So that at any one point in time, you have the same number of kids doing “gifted” stuff that you do now, except not reserving the stuff for just the snowflakes, but extending it to everyone.

In case it’s not clear, I’m in favor of doing away with the “gifted” labeling to start with. Unless we’re talking about true geniuses whose intelligence acts as an social and academic impediment to them in a normal classroom, “gifted” is just a feel good label to make parents and kids feel superior to others. It would be better to just call these kids “above average” and keep it moving. My memory is imperfect, but I estimate that roughly 20-30% of my classmates in elementary school were labeled gifted. Come on now. It doesn’t take a gifted mind to see the absurdity in calling 30% exceptional.

Which is why I don’t understand how you propose to weed the fast kids from the slower kids based on these cultural outings. And you want to take 4 years of equal treatment to do this? I don’t think your plan is unworkable or realistic at all.

Why not? The teachers should be paying attention to their students to see what their strengths and weakness are, and assessing which activities seem to be a meaningless distraction that keep them away from the academics, and which activities seem to be enriching their academic development.

You seem hung up on how the slow kids could be weeded from the fast ones. Gee, why not just look at their grades? If a kid is mostly scoring C’s and B’s in the academics, then maybe they need less enrichment and more concentration on the basics (regardless of how high his IQ is). If a kid is getting mostly A’s in the academics, then it’s safe to assume that enrichment at the least isn’t hurting them; keep them in the program (again, regardless of how high his IQ is).

Why would this be a problem?

How are you going to convince the parents of children that have been labeled “gifted” are no longer so? Good luck with that, and enjoy the lawsuits.

Well, in my world, they would never be labeled that way to be begin with. But your point about lawsuits is not a bad one. The notion that a parent would even lawyer up at the suggestion that their smart kid isn’t “gifted” is exactly why my plan would require an inordinately huge paradigm shift. People are way too invested in the “gifted” label.

This isn’t want I am saying, exactly, so I don’t think we are that close. In a perfect world, I’d walk into this with the idea that all kids are eligible for all activities, cultural events, etc. But as soon as expenses begin to be added up, decisions will be made, and you know it. So almost immediately, we start dividing kids into different sections with different LABELS. THE HORROR. But it’s the truth.

Nah, the truth is that OMG ITS TOO EXPENSIVE! WHO WILL PAY FOR THE MORONS TO GO TO THE SYMPHONY!!! is an excuse for keeping the status quo. Someone truly committed to giving all kids the opportunity to shine, as you put it earlier, wouldn’t find costs to be unsummountable problem. They would put their little enriched noggins to use and think of ways to use resources so that not just a privileged view can benefit from them at the expense of others.

Labels can dramatically affect the course of a kid’s life, which is why many parents fight so hard to get their kid slapped with the right one. Knowing this, it makes it really hard for me to have a blase attitude towards them. In many respects it’s not unreasonable to view them as horrible things.

Gifted students are rarely given special dispensation from this work because the truth is that these kids will do generally the best on the standardized tests. and the schools need them. so cancel that train ride! Sit down and take a test.

“Dispensation from this work?” This is hilarious. By your own acknowledgement, this isn’t work for them. They could pass these tests with their eyes closed, so really what is the problem? I mean, I do admit tears come to my eyes when I think about all those poor “gifted” kids having to take a boring test when they’d rather be outside playing kickball or something, but you know what? It ain’t like the average and below average kids don’t feel the same way.

All you’re demonstrating is that “gifted” kids are raised to have a overblown sense of entitlement and self-importance. Brats, in other words.

Is this even sinking in a little bit? I’m writing it late and I tend to slip over things that are obvious yo me.

Sorry, but my skull is a little thick so it’s taking a while for it to sink in.

[DSeid]

Thing is I think there is actually fairly broad agreement here.

What passes for gifted ed is usually not actually serving the needs or identifying the truly gifted. It is a feel good for parents sometimes, a means of keeping the better test takers in your school sometimes, and a another name for old fashioned tracking some others. To the degree it is one of the first two it is smarmy. The last has pros and cons both but when done in a manner that makes early assignment in and out of the group “sticky”, it clearly has more problems and fewer advantages. Because it is often sticky some parents, especially those with the means to do so, will try to game the system to get their borderline kid in with a smarter peer group and to get them some of the perceived advantages of the “special” programming. Labeling a large number of just plain better than average at taking standardized tests as “gifted” has some negative effects. (Again, DSeid’s rule is that the more an adult trumpets their giftedness and their high IQ the more unimpressive they actually perform both in real life and in apparent intelligence as able to be judged by their posts. The exceptions exist but are rare.)

Anyone disagree with that?

There is a much smaller population that is truly gifted and that could significantly benefit from special needs programming. Their needs are sometimes still not met by this faux gifted programming.

Any disagreement with that?

Cultural programming benefits every child. That far we all agree. We disagree some on how to allocate those opportunities given limited resources.

[Jaledin]

Don’t know. All I know is that, as a poor kid in a very rural, very poor elementary school, TAG, led by a very gifted Ph.D. who drafted many of the state educational guidelines, showed me by example what were possible, should one to aspire or at least attempt to learn. I’m white, though, and by scholarship (on my own initiative), I managed places in several prestigious private day schools.

I think it’s luck. As I said somewhere else, cf. Nussbaum on moral luck at the Greeks. I don’t have more to say on the topic right now.

Even though my father drove (at the time) a delivery truck for bread and managed a donut shop in the early morning, I was in the right place at the right time. Luck, is what I say, although there may be “systemic” (contemptible vogue word) racism, as I think was the point of the OP.

[RickJay]

@monstro

2. Should kindergartners be tested for giftedness? I say no. Selecting the smart ones out of the bunch so early in the game is assuming that early-bloomers–kids who start talking earlier, for instance, or who are better at paying attention–are inherently smarter than kids who develop later.

Frankly, I think this ends the argument.

I have trouble believing that anyone who has raised children, worked with children, or even for that matter been around children for any significant amount of time does not realize that 4 is far, far too young to make a reliable assessment of how gifted they are.

[monstro]

@Jaledin

Don’t know. All I know is that, as a poor kid in a very rural, very poor elementary school, TAG, led by a very gifted Ph.D. who drafted many of the state educational guidelines, showed me by example what were possible, should one to aspire or at least attempt to learn. I’m white, though, and by scholarship (on my own initiative), I managed places in several prestigious private day schools.

I think it’s luck. As I said somewhere else, cf. Nussbaum on moral luck at the Greeks. I don’t have more to say on the topic right now.

Even though my father drove (at the time) a delivery truck for bread and managed a donut shop in the early morning, I was in the right place at the right time. Luck, is what I say, although there may be “systemic” (contemptible vogue word) racism, as I think was the point of the OP.

I too think luck has played a huge part in my life, even though I know I also worked hard.

I was lucky that I attended fairly good schools. Though I was not branded as special, I was given an education that was probably much better than the education I would have received if I had been born twenty years earlier or in a less cosmopolitan place.

One of the best things my mother did for us when we were coming up was to buy a set of encyclopedias. My parents still have them. World Book, 1987. God, I must have memorized everything in every volume! We had other books–mostly low-budget children’s books (no Dr. Seuss for us). But those encyclopedias, along with educational TV, really supplemented my education.

I had a mother who was a social activist. Racially paranoid. When I was placed in remedial tracks in middle school, my mother didn’t miss a beat in getting my schedule corrected. Other parents, especially those who resided outside of the neighborhood (like mine), wouldn’t have had the moxy to do that. They might have figured going to a “white” school was good enough, regardless of what kind of class their kid was in. But my mother had majored in sociology in college. She knew some things and wasn’t scared to confront classist/racist bullshit in its face (even if sometimes she went overboard).

I can think of countless other examples of people helping me along the way. Maybe it wasn’t all luck–maybe I did do some things to make myself noticeable. But I also know that there were people who were not so fortunate, due to no fault of their own. That kid who was in my history class and hadn’t been groomed to think of himself as smart…that’s who I’m thinking about. I will never know if that guy really was just average or if being stuck at bottom of the middle and high school caste systems had created a cruel self-fulfilling prophecy.

All I know is that it almost happened to me, and to this day I still don’t know why.

[China_Guy]

I think the jury is out on whether ADHD should be on the autism spectrum or just shares many characteristics. Here’s one take(PDF link) that kinda sums up what I know from my own experience as a parent of someone on the spectrum and a quick internet search.

It is probably best to consider ADHD as sometimes sharing the following symptoms
with—but not part of—the Autistic Disorders Spectrum:
• Poor reading of social clues (“Johnny, you’re such a social klutz. Can’t you
see that the other children think that’s weird.”)
• Poor ability to utilize “self-talk” to work through a problem (“Johnny, what
were you thinking?! Did you ever think this through?”)
• Poor sense of self awareness (Johnny’s true answer to the above question is
probably “I don’t have a clue. I guess I wasn’t actually thinking.”)
• Do better with predictable routine.
• Poor generalization of rules (“Johnny, I told you to shake hands with your
teachers. Why didn’t you shake hands with the principal?)

Conclusion (Finally!)
The classification of the Autistic Spectrum Disorders is in a state of flux. The problems can overlap, cause each other, occur simultaneously in different combinations and severities, change over time, and don’t even have one “official” group attempting the classification of the whole spectrum. (Hence, this paper.)
However, unless we know all of the possible syndromes, we will continue to squeeze everyone into the same category or two. Most importantly, unless we know the full range of the Autistic Spectrum Disorders, we will not identify all of the individual symptoms which require treatment.

[even_sven]

I think a lot of people are missing the point.

These parents would gladly push to have their kids labled “slobbering idiot” if that is what it took to get them in to the best schools and on the path with the most opportunity. The fact is that where you go to school matters.

I was a GATE child, and our district’s implimentation was worthless. But I still saw some hideous tracking abuses- year after year, bright students with good grades were put in remedial tracks. Oddly, none of these kids were white. One straight A friend (last name “Martinez”) confronted his counselor after once again being put in the slow class. He was told “I thought you’d want to be with your frinds.” I know a lot of stories like this.

I do think different students need different education. I would have greatly benefitted from a real GATE program. But I also think we are a long ways from being able ti impliment this fairly.

We need to find a way to make sure that every child, in every school, of every ability, can reach their full potential. Going to your neighborhood school should not be a ticket to a marginal life. A bad score on one test should not make it impossible to get back on track. We all have our own unique potentials. School should never diminish or hinder your progress to that.

I don’t have answers. I do know the massive inequalities between schools adds to he problem. So doe overworked counseling staff (we had onw for every 500 students- no wonder they take shortcuts.) Tracking needs to be flexible and veer towards overly challenging.

[msmith537]

@you with the face

You seem hung up on how the slow kids could be weeded from the fast ones. Gee, why not just look at their grades? If a kid is mostly scoring C’s and B’s in the academics, then maybe they need less enrichment and more concentration on the basics (regardless of how high his IQ is).

Yeah but isn’t the whole point of gifted programs to weed out the extremely intelligent kids so they can be put on the fast track to success? What is the point of having them master the mundane work designed to prep the nosepickers and glue eaters for their eventual future in our nation’s cubicle farms and call centers?

[fumster]

@antonio107

But when the other kids read Julius Caesar, we read Merchant of Venice, because “We could handle it a bit better than the Arab kids.” (a direct quote from my grade 11 gifted English teacher).

I imagine that as less to do with the difficulty and more to do with how “Arab kids” might view the subject matter.

[DSeid]

@msmith537

… isn’t the whole point of gifted programs to weed out the extremely intelligent kids so they can be put on the fast track to success? …

Actually, no, it isn’t. Neither for the more common faux gifted programs or for the less common programs that actually aim to serve the truly gifted.

[monstro]

@msmith537

Yeah but isn’t the whole point of gifted programs to weed out the extremely intelligent kids so they can be put on the fast track to success? What is the point of having them master the mundane work designed to prep the nosepickers and glue eaters for their eventual future in our nation’s cubicle farms and call centers?

I think the point many of us have been bringing up in this thread is that most of the kids that are pinned as “gifted” are not “extremely intelligent” but merely “smart” or “bright,” and in large part due to their socioeconomic status. A school that assumes that all kids are smart and then targets the ones who flounder is, IMHO, better than the one that assumes all the kids are average except for the 30% who are not and targets THEM for special services. In my world, 30% is too much of the distribution to be singled out as “special.” In the former school, you will enrich the education of all the kids and not recreate the same power structure you find in the real world (where the rich kids have better things than the non-rich kids). In the latter school, the concept of “special snowflake” is given more credibility than the idea that all kids can get something out of enrichment activities, and creates a system where from the very beginning, kids who–through no effort on their own–are rewarded with an education that will indeed put them at a better advantage over those who do not meet some arbitrary criterion. The latter school does not belong in a meritocracy.

If a single test score is all you need to know about a student’s ability to succeed on the “fast track”, then why even bother with grading?

[DSeid]

China Guy as someone in the field and who has been published on the subject of autism (PM me if you want a link to the article), I will state that there is not any serious scientific discussion that I have ever heard of or read portraying ADHD as part of the autistic spectrum. Yes they both have wide spectrums and overlap with the normal populations. Yes there are individuals who have both and individuals with autistic spectrum disorders that have attention issues that are not ADHD (in fact difficulty shifting attention and managing sharing attention - joint attention - may be a key early deficit in autism) and ADHD individuals who have a hard time reading social cues, but most children with ADHD have very little in common with the core features of high functioning autism.

[monstro]

@sh1bu1

I imagine that as less to do with the difficulty and more to do with how “Arab kids” might view the subject matter.

Well, that’s just dumb. It’s just as dumb as keeping the black kids from reading “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” because it contains the word “nigger.”

[monstro]

@DSeid

China Guy as someone in the field and who has been published on the subject of autism (PM me if you want a link to the article), I will state that there is not any serious scientific discussion that I have ever heard of or read portraying ADHD as part of the autistic spectrum. Yes they both have wide spectrums and overlap with the normal populations. Yes there are individuals who have both and individuals with autistic spectrum disorders that have attention issues that are not ADHD (in fact difficulty shifting attention and managing sharing attention - joint attention - may be a key early deficit in autism) and ADHD individuals who have a hard time reading social cues, but most children with ADHD have very little in common with the core features of high functioning autism.

Correct me if I’m wrong, DSeid, but isn’t the underlying brain chemistry/hardwiring different between these conditions? IIRC, decreased dopamine levels have been linked to ADHD*; hence why it can be treated with medication so that it’s impact is minimal. Many kids diagnosed with ADHD outgrow it as they reach adulthood (although adults can struggle with it too). Whereas autism is much more of a structural problem. Drugs can touch the symptoms, but you can’t medicate it away.

*I think I read this from somewhere (while doing research on Parkinson’s Disease), but it seems counter-intuitive since ADHD is often co-morbid with Tourette’s–which is characterized by having too much dopamine. So maybe I don’t know what the hell I read.

[you_with_the_face]

@msmith537

Yeah but isn’t the whole point of gifted programs to weed out the extremely intelligent kids so they can be put on the fast track to success?

Why would an extremely intelligent kid need to be put on a fast track to become successful? By virtue of being smart, he should be to able power his way to the top on his own.

What we see with tracking and GATE programs is that so-called gifted kids are given a head start over other kids, when they really don’t need that head start. By being labeled as gifted, they are given more opportunities to flourish, acheive, and acquire impressive skills (e.g. foreign language, typing, etc). The cards end up being stacked against the kids without the gifted label, because they are denied those same opportunities due to nothing except prejudicial assumptions (even sven’s experience mirrors my own).

It’s almost as if this “fast track to success” that we give the gifted can only occur if the “non-gifted” are handicapped. Of course that’s a horrible thought that no decent person in favor of GATE could accept. So the party line is that the “non-gifted” can’t handle extra enrichment; only the gifted can. This justifies years and years of tracking and labeling and discrimination.

[Voyager]

@msmith537

Yeah but isn’t the whole point of gifted programs to weed out the extremely intelligent kids so they can be put on the fast track to success?

No, the point of the programs is to identify kids so that their instruction can be more easily differentiated into a path that better suits their needs. Success involves many other factors.
There is a another type of gifted program with a lot more support. In fact people in this program walk around their schools with identifying marks, and they often get written up in both the school and local papers. This despite the fact that their chance of making a living using these talents is about as good as getting rich with a PhD in English. They are called sports teams. Now they are fine, because it would be silly to give someone with this kind of talent only the kind of opportunities and training suitable for a geek like me. But they get a lot more attention and money than programs for kids more likely to do things for the world.

[DSeid]

Yes stimulants, which treat ADHD, increase extracellular concentration of DA, hence the dopamine hypothesis of ADHD. Personally I believe that ADHD and ADD inattentive predominant type are both common overlapping baskets of phenotypes of various physiologies and genotypes and doubt that any single “cause” will be identified. Anomalies in the serotonergic system are more often implicated in the autistic spectrum disorders. Again however the likelihood, IMHO, is that many physiologies and genotypes are involved in creating the spectrum of phenotypic endpoints that are the autistic spectrum of disorders as well. (For the mathematically inclined, I tend to see them both as attractor basins in the chaotic system that is the human brain. FWIW. And again, if interested PM for a link to an article that will assuredly bore most people to death.)

[monstro]

@DSeid

For the mathematically inclined, I tend to see them both as attractor basins in the chaotic system that is the human brain. FWIW.

NERD! LET’S GET HIM!

Thanks for the explanation.