Being smart has never been easy, especially in the modern world of public education. Since the Soviet Sputnik ratcheted- up the Cold War in the 1950s, school systems have attempted to respond with school programs for “gifted children” supposedly aimed at re-asserting North American brain power. After 1958, bright kids were suddenly identified as “gifted” and hothoused in special segregated classes. Yet, since that time, bright kids, by whatever name – “egghead,” “browner,” or “nerd”” – have not been very well served by public education.
The recent Toronto Globe and Mail series on “The Gifted Child”(November 11-18) may have been a laudable effort, but it will, regrettably, do little to change that reality. In one article after another, the ably written and well researched stories do little more than reinforce existing stereotypes about gifted and academically-able children. The whole series approached the critical public issue from inside the system –from the inside out – when what we needed was a broader, more comprehensive look at how academically-motivated students are actually served in public education.
The standard, “one-size-fits-all” philosophy of public education has always troubled me. Even though I am one of the system’s products, I always harboured suspicions. Students with ideas of their own, an independent streak, or serious personal needs never seemed to fare well.
While researching my recent book, The Grammar School (2009)), I made a rather startling discovery. Public schools were really designed for – and serve reasonably well – society’s comfortable middle class and serve to mask what historian Michael B. Katz long ago identified as the class realities underlying the rise of the modern bureaucratic education state.
Founders of the Halifax Grammar School like Dalhousie University professor Dr. Gordin Kaplan were incredibly perceptive. A long- forgotten and often dismissed education critic, Hilda Neatby, author of So Little for the Mind (1953), was right all along. Above average and academically able students posed a challenge to “mediocrity” in public education.
In an emerging system dedicated to equality of outcomes, ‘outliers’ could not be easily digested. That, in a real sense, is why Canada’s leading independent schools continue to not only exist, but to flourish under the radar of public education.
What have we learned about “gifted education” after more than fifty years? Ambitious, upwardly-mobile hyper-parents strive to prove that their children are “gifted.” Being identified as a “gifted child” is a curse as well as a blessing. Gifted education is considered “elitist” and fraught with controversy. And challenging gifted kids in school is actually hard work.
The Globe Life polls on Gifted Education ( Nov. 11 and Nov. 15, 2010) were totally contradictory. After a story on the social costs to kids of “Gifted” programs, some 56% of the 2,284 respondents opposed “segregation” of gifted kids. Yet, if given the option, most parents would put their kids in such programs anyway. When asked “Would you put your child in a gifted program?,” some 73% of the 765 respondents replied in the affirmative.
Where do these revelations leave us? No further ahead because they merely confirm popular notions that “gifted children” are “exceptionalities” who inhabit their own world in public education.
Stepping back with a wider lens, highly motivated, academically inclined students look a lot different. Seeking more from your local public school and demanding better can be difficult –and can be easily dismissed as reflecting the “elitist” attitude of the privileged classes. If you live in Toronto’s Forest Hill or the Allenby School district, Montreal’s Westmount, Vancouver’s Kerrisdale, or Halifax’s South End, school options do exist. For ordinary families with academically able children in the inner city or small town Canada, the everyday reality is bored kids seeking outside outlets for their creative or higher intellectual pursuits.
America’s radical education critics such as John Taylor Gatto are over-the-top in their indictments of public education. Gatto’s bestselling book Dumbing Us Down (1992) and his more incendiary Weapons of Mass Instruction (2009) are designed more to shake up the system than to produce implementable reform. But the underlying message is crystal clear: public schools have become agents of compulsory schooling strangely akin to sausage “factories” for both students and teachers.
With over 70 per cent of today’s students in English-speaking Canada virtually guaranteed a high school diploma, secondary school education now performs a radically different function. Producing critically aware, fully educated citizens takes secondary place to inculcating employability skills leavened with social justice values.
Today’s ambitious, university-educated parents can hardly be faulted for seeking gifted or French immersion programs for their children. Unless parents can afford the exorbitant fees for private, independent schools, that’s their only real choice. It’s hardly surprising that the ‘everyday garden variety’ neighbourhood public school has less appeal for many of today’s parents, raised as they were after 1982 as Canada’s first generation of “Charter children.”
All of this begs a few critical questions: How did naturally smart and academically motivated students come to be clinically labelled “gifted” and treated as “exceptionalities”? If high fliers tend to motivate others, why did our public schools all-but-abandon challenging all students in regular classrooms? And is it now time for a complete rethink of “gifted education?”
Something I have always had a problem with. Gifted children still need to be taught. There is, unfortunately the view that because they are smart, they can teach themselves. Wrong. Yes, it is now time for a complete rethink of “gifted education” and they could start by not labelling/stigmatizing kids as “exceptional” — which currently is code for special need or disability. Hardly appropriate.
Exceptional label in some cases and in some US states means funded gifted programs. We’ll take the ESE label thank you very much and the funding.
Before we take off on this “gifted” journey, it would be helpful if there was a unanimous definition of “gifted” as it pertains to children.
My spouse and I declined putting our child in a “gifted” program because the program itself was ridiculous and it removed the children from the classroom too often.
Does “gifted” really mean a student of higher intellect or does it just mean “different”?
What was amazing to us was the great lengths our children’s educators went to impress upon the children NOT to be too confident about their “giftedness” because it would make the other kids feel bad. In essence it’s ok to be smart but shhhh, don’t tell anyone.
It would be great if there was a different word or phrase to communicate the message that ” this particular child here is not only going to meet or exceed the expectations of grade 3 math and science, but this particular child will eat up any and all information you can possibly present to them as fast as you can present it and will be ready and able to move on to the next level of discovery before you can figure out what you are having for supper tonight.You will quickly feel like you have run out of tricks to show this student.”
Is there a word for that?
Words which accurately describe our kids rapidly turn into disparaging epithets. Dammit!
Brilliant, brainy, really smart…
You have accurately presented the situation typical teachers, of fair to good intellect themselves, find themselves in when a 1/100 or brighter kid shows up.
I most respected one teacher who just admitted “I am an elementary teacher. I cannot teach this child” as opposed to others, certainly no sharper, who insist on storing kids regardless of boredom.
Amazingly said!!! this is exactly how I feel about my 9-year old daughter.
jtc, one of mine got put in the hallway far too often for my liking in grade 9 (the age of being squashed by the rest of society in general) for asking the teachers too many questions. He had to learn which teachers would be the type to answer and discuss and which ones would’nt in order to avoid this trouble. I did go in and ask this not happen over and over because I didn’t think it was the right approach to put the smart kids in the hallway.
Although your article in intended for a Canadian audience, please excuse my intrusion into the discussion as a neighbor to the south (U.S.). I admit that I am not schooled on the intricacies of the Canadian education system, but the article begs two questions: funding of public education and a re-think of the delivery of public education.
If everyone pays into the system, everyone should receive an appropriate education based on the student’s needs. As conceived now, outliers will only continue to eat up the budgets of school systems through the delivery of special-needs instruction. A much easier and equitable system would be to instruct by ability rather than age … a figurative return to the ‘one room schoolhouse’.
After 20 years of working with gifted parents, I doubt that a universal definition of ‘giftedness’ will ever be agreed upon. And the arguement, for or against academic ability grouping can only be decided if it is given a chance.
You are onto something Lisa.
Grouping students by ability has been shown to work quite well at most universities. Students sign up for classes they think are good ones to take next. Sometimes they get advice. Some students need rules and pressure to make progress. Eager learners can soar.
The result is a room full of kids who are all interested in the subject matter at a similar level. I do not fear a huge lecture hall full of such students. Almost all of them listen much of the time.
A class of two kids who are NOT on the same wavelength would be worse.
It’s cost-neutral to allow kids to take classes which are interesting.
In most of the US states, a school receives funding based on butts-in-seats regardless of whether the kids learn anything.
Ability and interest grouping allows everyone to have more fun and learn at appropriate speed.
I have thought this a sensible solution for ages – one that might make me more open to putting my child into school (we have homeschooled her all her life). Grouping any people based upon the date on which they were born seems rather arbitrary and not based in fact. Certainly, when we enter the workforce, go to college, etc, we are grouped based on proven ability, not age. There may be some loose correlation to age (for example, in the workplace most entry-level employees are likely to be younger, most senior management older) but that is certainly not the main deciding factor in placement of an employee. Nor should it be for educating our children.
First – I am American, not Canadian. I was identified as gifted in elementary school, though, so I think I can still contribute.
My parents were factory workers. I’m on the upper end of working class, I suppose. Never was interested in money or the American definition of “success”. I was tested as reading at college level or above in fifth grade but I don’t have a four year degree because I don’t care and can’t make myself care about “social status” and “capitalism” and “having more money than you need for shelter and food and a computer and an internet connection”.
I think that giftedness is real. My mother certainly did not push me, and she wasn’t motivated by class issues – she boarded socks in a factory. It’s not like I was a trophy kid she carted around in a gas guzzling world destroying living being hating SUV to show how superior she was.
And perhaps because my community was generally upper working-class and so intelligence was not tied into class issues – I got respect for being the resident genius at school and was pretty popular, as opposed to being picked on and rejected.
I don’t know how the label came about, I admit. I can imagine some nasty social engineering motivations and also some well intentioned motivations.
As for public education and lack of challenge – dude. There was a reason why it was illegal to teach slaves how to read.
I never skipped a grade, but I was in the gifted program in elementary and middle school and took honors and AP classes in high school. And I was never challenged by any of it. I was doing my brother’s high school senior English homework for him in second grade, so yeah – I wasted 12 years of my life academically, but socially and emotionally I had fun and had good friends.
What I would have really liked, what would have helped me…
In second grade I was writing in my journal that I wanted to grow up to be a real true story writer. And I was thinking about how hundreds of years ago young painters learned from master painters and young composers learned from master composers. I wonder how much better I’d be at writing now if I’d been apprenticed to a master writer when I was young?
So that’s my contribution to ideas for gifted education – hooking up kids with mentors who are accomplished in the fields that the kids are interested in. And it would have to be a program in the public education system, because like I said – my mother was a factory worker. My father died when I was in first grade, so she raised me on her own. She would not have had the knowledge, contacts, free time or financial resources to do something like that on her own.
That’s really the sad part about cookie-cutter education. People who can do more never get challenged. I was challenged up until high school. Things I was “taught” in my senior year, I had learned when I was in middle school.
Lucky me, I only wasted 4 years of education.
Why not let a kid take tests for the higher grade levels and, if they score high enough, let them choose what they will learn in the period between?
Right on medlymist; and I love your use of hte word ‘dude.’
There should be lots of ways to get “gifted” kids and ALL kids what they need. We need individualized whole-child educaiton, with differentiated learning, school-organized mentorship, and project-based learning.
My daughter is in a gifted program, not that she is ‘better’ than everyone else but she IS different, in a particular way.
What I observe is that the one day per week she goes to the (very wonderful) gifted program, she has no trouble falling asleep. Other days she lies awake, reporting that her thougths are keeping her up. We often need to practice calming techniques such as visualization and yoga breathing. Stuff I’m reading about ‘giftedness’ describes it as a set of ‘intensities,’ which I really see in her. She isnt’ a straight A student but she has a very rich inner life.
If hte whole educational system was brought up to date we might not need ‘gifted’ programs and all the wierdness they tend to bring (class issues, elitism, judgement….).
L
I was trained in Gifted education and taught in a gifted program for 3 years. I asked for a transfer out after 2 years. The kids in each class numbered about 22. I would say by any intellectual standard 2-3 were gifted, the rest were just “good kids from nice upper income homes who worked hard”. Their parents spotted this cloistered atmosphere and hoped it would “make their kids gifted” if they were in the class. There were few disruptive kids, few who needed things explained more than once but hey I went to school with many kids who were far brighter than these kids and nobody thought they needed anything extra.
I actually LOVE one size fits all, I love the fact that schools are about equality of outcomes. Of course individual children will differ but when identified groups are not equal this is our barometer that more must be done both inside and outside school to mitigate the gap.
The neighbourhood public school is my church. Attempts to denegrate it I see as attacks on my religion.
School is about 3 things to me.
1) Make people useful (to the economy and society)
2) Make people happy (when people understand the word they are happier, arts, PE, language, etc fit here)
3) Make people EQUAL. Eliminate all of the racial, class, gender, religious bigotry and barriers. This is why university and college should not only be free, there should be very easy grants and loans as well.
Gifted, streaming, IB, French Immersion (sadly as it is programmed) and all similar programs are attempts to spread learning gaps. All efforts in schools ought to be about closing gaps.
Ahh in a perfect world. Sounds so nice.
Reality is, to close gaps, the top must be “dumbed down” or the reigns pulled tightly so they can’t reach their full potential. That’s how school bureaucracy closes gaps.
Doug- Your views are so disheartening and quite possibly what is wrong with education in both the US and Canada. Nobody in either country is guaranteed an equal outcome, simply an equal opportunity. Why would anyone want an equal outcome that produces automatons and factory workers, not creative and inspired individuals. I do not believe in equality of all people- that sounds terribly dull and boring.
My child spends 6 hours of his 8 hour day in school independently reading. He does not receive instruction because he has mastered the material of not only his grade, but two grades up. This is documented repeatedly but for fear of “labeling” kids, he just has to sit there and wait it out on the theory that the other kids will catch up to him. They likely will at some point because he is not receiving an education… the rest of his class is. His teacher even regulates what he is allowed to read so that he does not move farther ahead of the class.
Why does this seem like a good idea? Because someone got stuck on the idea of equality of outcomes and passing this year’s test. He’s easy to teach since he already passed the test. Teacher earns a bonus, school earns bragging rights about high scores and my child loses another year of education.
“2) Make people happy (when people understand the word they are happier, arts, PE, language, etc fit here)
3) Make people EQUAL. Eliminate all of the racial, class, gender, religious bigotry and barriers. This is why university and college should not only be free, there should be very easy grants and loans as well.”
For my gifted son, goals number 2 and 3 are inherently contradictory. When he was in a one-size-fits-all classroom, he was bored and miserable all day long every day. Being forced to do uninteresting, unchallenging work all day long was devastating for him emotionally. I remember reading somewhere that children process boredom in the same way that they process pain. It is torture for children to be bored all day long, as gifted children in environments designed to produce equal outcomes nearly always are.
So medleymisty what you’re saying is that you would have proven “gifted” even without ever having set foot inside a public school classroom?
Gifted, or high ability, students are defined in the U.S. as individuals who test two standard deviations from the mean – that translates to a “Superior Cognitive”designation – or about a 128 (or higher) IQ score. School districts in the U.S will typically broaden that definition to include more students – so that in a typical school where about 10 percent of the population is actually “gifted” you may find 40 percent or more who are identified as such. Perhaps it is the Lake Woebegone effect. The following definition is from the High Ability blog:
“High ability is a measurable cognitive ability to process information more quickly than the average person. It transcends demographics and gender. It allows some children and adults to master concepts and skills faster than their age or work peers. Brain synapses fire more rapidly. It is considered to be a gift because students with high ability generally perform well on tests and in school with little effort. But the further away from the median IQ of 100 a high ability student is, the more difficult it is for them to learn in the typical American education environment – whether public or private. And the longer a high ability student remains in an unchallenging learning environment, the less likely he or she will be to develop to their true potential.”
USmom “Doug- Your views are so disheartening and quite possibly what is wrong with education in both the US and Canada. Nobody in either country is guaranteed an equal outcome, simply an equal opportunity. Why would anyone want an equal outcome that produces automatons and factory workers, not creative and inspired individuals”
Thank-you. You are so right.
Full disclosure: I’m from the U.S., so this is not a perfectly symmetrical comment.
That said…
“I was always labeled as “gifted,” though I did not attend public school. I went to a private school. What is interesting about this is the simple fact that they were not built, systematically, to deal with that in the same way that a public school would be.”
What my elementary school did, I believe to be a fantastic solution to the problem of divergent ability among students of the same class.
I was never separated except during math and science. The other students knew that I was reading different books for English/Literature class, studying a different text for civics, etc. – but while my work was graded differently, it was discussed conceptually with the other students present. Math and science I did separate from the other students, under the guide of a teacher’s aide.
That I never left the room or the class as a unit served to create the concept in the other students’ minds that I was not fundamentally different or special. I just did some things on my own.
At least, that is my interpretation. I gather that from the fact that I never faced ridicule on account of studies. I was known as “the smart kid,” but it came with no negative association.
Growing up as such, that is what I see as the real major problem with the “gifted” system, as it is. “Smart” is different. It’s not “normal.” It singles you out. It singles others out.
The fact is that this is true. Being born with a natural ability towards exceptional learning is not normal. Being in the middle is normal. But we’re all part of the curve, and the best thing is to create a solution that respects that and brings all students together. The “smart” kids have just as much to learn from the “average” kids as they do from us.
‘in a typical school where about 10 percent of the population is actually “gifted” you may find 40 percent or more who are identified as such. ‘
This sounds out-of-whack to me.
128 IQ is between 96th and 97h percentile, depending on whether the test you’re referencing has an SD of 15 or 16. (This is already a ‘low’ standard for gifted, BTW; in the US the cutoff is generally +2SD, which is 130 or 132 depending on the test.)
If your cutoff is 128, you should be seeing between 3% and 4% “gifted,” unless you are drawing from a population with a significant skew. This shows how bad the “numbers” problem is if you want to create a true “gifted” program: if you need a classroom of 15 kids in order to finance a separate classroom for gifted kids, and your population distribution is “normal,” you need to draw from 400-500 kids.
From that same normal distribution you should expect to find 15 kids who have IQs of 72 or below, who are going to need intensive services in order to make progress at all.
And because the rightward tail isn’t cut off like the left one is, you may be faced with “gifted” kids whose IQs are much higher than the rest. A kid with an IQ of 156 is as different from your 128 baseline as the 128 baseline is from an IQ of 100. All of which is to say, segregating by IQ is not viable.
This leaves another reasonable solution: In order to challenge all kids, you need to group them by ability. And then–this is CRUCIAL–you need to have high expectations for all of them, regardless of grouping.
Yes, your math is correct – it should sound out of whack because it is. In the quest for creating an equal learning opportunity, or perhaps greater acceptance of the needs of high ability students – some schools open the definition of gifted to include students who, under stricter guidelines, would not be considered as such. And yes, ability grouping is a solution, but how do you ability group a student who is years ahead of their classroom peers? Do you take them out of the 3rd grade classroom and group them with the 7th grade students who, if ability grouping were implemented, is the group to which they should belong? (The answer is YES!) The class where they would be academically challenged – where they might actually learn something?
I have long been dissatisfied with the typical enrichment classes as the answer for gifted. Yes, it can give them a place of safety each day and an opportunity to meet other students like them. But better options are available to high ability students – including telescoping curriculum, subject and whole grade acceleration, working with adult mentors, etc.
To dismiss gifted classes entirely because they are not economically viable is to fall into the same trap we used to fall into with special needs kids.
[cut-off scores and percentiles vary – see wikipedias nice compilation of adult cut scores for high IQ society admission (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_IQ_society) I have found that our public school districts will move the cut score definition for service regularly in an effort to control the total number of students receiving services and absent any consideration for a wide range of abilities within the gifted classroom.]
If we were to move to a system where we students were grouped based on ability, wouldn’t we need to have teachers able to teach to those abilities.
I can’t speak for how things are in the USA but what qualifications does a teacher have to have to be able to teach gifted children?
I often got the feeling that sometimes kids were put into the gifted program because teachers just didn’t know what to do with them.
” I actually LOVE one size fits all, I love the fact that schools are about equality of outcomes. Of course individual children will differ but when identified groups are not equal this is our barometer that more must be done both inside and outside school to mitigate the gap.”
However, even in the present-day reality of what we call a public education, that Doug describes perfectly, equality means tampering with the basics of reading, writing and numeracy and limits the knowledge base, to equalized portions. It forces the outliers to conformity of the pre-determined equalized outcomes that were subjectively determined by the same education system, with the underlying assumption that all students are equal in potential, ability and talent.
If a student moves beyond the set parameters, they are penalized by the education system by ignoring the individual student’s learning/educational unique needs, by controlling and limit the amount of knowledge by subjectively determining the knowledge outcomes.
For outliers at the opposite polar end, who fall below the pre-determined equalized outcomes, they are also penalized, by ignoring their unique learning/educational needs. Their needs are met by subjectively determining by lowering the knowledge outcomes and remediation of core subjects.
For the unique learning needs of the outliers are pushed into conformity, much like a factory pushing out cheap plastic bags or the loaf of bread for the mass market. Quality is determined by costs of material, salaries, and regulations. At least here, it is based on objective data, and not the subjective data within a public education system.
As Lisa has stated, ” A much easier and equitable system would be to instruct by ability rather than age … a figurative return to the ‘one room schoolhouse’.
After 20 years of working with gifted parents, I doubt that a universal definition of ‘giftedness’ will ever be agreed upon. And the arguement, for or against academic ability grouping can only be decided if it is given a chance.”
Yes, instruct by ability rather than age is what is calling for in the literature that I have read. The outliers challenges the present education system, and the one-sized fits-all approaches. If anything, the outliers represents the failure of the public education system to adapt to the unique learning/educational needs of the outliers. If instructed by ability was a reality in today’s classroom, my own LD child would be taking advance science classes several grades above, and taking a English class learning a solid foundation on grammar and the mechanics of the english language. Instructing by ability, represents true equality and not the present kind – “Let’s all pretend we are equal in ability, skills, and knowledge.”
As USmom states, “Nobody in either country is guaranteed an equal outcome, simply an equal opportunity. Why would anyone want an equal outcome that produces automatons and factory workers, not creative and inspired individuals. ”
Equal opportunity but not equal outcomes based on the individual’s unique learning/educational needs.
“As cited by Norm Weiner, Aydelotte says, “The best education for any individual is that which will develop his powers to the utmost (Aydelotte, 1944, p. 128 …).” In withholding or limiting special programming for intellectually gifted students, we are pushing them into mediocrity rather than allowing for intellectual fervor and growth. Intellectually gifted students are deprived of opportunities to develop to their fullest potential if they are not offered an advanced education. If we do not provide education that allows for excellence, then we are not providing equal education for all.”
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_6947/is_1_10/ai_n32181104/?tag=content;col1
The last link, is food for thought, and to add to USmom’s thoughts.
It varies from state to state. In Ohio gifted certification is required if you are going to claim you offer gifted services – but the problem is that although you are required to identify gifted students in Ohio you are not required to serve them. Suburban schools are pressured by the populations they serve to offer gifted programs – the ones usually left out in the cold are rural and urban districts where gifted students are rarely served. In one rural Ohio school district (where the admin didn’t “believe” in gifted), 40 percent of the high school dropout population tested in the “gifted” range – a serious waste of talent.
And yes, we would need teachers who were qualified to teach high ability students – not just give them Sudoku and word search puzzles to keep them occupied while the other students learned something the high ability student had long ago mastered. That might be a great opportunity to usher in online learning tools guided by a trained facilitator or learning coach rather than a traditional teacher! Or simply getting out of the student’s way and letting them pursue a project based learning environment in an area of their greatest passion with an expert in the field mentoring the process. So many options! Yet we are hampered by this narrow definition of service and – dare I say it? – anti-intellectualism that pervades public education. An amazing resource for low cost options for high ability students is available for free from the Institute for Research and Policy on Acceleration: http://www.accelerationinstitute.org/nation_deceived/
It has become a handbook for nations around the world seeking to provide a better learning experience for the academically gifted.
My latest post has attracted considerable attention in the United States and has been circulated widely among advocacy groups and parents with an interest in gifted education.
One of the most fascinating responses is from Dyspepsia Generation.com. My commentary is listed under Dystopia Watch! That section is entitled “The world is rapidly going downhill. Unfortunately, we can’t get off.”
Here is the whole response:
“Smart Kids: Why Do Schools Stigmatize “Gifted Children”?
28th November 2010
Read it.
My theory is, that teachers typically come from the left side of the Bell Curve, and smart kids make them feel inferior and threatened. I’ve run across more than a few of those in my time.
And, of course, there’s the Keillor Syndrome: Modern ‘progressives’ are committed to the worldview in which ‘the children are all above average’, so to single some out as ‘gifted’ constitutes DISCRIMINATION of an particularly invidious kind.
Educhatter says: The standard, “one-size-fits-all” philosophy of public education has always troubled me.
Reply: And rightly so. This is the classic ‘factory school’ in which batch-processed kids are passed along the assembly line like so many cartons of eggs, based on the theory that kids of roughly the same age will have roughly the same cranial abilities — a notion that’s laughable on its face … except that everybody forgets to laugh.
Educhatter says: The Globe Life polls on Gifted Education ( Nov. 11 and Nov. 15, 2010) were totally contradictory. After a story on the social costs to kids of “Gifted” programs, some 56% of the 2,284 respondents opposed “segregation” of gifted kids. Yet, if given the option, most parents would put their kids in such programs anyway. When asked “Would you put your child in a gifted program?,” some 73% of the 765 respondents replied in the affirmative.
Reply: Not really contradictory. When people are asked about airy generalities, they provide the socially-acceptable response. When it comes to their own interests, however, it’s All About Me. This is why rich people who are strident in their calls for ‘increasing taxes on the rich’ don’t send all their Extra Money to the government voluntarily.
Educhatter says: Stepping back with a wider lens, highly motivated, academically inclined students look a lot different. Seeking more from your local public school and demanding better can be difficult –and can be easily dismissed as reflecting the “elitist” attitude of the privileged classes.
Reply: And we see this in Politically Correct California, where left-wing Crustian parents loudly denounce segregation and the Oppression Of People Of Color and then fight tooth and nail to keep their own kids out of schools that have any substantial number of black or latino kids.”
(Reprinted from Dyspepsia Generation)
Good thing we don’t have a one size fits all in sports. There would be no Olympics, no Stanley Cup final and no Superbowl. Why are we so much more comfortable with the notion of gifted athletes?
or music, or theatre, or, or, or……education is always the exception it seems.
Guys, please, forget about the gifted, the really gifted top 1% or 3% of the population.
Can we please talk about the average, healthy kids, that represent 50%-60% of each class and that will be the base of our society in the future?
These kids, the regular kids, do not learn enough.
These kids, the regular kids, are not taught well in the first place.
It is also them, the regular kids that are not motivated to learn and a lot of them bored.
Really, I think we are losing track of what young minds can really learn if taught properly.
Let’s look at what kids in other nations are learning, let’s look what our North American Sigfried Engelmann has achieved with regular kids.
All the kids are dumbed down and all of them are not taught the basic skill.
Do we really want citizens who avoid having to read too much because it is laborious?
Do we want future university students that need remedial courses or switch to less demanding programs otherwise they won’t make it?
Do we really want people who do not understand interest rates (because they have never really understood percentages and fractions in school) to get into debt and to elect politicians that make utterly impossible promises?
I think I have kind of a different perspective coming from the Elementary levle. I’ve taught a GT class in Kinder for years and now 1st Grade. I think it’s really important to challenge these kiddos from the very beginning. As it’s been pointed out, many teachers are focused on the kids who are struggling-those test scores may determine whether or not they keep their jobs and they assume GT kids will already score well-so why take time out to actually teach them.
What I see happening is, year after year of not being challenged in any way-sent to read a book as their instruction, these kids start to lose that above-average-ness and fall into scoring academically with the “mediocre” kids. So what’s the solution? Teacher’s class sizes will just continue to rise, will they take the time to really differentiate for every child? It can be done; I taught my “regular” class with the same high-level of rigor that I use now. I just don’t know how often teachers will really go above and beyond incorporate those skills. It may cause a stigma to be in a separate class, however, it may benefit them in the end to have someone looking out for their progress.
“I’m a product of the Canadian education system, but I am now homeschooling my children. At least three teachers told me “We have to break your will” ?!? I was a good little girl – i caught on quickly, but there is no reward for doing well – we all have to serve the same “sentence.” I started in French Immersion, moved to francophone classes, took a year of violin and ended with Grade Eight ability. I think the whole “you’re so smart, you don’t need anything” is a myth. I wish I could have been challenged at certain points in my school career. As it was, I endured eleven years of pure boredom and this strange culture that was nothing like the one I had at home. I didn’t feel I had much in common with my schoolmates, and couldn’t force myself to pretend otherwise. I spent most of the first two decades reading. I got into grade twelve, had an IB “Theory of Knowledge” course that I loved, and a specially written for me and one other person. It was a “Musicianship” course that was extremely applicable to my future plans (and prepared me well). But the whole rest of the whole sentence was a waste of “the best years of my life”. I am trying to challenge my children now, and I know I won’t do it perfectly, but I’m listening to them, and I’m far more flexible than the school system.
We shouldn’t ”forget” about the gifted, anymore than we should forget about the average or the 5th percentile or the kids in the hospital going through chemo. They all need us to help them reach their full potential. It’s a big picture. This discussion happens to be about how we treat the small percentage of kids that don’t fit in the regular classroom because they are so strong in a few areas. That’s all.
But Peggy, the identified gifted are funded using the same pot of money from special education funds. Gifted, and twice-exceptional are still classified under special education. In my eyes, the gifted have the same problem having their educational needs being met, in the same way as the LD student has and in the same way as the average student does. I think the real question that needs to be asked, is the public education as it is today, do a good job in reaching each and every child’s education potential? I am inclined to say no for various reasons. There is parallels between the gifted, the students in between and the ones at the bottom such as the LD kids. Are any of the students truly have their learning/educational needs being met, or is it as Paul has stated in his last post,
“The standard, “one-size-fits-all” philosophy of public education has always troubled me.
Reply: And rightly so. This is the classic ‘factory school’ in which batch-processed kids are passed along the assembly line like so many cartons of eggs, based on the theory that kids of roughly the same age will have roughly the same cranial abilities — a notion that’s laughable on its face … except that everybody forgets to laugh.”
Peggy, what I was trying to say is that a lot of the kids considered gifted only seem gifted because the average kid learns so little in school.
NOTE: I am not talking about the children identified as gifted in the top 5% by psychological or intelligence tests, I am talking about the way the gifted term is usually used to apply to any student that performs very well.
Also, I was trying to say that with good teaching and good effort from the part of our normal, average students a lot of them would start “to look gifted” in whatever they study just the way the asians are usually considered gifted in math for example.
The expectations are so low that what would be considered very good performance – but achievable by normal hard working students – in other countries here it stands out so much that it is considered gifted.
To AConcernedParent,
This discussion is not about the “look gifted” student; it is about the student who is truly gifted–the one who learns (seemingly) effortlessly and immediately any information that is shown her/him.
I was in AP courses throughout high school (except when I was accelerated well beyond AP in my most gifted area). There were two separate groups of students in the classes, the gifted and the hard workers. We students all knew which was which…why couldn’t the teachers?! (And, BTW, the private schools aren’t necessarily better; I had an opportunity to attend what might be the “best” prep school in the US and was told that the public high school was better for a gifted child. And, in fact, it was!)
Ironically, it’s the “look gifted”/hard workers who are best served by the public school system, which often spends most of its effort on the students who learn best without needing special accommodations. Although most public schools also do well with average students who are motivated to learn, too.
Ok, so we are really still trying to define ”gifted”. This is a great discussion to have because we seem to be all over the map. Despite the language we use to talk about these kids, we seem to all agree that not enough is being done to help all students reach their potential.
My province is asking school boards to prepare for a budget cut of over 20%. The future is not looking any brighter, sorry to say. I’m sure the private schools are preparing for more students.
My personal view of ”gifted” is described above, in my earlier post. The smart kids make the teacher feel good.The gifted kids make the teachers feel inadequate, intimidated and drained of energy. I actually there is a distinct difference and it is a rare teacher who can confidently deal with this student. I think it takes intelligence to recognize intelligence too. Some teachers think these kids are too ”big for their britches” and the kids even end up in trouble and in detention, etc.
And it is also a big challenge for the parents. I remember watching a kid from India on TV that started doing surgeries on the people of the village when he was about 7 or so, or some incredibly young age near that. He was talking about his situation and he said ” My parents found it difficult to manage me.” I think that’s another characteristic of a gifted child, the parents also find it hard to give their child enough opportunities for growth. The smart kid, on the other hand makes the parenting job feel like a breeze.
My son is a first-grader at a private gifted school, where he is very happy. I am very grateful that an all-gifted environment is available to him, and that he has teacher that recognize and encourage his giftedness.
Before the gifted school, we tried a public school for my son, and it was a terrible fit. My son started off the school year in a one-size-fits-all public school classroom. He was bored and miserable every day, and he begged me every day to let him stay home from school. He said none of the work was interesting except except SRAs, so he did lots of those until he got in trouble and to stop.
It was very frustrating to try to advocate for an appropriate education for my son, because the school had a number of frustrating tactics that allowed it to put me off and avoid making changes in my son’s education.
“The work must be challenging for him — he’s not completing it all.”
“Just be patient. The work will get harder.”
And two months into the school year: “Just be patient — we’re still assessing the children.”
“You know, every year, we get a lot of parents coming to us saying they think their children are gifted. [eyeroll]”
The school had no idea that my son was gifted. His report cards were a sea of “on grade level”, although my gut feeling told me no way was my son achieving only on grade level. We spent hundreds of dollars having him independently tested, and tests revealed that he was achieving three years above grade level. But when I shared the test results with his teacher, no reply.
It was exhausting trying to deal with all of these tactics, and to try to figure out how to get them to take me seriously and listen. Giftedness is not on the forefront of their minds, they have not been trained in gifted education, and they just don’t recognize a gifted child when they see one.
Gradually, I realized that the system was stronger than us, and would overpower us, and any accommodations we set up for my son at the public school would be inadequate and begrudgingly bestowed. Also, at the beginning of every school year, we’d be back to square one, and would be advocating all over again for accommodations.
So eventually, I gave up and switched my son to the private gifted school, where he is happy and thriving. It is a strain in our budget but we are making it work. I am glad that my son is in an environment that is well-suited for him. But I am also very, very sad that there wasn’t an appropriate public education available to him. It seems wrong to have to seek out a private school to get him an appropriate education.
At the end of this article: “Currently, gifted programs too often admit marginal, hardworking kids and then mostly assign field trips and extra essays, not truly accelerated course work pegged to a student’s abilities. Ideally, school systems should strive to keep their most talented students through a combination of grade skipping and other approaches (dual enrollment in community colleges, telescoping classwork without grade skipping) that ensure they won’t drop out or feel driven away to Nevada. The best way to treat the Annalisee Brasils of the world is to let them grow up in their own communities–by allowing them to skip ahead at their own pace. We shouldn’t be so wary of those who can move a lot faster than the rest of us. *
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1653653-4,00.html#ixzz16gPFgbre
I became curious to what R has stated, in his comments that the look-gifted and hard workers are best served by the public education system. In the beginning of the article, it states; “Administration began using the impossibly sunny term “no child left behind,” those who write education policy in the U.S. have worried most about kids at the bottom, stragglers of impoverished means or IQs. But surprisingly, gifted students drop out at the same rates as nongifted kids–about 5% of both populations leave school early. Later in life, according to the scholarly Handbook of Gifted Education, up to one-fifth of dropouts test in the gifted range. Earlier this year, Patrick Gonzales of the U.S. Department of Education presented a paper showing that the highest-achieving students in six other countries, including Japan, Hungary and Singapore, scored significantly higher in math than their bright U.S. counterparts, who scored about the same as the Estonians. Which all suggests we may be squandering a national resource: our best young minds.
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1653653-1,00.html#ixzz16gPhAoQF
Now how many in Canada are wasted, and that is the best young minds. I knew of two with IQs over 145, one dropped out of high school and the other graduated. Both are dead, from a drug overdose and suicide. I often think about them and more so since this post, if the public education system of the day taught all children by ability. I wonder if my two high school friends would be alive today, living life as they see fit or perhaps making life better for Canadians.
“Ironically, it’s the “look gifted”/hard workers who are best served by the public school system, which often spends most of its effort on the students who learn best without needing special accommodations. Although most public schools also do well with average students who are motivated to learn, too.”
And R is correct. Anything outside the average, it becomes a roll of the dice, a crap shoot that determines their educational needs.
My goal is not equality of opportunity, that is a liberal goal. My goal is equality of outcome or equality of results.
Of course there is no implication that INDIVIDUALS will come out equal from education but if one race, ethnic group, social class gender etc lags significantly in overall data, graduation rates, university placement rates then this is the #1 project of the education system to fix.
There is no need to dumb down anyone. I advocate a university bound curriculum for every single student for as long as possible save possibly less than 4% for the very educationally limited.
If a school a board a class etc is behind then we bury them in resources and expertese until they can almost all go to university. We slash their class sizes and give them the best teachers, longer days summer school one on one remedial until the children of our public housing projects go to university in the same percentages as our wealthiest neighbourhoods.
This needs to be the prime directive as they say in Star Trek. Excellence for Everybody.
Your first mistake is thinking that there is anything you can do to achieve equal results. All kids are made differently and no matter how many resources you throw at education, you will never have equal results. If you want to see a real difference demand that ALL parents are involved in their child’s education. Parents not teachers are responsible for their child’s education. University is not the end game. Creating happy, well-adjusted young adults is. Each person’s definition of happiness is different, which is why trying to force all children into a mold (college-bound students) is the exact opposite of what we should be doing.
Someone said, there would be no Stanley Cup if we believed in Equality of Outcome?
Each year the teams pick new draftees by the lowest performing teams having the first pick (unless they traded it away) Equality of Outcome the goal
Each year the league uses revenue from the high profit teams to support the low profit teams. Equality of Outcomes.
The leagues brought in a salary cap to ensure that the richest teams could not just “buy” the Stanley Cup, once again Equality of Outcome.
The NHL understands that by suporting the weak very heavily and not allowing the strong to run way ahead they have a better league overall and a better product.
If we apply the same logic to education, a massive invstment in those lagging behind leads to a better nation for everyone down the road.
Does the NHL apply this same equity to the players? No! You have be the best to play in the NHL.
As gifted individuals increase in age, they increase in rage.
I hear mistymedly loud and clear becaue I know his/her energy firsthand.
Kasimir Drabowski studied the psycho-neuroses of highly intelligent individuals and made us aware of the incredible angst which exists between “what is” vs. “what should be”.
He coined the term “what is deemed as pathological amongst the normal population is actually adaptive amongst the gifted”.
Hyper-sensitive and acutely aware; over-exictable and passionate about what they are passionate about; intolerance for pretence and falsity; inable to conform; incapable of supporting the status quo.
Drabowski’s theory is that of “positive dis-integration”.
DIS-inegration. They don’t integrate because they CAN’t.
It’s not part of the psychic DNA.
The theory presents the notion that human conciousness is evolving to a higher level, a more altruistic state of awareness and that the gifted don’t integrate because they are here to disrupt the status quo — to turn over the apple cart — to point out that emperor isn’t wearing any clothes. They are the next rung, the next step up on the lader of evolutionary conciousness.
There are many types and domains of giftedness but the truly gifted all share these common characteristics (as afore-mentioned).
What seems to be perpetually left out of the equation of gifted education is the factor of gifted psychology.
These are different animals we’re talking about.
And — something else which bears mentioning is the adult gifted. WHO looks at the experience of the adult gifted on order to validate the experience of the gifted child?
Do any of these prgrammes (public or otherwise) look at long term “results” of these so called “gifted” programmes and how sucessful they are? Do they measure degrees of self-actualization in the long-term?
I may be wrong – but I’ve neve seen it.
I am the gifted mother of a gifted daughter;
the gifted daughter of a gifted father;
the gifted sister of a gifted brother;
the gifted aunt of a gifted nephew.
I “get” gifted. WE are different. There is no doubt about it.
Trying to make us “fit” the “norm” does not work. It creates anxiety, depression, anger, frustration, low-self esteem, substance abuse, escapism, lack of motivation,
feelings of isolation and worthlessnes …..
Not recognizing the gifted for WHO they are, vs. what they can DO is the biggest crime. Recognize WHO they are and let them do what they WILL and CAN do without any tethers … and maybe they will save the planet. Afterall —
that’s what they came here to do.
TALL POPPY SYNDROME sucks.
Peggy “The smart kids make the teacher feel good.The gifted kids make the teachers feel inadequate, intimidated and drained of energy.”
I agree with you there….but are the either kid actually being challenged to their potential? In reading the posts, the majority here would say “no”…not even close to their potential.
It’s clear that the system is proving by the experiences shared here that it’s not meeting the needs of either let alone just the defined “gifted”.
Still not buying your twisted hockey logic Doug. In terms of real excellence your theory might explain the dismal performance of the Toronto Maple Leafs but any comparison between excellent in sport pales greatly when applied to public education.
“I agree with you there….but are the either kid actually being challenged to their potential? In reading the posts, the majority here would say “no”…not even close to their potential. ”
I agree with jtc on this one. In my opinion, the public education system is striving for every student never to reach their full potential. Especially for those who are outside of the norm, and it seems that outliers poses the greatest stress for most educators, and administrations.
Maybe the Stanley Cup wasn’t a good example. I’d be interested in hearing about the Olympics and the Superbowl. They are probably watered down too.
Maybe the #1 draft pick in the NHL is all a joke. It’s a good one though because I fell for it along with everyone else. Who knew Sidney Crosby was just an average player with average skill, average strength and average work ethic. He really got a great paycheque for being so average.
Scale of 10 problem
The bottom 20 to 30 % of students could do better with more effort from the system.
10/10
A few gifted kids are bored.
2/10
Where should we invest our resources? I mean really.
seriously Doug if there’s 30% of students at the bottom you’ve lost the argument and there’s more wrong with the system than even you know..or will admit to.
Isn’t that the same cavalier attitude too many parents hear every day and their kids pay for for the rest of their lives?
The bottom 30 % of the student population covers a vast range of skill and ability. Pouring resources into this area, will leave gaps in the education of the remaining 70 % of the students. The best solution is to teach by ability, because it will allow those who need more time, others can speed up and others who are comfortable at the standard level. By high school, more than likely over 95 % of the students will have high reading, writing, numeracy skills. It is far more important knowing the essential skills, and not the knowledge in the early grades, that the education system narrowly focuses on, ignoring the basics. I never did see any sense for my child to be tested on the 4 stages of a butterfly, when she was having great difficulty with the reading and writing processes. It was always so over-whelming for her, because she dearly wanted to pass. My child never had a problem acquiring knowledge, but in order to express the knowledge, she needed a solid foundation in reading, writing, and numeracy, to pass a test.
I wager a good majority of the bottom 30 % do need a solid foundation, as well as a good portion in the remaining 70 % of the students.
And Doug, one more thing to your comment on the gifted children. Your attitude is wrong about boredom for gifted children. Boredom hurts these children in major ways that impacts their future, if they do not receive the correct supports. Here is a link on the Myths of Gifted Students.
Click to access Myths%20about%20Gifted%20Students.pdf
“Trying to make us “fit” the “norm” does not work. It creates anxiety, depression, anger, frustration, low-self esteem, substance abuse, escapism, lack of motivation, feelings of isolation and worthlessnes …..”
Perfect, YHWH. Today’s typical public school, it is rare to find a school celebrating the differences. Instead the differences must be fixed, so the kids can all strive to the same goals of normalcy. It is the age old problem of the public education system, trying to put the odd shape pegs into a square peg hole. They keep falling out, and the public education system, keeps insisting to put the students with the odd shapes, back into the square pegs.
Teaching by ability is the single worst idea in education. It has been tried many times and polarizes results. nown as streaming or tracking, it actually widens results. Familiarize yourself with the work of Jeanie Oakes and John Goodlad.
Waiting for Superman’s Geoffrey Canada just denounced tracking in the movie.
We need to abolish the applied stream in Ontario high schools and gradually look into abolishing streaming in upper levals.
You will have to accept two fundamental facts:
1) No nation on Earth has a better education system than Canada
2) At the same time, the Canadian system could do much better for the bottom 30% of students. This needs to be accomplished by ECE, smaller classes, more support, the best teachers incentivized to work in the worst schools, and more resources to support learning.
And we should all be paid the same no matter what we do for a living.
This country’s innovators aren’t coming from the bottom 30%. We need to develop our best and brightest to their full potential or we’ll become a third world country.
Doug, not this again.
You say: “Teaching by ability is the single worst idea in education. It has been tried many times and polarizes results. Known as streaming or tracking, it actually widens results.”
Commenters here might be interested to know that you help your wife run a private school in Toronto for smart foreign students. I say smart, as in one ability level, because your wife’s school guarantees their admission to the university of their choice following graduation. Meaning, she sure wouldn’t be able to make that kind of guarantee to students with moderate to low ability levels. Suggesting to me that the school, while not formally streamed, does so simply by the type of students accepted.
Then, there is your outlandish claim that Canada has one of the best education systems in the world. Hardly. In fact, on my site you have admitted it isn’t but claimed it “could” be if billions more were spent. Or, if only we were like Finland — which you have stated many times really is the best in the world.
So, commenters, take him to task. He does this on many education websites. Pushing his public school and teachers’ union agenda while personally involved in a private school for gifted students, even if not formally “identified” as gifted.
Nothing wrong with that. What is wrong is the opposite impression he tries to give.
Well stated!
“Ability grouping is the placement of children in one classroom into groups based on their ability. The classroom may contain children with a wide range of ability. Children can move in and out of groups as needed. For example, a child may be in the high ability group in reading, but a middle level in math. If the child improves in math, he could be moved up to the high ability in math. In the same way, if the child begins to have problems in reading, he could be moved to a lower group. This flexibility of grouping allows the needs of children to be better met. Ability grouping is not the same as tracking, heterogeneous grouping, or cluster grouping.”
The difference is that there is no cap on the knowledge. If one child is well advance, he can feel feel to advance their knowledge. Unlike the version that the educrats cite or the one Doug is talking about. There is a cap put on, decided by one person or persons known as educrats, and moving beyond the knowledge is discourage. The educrats version is seen often in SE classes, and my child spent two years in a SE math class and was known as the math whiz. What a waste of resources, that should have been better spent by offering one to one instruction, or adding a few other children from the regular math class, by teaching them to their ability of each, and than start off from there.
Grouping ability, as I see it, age or grade level should not a factor. It should only be ability. It works very well with the gifted, and I do not see why it cannot work well in the rest of the public education system. I don’t see anything wrong, with one child going to a language arts class that is 3 years ahead, and than going into a math class that is at her age level, than attending a class of lower ability for art. My youngest would be in both extremes, well advance in the sciences, strong in math areas but attending classes of lower ability in language arts, paying attention to the mechanics of writing.
My child had an excellent early childhood education, along with the typical trappings of the middle-class, small classes under 20 until grade 6 which had risen to 24 students by that time. Throughout it all, the only thing that matter was the teachers. No matter how excellent the teachers were, it becomes mute, when the child’s educational/learning needs are not being met. Like the truly gifted, my child needed certain educational services to bring her to her potential. It was denied to her, just like the educational needs of the gifted are.
The OECD/PISA/TIMSS people say Canada is second only to Finland, Korea is catching up, however, by going to school many more hours per day.
It is no secret that I do work for VIP Academy (Toronto), so what, it is 15 kids right now. They must pass a SSAT level entrance exam, they must come to school every single day and hand in every single assignment on the due date or lose a guarantee to university, U of T if they want it. Old news.
George Radwanski (author of an Ontario educational report of the early 1990s)once called streaming “A theoretical error, a practical failure and a social injustice.”
Geoffrey Canada in the Waiting for Superman film calls tracking the core of the problem
Your system has been tried and abandoned at least 3 X since I have been a teacher Nancy. It is now being relabelled as differentiated education or learning.
Guess what, the parents of the students not put in the top group in reading and or math, go to the principals, supers trustees etc and raise cain.
Parents who expect their children will be in top group and pull away on the other kids of course, think it is great. When there is ability grouping in place, weak learners do even worse.
Finding work “at a students level” is not the point. Children need to be stretched.
The very process of placing children in ability groups has a labelling effect that is very damaging for young people. Those placed in lower groups are depressed about it, humiliated and tend to work even less.
Ability grouping is the single worst idea in education. It makes things clearly worse than not doing it.
Ability group is not harmful to gifted students only to students who are held back.
Sandy, our students are not gifted.
Sandy could you name a country with a better education system and prove it?
My proof is the OECD/PISA/TIMMS results. You believe in standardized testing don’t you? Well when the agreed upon international tests say not one country on Earth has better reading 15 year olds than us you ought to celebrate that right?
It is like your types say we like standardized tests but only the ones that prove our case.
Standardized tests also prove that kids who are behind in reading are overwhelmingly poor but when that is pointed out, conservatives make pathetic attempts to find another poor school that is 1% better and then say “see it is not poverty”
I hate standardized tests in spite of the fact that they prove my case that the Canadian system is the world’s second best and our only remaining problem is the education of poor children.
Even though they prove I am right, the University of Texas at Austin has proven that these tests drive up the dropout rate.
Let’s get back to the topic. In his initial post, Paul (Educhatter) raised a few questions worth discussing:
“How did naturally smart and academically motivated students come to be clinically labelled “gifted” and treated as “exceptionalities”? If high fliers tend to motivate others, why did our public schools all-but-abandon challenging all students in regular classrooms? And is it now time for a complete rethink of “gifted education,
I tend to agree with Paul. Gifted children need to be challenged in the regular classroom and not segregated. There is nothing wrong with kids being at the top of the class. That said, they need to be in a classroom where the teacher “gets it” and doesn’t want out in three years.
When I was teaching as a teacher educator, one of my duties was observing pre-service students when they were out doing their classroom practicum. There was one gifted classroom that I visited several times. What I noticed was that, in some ways it was like a regular classroom, the really smart kids were performing at the top and the smart but work hard kids at the bottom. But, none of those students learned to work with the disadvantaged slower kids or the middle of the road average kids. That is a shame because once they get out in the workforce, they are going to have to do that.
But, I can also see the argument that a regular classroom does not meet the needs of some gifted kids. Well, that represents the real world. They need to learn that their entire environment does not revolve around them. However, that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be challenged in important ways.
But, do they need to be labelled as special education students to do that? I don’t think so. If extra funding is required, there simply should be a separate category. As a former educ. psychologist, I have to say that an IQ of128 is not gifted. 90%ile probably and smart, yes. Over 140 IQ across the board? Yes, definitely gifted.
Interesting that the last I heard, 140 was the cut off for Mensa membership.
And, anyone with that IQ had better have a homeroom teacher that functions in the same ball park.
Anyway, thanks for the forum Paul. I am no longer allowing comments at my blog (Crux-of-the-Matter) because, after nearly five years blogging, I am very tired — and my arm and shoulder need a rest. However, I am getting some interesting questions and concerns sent via my Contact Form.
Damaging eh? While I contest to that one, based on my own personal experience, where the elementary school that I attended practice a form of ability grouping, with the resources at hand. It did no damage to my psyche, but than again high expectations was a given back in those days. As for my youngest, if she had what I received back in the 1960s, she would be a very good reader and writer. The real reality in the present system, there is great psychological damage being done to the ones that are formally identified, and labeled. The real crime is not providing the correct educational/learning needs of the individual student’s unique educational needs. As to what I have observed, differentiated education or learning is becoming a practice of lowering the standards or the number of outcomes. Far different from the literature that I read back in 2004, to get different ideas to improve the tutoring that was taking place in my own home.
Universal Design for Learning, is the real version, compared to the pale version being used in Canada’s classrooms today.
http://prezi.com/zvehbf95tho8/universal-design-for-learning/
http://www.udlcenter.org/aboutudl
Now the ones that I read back in 2004, came from the cognitive science files. However, the two links provided touches on the cognitive science. It was here that I started to used some of the very practices that are recommended to improved learning outcomes at home, and found it very helpful for my child to keep up in class. On the other side of the coin, the difficulty lie in getting some of the tools as accommodations for my child. Turned down, and yes I was willing to pay for the supports. Just like some parents of gifted children are willing to pay, for supports that will only increase their knowledge, the same school turned them down. In my case, it was called an unfair advantage, and for the two gifted children, the school board stated too much of an age difference.
As for this comment, “Finding work “at a students level” is not the point. Children need to be stretched.”
From my understanding, it is the students level that is the point to begin with. Than the stretching.
In another site, called CAST: “Neither law adequately addresses the greatest impediment to their implementation: the curriculum itself. In most classrooms, the curriculum is disabled. It is disabled because its main components—the goals, materials, methods, and assessments—are too rigid and inflexible to meet the needs of diverse learners, especially those with disabilities. Most of the present ways to remediate the curriculum’s disabilities—teacher-made workarounds and modifications, alternative placements etc.—are expensive, inefficient, and often ineffective for learning.
By addressing the diversity of learners at the point of curriculum development (rather than as an afterthought or retrofit), Universal Design for Learning is a framework that enables educators to develop curricula that truly “leave no child behind” by maintaining high expectations for all students while effectively meeting diverse learning needs and monitoring student progress.”
http://www.cast.org/research/faq/index.html
Key words Doug, “Most of the present ways to remediate the curriculum’s disabilities—teacher-made workarounds and modifications, alternative placements etc.—are expensive, inefficient, and often ineffective for learning.”
Just talk to any parent that has a gifted child, and the road blocks that are set up via through the curriculum. Than turn your attention to the LD kids, where there is road blocks via through the curriculum.
We are running a public education system. We cannot whipsaw the system in order to accomodate outliers.
Personally I think the best of both worlds is a withdrawal period once or twice per week where the so-called gifted students are given extra projects that challenge them.
I also agree that gifted does not mean just bright and hard working.
Pre amalgamation, the six Toronto boards had 6 different criteria for gifted. Scarborough had the most restrictive where the bar was set at a high IQ level period. The bleeding heart, touchy feely Toronto board had a sort of “portfolio” system. This was goofy Howard Gardner stuff which had kids ending up in gifted math classes because they were very creative artists.
The merged board simply concluded that gifted was just too expensive so they adopted the Scarborough outlook.
I believe if we are stuck with gifted education, it ought to be very difficult to get into. To me you would need a very high IQ and evidence that the student would be damaged but exclusion, not just bored. Those who are bored to me have some responsibility to arrange for their own projects outside class.
Guys like Bill Gates got busy in their own parents garage.
When we have a hell of a job to get regular students educated, students who are behind remediated and brought up to speed, I see few resources left for the fragile constitution of the so-called gifted.
Why are gifted classes full of affluent and middle class families? No poor gifted kids? I didn’t think so.
“Personally I think the best of both worlds is a withdrawal period once or twice per week where the so-called gifted students are given extra projects that challenge them.”
The problem is that gifted students are gifted 24/7. Giving them an hour or two a week–especially of “extra projects”–is insufficient. When the gifted program consists of “extra projects”, the students are punished rather than educated!
“When we have a hell of a job to get regular students educated, students who are behind remediated and brought up to speed, I see few resources left for the fragile constitution of the so-called gifted.”
It is a tragedy when ANY student’s needs are ignored. The gifted should not be educated at the expense of the “regular” or “behind” students, but neither should they be left to their own resources because “they’re so smart, they don’t need an education”! That’s a bunch of male bovine waste.
R
How to respond to “smart kids” in our public schools is a hot button issue right across North America. My initial post has attracted a truly unprecedented response from far and wide –from recognized experts on gifted education to classroom teachers, concerned parents and even products of the “gifted education” system.
On November 29, 2010, I was shocked to learn that my little BlogPost had cracked the Top 100 on WordPress.com in terms of hits. That’s quite a feat up against pop culture posts that appeal to society’s lowest common denominator.
Over the past three days (November 28-30), “Smart Kids” has been viewed 3,325 times. It’s also drawn many to my other 30 posts on a wide range of critical education issues. That’s amazing for a collection of 800 word opinion pieces on an obscure independent education blog.
How did it happen? The post attracted immediate attention from advocates for gifted education as well as champions of higher education standards. Gifted Phoenix offered this recommendation: ” A thought-provoking blog post from Canada calling for a rethink of giifted education.”
Jeanne Bernish (Cincinnati, OH) of Race to the Middle also helped greatly to give it added credence among Americans committed to raising school standards.
The post has also rekindled interest in my 2009 book, The Grammar School: Striving for Excellence in a Public School World (Formac, 2009). That’s hardly surprising, since the book tells the powerful story of one school that beat the odds, carrying the torch for higher standards.
http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/Grammar-School-Striving-Excellence-Years-Paul-W-Bennett/9780887808395-item.html?ikwid=the+grammar+school&ikwsec=Home
What does it all mean? The New York Times feature story and The Globe and Mail (Toronto) “Gifted Child” series missed a critical aspect of the whole issue. People expect more from their public education system and continue to believe in challenging all students to do their best, whatever their capabilities.
Doing your best in school is, after all, far more satisfying than simply showing up, occupying a seat, and towing the line. Let’s hope the message eventually get’s through, where it really counts.
Teaching and educating based on ability needs some serious consideration in Canada because the public system is failing students so miserably.
It’s great to have American visitors on Educatter’s Blog. Just beware of those who profess to be public education cheerleaders and yet involve themselves in private venture schools.
If you’re a student outside the norm, you are more work for the teacher and you cost the system more money. Good luck to ya! The enrollments are declining everywhere and the politicians know this problem involves fewer and fewer voters all the time. It will get much worse before it gets better, I’m afraid. I’m finding myself starting to count down the years of being done with school systems, so I don’t have to think about it anymore.
As Paul stated, and should be repeated, “What does it all mean? The New York Times feature story and The Globe and Mail (Toronto) “Gifted Child” series missed a critical aspect of the whole issue. People expect more from their public education system and continue to believe in challenging all students to do their best, whatever their capabilities.
Doing your best in school is, after all, far more satisfying than simply showing up, occupying a seat, and towing the line. Let’s hope the message eventually get’s through, where it really counts.”
I will add, as it has been my observations and experiences that the public education system, and the educrats that work within the system, have lower standards, lower expectations than the parents and the children, who have much higher standards and expectations in education. At the very least, parents expect to avail of the expertise of the public education system, in much the same way that parents avail of the expertise in the health field, for their children. I soon learned to my dismay with my youngest, that the educrats rather lecture me on my standards and expectations being too high, and should just accept the fact, my youngest would always be a C- student.
Well, it is a good thing that I did have higher standards and expectations for my youngest. My child came home yesterday, beaming, with a look of a job well done in her eyes, showing me her latest test result. It would never have happen, if I decided to listen to the expertise of the educrats, who lectured me in an attempt to lower my standards and expectations.
The gifted are gifted 24/7. What that says to me is we have to whipsaw the system totally out of shape for the benefit of very few students while we continue to ignore the needs of those at the bottom.
Wrong priority.
Some even say reorganize the entire system to accomodate this.
I don’t know how many times it needs to be proven that when you educate the weak readers for example, with the other weak readers, they do not progress as fast as when you educate weak readers with strong readers using the materials of the strong readers.
Far more students would get to university if we would do as I advocate and have university bound programs only in our high schools as Geoffrey Canada advocates in Waiting for Superman. I t does not even cost money. It is, in fact cheaper. Vocational progrms are very expensive. Academic programs are cheap. The weak would just go down the same path and take longer if they require it. The variable is not ability level it is time. They might not graduate HS until they are 20-21 but they would have a HS education that is worth something.
It certainly takes some kind of ”gift” to come up with some of this stuff.
Doug, you are mistaken,
If a material is too hard for a child’s level of mastery, they don’t raise to it they just give up on themselves.
That’s why we have the epidemic of high schoolers beginning to drop out of school around grade 10.
They have not mastered the necessary pre-requisite skills because up until then the public shools they have attended have not taught them and have not demanded them; the students have just been promoted from grade go grade.
Children may get the flu from their next desk colleague, but they don’t learn skills just by sitting nearby a colleague that has mastered them!
After all they have already been sitting nearby such colleagues for 10 years now. If this harebrained, irresponsible solution could work, it should have worked for them in 10 years.
Let’s just make sure we dumb down everybody, so that no students achieve well enough to stick out. Then we will loudly claim it is simply not humanly possible to achieve.
So why are there so many students for which the supposedly grade 10 tests – in reality more like grade 6-7 test – are too hard? How come?
After all these students have been “taught” by “experts” for 10 years now at total cost so far of about $100, 000.
The drop out level is higher the lower the program level. They do not stay in school if the work is easier. They are called the dumb kids in the dumb program in the dumb school.This labelling and tracking is so humiliating and demoralizing that they quit.
Radwanski demonstrated this when he said “Streaming is a theoretical error, a practical failure and a social injustice”
The mere act of placement in a lower program causes kids to drop out.
If this were not true then students would stay in vocational schools because they meet their needs. All the vocational schools and programs are closing because students drop out as soon as they can from them. They are universally hated by parents students and the neighbourhood.
If you give students work above their level they are stretched by it.
At VIP we take Chinese kids with weak English skills and skip right over ESL and put them in academic English and university English, Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, etc. In 2 years they can pass the TOFEL and go straight into university.
The film Waiting For Superman Geoffrey Canada demnds that vocational and low stream schools be removed from the black ghetto neighbourhoods. He wants high level academic schools only for poor kids who are behind. In this he is 100% correct. This is the core message of the film.
Low reading programs are the epitome of “low expectations” they are “low expectations on steroids”
The research backs me. Not those who want ability grouping tracking and streaming. It is the route and core of most of our problems.
Learning “at your own speed” is AKA “going nowhere at your own speed.”
Ha, ha!
You compare
– a very good Chinese student who can read and write Chinese and has been studying hard for 10 years and who learns English as a foreign language against
– a Canadian student who cannot probably read and write well in his own language and who has been socially promoted without having learned much for 10 years.
Very convincing argument indeed!
Enter the wonderful, magical world of “education experts”!
So why hasn’t the Canadian kid learned enough after 10 years of having been taught by experts, having been surrounded by his peers – unstreamed – and at a cost of $100,000 ?
There is something to be said about raising the expectation level and kids responding to it. It’s pretty powerful. They’ll stretch up to meet higher expectations and sadly, they will also lower themselves to meet what should be ‘normal’ or acceptable to their teachers, peers and society. If it is the right thing to do to get the bottom half of the learners to rise up to a higher level of learning,which I fully believe they can do, then isn’t it also right for the learners on the top end to also rise up even higher? I don’t see the benefit of letting the brightest students stall. Well, I see the financial benefit in the short term, but that’s not a good enough reason.
You cannot cut your teeth on baby food. Giving students material that is below grade level traps them in a system where they are behind forever. Students who are behind need reading boot camp until they are ahead of the class. The need the skills and they need the self confidence that comes from high reading skills not Pablum.
Our SE programs trap kids in SE. Except for the profoundly slow, the point needs to be intensive support for a couple of years like a pit stop on a race track and then back into the stream.
SE is not suppose to be a stream of its own.
Academic standards have been debased at the expense of bright and gifted young people.
Well, the “no-fail” and “social promotion” policies — the everyone equal and graduating together notion — have reached the top.
We now have learned, because one “gifted” professor is a heck of a gutsy fellow, that the University of Manitoba’s Math Dept conferred a Ph.D on someone who twice failed their final comprehensive exam.
Now, the whistleblower is somehow the bad guy and has been suspended for three months without pay. I say good on him.
Prof. Lukacs, by the way, the whistleblower was a child prodigy. So, it just goes to show what happens to some gifted children when they become gifted adults. Kudos to him!!!
For the full story, see http://crux-of-the-matter.com/2010/11/30/prof-lukacs-exposes-univ-manitoba-social-promotion-policy-at-ph-d-level/
Where you you get the idea that I support no-fail policies? I fought them for years. Every sane person supports no elementary grade retention because it is very clear from the research, that students do even worse after they fail an elementary school grade.
[…] of different stuff and not afraid to rock the boat. Check out Paul Bennett’s blog EduChatter and his latest post on where gifted education should be going. While you’re at it, read the comment thread as well because there is an excellent discussion […]
Did I say they can do it? We have class sizes of 15, only certified teachers, supervised homework by certified teachers after school, 2 trained guidance teachers among 4 teachers, an admission test, a kick out policy.
We don’t pretend we are anything other than what we are. One thing you will never see is our hand out for public money.
The problem Doug is that you support policies that are at opposite ends of the spectrum. On the one hand, you say you are against no-fail lowered standards policies. But, on the other hand, you want all the kids thrown in together in the hope that the smarter kids will help the struggling kids. Where did I get that idea. You said clearly you don’t like any kind of streaming by ability. None.
So, when I read your comments, I get confused because I am never quite sure what you really do support.
Take getting rid of all streaming, for example. What happens to the child who is truly gifted? You expect him or her to run reading groups and act as a mini teacher?
While I agree with Paul that gifted children shouldn’t be lumped in with special education, other types of streaming/placements are possible.
Let me give you an example. A long time ago in a not so far away land, the Niagara Region of Ontario, there was a program whereby underachievers (gifted) high school students would visit the local university (Brock) two days a week. My husband was in that program (and he is retired now so it gives you an idea of the timeline — LOL) and he said it saved his academic career. They were in grade 10 and they studied Shakespeare and other literary classics, western philosophy and classic archaeology.
That is, to my mind, what gifted kids need, honest to goodness stimulation and challenges that does not come with negative labels.
Anyway, Doug, how do you connect the dots between wanting everyone lumped in together, equal in every way, and not liking the lessened academic standards we see today. I mean, when everyone is lumped together, something has to give. Either the standards go up to meet the needs of the smart kids or the reverse happens.
Just wondering.
The proportion of gifted speaking students on any Bell Curve of intelligence is about 4% of the population. This is about one kid per class. They can be withdrawn for 1-2 periods per week by a “gifted teacher” so called who would give them projects and assignments at their level.
Back in the regular class, they would be expected to complete all the regular work and when it is finished, they would be allowed to work on their special projects and assignments.
I would not do anything more for them than that. If they are bored, I say “boo, hoo”; there are much more pressing problems than that.
Where’s the high demand for accelerated programs? Why don’t we have Kumon gifted or Sylvan Gifted centres popping up across the land. I guess because there are too few kids to make them viable or funded by the province.
“Our SE programs trap kids in SE. Except for the profoundly slow, the point needs to be intensive support for a couple of years like a pit stop on a race track and then back into the stream.”
So Doug, will you make up your mind on where you stand?
“I don’t know how many times it needs to be proven that when you educate the weak readers for example, with the other weak readers, they do not progress as fast as when you educate weak readers with strong readers using the materials of the strong readers.”
So Doug, will you make up your mind on where you stand.
“You cannot cut your teeth on baby food. Giving students material that is below grade level traps them in a system where they are behind forever. Students who are behind need reading boot camp until they are ahead of the class. The need the skills and they need the self confidence that comes from high reading skills not Pablum.”
So Doug, will you make up your mind on where you stand.
“It does not even cost money. It is, in fact cheaper. Vocational programs are very expensive. Academic programs are cheap. The weak would just go down the same path and take longer if they require it. The variable is not ability level it is time. They might not graduate HS until they are 20-21 but they would have a HS education that is worth something.”
In a series of posts, Doug claims without supporting evidence, intensive supports for SE children, support weak readers using the reading material of strong readers, advocating for students to take as much time as needed to pass each course successfully, and the elimination of vocational/skills courses.
It is obvious that Doug has spend too much time in the pickle brine barrel called progressive education and reform.
The cost-effective solution Doug, and has always been there, provide the students with the effective help in the first place. ConcernedParent is right, “That’s why we have the epidemic of high schoolers beginning to drop out of school around grade 10.
They have not mastered the necessary pre-requisite skills because up until then the public shools they have attended have not taught them and have not demanded them; the students have just been promoted from grade go grade.
Children may get the flu from their next desk colleague, but they don’t learn skills just by sitting nearby a colleague that has mastered them!
After all they have alredy been sitting nearby such colleagues for 10 years now. If this harebrained, irresponsible solution could work, it should have worked for them in 10 years.”
But what Doug is advocating for, is the new brand of progressive education, that the cohorts are recommending. Socialist education in a purer form to drive the new economic activity of handling the overflow of students seeking alternative education options that will provide the remedial help for the essentials, for a fee. The trick for parents and students, finding help without the social engineering built into the programs. As I see it, critical thinking is the next item to be abolish, in the public education system.
I spent an afternoon reading all kinds of articles and the fans of progressive education are certainly fighting back since the film called, Waiting For Superman. I am dismay, many of the articles that I read come from the files of the teachers’ colleges. Who still defend the progressive philosophy, the techniques and methods, even though the stats tells the stories of the many failures.
As Sandy has pointed out in a story about a professor being suspended for 3 months without pay, she states; ” It so very much relates to much of this discussion about the way academic standards have been debased at the expense of bright and gifted young people.”
And I will add, academic standards have been debased at the expense of all children.
“academic standards have been debased at the expense of all children.”
Thank-you Nancy.
I say streaming (tracking) is bad, and so do many others.
It is done FOR poor people but they reject it. They want academic work leading to UNIVERSITY only. Nothing else.
If it was up to me, I would put almost all grade 9-10 students in academic program and all grade 11-12 students in the university bound stream. Those who encounter difficulty would be given more time, not a lower program, + lots of free academic tutoring and support. I don’t care if they are 22 when they graduate HS in a university stream. They have much more than an 18 year old who graduates from a workplace oriented vocational stream. The variable should be time not streaming.
Those who do not agree are advocating lower standards. I am for higher standards for every single student.
Educhatter says: Cool it and keep your comments focused on the topic of “gifted education.” As a former teacher, I’m inclined to repeat points too often… so I’m particularly attuned to such behaviour in others.
I would like to call a time out, just to see if we might encourage a few newcomers to get into the action.
It’s time to hear a few other voices.
So far, we haven’t heard from ABC, the Canadian Association for Bright Children. That’s strange, since they are the leading advocacy group for gifted children in Ontario and elsewhere.
ABC Ontario’s mandate, as posted on their website, http://www.abcontario.ca/ is:
The Association for Bright Children of Ontario is an all-volunteer, provincially incorporated support and advocacy group, with many chapters across Ontario. It is dedicated to providing information and support to parents of bright and gifted children and adolescents through newsletters, networking, an annual conference and local workshops. It offers the parents’ voice to local school boards, educators, professional groups and the Ontario Ministry of Education.
Here is how ABC defines “giftedness”:
“Giftedness is a recognized intellectual exceptionality in Ontario
School boards are required to identify exceptional students and provide appropriate Special Education services to meet these students’ needs
Parents can initiate the identification process by sending a written request to the school principal
Gifted students are the second largest group of exceptional students in Ontario
Students with other physical, visual, hearing, behavioural or learning disabilities may also be intellectually gifted
Giftedness is a potential for learning, not a guarantee of academic success
Gifted students may underachieve academically and even drop out without appropriate support
Gifted students often need support to develop good time management and study habits
Gifted students often require daily academic challenge in order to be intellectually engaged and academically successful
ABC Ontario holds an annual enrichment conference for educators, parents and children.
Everyone interested in the well-being of bright and gifted children is welcome to participate in ABC
An informed parent is a child’s best advocate.”
( Reprinted from the ABC Ontario website )
All of this sounds like a rationalization for the existing policy and a justification for segregating the “gifted child.” It makes me wonder if ABC is an advocacy group or just a lobby group to maintain the existing grant structure.
On the ABC website, I did not see any reference whatsoever to the recent Toronto Globe and Mail “Gifted Child” series. Perhaps I just missed the link.
Would anyone in ABC Ontario or affiliated with the organization favour a complete “rethink” of gifted education? Just asking.
As has been discussed elsewhere having the ability to cherrypick the kids attending a school (and an admission test and a “kick out policy”) would give a private school all sorts of advantages over the public system.
On the other hand that sort of private school would and should be considered evil incarnate for advocates of the public system.
Educational research does not appear to support destreaming students, contrary to Doug’s claims. Here, for example, are two links which address the issue:
The first called In Defense of Tracking (PDF)
Click to access el_198703_nevi.pdf
Apparently, there is very little research in the areas of the elimination of tracking and group ability, for the claims that are made by Doug and other advocates such as Oakes.
But lots of evidence for tracking and group ability, the positives as well as the negatives.
The next is a paper, that certainly will tell you the history of tracking, and a few solutions as well. It is called The Tracking and Ability Grouping Debate.
http://www.edexcellence.net/detail/news.cfm?news_id=127
“The primary charges against tracking are (1) that it doesn’t accomplish anything and (2) that it unfairly creates unequal opportunities for academic achievement. What is the evidence? Generally speaking, research fails to support the indictment.”
Solutions:
“Individual schools must have the latitude to make decisions about the best way to educate students, including whether tracking, ability grouping, or heterogeneous grouping works best for their pupils. In classrooms, learning depends upon a multitude of factors, some within educators control, and many not. Teachers and principals are in the best position to structure the learning environment so that it works well because they know their students better than policymakers sitting many miles away. Managing instruction by remote control rarely succeeds.52”
“Equity is a paramount principle of social institutions, but schools do more than dispense a public good. They also serve families. Parents will no more tolerate schools that give short-shrift to individual learning needs than they will tolerate hospitals that give short-shrift to individual health needs. And schools are also workplaces where educators exercise professional judgment to the best of their abilities. The idea that schools must defend activities that research cant verify invites promiscuous policymaking. Schools do lots of things that research hasnt validated. Sometimes this is a failing of schools. Sometimes its a failing of research. Issuing report cards with grades, assigning homework, suspending students for disciplinary reasonsthese are all activities that draw distinctions among children and impose unequal burdens on them. They are also routine school practices that research has been unable to declare unequivocally good or bad.”
“Non-effects in research should not invite policymakers (or researchers) to impose a particular ideology or educational philosophy on local schools. No evidence indicates that abruptly and universally abolishing tracking would help anyone. It may even harm the students it is intended to benefit. Proclamations that tracking is undemocratic, inequitable, or educationally unsound cannot be reconciled with the non-effects found by research. Polls indicate that parents, teachers, and students support tracking. That part of democracy that premises governmental action on the preferences of the governed stands in favor of trackings use. Moreover, the intervention advocated by Jeannie Oakes, attempting to dictate schools operations and procedures from courtrooms and legislative arenas, is rapidly going the way of the dinosaur. Results are now assuming a dominant role in public policy. In this spirit, states and districts should establish clear expectations for achievement, judge schools by whether they attain them, and leave decisions about tracking and ability grouping to teachers, parents, and principals. Some schools will track, others will untrack.55”
“Why don’t we have Kumon gifted or Sylvan Gifted centres popping up across the land. I guess because there are too few kids to make them viable or funded by the province.”
Probably because they’re too busy with business generated from the bulk of kids who can’t keep up with the regular program.
Then there’s the issue of how many parents can afford to pay extra costs, above and beyond what they’re already paying in taxes, so their kids can attend a Sylvan or Kumon.
No doubt some parents also question why they’d be expected to fund additional costs for their kids to receive an appropriate level of instruction.
Sorry Paul, I think I was one of the bloggers who sidetracked the discussion.
If the discussion is about the top 3% of population identified as so highly inteligent to be “gifted” by psychological tests, then my comments did not belong to this thread.
>>How did naturally smart and academically motivated students come to be clinically labelled “gifted” and treated as “exceptionalities”? If high fliers tend to motivate others, why did our public schools all-but-abandon challenging all students in regular classrooms?<<
Based on your initial post I thought that the discussion was also about all the either relatively smart or motivated students or both that are academically inclined for which the Ontario system in my opinion does an extremely poor job.
These students in my opinion are probably a good 20% to 40% of our student population.
Let's look as to why some of the parents of these students may choose French immersion for them or try to get them identified as gifted.
What does a regular program offer to a healthy, normal 7 year old in let's say grade 2?
Well, first of all only about 30% of instructional class time is probably at his level. So out of 9 full month of school he will really only study for 3 month each year.
Why?
Well, if he knows how to read well and a good half of his classmates or more don't, he would be probably be asked to read on his own and pretty much left to his own devices.
Well, if he knows his letters well enough so the shapes are recognizable, he will be left on his own devices.
He will not be taught anything new.
Correct pencil grip, handwriting, correct letter printing left-right, top-bottom are not taught, writing letters in a straigh line and of the same size are not taught. Sure he may get a comment here and there like "Good work, try to get the letters to line up the next time!" but that would be about it.
Add to the mix the fact that they are all quite young at 7 year olds, that his classmates – just like him – only get instruction at their own level only about 30% of the class time.
So what do 7 year olds when they are left to work on their own 70% of the time? How much class time is lost in interruptions with discipline problems or how continuously chattering and moving are some classes?
So my point is that because the schools don't teach the basics well in the first grade: reading, writing, basic math facts then any student who knows them – a "smart" student, an academically oriented student – wastes precious learning time year after year from then on.
All students become "smarter" when they are taught, they become motivated and disciplined and reach out to higher expectations when they are taught 9 months a year and not 3 months or less a year!
To Nancy’s last comment, re other research on tracking and streaming, thankyou.
Over and above my professional hat, I am the mother of a now adult son with learning disabilities and mild autism. He would never ever have graduated from high school without the modified basic program he took — which has since been cancelled. It is the kids at the bottom who benefit from ability groupings, as much as the kids at the top.
As far as I can recall, during the graduation ceremony, no one mentioned that his program was modified. And, he stood up there proudly like all the other students.
My daughter, on the other hand was considered a “bright” child, not gifted, but extremely bright. She too graduated from high school and has never differentiated her diploma to that of her brother’s.
But, make no mistake, while they went through high school at different times, they were streamed, even if informally.
Having the two hats has always helped me understand what parents are going through.
Again, thank you Nancy. I get so tired of people quoted research to prove their narrow point of view when there is plenty of evidence to the contrary.
You can put me on the list of parents who went outside the school system to enrich my kids education. It costs alot, but that’s what I’ve been doing for years. I’ve spent loads of time, energy and money on music lessons, hockey, drives to cadets and, so on. Not because I wanted to create a ”spuerchild”, but because sometimes there are children that need more. I can hardly keep up with the energy level of one of my kids in particular. Actually, I can’t keep up. Thank God he now has a driver’s liscence. Mama is tired.
Sandy, regarding ability grouping, could you clarify how you use the term?
I’ve used it in my previous posts trying to say grouping where all the students know the pre-requisites.
For example if you want to teach a group how to read longer words a pre-requisite would be for everybody in the group to know how to read or at least sound any 3 or 4 letter word.
TDSB corrected me essentially saying that ability means the capacity of an individaul to learn fast something new.
To express the idea that all students in the group know all the pre-requisite skills the word to use would be mastery.
For example a student can be able – that is “smart” – , but if he doesn’t know how to sound 3 or 4 letter words he hasn’t mastered them and he should not be in the group that is learning how to read multisilable words.
A Concerned Parent — Just to confuse the issue (LOL), there are many types of ability groupings. For example, all the students in a reading group could have similar mastery and ready for challenges — as both you and TDSB have stated.
However, there are also ability groups where students are all at different levels of mastery. It’s still an ability group, just mixed.
I tend to favour the latter because it stretches the kids who are having difficulties and challenges those who are ready to move ahead.
That said, when I taught elementary school, what I used to do was following reading and discussing the story I would give each child or in pairs, different activities. So, the children experiencing difficulties would have a “turn” at the listening station or a chance to do oral reading with me (eg., I never embarrassed a child to read out loud if I knew they were struggling). The really bright kids, on the other hand would have challenging activities instead, like drawing or painting the main ideas of their story or preparing to dramatize their story to their little group or the whole class — depending on what “they” wanted to do.
Then, at the end of the story unit, they would get together and tell each other what they had learned.
In that way, no one was labelled slow or gifted. And, parents didn’t object to the groupings.
Now, streaming or tracking is different. My son was in what was called in the nineties, high school basic. Meaning, that, upon graduation, he would have been eligible to go to a community college but not university. General was average and then there was the university stream, which in Ontario was called OAC’s (Ontario Advanced Credits). The thing is, a similar curriculum was followed apart from the OAC’s.
Now that Grade 13 was eliminated (basically the OAC level), Grades 9 and 10 are non-credit (called the Common Curriculum) and Grade 11 and 12 are C (college) or U (university) credits.
Same thing as far as I am concerned, apart from the special education kids who usually can’t pass the C or U courses.
Since I am retired I am not sure what they do now for that population.
Hope I have answered your question.
Sandy, thank you for your answer.
I understand now that by ability grouping you mean giving different activies to different groups of students in the same class.
So ability grouping means the same thing as differentiated instruction?
I am from the USA and have a 8 year old son who is off the charts academically.
In our school system (one of the biggest but one of the worst in the Nation), I was told by administrators that we should just be happy he is smart. He should take this “gift” and spread it around to his classmates! In fact, in the last 2 years he has been asked daily to sit with the slowest kids in his class and help them.
Not only has this retarded a bit of my son’s passion for learning, it subsequently made his classmates feel sub-par. So I do not agree with making everyone equal, because reality is we are all different. We are not all NBA athletes, and yet we praise those that are; so why does this same thought process elude educators?
My son, and others like him are getting an unequal education and frankly have been totally ignored by the school system. Why would anyone think this was fair?
“So ability grouping means the same thing as differentiated instruction?”
Yes, except it doesn’t have to relate directly to ability groupings. It is that, although the curriculum objectives may be the same for a whole class, the teacher uses different strategies with different kids. In other words, you can have both ability groupings and DI as the same time. Here is a good description: http://members.shaw.ca/priscillatheroux/differentiating.html
Years ago I did that when I taught Grades 4-8 language arts — by making up about 100 different laminated cards with up to four possible follow-up activities on each card. They were colour-coded into four colours.
So, I used to tell individual kids to pick a card from one of the colours. Now, the colours were ability grouped and the kids knew it, but I used to alter who did what so few would always be in the same colour. Or, I’d say do one activity from each colour. Or, other combinations.
As I remember it, I was into multi-sensory strategies even then, and that was before I went on a leave of absence to work on my master’s — which eventually led to the doctorate.
Listening centres are key to learning to read (Grades 1-3) and Reading to Learn (Grade 4 and up) so I used listening activities there a lot, especially with the younger kids. Creative writing can come out of story telling. As can small group debates, etc.
O/T but for those who are wondering why “listening” is so important to reading. Think about it. You are reading this right now and, unless you are moving your lips, you are “hearing” it in your head. That’s called sub-vocalizing. When kids have trouble reading silently, that is an immediate cause to have them formally assessed because they may have a central auditory processing problem. So, tape-recorders where kids can tape-record their stories and then listen back are VERY important. And, reading silently without moving their lips.
Not to say moving our lips is bad. It is a good verbal rehearsal memory strategy. But, you need to be able t do both.
DI has to be done in ways like that because no teacher can teach thirty different programs simultaneously.
Which brings up the subject of the gifted again. If ever there was a need for DI, it is with bright kids. I asked my husband about this. He was an identified gifted child, yet failed Grade 11. He managed to fail it with an 85% average. Meaning, that in Math and French, he was bored so he didn’t do much. So, he was labelled an underachiever. Luckily, a very bright teacher took him under his wing and arranged for the university program I mentioned in an earlier thread and he did well from there on in. Yet, look what it took. No body clued in as to why this kid was getting 90s and 100s in some subjects but failing in others.
So, yes, DI is definitely needed for kids who need extra help, be they the slower ones or the very bright ones. To treat them all the same is not good teaching, nor does it reflect the real world IMO. Perhaps I take that position because I don’t like social engineering projects with kids lives.
“On the ABC website, I did not see any reference whatsoever to the recent Toronto Globe and Mail “Gifted Child” series. Perhaps I just missed the link.
Would anyone in ABC Ontario or affiliated with the organization favour a complete “rethink” of gifted education? Just asking.”
It has been my observations that associations such as the gifted or the learning disabilities, do not post comments on other education blogs, or news articles on their sites that are not in keeping with their goals. Another reason is, it is political suicide because it may put any government grants at risk for immediate withdrawal, or a denial for future grants. The organizations have a tendency to tow the line, and work within the education system to promote effective change. But I certainly like the Autism Society activist brand of exacting change unto a society and an education system that is loath to new change, new thinking and different approaches. Other organizations such as the gifted could learn a thing or two about the volunteer boards of the Autism Society across Canada. In the very least, the Gifted or the Learning Disabilities organizations, should be writing comments to correct or to inform the participants in blogs. And it is here, where the Autism Society have no fear to tread, where other organizations dare not to tread, the negative aspects of the public education system.
That said, there is a news link on the ABC site called, No Room For the Gifted. http://www2.macleans.ca/2009/02/23/no-room-for-gifted-kids/
“According to educators, the problem is nationwide. Gifted programs are dwindling, and fewer students are receiving formal identifications. The stakes, meanwhile, are high. Studies have shown that gifted students, who make up about two per cent of the population, risk social alienation and boredom, which can give way to underachievement and behaviour problems. It’s possible for these kids, as well as the profoundly gifted (the top 0.5 per cent), to be saddled with a learning disability. And though their potential to achieve may trump that of their classmates, as some experts have found, so does their propensity to drop out.
But as parents intervene, the battles for limited special education dollars become highly polarized. As former Edmonton Public Schools superintendent Michael Strembitsky points out, “Every dollar that is provided to one group, that’s a dollar less to another group.” And when forced to choose, some argue that educators can’t be faulted for tipping the scales in favour of those whose struggle is most apparent.
The very notion of extreme intellect as a special need still seems like a stretch to some, and making accommodations for it in tough times a luxury. As Shari Orders, co-author of a University of Ottawa study on the advocacy experiences of parents of gifted children, explains, “The societal notion is that gifted kids have it made.” According to Bill Morton, who has been teaching gifted students in Ontario since the mid-’80s, “Every time money gets tight, gifted comes under the light, because it’s not a popular exceptionality.”
I would state further, that when money gets tights within the education system, any student that is an outlier, there education is at risked.
Further down the article, “Jack Goldberg, a University of Alberta education professor, says it’s not unreasonable that gifted kids often wind up near the bottom of the list: “[The gifted student] may be bored. The loss, though, would be largely his own. Parents would argue it’s society’s loss, because this kid is a budding Einstein. But the truth is that most gifted kids don’t become Einsteins.” Goldberg specializes in conduct disorders; conditions characterized by severe violations of social mores. In Alberta, identifying a gifted student no longer entitles schools to additional funds, but confirming a conduct disorder can bring in more than $16,000. “This is the kid who is going to be out there raping and murdering and robbing, and being a total financial loss to society. So of course, it’s a greater priority,” he says.”
Certainly explains why, there has been an increase in the number of children being identified as having conduct disorders. And it certainly shows why the dropped in stats or the flat lining, the number of gifted and LD children being identified. Gifted and LD children shared the common problem where their learning needs mainly come from the educational component, and a much smaller percentage from the behavioural component.
Further down the article, “Whether boards are doing enough to educate gifted students is open to interpretation. But since the tide turned toward inclusion, Ontario has seen some of the most protracted parent-board conflicts surrounding special education students, including gifted kids. Unique legislation, passed in 1980, requires boards to have procedures in place for the early identification of exceptional students, and either provide them with programming or purchase it from another board. And, significantly, if parents disagree with the outcome of an assessment or a placement decision, they’re entitled to an appeal.
Cornwall resident Michele Alexis started down this road when her son Cameron Bharath was in Grade 6. Her charge was that the Upper Canada District School Board’s criteria for giftedness was too high, because only a handful of students had been identified. In July 2001, the special education tribunal ruled in her favour, identifying Cameron, by then in Grade 8, as gifted, and ordering the board to place him in a full-time high school program. When September rolled around, however, no such placement had been created. Alexis took the case to divisional court. But because the wording of the tribunal order “was too imprecise,” she lost, and was on the hook for the board’s legal fees. After turning down her proposal to repay the $15,000 in instalments, the board seized her wages. For five months, Alexis, a doctor who owns a family practice, did not get paid.
The following August, the case went to tribunal again. Before the decision was rendered, the board extended an olive branch, which she accepted: it paid to have a private car transport Cameron to a full-time gifted class for the duration of his high school career. (The board later provided the same solution for his two siblings, the youngest of whom is currently in Grade 12. Alexis estimates the annual cost to be close to $30,000.) “I still consider myself kind of traumatized by the whole thing,” she says. “It’s hard to describe how you feel when you’re made to believe you have certain rights and privileges, and that the process is there to protect your child—and you discover it does neither.”
It certainly describes in a nut-shell, the Canadian Public Education system, that makes us believe that parents and children have certain rights and privileges. Further that the public education system is there to protect children’s educational interests – and in reality, it does neither.
I would think Paul, the ABC organization, would be in favour of a complete overhaul of the public education system. As I would think, other organizations such as the LD and Autism societies would favour the same thing. It takes a brave parent to confront the education system, and a parent willing to put their personal monies at risk, to force the public education system to do the right thing – the best interests of the child’s education and their potential.
I believe that the outliers of a school, are the canaries and the measurements to determined if the public education system is doing a very good job. In my opinion, the canaries are suffering, and most are on life-support, that does nothing for their education needs and their potential.
I guess we are dealing with a system that is overall, profoundly underfunded.
When the water is low in the water hole, the animals look at each other differently.
Sandy, I don’t know how to say this the right way because you definitely mean well.
Do you realize that for a grade 2 7-year old that knows how to read drawing or painting or dramatizing what he reads may not be a challenging activity? Do you realize that he or she is not learning anything new?
Do you realize that with differentiated instruction, for most of their time the majority of students work alone without the direct immediate feedback of the teacher?
Hence my comment, each of the students goes to school really for 3 month of the year and not 9 months.
If the students in a class were grouped by mastery in that subject the efficiency of the teacher would go up by a factor of at least 2, more likely 3. You could teach all the students the same lesson all the time, and the students – since they work on the same thing – can listen and learn from the feedback you give to others.
Something else that has puzzled me about Differentiated Instruction.
If the students do different activities at their own level how do you grade them at the end of each semester?
Based on their own level or based on common standards that apply to all students in that grade?
PS: Are you familiar with Siegfried Engelmann’s work or with other education systems where in the elementary years all the students in a class are taught together and have to meet the same standards, for example the french system?
On the contrary Doug. What we have is a system that continues to be unresponsive to the needs of students.
Money has nothing to do with what the majority have shared here. That’s a tired and very worn out philosophy that needs deep sixing.
Zsuzsa – your experience mirrors ours almost exactly. It ended up that our child ended up helping other kids or helping the teacher fix the computer or download something but as for challenging him…..nope.
I recognize that the title of this blog post is “Smart Kids: Why Do Schools Stigmatize Gifted Children”
But you know, one of the reasons it’s so easy to get sidetracked off the gifted angle is that truthfully all students are stigmatized in some way by the school system.
Peggy touched on it briefly earlier. It would seem that the system loves to compartmentalize children and attach all kinds of labels to them and their learning that make no sense at all. Anyone looking in on our system would wonder how on earth learning happens at all when the “experts” trip over themselves reinventing or renaming really bad methods and programs only to get the same mediocre results.
Has anyone actually done any studies on how the school system impacts a child’s mental and/or physical health?
Maybe they should.
Concerned Parent — You asked me a question. I tried to answer based on my experience. I am certainly not going to defend what is going on in the system now. However, I take strong exception to the notion that dramatic and creative activities are not excellent ways to stimulate learning in gifted individuals. They are, as they aid in cognitive perception, decision-making, drawing conclusions and information processing, as well as stimulating their imagination — something I would later test in my private practice. In fact, I would go so far as to say that what makes a person gifted is the ability to easily switch from verbal and performance skills and left versus right brain activities.
Beyond that, I will leave your classroom-related questions to others who are currently teaching or consulting in the system, be it in the U.S. or Canada.
Doug — More money is not the answer to everything. All more money will do is be used to hire more teachers and give the current ones a raise. Oh, right, that is what you’re getting at — meaning, nothing would change for the kids.
To others hear worrying about special programs for the very bright and gifted, I would tell you that if there were more money in the system, it should not be spent on the gifted (who have the ability to compromise and adapt). No, it should go to the kids with severe learning disabilities and pervasive developmental disorders, such as mild autism. For example, their parents need funding or a voucher of some kind so that their children can attend specialized private schools. In fact, I have heard from two such parents via my blog in the last week. They are nearly bankrupt and they want is individualized instruction. The difference in these situations is, having been there and done that many years ago with my own son, they are talking about their children getting enough of a basic education that they eventually live independently.
In other words, some of those on the “exceptionality” pendulum are more needy than others.
I’ll sign off now as I am on a blogging break to give my right arm and shoulder a very needed rest.
Thanks Paul, its been fun.
I think mentoring programs in collaboration with Universities is the way to go forward. There is not enough money in the public school system to hire lots of staff to offer more specialized teaching to gifted students, but there are lots and lots of Universities out there with other gifted adults doing research and projects and all kinds of neat stuff. Why not pair them up, either in person or online? You have to get get creative sometimes to build enrichment in to the day. We really have to expand our thinking on this. The kids out there are amazing and they , themselves might have some of the best ideas, if we even think to ask them.
The current issue of the American newsletter District Administration features a story on the challenges facing gifted education. It was drawn to my attention by Jeanne Bernish of Race to the Middle, Cincinnati, OH, a contributor to our ongoing conversation.
“The Rise of the Rest
Increasing attention to the nurturing of gifted students should be a national imperative.
By Sarah Jerome
Superintendent,
Arlington Heights (Ill.) School District 25.
November 2010
“Gifted students may just be among the most underserved students in the nation. They are one of the few special populations with no funding mandates and no legal requirements to serve their special needs. Yet every author and researcher who forecasts the global economy indicates that the best and brightest students in India and China are being provided the best education those nations are able to provide. These forecasters tell us that our most able students must be more creative, more globally competent, more innovative and more motivated— and that our national lifestyle and leadership is dependent on it. Providing a topnotch education to gifted students should be a national imperative.
George Peternel, a recently retired advocate for Northwestern University’s Center for Talent Development, says “There is an egalitarian view among many educators and most politicians that the academically gifted and talented are endowed with intellectual riches … So the common mantra is to leave them alone, and focus both public and private resources to bring up the students who must struggle to learn. Forgotten is the reality that it has been the innovation and technical advances created by America’s best minds that have kept us a world leader.”
Lack of Federal Funding
Even if we believe that raising the bar for these advanced learners is necessary, we find little evidence that many legislators share this belief. Whimpers are heard from the only federal funding available for gifted education, through the Jacob Javits Gifted and Talented Education Act, which has provided $7.5 million. This money serves the approximately 3 million advanced learners in the United States by supporting the National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented (NRC/GT), and a series of demonstration grants.
In past years, these monies have been used to identify strategies to increase access to gifted education for minority, lowincome and limited-English-proficient students. It is currently on the federal chopping block.
There are three issues: (1) the end of supportive funding; (2) few or no legislated mandates for gifted education; (3) NCLB focused on bringing up the bottom rather than raising the top. These represent an unacceptable lack of attention and programming for advanced learners.
My colleagues and I are working hard with limited resources. Under the punitive threats of NCLB, districts have been compelled to attend to students with the weakest skills. But what if NCLB had the same punitive requirements for schools that failed to provide rigorous and challenging programs for the most able students? Would we be more motivated to attend to the needs of this population?
On the Horizon
Several efforts are underway to increase federal attention. President Obama has recognized the need for more elementary and middle school students getting access to gifted and talented education in his Blue Print for Reform for the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA).
The Equity in Excellence Act of 2010, currently pending in the House and the Senate, has also recently been introduced. This legislation calls for increased funding, increased teacher effectiveness and increased accountability for gifted students. In addition, Indiana University has published a report, “Mind the Other Gap,” that points out the urgent need to address and improve gifted education in our country.
Public education needs the federal government, school leaders and U.S. citizens to have a high sensitivity and deep commitment to the needs of gifted students. Not doing so will hasten a new world order in which the United States will have a significantly diminished role.”
(Reprinted from District Administration)
Something I just thought of that’s missing from this conversation: Intuition. Ahhh, that’s the word I was looking for.
Here’s just one link http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Intuition.
It definitely plays a role in how we all learn, but the gifted have alot of intuition for some things. There is no spot for this on a report card, yet it is real.
Paul re ““The Rise of the Rest
Increasing attention to the nurturing of gifted students should be a national imperative.
By Sarah Jerome
Superintendent,
Arlington Heights (Ill.) School District 25.”
We can replace the word “gifted” in this article with “smart” I think and the message would be the same working within the bounds of public education.
We are still faced with the need to educate each and every student based on needs and ability but keep jamming it through a public system that shows no willingness to change in the way it must to meet not just the of all students not just those who fit into the handy labels and flavours of the day.
I went through a high school gifted program thirty years ago in Toronto. Negatives – being evaluated on a higher scale so that I was getting mid 80’s in the gifted stream rather than being a 90’s student in the regular stream. Positives? – I met my future wife.
Teachers now are mandated to teach a curriculum, not the student. There tends to be many more resources for students who are not keeping up with the curriculum compared to any other group. The kids that fall into the the middle just stay put. The kids at the top just get frustrated. Schools are not designed to target learning so that the middle and top get challenged. It is based on making sure everyone “meets” expectations. It’s really too bad because there are tons of exceptional teachers who have the ability to teach outside the curriculum (and many do), but a board’s mandate is just the opposite.
Somehow it seems easier for a board to justify more resources/jobs/paid positions and more budget to ensure everyone “meets” rather than “exceeds.”
When you base your system on curriculum and budget rather than the person, inevitably you end up with what we’ve got.
Thanks for the hat tip Paul!
You certainly know how to get a conversation started! Don’t ever let anyone say that no one cares about gifted education!
>> Schools are not designed to target learning so that the middle and top get challenged. It is based on making sure everyone “meets” expectations.<<
I could live with making sure that everyone "meets" expectations if at least these expectations were clear, if they were aimed in the middle and if they were enforced.
However that's not the case currently in Ontario.
First the expectations are not clear. Just try and figure out a test for a certain grade based on the Ontario curriculum!
Secondly, judging by what the grade 6 tests and the high school tests' content these expectations are very, very, very low.
Let's say bare minimum expectations. It is a race to the bottom.
Thirdly, they are not enforced. When you continue to keep together and try to teach for example grade 7-s when some know how to read and some do not, all the bets are off.
That's daycare, not school when students need school and we pay for school.
[…] able to, or want to, complete university courses in high school. What reminded me of that fact was Paul Bennett’s recent post on the importance of not stigmatizing gifted children. Check out the comments on that EduChatter […]
School had always been easy for me; it has also been boring. The teacher repeats instructions twenty times – long after I have understood. Yet if I fidget or move or try to read a book, I get detention. Imagine sitting in a uncomfortable chair listening to fractions being explained twenty times while being forced to stare straight ahead and be quiet. I try various strategies to keep myself occupied. I write all my history notes in caesar cipher; I write mathematics in rhyming couplets (its harder than it seems); I write my English notes in pictograms. Nothing helps.
Perhaps numbers can best indicate the problem: Someone with an IQ of 130 (gifted level) in the same class as someone with an IQ of 100 (average) is equivalent to that average person being in a class of people with an IQ of 70 (mentally handicapped). Is it a wonder we seem different. We are just as “different” as those in special education.
For all you who say gifted children need to learn how to socialize. I already know. I can pull the popular act – I learned in fifth grade that if I dressed up and did my hair and my makeup and watched the latest movies and talked about the latest gossip I could be popular. I hated taylor swift boys and thought lip-gloss was a waste of time, but I tried. In 6th grade I joined the mathcounts team and settled for three close friends who were also gifted. There is a difference between knowing how to be social and being popular. For some of us, it is not worth giving up our intelligence to learn how to be well-liked. That is the sacrifice you demand from the “gifted” when you want them to socialize instead of take advanced classes.
As for gifted children being elitist, most of us are not. My group welcomes anyone who want to join us at lunch or recess (though few have). How many of us can go and sit at the popular table? We tutor after school and help the homeless. We teach braille to the blind. And with all the teaching, we learn just as much from them.
I, and all the others like me are asking you to challenge us. We are bored. We are unhappy. You are losing us. My best friend from third grade – the one who told me the sun was going to explode in a million billion years and the explosion would reach earth and warm Pluto – he is on drugs and into skipping. Another girl now gets straight ‘C’s and has stopped winning the county geography bee. Maybe I failed my friends, maybe you did, maybe the system did, but something needs to be done, and as gifted as I may be, I can’t do it.
Please.
One of my former students, a UCC Old Boy who once attended University of Toronto Schools, called me out-of-the-blue expressing grave concern about the impact of Gifted Education on its graduates. That conversation confirmed, in my mind, the wisdom of this post. I simply cannot understand why public education authorities keep promoting “Giftedness.”
He asked me a fundamental question: “Has anyone tracked the life cycles of
“Gifted Education” graduates?” I simply do not know– but think that such a study, conducted independent of ABC and Mensa, would be very revealing.
Canada’s leading boys school, UCC, is a favourite target for the mainstream media. Why is no one prepared to look at UTS’s legacy? It would be interesting to look deeper than the obligatory interviews with such outstanding UTS luminaries as Tom Symons, Richard Sadleir, Jeffery Simpson, and Bill Robson…
All great (uncommon) Canadian schools should be subjected to some scrutiny.
American education policy analyst Frederick Hess’s feature essay, “Our Achievement Gap Mania” (National Affairs, Fall, 2011) has sparked a lively debate over the “closing the gap” focus of education reform efforts. He makes the case that current reform initiatives look like a “rehash” of ” the failed Great Society playbook.”
The obsessive focus on “closing the gap” may well have affected academically-inclined students now labeled “gifted” in the public education world. The Washington Post’s Jay Matthews offered these insights:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/class-struggle/post/why-gifted-education-misses-out/2011/10/12/gIQATASLgL_blog.html
One comment by Jay Matthews jumps right off the page:
“Reducing the gap sounds good until you realize that means it is okay for high achievers to stagnate so that low achievers can catch up.”
(Jay Matthews, Class Struggle, The Washington Post, 13 October, 2011)
That’s consistent with Dr. Paul Cappon’s assessment in his final Report Card on Canadian Learning where he pointed out that the top Canadian 15-year-olds are now lagging behind the best in the world on the PISA tests. Indeed, the CCL final report provides ample evidence to support Jay Matthews’ recent contention.
I teach in Hong Kong and I see the negative effect of school putting all of the less capable kids together. The kids know what class they are in and the high performing kids are put into advance class. They developed this superiority complex and are pretty snobby.
I do see the benefits of putting some smart kids in other classes to help motivate the other students.
I have to admit that I did feel superior in that effect. However, putting gifted students in average classes would produce the big fish little pond effect. When I was in an average class, I felt smarter than in a gifted environment. I would constantly think about how slow my other classmates were at that time. I was ‘snobby’ back then.
After being exposed to people generally at the same skill level, I began to gain more modesty. Instead of thinking that I was smarter than everyone else, I began to work harder. If I did not, I would have remained ‘average’ in that environment, opposed to being ‘smart’ in another situation.
I realize that it may motivate the other students, but what about the gifted students? So we want to help the average skilled and disregard the ‘gifted’ because of their title? Because they don’t need any more improvement? I don’t think it’s fair for the average to remain average, at the cost of the ‘smart’ to remain only ‘smart’ (in comparison to the average). To clarify, however, I am not saying that the average cannot improve. I just think that people have different needs, and for one to address them, one needs to understand the individuals’ needs.
[…] able to, or want to, complete university courses in high school. What reminded me of that fact was Paul Bennett’s recent post on why schools stigmatized gifted children. Check out the comments on that EduChatter thread as […]
[…] of different stuff and not afraid to rock the boat. Check out Paul Bennett’s blog EduChatter and his latest post on where gifted education should be going. While you’re at it, read the comment thread as well because there is an excellent discussion […]
I agree with Sandy (first comment). When I was a child growing up, I was identified as ‘gifted’, put into a congregated gifted class in an average school, and given more homework than the average class.
However, my math teacher, and science teacher, would expect us to already understand the content. Now, this school was grade 6-8, and I started at that school as a grade seven (my other school was k-6). Maybe my past classmates were taught grade 7 content in the grade six gifted class. Considering that we had the same curriculum with the same supposed lessons…it’s unlikely.
I had to ask my parents and/or research the topics myself, since there was the conclusion that being gifted meant knowing everything exceptionally well (the thought that if the child had been taught the lesson or not was non-existent).
I understand that independence and finding your own education to meet your needs is important (speaking generally), but we were still students. We could learn quickly, but if we weren’t being taught…………
If I hadn’t been identified as gifted, or hadn’t gone to that school, I would have gone to the school nearby for middle school. I contacted my friend when I was younger, and she said that they barely had any homework.
We already had title sheets due and done, a math quiz on a variety of things on the second week, a novel study going on, history project packages, band (in which everyone had to play an instrument), and artworks in which we had strict time limits, and were not allowed to take home to work on.
I didn’t, and still don’t, know the entire picture, so to speak. It’s ironic how that last year I had listened through the explaining over on basic things I already knew, and then the next, I’m given more homework and a faster sped environment.
However, school seemed to be more interesting from there on in. And even though there are so many more things I feel the urge to say (or type), I still wouldn’t have it any other way.
Love your sharing Masako
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[…] of this group in a majority of American schools, and it seems, also in Canadian education. Read this article. I like this comment by Sandy, Nov 27, […]