3 ms·
A point not raised in the article: some areas have gifted programs that are simply too large. I was enrolled in one in Fairfax County in northern Virginia, and
by adrusi 11y ago
A point not raised in the article: some areas have gifted programs that are simply too large. I was enrolled in one in Fairfax County in northern Virginia, and nearly a fifth of the student population was part of it. I moved away before high school, but in high school, the program ended, and the expectation was that gifted children enroll in the Thomas Jefferson magnet school for science and technology — which looked at GPA (of eighth graders) as a deciding factor in admissions — or simply continue taking ordinary honors classes in high school, which were essentially opt-in-to-more-homework classes.
The correlation with eccentricity is not nearly as strong, in my experience, among children who are one standard deviation above average, as in children who are two. Teachers who are actually talented at teaching gifted children see their efforts spread too thin, with only 1–3 children per class who could really benefit from this teacher over other good teachers.
And the eccentric children don't ever get the insulation from other kids' bullying they need; they often avoid even making friends among themselves because they see that as a way of cementing their low social status. Gifted children can make friends with — for lack of a better word — normal children, but some of them, at least, can only get the social stimulation they need from real intellectual conversation with their peers, which other children are either incapable of or uninterested in.
I don't believe we should isolate gifted children from the rest of the population day in, day out. That would only serve to create an echochamber and leave them woefully unprepared when they inevitably leave the bubble. But I do think they need to be given significant time amongst themselves so that they can develop the friendships and confidence they need to survive in the general population, and the special academic attention which might hopefully stimulate them enough to help them flounder less in regular classes.
- stinkytaco 11y agoAn anecdote: The gifted program at my school was genuinely fun and interesting. They spent the year on a theme, say astronomy, and explored that theme through a variety of projects. For example, they designed a game about space travel, they built a model of the solar system, etc. I was not in it until the 6th grade, the last year before "gifted" meant "do more homework" in my school system. I got in because the previous year I built a fairly impressive lego castle for my entry project and maybe they thought that because they were doing architecture as the theme that I would do well. I really did enjoy it and looked forward to it every week. But I was not, and am not, an exceptionally hard worker or particularly motivated to excel. I probably have an above average memory and was thus able to do well in school despite my laziness (I graduated high school with a 3.3 GPA). Even if I was "gifted", you wouldn't know it from my work. But given the opportunity to engage in something, I took that chance and looked forward to it. I'm not sure that this addresses the children in the article, but I feel it's sort of a pity that the weekly "explore your interests" classes are no longer part of the gifted program in my child's school district. Not because she's necessarily gifted, but because I think she'd find it fun.