7 ms·

I read a disturbing stat in the WSJ on Saturday - it pointed out that 20% of school's resources are geared towards learning disabled, developmentally challenged

I read a disturbing stat in the WSJ on Saturday - it pointed out that 20% of school's resources are geared towards learning disabled, developmentally challenged students and "low achieving students", while only 0.5% is devoted to talented and gifted students. The article blames this on the increasing costs of adhering to all the national and state laws regarding disabled children, while another argument could be made that schools are more concerned about obtaining minimum scores on standardized tests to receive funding. It may seem completely insensitive to argue against helping disabled students, but it seems to be happening at the expense of the gifted students. When you read articles like this one, you realize that the people who move society forward in leaps and bounds, the ones who create great businesses, create new products, discover new medicines are predominantly the talented and gifted ones. If we as a nation are making a decision to cut funding to these gifted students, are we at the same time making a decision that jeopardizes the advancement of our society as a whole.?

dorkitude 15y ago
Check out the book "Genius Denied"
euroclydon 15y ago
Not exactly related, but HomeSchool Baby! It's SO nice to just opt out of the whole discussion about what the school system should be doing for my kids. I've got friends who are selling houses, going to school board meetings, essentially begging the government to educate their kids well.
- Vivtek 15y ago
  Not to mention you're not locked into taking your vacations during high season.
- rjh29 15y ago
  I don't know, I look back fondly on my school days. I'm not sure if I would have liked to miss out on that.
  - JoeAltmaier 15y ago
    Your life is different,sure. I'm sure home-schooled kids think similar things about their experiences, things they are glad to have not 'missed out on'.
  - GFischer 15y ago
    Anecdotal evidence, but many of us here on HN don't (1). I went to one of the most backwards and messed-up schools here, a Christian Brothers all-male, catholic priest-taight school... in the 1990s! (it has since reformed and is now mixed-gender) Stories of bullying often end up with lots of comments here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=709733 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=709733 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1771483 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1771483 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1764236 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1764236
- phillmv 15y ago
  Schooling is relatively unimportant. There's nothing your kid can't learn on their own time. How do you handle properly socializing your kids? You can't teach them that.
  - rubyrescue 15y ago
    you really can teach them that. in fact, it's much easier for homeschooled kids to relate to people in different ages and social spheres because you have time to actually socialize them with people born outside of a six-month window on either side of their birthday. there are an incredible number of resources both in terms of physical meetups, online classes, public schools who allow kids to show up for sports or difficult to teach subjects (like foreign language) - it's really an incredibly rich experience to homeschool these days and socialization is often only a challenge for those who don't WANT to socialize - particularly the very religously austere homeschoolers. but that's less and less the average homeschooler these days.
  - andrewflnr 15y ago
    My socialization while I was homeschooled was much healthier than when I was in public school. My friends were nicer, mainly. We and several other (Christian) homeschooling families would get together on a weekly basis and hang out. I developed all my social issues from not knowing how to deal with the jerks in public school. There's also church. Something else I've noticed is that homeschooling has given me a certain resilience to crappy teaching in college. I don't care as much, because I know I can just read the book and get what I need.
  - euroclydon 15y ago
    To your first statement: that's just the point, isn't it? How much of their own time is dedicated to high quality learning while in the school system? We're very concerned with socialization. I dont have time to talk about it right now, but I'm not convinced that what goes on in a typical school is in any way "normal". It is a very contrived environment.
  - ChuckMcM 15y ago
    That is the bogey man[1] isn't it? That your home schooled kids will somehow become anti-social. My wife and I home schooled (up to high school) our kids and socialization is a non-issue for three reasons: 1) There are other home schooled kids and they often get together in groups (more on that in a minute). 2) Good home schooling involves interacting with a lot more people from different backgrounds giving more social experience per unit time. 3) One of the common complaints of school students is how messed up the social scene is with regard to cliques, fashion herds, and morality memes. The image that comes to mind when you think 'home school' is that you and your kid, one on one, going through the curriculum. However, there are lots of people and if you look around you will find that a lot of them are home schooling too. When you find the group that is compatible with your tastes you can plan group activities. Our group was covering science by each parent taking the whole group one day a week to focus on something they knew really well, that group was 10 - 15 kids of a variety of ages. Then there are programs like the Riekes Center[2] which spend one day a week with a group of kids understanding a local park's biological diversity. The bottom line is that socialization is the least of the problems you will face. Things that annoy you, people 'turning you in' because your kids aren't in school. People assuming that because you are home schooling you are a science hating religious fanatic, or are a science hating alternate medicine/crystal/universe fanatic, or are sacrificing your child's well-being because they are too lazy to go to school. [1] "bogey man" that mythical creature that is going to 'get you' if you don't conform. Used by parents to tell kids that if they don't go to sleep the bogey man will get them. [2] http://www.riekes.org/info/missionstatement.html http://www.riekes.org/info/missionstatement.html
maeon3 15y ago
You will be unable to prevent the industrious people of the world from being showered with wealth and success. Better to spend time turning drains on society into small contributer.
DanBC 15y ago
You're right, but there should be plenty of companies willing to fund education of very bright youth. Not many people care about those with a learning disability - see the death rates and poor health outcomes for simple illnesses. Whether it's acceptable to have the IBMs and DuPonts providing funding for education is up for debate. Seeing the god-awful job that governments make of education for regular students I'm not sure many people would be too upset. Finally: learning disabled covers a wide range; unfortunately it's sometimes used to include "people with mild dyslexia", and everything done for those people gets included in that budget. So people with severe need may not be seeing much result from that money because it's all being used for, for example, photocopying handouts onto different color paper.
- bluedevil2k 15y ago
  Not sure if you were exaggerating, but that seems like a good idea to get companies to fund and brand gifted learning programs in schools. "IBM Gifted Class"
huxley 15y ago
That 20% you quote covers a wide range of programs which apply to a substantial percentage of all students not just the disabled. But why screw with the disabled and learning challenged when there is the other 79.5% of the funding you are ignoring? Or the fact that massive funds are spent on standardized testing which can be so difficult that high-achieving adults have trouble passing them? http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/2011/12/05/gIQApTDuUO_blog.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/2011/1... The talented and gifted students don't really need much help in school. Often the best thing you can do is get out of their way, perhaps offer them some organizational skills, but those should be offered to all students. I got more from that in school than any other instruction offered.
- bluedevil2k 15y ago
  "The talented and gifted students don't really need much help in school." That couldn't be further from the truth. Every study shows that T&G students need more interaction and more guidance than other students to ensure their increased appetite for knowledge is met. Otherwise, they become bored and disinterested. If you read the Steve Jobs bio, it's a great example of what happens when a gifted kid isn't taught properly
  - hendrix 15y ago
    Let them enroll in community college then. Here in WA it is possible to get an AA/AS as you graduate HS, and not attend the last two years of HS. IMO the first two years HS is very, very necessary for a somewhat decent social development of young people though.
  - ghurlman 15y ago
    Compared to the kids you're trying to take money from, the gifted kids will do just fine, thank you.
    - franticpedantic 15y ago
      I'm sure they will do fine, but are we maximizing their potential? I don't think I was especially gifted, but I did feel like my school pandered overwhelmingly to the worst students. I had an interest in programming and made some QBasic games, but got stuck while transitioning to C and I lost interest until college where I got the mentorship I needed. My school's only computer class taught Microsoft Word. In college, I met people who had family in software or better schools and I can see how it helped them develop their interest better. Now, I'm a professional programmer so of course I'm just fine. But I think I might be even more accomplished if I had a little more help in high school (today's internet might have also sufficed). I think the real super geniuses might not be held back, but I think there are lot of cases like me where you have less than genius but above average intelligence that could accomplish a lot more if challenged a little more.
pragmatic 15y ago
As a father of a child with special needs and also someone who participated in the "gifted" program, I can add a few thoughts. 1. The gifted program (at my school) was next to worthless. We skipped one regular crap class (social studies) to go build paper airplanes to prepare for this competition: http://www.odysseyofthemind.com/ http://www.odysseyofthemind.com/ 2. Early intervention (yes funded with tax payer dollars as part of a program) helped my son with high functioning autism. Due to that intervention he is now (besides from some personality quirks and the occasional melt down) virtually indistinguishable from any other student. In fact his IQ puts him very close to the gifted range. Yes, this is a personal anecdote. I would like to see the research on gifted programs. Are they worth the cost? As a "gifted" student, I learned much more from the library (and now the intranet) than any kind of gifted program.
- TheEzEzz 15y ago
  My experience with the gifted program was similar, but I'm not sure it's fair to judge it based on what it accomplishes with it's current paltry funding.
- shasta 15y ago
  I had a similar opinion of the gifted program I was in. But you seem to drawing the conclusion that money therefore shouldn't be spent on gifted students. I think on the contrary that with bright students it's worth the money to splurge on high functioning teachers.
- andylei 15y ago
  i think there is an argument to be made that your gifted program sucked because it had basically no resources, probably as a result of budgeting decisions.
  - illumin8 15y ago
    There is also a very good argument to make that gifted students don't need any special programs, because they are able to learn on their own at a pace that no instructor or regular course could keep up with.
goblin89 15y ago
I'd better question the way how teaching low achieving students (as opposed to "talented and gifted") is done. The first thing you do to make a person low achieving is call them so and treat them like "low achieving" all the time. I recall there probably are even some researches indicating that if you treat a student like genius, he or she will most likely turn into genius. We can't reliably measure what we call "natural abilities". In other words, what you need IMO is not only spending more money on talented students, but also considering more students gifted and talented. Although this is probably slightly out of scope here. =)
phillmv 15y ago
>It may seem completely insensitive to argue against helping disabled students, but it seems to be happening at the expense of the gifted students. False dichotomy. 1) To begin with, scholastic success correlates most heavily with income, so we're not quite rewarding what you might think we're rewarding 2) The whole purpose in this case is to help these kids become independent or be able to function properly in society. Cutting these kinds of programs only increases the number of people who need to be assisted. > "When you read articles like this one, you realize that the people who move society forward in leaps and bounds, the ones who create great businesses, create new products, discover new medicines are predominantly the talented and gifted ones." This is a tautology. These people don't necessarily do well in school. Success in school != success in life, despite what my family told me.
jasonkolb 15y ago
I think this is a failing of our educational system at a fundamental level. The way it is currently structured--by treating large groups of students as one whole and then teaching to the average or median student--doesn't work well for anyone except for those students who happen to fall very close to the totally average/median. A much more tailored approach is needed, where students falling behind are helped in their specific problem areas, and gifted/exceptional students are allowed to progress at whatever rate they're capable of. This doesn't need to cost more, either, this is not a matter of setting up an exponential number of schools/classes. Technology can easily do most of this, but a large number of sacred cows would need to die. Ultimately IMO this boils down to the fundamental problem facing our society right now--vested interests controlling the political process to maintain the completely outdated status quo. You see this pretty much everywhere you look. But it always awesome to see gifted kids like this young woman overcome the system to do incredible things. I'm looking forward to seeing what she does next.
timtadh 15y ago
As some one who spent the majority of my primary education in various learning disabled programs I have to entirely disagree with you. These programs allow people like me to become productive members of society, without them many people who can achieve great things would never learn the basic skills they need to succeed. What we call "gifted" has nothing to do with "gifts" during the elementary education phase. It has to do with a child's learning style properly fitting the surrounding environment. These children succeed because they fit the system. Others, like me, who have an "impedance" mismatch with the educational environment struggle to gain basic skills such as reading, writing and arithmetic. However, if those basic skills can be mastered and the environment can be altered to fit these "disabled" students they can become highly successful. I consider myself to have succeeded in academia despite not learning to read till the third grade. If I had not been placed in the proper program I would have likely failed to learn to read, write and do arithmetic for a much longer period of time. While "gifted" students need assistance and programs designed for their needs as much as "disabled" students it makes no sense to reduce already limited resources available to programs for disabled children. These children can become productive, highly successful individuals if given the proper support.
tryitnow 15y ago
Throwing more money at "gifted" programs is like an emergency room taking care of someone with the sniffles while the guy with a gunshot wound bleeds to death. From an economic perspective it just doesn't seem like a valuable use of resources.
- jrockway 15y ago
  It's more like an emergency room treating the drug dealer who has just been shot while the police officer that has just been knifed sits in the waiting room after being given a towel to bleed into. Sure, the gunshot wound is more pressing, but is it really good for society to save him over a police officer? The amount of money spent on education goes farther if the people being educated have more potential. You could use the money to make someone below average less below average, or you could make someone above average into the next Einstein. I'd rather spend my money on the future researcher that cures cancer rather than on someone who will do little more than collect welfare checks and eat a bunch of high fructose corn syrup. (The good news is that enough money seems to be being spent on gifted programs. I got to go to a state-sponsored math and science high school, and it was the best experience of my life.)
  - gujk 15y ago
    Wow. Lucky for us we'll probably never have an incrediblly genius physicist who can't wipe his own drool or speak English under his own power. Probably. Anymore.
    - jrockway 15y ago
      Presumably Hawking would be in the gifted program.
peter_l_downs 15y ago
> It may seem completely insensitive to argue against helping disabled students, but it seems to be happening at the expense of the gifted students. As phillmv pointed out, this is a false dichotomy. If somehow these two were mutually exclusive, I would argue that (if anything) spending on gifted students hurts disabled students. Like pragmatic, I also have some experience with programs for the learning disabled and for the gifted. My twin brother Henry is extremely "intellectually disabled" (he has severe Autism and cannot speak English or take care of himself).I tested into my school district's gifted program in 4th grade. The gifted programs at the schools in the district seem very well funded, while the care my brother was bad enough that we moved Henry to a private school. > If we as a nation are making a decision to cut funding to these gifted students, are we at the same time making a decision that jeopardizes the advancement of our society as a whole.? Don't be ridiculous. Gifted programs are pretty useless. The truly gifted will find time to work on what they're good at, no matter the circumstances. Speaking from personal experience as a student in my district's gifted programs, most of them are wastes of time and money because they don't allow students to explore what they're interested in. My elementary school's gifted program was worthless - we gifted students skipped social studies (like pragmatic) and learned... all about Louis and Clark's journeys. If you weren't interested, too bad. The program did not suffer from lack of funding - We had guest speakers and access to the internet - but lack of good design. In middle school, we got to skip one class a week to work on whatever we wanted (within limits). Every week there were a couple of different projects that we could work on. My favorite were the lego mindstorms, but I also really enjoyed some of our literature units. The program was extremely well done - give students a chance to miss a class they dislike to focus on something they might, while still exposing them to different areas of knowledge. Unfortunately, the Highschool's program was terrible. Taking the place of a free period, we had a curriculum set without any input from the students. There were no grades, but we were expected to attempt to do well anyway, regardless of whether or not the area of study was interesting (usually not). Again, it didn't suffer from lack of money, but fundamental problems in how that money was used. About nine out of ten gifted students at my school dropped out of the program after the first year of Highschool because it was such a waste of time. All of these kids are intelligent and hard-working - they quit because they realized they could spend their time more efficiently. DISCLAIMER - This is all based off of personal experience. I cannot speak for all gifted programs in all schools.
bh42222 15y ago
Speaking as a foreigner who spent one year in a US high-school, I was shocked that both disabled students and non-disabled students were in the same school. To me it was obvious this was bad for both, but especially the disabled students who could be served much better in a specialized school. But then once I learned more US history regarding segregating different groups of people... well I still think it's a bad way to go, but now at least I understand why it is that way. In other countries disabled students attend specialized schools who provide them with a much better level of services. The concentration of students with disabilities allows for the concentration of people with advance and specialized skills. This not usually possible in a standard school, where only a very small number of students is disabled.
- scott_s 15y ago
  What kind of disabilities are you talking about? Physical disabilities, or emotional and cognitive disabilities? My mother was a special education teacher - her students had emotional and cognitive disabilities. While she taught inside of a normal elementary school, she was really in a school-within-a-school. All of her students had emotional disabilities, and they had a separate staff and reporting structure than the rest of the school. Some emotionally disabled kids can go into general education later on, but not all of them can. Now, physically disabled students is a different matter entirely. They have the same emotional and cognitive abilities as everyone else. I think they should be in the same classes, and the general educational system should accommodate them.
deleted 15y ago
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DrStalker 15y ago
An anecdote: I was fortunate to attend a primary school in Australia where the headmaster was very keen on helping both the low end and the high end students. The main work for the gifted students had almost zero budgetry requirements; it was a weekly class with assorted thought provoking questions and projects led by one of the existing staff members. Obviously there was a time cost involved in having someone do that instead of other duties, but that would not have shown up as extra budget.

dorkitude 15y ago

Check out the book "Genius Denied"

euroclydon 15y ago

Not exactly related, but HomeSchool Baby! It's SO nice to just opt out of the whole discussion about what the school system should be doing for my kids. I've got friends who are selling houses, going to school board meetings, essentially begging the government to educate their kids well.

Vivtek 15y ago
Not to mention you're not locked into taking your vacations during high season.
rjh29 15y ago
I don't know, I look back fondly on my school days. I'm not sure if I would have liked to miss out on that.
- JoeAltmaier 15y ago
  Your life is different,sure. I'm sure home-schooled kids think similar things about their experiences, things they are glad to have not 'missed out on'.
- GFischer 15y ago
  Anecdotal evidence, but many of us here on HN don't (1). I went to one of the most backwards and messed-up schools here, a Christian Brothers all-male, catholic priest-taight school... in the 1990s! (it has since reformed and is now mixed-gender) Stories of bullying often end up with lots of comments here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=709733 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=709733 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1771483 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1771483 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1764236 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1764236
phillmv 15y ago
Schooling is relatively unimportant. There's nothing your kid can't learn on their own time. How do you handle properly socializing your kids? You can't teach them that.
- rubyrescue 15y ago
  you really can teach them that. in fact, it's much easier for homeschooled kids to relate to people in different ages and social spheres because you have time to actually socialize them with people born outside of a six-month window on either side of their birthday. there are an incredible number of resources both in terms of physical meetups, online classes, public schools who allow kids to show up for sports or difficult to teach subjects (like foreign language) - it's really an incredibly rich experience to homeschool these days and socialization is often only a challenge for those who don't WANT to socialize - particularly the very religously austere homeschoolers. but that's less and less the average homeschooler these days.
- andrewflnr 15y ago
  My socialization while I was homeschooled was much healthier than when I was in public school. My friends were nicer, mainly. We and several other (Christian) homeschooling families would get together on a weekly basis and hang out. I developed all my social issues from not knowing how to deal with the jerks in public school. There's also church. Something else I've noticed is that homeschooling has given me a certain resilience to crappy teaching in college. I don't care as much, because I know I can just read the book and get what I need.
- euroclydon 15y ago
  To your first statement: that's just the point, isn't it? How much of their own time is dedicated to high quality learning while in the school system? We're very concerned with socialization. I dont have time to talk about it right now, but I'm not convinced that what goes on in a typical school is in any way "normal". It is a very contrived environment.
- ChuckMcM 15y ago
  That is the bogey man[1] isn't it? That your home schooled kids will somehow become anti-social. My wife and I home schooled (up to high school) our kids and socialization is a non-issue for three reasons: 1) There are other home schooled kids and they often get together in groups (more on that in a minute). 2) Good home schooling involves interacting with a lot more people from different backgrounds giving more social experience per unit time. 3) One of the common complaints of school students is how messed up the social scene is with regard to cliques, fashion herds, and morality memes. The image that comes to mind when you think 'home school' is that you and your kid, one on one, going through the curriculum. However, there are lots of people and if you look around you will find that a lot of them are home schooling too. When you find the group that is compatible with your tastes you can plan group activities. Our group was covering science by each parent taking the whole group one day a week to focus on something they knew really well, that group was 10 - 15 kids of a variety of ages. Then there are programs like the Riekes Center[2] which spend one day a week with a group of kids understanding a local park's biological diversity. The bottom line is that socialization is the least of the problems you will face. Things that annoy you, people 'turning you in' because your kids aren't in school. People assuming that because you are home schooling you are a science hating religious fanatic, or are a science hating alternate medicine/crystal/universe fanatic, or are sacrificing your child's well-being because they are too lazy to go to school. [1] "bogey man" that mythical creature that is going to 'get you' if you don't conform. Used by parents to tell kids that if they don't go to sleep the bogey man will get them. [2] http://www.riekes.org/info/missionstatement.html http://www.riekes.org/info/missionstatement.html

maeon3 15y ago

You will be unable to prevent the industrious people of the world from being showered with wealth and success. Better to spend time turning drains on society into small contributer.

DanBC 15y ago

You're right, but there should be plenty of companies willing to fund education of very bright youth. Not many people care about those with a learning disability - see the death rates and poor health outcomes for simple illnesses. Whether it's acceptable to have the IBMs and DuPonts providing funding for education is up for debate. Seeing the god-awful job that governments make of education for regular students I'm not sure many people would be too upset. Finally: learning disabled covers a wide range; unfortunately it's sometimes used to include "people with mild dyslexia", and everything done for those people gets included in that budget. So people with severe need may not be seeing much result from that money because it's all being used for, for example, photocopying handouts onto different color paper.

bluedevil2k 15y ago
Not sure if you were exaggerating, but that seems like a good idea to get companies to fund and brand gifted learning programs in schools. "IBM Gifted Class"

huxley 15y ago

That 20% you quote covers a wide range of programs which apply to a substantial percentage of all students not just the disabled. But why screw with the disabled and learning challenged when there is the other 79.5% of the funding you are ignoring? Or the fact that massive funds are spent on standardized testing which can be so difficult that high-achieving adults have trouble passing them? http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/2011/12/05/gIQApTDuUO_blog.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/2011/1... The talented and gifted students don't really need much help in school. Often the best thing you can do is get out of their way, perhaps offer them some organizational skills, but those should be offered to all students. I got more from that in school than any other instruction offered.

bluedevil2k 15y ago
"The talented and gifted students don't really need much help in school." That couldn't be further from the truth. Every study shows that T&G students need more interaction and more guidance than other students to ensure their increased appetite for knowledge is met. Otherwise, they become bored and disinterested. If you read the Steve Jobs bio, it's a great example of what happens when a gifted kid isn't taught properly
- hendrix 15y ago
  Let them enroll in community college then. Here in WA it is possible to get an AA/AS as you graduate HS, and not attend the last two years of HS. IMO the first two years HS is very, very necessary for a somewhat decent social development of young people though.
- ghurlman 15y ago
  Compared to the kids you're trying to take money from, the gifted kids will do just fine, thank you.
  - franticpedantic 15y ago
    I'm sure they will do fine, but are we maximizing their potential? I don't think I was especially gifted, but I did feel like my school pandered overwhelmingly to the worst students. I had an interest in programming and made some QBasic games, but got stuck while transitioning to C and I lost interest until college where I got the mentorship I needed. My school's only computer class taught Microsoft Word. In college, I met people who had family in software or better schools and I can see how it helped them develop their interest better. Now, I'm a professional programmer so of course I'm just fine. But I think I might be even more accomplished if I had a little more help in high school (today's internet might have also sufficed). I think the real super geniuses might not be held back, but I think there are lot of cases like me where you have less than genius but above average intelligence that could accomplish a lot more if challenged a little more.

pragmatic 15y ago

As a father of a child with special needs and also someone who participated in the "gifted" program, I can add a few thoughts. 1. The gifted program (at my school) was next to worthless. We skipped one regular crap class (social studies) to go build paper airplanes to prepare for this competition: http://www.odysseyofthemind.com/ http://www.odysseyofthemind.com/ 2. Early intervention (yes funded with tax payer dollars as part of a program) helped my son with high functioning autism. Due to that intervention he is now (besides from some personality quirks and the occasional melt down) virtually indistinguishable from any other student. In fact his IQ puts him very close to the gifted range. Yes, this is a personal anecdote. I would like to see the research on gifted programs. Are they worth the cost? As a "gifted" student, I learned much more from the library (and now the intranet) than any kind of gifted program.

TheEzEzz 15y ago
My experience with the gifted program was similar, but I'm not sure it's fair to judge it based on what it accomplishes with it's current paltry funding.
shasta 15y ago
I had a similar opinion of the gifted program I was in. But you seem to drawing the conclusion that money therefore shouldn't be spent on gifted students. I think on the contrary that with bright students it's worth the money to splurge on high functioning teachers.
andylei 15y ago
i think there is an argument to be made that your gifted program sucked because it had basically no resources, probably as a result of budgeting decisions.
- illumin8 15y ago
  There is also a very good argument to make that gifted students don't need any special programs, because they are able to learn on their own at a pace that no instructor or regular course could keep up with.

goblin89 15y ago

I'd better question the way how teaching low achieving students (as opposed to "talented and gifted") is done. The first thing you do to make a person low achieving is call them so and treat them like "low achieving" all the time. I recall there probably are even some researches indicating that if you treat a student like genius, he or she will most likely turn into genius. We can't reliably measure what we call "natural abilities". In other words, what you need IMO is not only spending more money on talented students, but also considering more students gifted and talented. Although this is probably slightly out of scope here. =)

phillmv 15y ago

>It may seem completely insensitive to argue against helping disabled students, but it seems to be happening at the expense of the gifted students. False dichotomy. 1) To begin with, scholastic success correlates most heavily with income, so we're not quite rewarding what you might think we're rewarding 2) The whole purpose in this case is to help these kids become independent or be able to function properly in society. Cutting these kinds of programs only increases the number of people who need to be assisted. > "When you read articles like this one, you realize that the people who move society forward in leaps and bounds, the ones who create great businesses, create new products, discover new medicines are predominantly the talented and gifted ones." This is a tautology. These people don't necessarily do well in school. Success in school != success in life, despite what my family told me.

jasonkolb 15y ago

I think this is a failing of our educational system at a fundamental level. The way it is currently structured--by treating large groups of students as one whole and then teaching to the average or median student--doesn't work well for anyone except for those students who happen to fall very close to the totally average/median. A much more tailored approach is needed, where students falling behind are helped in their specific problem areas, and gifted/exceptional students are allowed to progress at whatever rate they're capable of. This doesn't need to cost more, either, this is not a matter of setting up an exponential number of schools/classes. Technology can easily do most of this, but a large number of sacred cows would need to die. Ultimately IMO this boils down to the fundamental problem facing our society right now--vested interests controlling the political process to maintain the completely outdated status quo. You see this pretty much everywhere you look. But it always awesome to see gifted kids like this young woman overcome the system to do incredible things. I'm looking forward to seeing what she does next.

timtadh 15y ago

As some one who spent the majority of my primary education in various learning disabled programs I have to entirely disagree with you. These programs allow people like me to become productive members of society, without them many people who can achieve great things would never learn the basic skills they need to succeed. What we call "gifted" has nothing to do with "gifts" during the elementary education phase. It has to do with a child's learning style properly fitting the surrounding environment. These children succeed because they fit the system. Others, like me, who have an "impedance" mismatch with the educational environment struggle to gain basic skills such as reading, writing and arithmetic. However, if those basic skills can be mastered and the environment can be altered to fit these "disabled" students they can become highly successful. I consider myself to have succeeded in academia despite not learning to read till the third grade. If I had not been placed in the proper program I would have likely failed to learn to read, write and do arithmetic for a much longer period of time. While "gifted" students need assistance and programs designed for their needs as much as "disabled" students it makes no sense to reduce already limited resources available to programs for disabled children. These children can become productive, highly successful individuals if given the proper support.

tryitnow 15y ago

Throwing more money at "gifted" programs is like an emergency room taking care of someone with the sniffles while the guy with a gunshot wound bleeds to death. From an economic perspective it just doesn't seem like a valuable use of resources.

jrockway 15y ago
It's more like an emergency room treating the drug dealer who has just been shot while the police officer that has just been knifed sits in the waiting room after being given a towel to bleed into. Sure, the gunshot wound is more pressing, but is it really good for society to save him over a police officer? The amount of money spent on education goes farther if the people being educated have more potential. You could use the money to make someone below average less below average, or you could make someone above average into the next Einstein. I'd rather spend my money on the future researcher that cures cancer rather than on someone who will do little more than collect welfare checks and eat a bunch of high fructose corn syrup. (The good news is that enough money seems to be being spent on gifted programs. I got to go to a state-sponsored math and science high school, and it was the best experience of my life.)
- gujk 15y ago
  Wow. Lucky for us we'll probably never have an incrediblly genius physicist who can't wipe his own drool or speak English under his own power. Probably. Anymore.
  - jrockway 15y ago
    Presumably Hawking would be in the gifted program.

peter_l_downs 15y ago

> It may seem completely insensitive to argue against helping disabled students, but it seems to be happening at the expense of the gifted students. As phillmv pointed out, this is a false dichotomy. If somehow these two were mutually exclusive, I would argue that (if anything) spending on gifted students hurts disabled students. Like pragmatic, I also have some experience with programs for the learning disabled and for the gifted. My twin brother Henry is extremely "intellectually disabled" (he has severe Autism and cannot speak English or take care of himself).I tested into my school district's gifted program in 4th grade. The gifted programs at the schools in the district seem very well funded, while the care my brother was bad enough that we moved Henry to a private school. > If we as a nation are making a decision to cut funding to these gifted students, are we at the same time making a decision that jeopardizes the advancement of our society as a whole.? Don't be ridiculous. Gifted programs are pretty useless. The truly gifted will find time to work on what they're good at, no matter the circumstances. Speaking from personal experience as a student in my district's gifted programs, most of them are wastes of time and money because they don't allow students to explore what they're interested in. My elementary school's gifted program was worthless - we gifted students skipped social studies (like pragmatic) and learned... all about Louis and Clark's journeys. If you weren't interested, too bad. The program did not suffer from lack of funding - We had guest speakers and access to the internet - but lack of good design. In middle school, we got to skip one class a week to work on whatever we wanted (within limits). Every week there were a couple of different projects that we could work on. My favorite were the lego mindstorms, but I also really enjoyed some of our literature units. The program was extremely well done - give students a chance to miss a class they dislike to focus on something they might, while still exposing them to different areas of knowledge. Unfortunately, the Highschool's program was terrible. Taking the place of a free period, we had a curriculum set without any input from the students. There were no grades, but we were expected to attempt to do well anyway, regardless of whether or not the area of study was interesting (usually not). Again, it didn't suffer from lack of money, but fundamental problems in how that money was used. About nine out of ten gifted students at my school dropped out of the program after the first year of Highschool because it was such a waste of time. All of these kids are intelligent and hard-working - they quit because they realized they could spend their time more efficiently. DISCLAIMER - This is all based off of personal experience. I cannot speak for all gifted programs in all schools.

bh42222 15y ago

Speaking as a foreigner who spent one year in a US high-school, I was shocked that both disabled students and non-disabled students were in the same school. To me it was obvious this was bad for both, but especially the disabled students who could be served much better in a specialized school. But then once I learned more US history regarding segregating different groups of people... well I still think it's a bad way to go, but now at least I understand why it is that way. In other countries disabled students attend specialized schools who provide them with a much better level of services. The concentration of students with disabilities allows for the concentration of people with advance and specialized skills. This not usually possible in a standard school, where only a very small number of students is disabled.

scott_s 15y ago
What kind of disabilities are you talking about? Physical disabilities, or emotional and cognitive disabilities? My mother was a special education teacher - her students had emotional and cognitive disabilities. While she taught inside of a normal elementary school, she was really in a school-within-a-school. All of her students had emotional disabilities, and they had a separate staff and reporting structure than the rest of the school. Some emotionally disabled kids can go into general education later on, but not all of them can. Now, physically disabled students is a different matter entirely. They have the same emotional and cognitive abilities as everyone else. I think they should be in the same classes, and the general educational system should accommodate them.

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DrStalker 15y ago

An anecdote: I was fortunate to attend a primary school in Australia where the headmaster was very keen on helping both the low end and the high end students. The main work for the gifted students had almost zero budgetry requirements; it was a weekly class with assorted thought provoking questions and projects led by one of the existing staff members. Obviously there was a time cost involved in having someone do that instead of other duties, but that would not have shown up as extra budget.