

School Rules Stifle Gifted Student - tokenadult
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/class-struggle/2009/10/anyone_who_wants_to_appreciate.html

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skolor
As someone who struggled with schooling for quite a while, this story strikes
somewhat close to home. Even the "advanced" courses had little to offer, I
either already knew it, or it was trivially easy for me to deduce or learn.

I did, however, have one lucky point that many of these stories seem to be
missing: a large number of my teachers didn't care what I did, as long as I
was able to keep up in my classes. This meant that all through middle school
and most of high school, rather than pay attention in class I would read some
place in the realm of 1000-2000 pages a week, usually of various types of
fantasy or science fiction books. I also had a handful of teachers who
encouraged me to work on any problem I found particularly interesting,
suggesting that I keep working on it well past the point required by the
course.

I personally believe that is the way that any sort of gifted student should be
taught. The current remedial->"regular"->advanced set of curriculum seems to
work fairly well for those that fall into those categories, and by encouraging
those above the advanced level to work on their own, above and beyond the
classwork, on what they find interesting, you manage to meet their educational
needs too. I am strongly against home-schooling and private schools, at least
for those on the highest end of the intellectual scale. Any sort of
educational situation where your entire peer group is of the same intellectual
capacity leads to later problems. You develop the mindset that everyone is
exactly like you, and that they have the same abilities and capabilities of
yourself. Anyone who does not share your abilities becomes inferior, and you
are able to de-humanize them.

Its mostly anecdotal, but with few exceptions ever single I have met who was
home schooled, went to a private "gifted" school, or was in the IB program
(which, at least in our area, segregates a public school into regular students
and the IB students, and the IB students rarely, if ever, encounter the other
students through the course of a day) has had a negative view of anyone with
other skills and abilites, or at least those that have abilities that were not
present in the peer group they were schooled with. A schooling method that
teaches advanced students more advanced subjects, but also encourages slurs
for "normal students" and the concept that the students are, by nature, better
than everyone else, is not at all a good thing.

~~~
tokenadult
_I did, however, have one lucky point that many of these stories seem to be
missing: a large number of my teachers didn't care what I did, as long as I
was able to keep up in my classes._

Albert Einstein took advantage of this in his day.

". . . I worked most of the time in the physical laboratory [at the
Polytechnic Institute of Zürich], fascinated by the direct contact with
experience. The balance of the time I used in the main in order to study at
home the works of Kirchoff, Helmholtz, Hertz, etc. . . . In [physics],
however, I soon learned to scent out that which was able to lead to
fundamentals and to turn aside from everything else, from the multitude of
things which clutter up the mind and divert it from the essential. The hitch
in this was, of course, the fact that one had to cram all this stuff into
one's mind for the examinations, whether one liked it or not. This coercion
had such a deterring effect [upon me] that, after I had passed the final
examination, I found the consideration of any scientific problems distasteful
to me for an entire year. In justice I must add, moreover, that in Switzerland
we had to suffer far less under such coercion, which smothers every truly
scientific impulse, than is the case in many another locality. There were
altogether only two examinations; aside from these, one could just about do as
one pleased. This was especially the case if one had a friend, as did I, who
attended the lectures regularly and who worked over their content
conscientiously. This gave one freedom in the choice of pursuits until a few
months before the examination, a freedom which I enjoyed to a great extent and
have gladly taken into the bargain the bad conscience connected with it as by
far the lesser evil. It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the
modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy
curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation,
stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to wreck and ruin
without fail. It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing
and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty. To the
contrary, I believe it would be possible to rob even a healthy beast of prey
of its voraciousness, if it were possible, with the aid of a whip, to force
the beast to devour continuously, even when not hungry, especially if the
food, handed out under such coercion, were to be selected accordingly."

"Autobiographical Notes," in Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist, Paul
Schilpp, ed. (1951), pp. 17-19 © 1951 by the Library of Living Philosophers,
Inc.

~~~
johnnybgoode
Thanks tokenadult. I knew Einstein had views like this (mine are similar,
especially with regard to coercive study plans) but I had never seen this
quote in particular. It's refreshingly direct -- I did not know Einstein had
actually used the word "coercion" for this.

~~~
tokenadult
The cited book also shows Einstein's full text in the original German, and a
page or two in a photostat of his handwriting. It's great to have a statement
like this from the hand of the master.

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far33d
It's ridiculous that a student who barely coasts through the most remedial
track can graduate because of social promotion, but a motivated kid who takes
college courses can't get a diploma.

------
swolchok
As far as I know, I was allowed to skip 7th grade math and science simply
because my parents asked for it. If I recall correctly, it was a simple
request. (I don't know what led up to it exactly, but I didn't miss anything
-- those classes were pre-algebra and (I think) earth science), which are
redundant with earlier/later courses.)

~~~
tokenadult
It would be interesting to hear where and in what era that happened. Some
school districts are very loath to permit grade skips. My personal case in
childhood was quite unusual: I was grade-skipped, contrary to general school
policy, even though neither I nor my parents asked for the skip, when it
became apparent that my learning at that date was well beyond the school
curriculum. My skip was from fifth grade (elementary school) to seventh grade
(the beginning of junior high) so I never attended sixth grade.

Since then, I have often pondered the insanity of dividing children into
grades by age in the first place.

<http://learninfreedom.org/age_grading_bad.html>

~~~
swolchok
I won't spell it out here because I'd like to make any bad guys out there dig
too, but it's not particularly hard to divine my approximate age and where I
went to school by Googling.

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buugs
On the note of college courses something they have here is called concurrent
enrollment where you can take college courses for free and have them count for
credit so long that you take a minimum of half the required high school
classes and make up for the missing classes in your college courses.

I think that this child wants too much of the social aspects of schooling over
his learning as he can already attend college, you don't even have to be
"gifted" to find high school courses boring and review.

~~~
derefr
Is that supposed to be a bad thing? High-school students are generally of the
age where they [naturally, evolutionarily] feel most attached to people
closest to their own age. I definitely would have skipped ahead in school if
it didn't mean losing my friends.

------
tokenadult
The school district's response to the submitted article:

[http://voices.washingtonpost.com/class-
struggle/2009/10/_sin...](http://voices.washingtonpost.com/class-
struggle/2009/10/_since_the_story_of.html)

~~~
btilly
If you have experience with bureaucracies the response confirms the original
article. My favorite line was, _Currently over 40% of our students participate
in our Gifted and Talented program offerings across all grades._ Which tells
me that their definition of "Gifted and Talented" is so broad as to be
meaningless. And certainly doesn't have any room to understand truly
extraordinary kids.

~~~
roc
There's definitely some bureaucratic self-serving in the response. But this
particular bit seems to raise some questions about the original article RE his
college and home-school courses: _Credit will only be awarded if the student
completes the college course._

Given that the district isn't allowed to just come out and give specifics
about a student's test scores or grades, that line certainly casts the
parent's claims in a new light.

While the district likely doesn't have any capability to properly serve truly
extraordinary kids, I'm beginning to think the kid in question _probably
isn't_.

And I'm not sure that the public school system _ought_ to be required to serve
such kids. At best, they just need a method to recommend a gifted student to
the appropriate private or secondary educators who _are_ capable and possibly
work out some revenue agreement where state/federal funds for that student can
be applied to the institution that _does_ take that child.

~~~
tokenadult
_At best, they just need a method to recommend a gifted student to the
appropriate private or secondary educators who are capable and possibly work
out some revenue agreement where state/federal funds for that student can be
applied to the institution that does take that child._

Here in Minnesota, most parents have some power to shop for schools, because
all public school districts have open enrollment, with school funding
(provided just about entirely by statewide taxation) following students to
their districts of enrollment. There are also many charter schools here,
although no charter school is allowed to have selective enrollment by student
intellect. For eleventh and twelfth grade, Minnesota students may dual-enroll
in colleges or universities, also with general state funding, in what is
called the Post-Secondary Enrollment Options (PSEO) program.

<http://www.ohe.state.mn.us/mPg.cfm?pageID=797>

My oldest son avails himself of this opportunity at the University of
Minnesota

<http://www.cce.umn.edu/ahs/index.html>

allowing him to take upper-division math classes as a "high school junior" and
upper-division computer science courses as a "high school senior," which would
be impossible at any Minnesota high school. He was also able to take much more
challenging foreign language and English writing courses through this channel.
Not many other states are this flexible.

~~~
pchristensen
Holy smokes, I might have to move to MN when my kids hit school age. I'd heard
about how MN was generally more educated and progressive in education than
other states, but that's really, really impressive.

~~~
tokenadult
Yes, agreeing with sister reply to yours, UMTYMP is a great program, and
Minnesota in general has more power to shop for more parents than most states
in the United States, which parents of gifted children are gradually learning
to use to find more appropriate education for their children. The
homeschooling statute here is quite workable too.

------
bilbo0s
The unfortunate reality is that there are no INTELLECTUALLY gifted and
talented students in most schools. There are only slightly more who are
musically or otherwise artistically gifted and talented. Truly gifted students
should be moved to schools specifically catering to their needs. As there are
so few of these students nationally, it would need to be a boarding school in
my opinion.

The students being discussed in this article and in the response are just AP.
Not gifted. We throw that word around too much, and it has come to mean
nothing now.

~~~
tokenadult
_As there are so few of these students nationally_

This seems to imply a definition. What definition are you talking about here?
What is the source for the definition and the estimate of the frequency of
such students?

P.S. As a point of information, I will mention that I have one child in the
Davidson Institute for Talent Development Young Scholars program,

<http://www.davidsongifted.org/youngscholars/>

which has its particular definition of eligible students. To the best of my
knowledge and belief, a typical school district in Minnesota (where school
districts are considerably smaller than counties, unlike Maryland) has no more
than one or two students who have gone through the enrollment steps for the
Davidson Institute Young Scholars program. How many theoretically eligible
young persons any one place has is unknown, as far as I know.

~~~
asmithmd1
Here is a place that has a good definition.

<http://cty.jhu.edu/>

They have 7th graders who test at 95% percentile or above take the regular
SATs - not PSATs - and those 7th graders who are above the average for college
bound high school seniors obviously need something besides normal high school.

They define kids that score above 700 on math or verbal SAT _before they are
13_ as truly gifted.

~~~
tokenadult
_those 7th graders who are above the average for college bound high school
seniors obviously need something besides normal high school_

Yes. Those middle-school-age young people who take Talent Search testing
through Northwestern University's Midwest Academic Talent Search

<http://www.ctd.northwestern.edu/numats/>

receive a booklet of academic planning advice after receiving their scores.
Many of the specific points of that advice are impossible to implement in most
states in the Midwest.

