
Rethinking Giftedness and Gifted Education (2011) [pdf] - lainon
https://www.apa.org/ed/schools/gifted/rethinking-giftedness.pdf
======
avip
One thing which stands as obvious to me is that we should, as a society,
strive to provide the "special education for gifted" to everyone. Then we'll
magically have more "gifted" children. At my kids' school, there's one day a
week where all the "gifted" kids are going on "special program", where they do
chess, some electronics, robotics, math, in a very free atmosphere. This
should be the standard education, not some elite program for selected kids.

~~~
orbifold
There is „gifted“ children and then there are gifted children. To give you an
example there are more than a million university students in Germany but only
roughly 5000 are supported by the Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes. You
just won’t find enough students with 3 sigma deviation in a typical high
school. What is more a typical teacher won’t be able to support them in any
meaningful way because they quickly run out of things to teach them. Students
like that are best supported individually by extracurricular activities and
direct contact with PhD and Professors, as well as participation in
competitions.)

I agree with your general point that normal education could be made much more
interesting as well. Although it would partially defeat the purpose of
education to not prepare students for the boredom and rigid schedule of
ordinary work early on.

~~~
avip
There's no point in designing schools for "three sigma". Schools should be
designed to push the median upwards. "Three sigmas" should be homeschooled,
any sufficiently large system will only inhibit them.

~~~
neffy
"Three sigmas" and above aren't distributed only in the population of people
capable of home schooling very bright children.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Funny thing though - home schooling so easily beats the institutional kind,
you don't have to be very good at it to school very bright children.

Further, if the teacher at school with their class of 30 did nothing but tutor
the students, each student would get 10 minutes (in a 5-hour school day). You
as a parent can beat that the 1st 11 minutes of your home-school day. That
leaves you hours of the day for moving ahead of the classroom.

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droithomme
"Exceptionally Gifted Children: Long-Term Outcomes of Academic Acceleration
and Nonacceleration" by Miraca U. M. Gross is an extremely illuminating long-
term nationwide study of the exceptionally gifted and what differences result
between accelerating or mainstreaming them.

[https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ746290.pdf](https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ746290.pdf)

~~~
MRD85
That hit home fairly hard, though it can be hard to talk about since most
people respond negatively to claims of ability. I was identified as a gifted
child in primary school and was transferred school to a gifted school where I
completed my primary education. I graduated dux (top of the school) and was
years ahead in every subject.

My parents then chose to send me to the impoverished local high school, a
school with median grades well below average. It was horrible, in year 7 at
age 12 I would help my 17 year old brother with his homework when he
struggled. I struggled to make proper bonds with other kids and I was horribly
bored. It led to a bunch of psychological issues that I didn't get sorted out
until my late 20's. I was incredibly interested in computers but I was pushed
away from them (this is the early 2000's) as they were a waste of time and I
should focus on skills so I can get a trade. I completed a trade in my early
20's and was depressed due to social isolation. I had nothing in common with
my peers.

My parents did the best job they knew how to, I don't hold it against them. To
them, a trade sets someone up for life. I'm in my early 30's now and I am
finally starting to live a great life. I've been studying for a few years and
I am preparing to transition to life as a software developer. I'm finally
meeting people that I share interests with!

I don't care about missing out on career achievements I may have possibly had.
I do regret I missed most of my teenage years and all of my 20's to major
depression. They are supposed to be the best years of your life. My 30's are
turning out fairly amazing though, every year I become happier and happier
with how my life is shaping up. The best decision I ever made was seeking help
from a proffesional to identify why I was so unhappy.

~~~
mcv
My impression is that most schools don't like accelerating kids, because they
can end up way too young among much older class mates in a completely
different phase of their lives. The Dougie Howser idea is terrible; Dougie is
not a doctor, he's a child and should get the chance to live as one.

Better is challenging children in other areas: find things outside the regular
school curriculum to challenge them with. Robotics, philosophy, science,
politics, or other projects that are interesting and challenging but don't
make them bored about next year's school curriculum.

My son did skip a grade despite his school not being a fan, and he did so at a
point where next year's curriculum would have been mostly a repetition of the
previous year's. That would have been a recipe for boredom, so it makes sense
to skip that. But other than that, he just does a bit extra in less time and
gets other interesting challenging stuff to keep him occupied.

When I was a kid, my schools did nothing of the sort, and I ended up bored and
demotivated. By the time I went to university, I still hadn't learned to do
homework, because I never needed to. Turns out being able to work is rather an
important skill in university. I plan to make sure my son learns it on time.
But not by skipping too many grades.

~~~
MRD85
The phase of the life issue is touched upon in the link. It discusses how the
accelerated kids are often happy because they have new peers who have similar
interests. It's a difficult issue to solve. A 7-year-old who is 4 years ahead
of his age group peers has little in common with his peer group but is very
much younger than 11-year-olds.

The study in the link appears to indicate that the accelerated kids ended up
happier and more fulfilled as adults. I think that's a very good argument for
acceleration.

------
Bucephalus355
Being an expert violinist takes about 4 hours of “purposeful practice” per day
from 5 until 18. Really even this just means “good enough to get into the
school that can then maybe get you into the Berlin Philharmonic”. This is also
where Malcolm Gladwell got and then sort of over-simplified the 10,000 hour
rule.

Of course, being a violinist takes that long because we have a well defined
training platform that has been developed for 400 years. Being an expert cloud
architect, a relatively new field, would take less time. Once someone gets
into the Berlin Philharmonic and then plays for a few years, they are closer
to 30,000 hours. Can’t imagine being an expert of cloud architecture couldn’t
be done via 2 hours a day for 8 years, which is 6,000 hours. It barely existed
8 years ago!

~~~
stephencanon
> Being an expert cloud architect, a relatively new field, would take less
> time.

This is non-obvious. It seems at least as likely to me that there are _no_
expert cloud architects yet.

~~~
taneq
You're both right. Being an expert (relative to other living humans) is
easier, because the bar is lower. In 500 years I bet it'll take 15+ years of
daily deliberate practice to be a world-class cloud architect too.

Of course, the bar will probably remain lower because there are far more jobs
for cloud architects than there are for high-end professional concert
violinists.

~~~
luckydata
Your average violinist now is much more proficient than 100 years ago. The
phenomenon is particularly evident in electric guitar where the average player
now would have been considered a GOD in the 70s. The bar keeps getting higher,
but our ability to teach is also getting better, especially thanks to youtube.

~~~
joejerryronnie
I don’t know, name me an average guitar player today who is better than Jimmy
Page?

~~~
luckydata
Jimmy was an innovator but also an extremely sloppy player. I can play his
parts note for note better than he ever could. That's true for a LOT of people
playing the guitar for fun at this point in time. Take a look at this to get
an idea of what's "technically proficient" nowadays:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oj0CjV1QxtQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oj0CjV1QxtQ)

these are almost all folks making youtube videos, not exactly rockstars (with
a couple exceptions).

~~~
chosenbreed37
> Jimmy was an innovator but also an extremely sloppy player. I can play his
> parts note for note better than he ever could.

Hard to argue with that. Except to say that ultimately it's not always the
virtuosity that captures people's affections. Some have postulated that soon
we'll have music made by machines. Perfect pitch and tempo. But it would
appear that the irregularities in human performances actually produce the
music we all enjoy listening to.

~~~
luckydata
Agreed, but here we're talking about how difficult it is to become
"technically proficient" and my answer to that is "not very with current tools
and education methods". The biggest obstacle for most people is drive and
interest. If you spend the time, you will get good at playing.

~~~
joejerryronnie
Good point, if you're talking technical proficiency rather than pure artistry
you may be right.

------
tyler-
I think what is often missed in mainstream discussions on "giftedness" is
those gifted but with disabilities.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twice_exceptional](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twice_exceptional)

These are students that are gifted, but due to their disabilities
underperform. It isn't uncommon for them to not be identified as gifted, and
thus never be put in gifted classes despite being very intelligent.

Imagine having someone 140+ IQ that is stuck in a standard classroom all
12-years of their pre-college education because they weren't ever identified.
They typically are the students that enroll in special services and get exam
accommodations in colleges.

At least colleges recognize these sort of students. For example Princeton has
such services: [https://ods.princeton.edu](https://ods.princeton.edu)

~~~
justtopost
I was in both disabled and gifted programs concurrently in elementary in the
80s and 90s. Public school, in California. Its not missed, so much as parents
seem to pidgeonhole their kids faster than the schools do.

~~~
Regolitch
Same.

I remember having to be pulled out of my 'special needs' class to go to the
auditorium for a small celebration recognizing the students who has scored
highest on the standardized reading comprehension exams.

I won a pizza party for my english class because I had the highest score of
any student in the entire middle school.

The two eighth grade honors classes had been competing to see which of them
would get it.

They were pissed to loose it to the sixth grade remedial english class.

That was about the time I started to lose respect for the US school system.

------
afpx
The original big push for gifted education in the US was primarily a response
to the Soviet Union’s scientific and technology advances after the 1950s.
During these times, gifted programs were well-funded, and they provided smart
but poor or unconnected kids vast opportunities that they wouldn’t have had
otherwise.

After these funding programs died down, the “gifted” label was usurped by
upper middle class parents for obvious reasons. As far as I know, gifted
programs today are much different than they were before the 90s. And, as
Gifted has become a status label in upper middle class communities, one can
see that politics has become more important than natural abilities. For
example, in some large, well-funded school districts (like Fairfax Virginia),
it’s common for the number of students in gifted education programs to be
quite higher than statistically likely. In fact, parents and students compete
for these positions using test prep systems, cheating, political maneuvering,
and even fraud. So, in my mind, gifted education in the US is mostly a dead
concept.

------
arandr0x
Gifted education is, I believe, an area that has rather too much funding
compared to gifted mental health services. (Mental health services generally,
of course, but often gifted children are functional long enough and just
enough that debilitating conditions that have nothing to do with intelligence,
but could end their life, are not identified in them.)

A lot of the gifted education policy discourse seems to treat gifted children
as resources where the yield must be increased. But they are, like all
children, humans and the primary problem of their condition is not "not
achieving according to their ability", but indeed it is suffering. Policy
should strive to address, first, suffering, and only then be concerned with
achievement. (Again, as with all children. For example, this is what is done
with education for children that don't have the intellectual abilities for
regular schooling.) And I don't really wish to tell actual experiences here,
but gifted children have plenty of suffering that is not simply due to being
bored in school or not told they're smart often enough.

