I'm from a post-communist country. We were all about equality. I first heard about gifted programs when I came to Hatrack.
Here's my question: do you think they're such a good idea? Why?
I had about 30 kids in my class at grade school (years 1-8). There were maybe 10 classes in each year. Each class had all sorts of kids, from the gifted ones, to kids with learning issues. I never noticed school being too easy for me, or for the brighter kids. I don't think I knew a single person that was bored in school all the time and would need a more difficult program. There was a minimum all had to know, and there was always a way to learn more, if you were interested.
Every now and then, I hear kids at Hatrack say how they are in gifted program, like that makes them better than all the other kids. Honestly, how many are really so extremely bright?
I don't think I lost anything by not being in a gifted program in grade school, and I was one of the top students. I also don't think I lost anything by having a limited maths and physics course in high school.
So what's the big deal?
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
I was in the stupid classes for stupid kids, and it was clear to me that I was not gifted. Maybe it helps the gifted kids, I know it made an impression on 10 year old me.
[ January 16, 2005, 11:36 AM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by Kama (Member # 3022) on :
One more thing. The only reason my mom took my brother from one class to another, was because in that particular class, he was the best male student (with below-average grades). She had him put in a class where there were boys with better grades than his, so he could see boys could have good grades as well. That I understood. But I really can't understand putting a kid i a class where all other kids are as good or better. I can't see how it helps their social development.
Posted by Kama (Member # 3022) on :
The thing is, Irami, were you really stupid? Were all the gifted kids more gifted than you were? Or was it what you were expected to think?
[ January 16, 2005, 11:42 AM: Message edited by: Kama ]
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
I am myself from the last Stalinist country, and my classes were way too easy for me. Zero effort, excellent grades - until I hit the wall upon entering university. Some more challenging classes might have been a very good thing indeed.
Posted by Megan (Member # 5290) on :
I was in the gifted program all the way through elementary and middle school, in a situation where two or three times a week, the gifted kids would leave their regular classrooms and go to ...well, whatever the program was called (it was called FOCUS in my elementary school and PROBE in my middle school). In high school, there wasn't a separate program; you were just in honors or AP classes, with most gifted students doing extra-curriculars like academic team.
I got a lot out of being in those programs. For me, it was a chance to show I was, well, smart, without having other kids make fun of me. It was also a chance to do something a little above the level of everyday schoolwork, which was easy at best and boring at worst. In elementary school, we learned other languages, higher level math than we were getting in regular class, did brain teasers (which I loved). We did long-term projects that wouldn't have been doable in a regular classroom. It was sort of a chance to be a geek with all the other geeks and no one to say, "Geez, you're such a geek."
Believe me, I was bored stiff in the regular classes. That, I think, is the point of gifted programs--not so much to give anyone a sense of superiority or inferiority, but to give people who are bored out of their skulls a chance to do something that challenges them.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:But I really can't understand putting a kid i a class where all other kids are as good or better. I can't see how it helps their social development.
For the same reason we don't teach kids of different grades in the same room anymore.
Dagonee
Posted by Kama (Member # 3022) on :
I wonder if y'all's regular schools were so easy, or if you were way smarter than I was.
Posted by gingerjam (Member # 7113) on :
I don't know about calling it a "gifted program" which i agree makes them seem more elite, but for me the concept itself is not necessarily bad. In Australia it's not as concrete a concept as in the States but we have programs for the "gifted kids"...
when i was a part of it in primary school it just gave those involved a chance to expand our learning a little more, acknowledged our potential and helped them not be bored with classes that were too easy (which happens here and often makes kids 'trouble makers', cheeky or distractions cos they have to entertain themselves or find mental stimulation in other ways).
in high school we didn't have a program like that but our subjects were split into streams, and people could decide which to go into at higher or lower levels so people could learn at similar levels to their classmates...you could also change classes (to be harder or easier) in consultation with teachers.
quote: I also don't think I lost anything by having a limited maths and physics course in high school.
I don't think it's about losing anything, rather it's about gaining extra. For me being in a harder stream pushed me to work to achieve what i wouldn't have otherwise, rather than learning the minimum required and leaving it at that...surrounded by other kids who wouldn't ever feel the need to learn more than they had to.
But i think attitudes towards learning and entitlement to school etc is contextual and changes drastically between countries and cultures, perhaps affecting the need for "gifted pragrams". Here it is compulsory, public schools are practically free and kids take an education for granted. In other countries i've lived in to go to school is the highest privilege and a costly endeavour for most children, and so they'll go out of their way, walk for miles, work hard to earn the money just so they can go to school at all...the number of kids there not interested in learning drops dramatically and i'd guess so does the need for a "gifted program".
maybe i've just rambled on and not answered anything though!
Posted by Kama (Member # 3022) on :
So Dag, what about really smart kids who have learning issues? Or not-so-smart kids, who still could do well at school, if they put effort into it, but don't, because all they see is other stupid kids?
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
Kama, I started down the road of distrusting authority. I think it's because I had to find a sense of dignity outside of the framework everyone else excelled in. No, I didn't think I was stupid, but I was smart enough to know that if I were stupid, I'd be the last person to know. And I was smart enough to know that stupid black kids in the US don't fair well, so I better figure something out in a hurry.
[ January 16, 2005, 12:01 PM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by Tristan (Member # 1670) on :
quote:But I really can't understand putting a kid i a class where all other kids are as good or better.
It's easy for a gifted kid to get complacent when he's in an environment where he consistently gets the top score in the class without really having to exert himself. While certain individuals have an inherent thirst for knowledge and strive to better themselves no matter their surroundings, in my experience, many do much better with external influences such as a little competition and raised expectations. I believe most gifted children do perfectly fine in "normal" class settings -- but that does not mean they would not have realised an even greater part of their potential if spurred by a more competetive environment. I know a pathologically lazy person such as myself would have.
[ January 16, 2005, 12:00 PM: Message edited by: Tristan ]
Posted by gingerjam (Member # 7113) on :
wow while i slowly wrote that giant essay heaps of people responded...
sorry for the repetitions!
Posted by Ela (Member # 1365) on :
quote: For me, it was a chance to show I was, well, smart, without having other kids make fun of me.
You make a good point here, Megan. My daughter recently told me that when she was in first grade, she used to deliberately misspell words, so she would be like the other kids, who just didn't know how to spell as well as her, yet. (She also told me she suspects her teacher was on to her trick.)
That said, neither of my kids were in gifted programs - her elementary school didn't have any gifted programs that were worth taking time out of class for.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:So Dag, what about really smart kids who have learning issues?
They should get help with the learning issues.
quote:Or not-so-smart kids, who still could do well at school, if they put effort into it, but don't, because all they see is other stupid kids?
If this is the issue, then a better way needs to be found to motivate them. But I can't see holding back other kids because of this. And it is a form of holding back when half the class understands a concept in half the time as the other kids.
Dagonee
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
Kama, at most high schools there are advanced classes, and those advanced classes are available to anyone who gets good enough grades to qualify for them.
I was in a lot of college prep courses, and they helped me a lot. I was always bored in the regular courses I took because it too way too long for them to DO anything. I use to read my entire English text books in the first two to three weeks, and most of my classes never even made it through the whole thing for the entire year. I read really fast, so creeping through the text book with the rest of the class just put me to sleep.
On the other hand I am horrible at math, as in I barely passes Algebra I, and never got past Geometry. I would have been lost in Calc or Pre-Calc, but if every person had to be restricted to my level of math skills then no one would have been able to advance past that, and that would have been a shame.
Without advanced reading and social sciences I probably could have graduated, purely from a knowledge standpoint, by the beginning of 10th grade. I wasn't even the smartest guy in my class either, so imagine how that guy would have felt if he was never challenged beyond the point of his basic skills.
I think gifted programs are an excellent way of challenging kids to excel, and providing the advanced knowledge needed to succeed in college and beyond.
Some people feel it isn't a good thing because it causes other kids to feel inferior, but I don't think that is the case. Grades in general could do the same thing....does that mean we should stop rewarding good work all together? If anything we should increase the rewards, and grade on skill rather than on a curve, which rewards mediocrity rather than knowledge.
IMO, of course.
Kwea
Posted by Kama (Member # 3022) on :
Hmmm, I'd like to see a comparison in teaching levels between Poland and the US. I'm interested if there is a difference.
I never saw my school as holding the bright kids back. Sure, there were times where some kids undestood things quicker, and where some didn't undesrtand at all and had to stay after classes, or have them explained by someone else. But I definitely never saw that it was a trend. It was different things at different times.
Posted by mothertree (Member # 4999) on :
This is hearsay, but a doctoral student who T.A.ed my child psychology class said that she spend the first part of her schooling in Germany, and if she had stayed there she probably wouldn't have made it into the college-bound tier of students because she was only interested in ponies at age 12.
Also, someone I know from Taiwan was amazed that people here can decided they want to go to medical school pretty much at any point along the line. In Taiwan you have to get on the track to make medical school pretty early in life, like age 14.
But maybe the American system just seems more open to me because I was in gifted classes and AP classes. I recall that my 2nd year Chemistry Teacher didn't want me to take AP physics. I'm sure that if my parents had made a big deal of it, they could have got me in though. I guess being in the "Normal" tier it would probably seem less possible to go on to a good college and do the things necessary to have an elite profession.
The thing is, in America test scores are of equal importance as actual grades. And those two together are more important that much of the curriculum you took. Now if you are competing with a kid with similar grades and test scores, they will look a little closer at the curriculum and extracurricular activities like clubs. But it seems like for most things the first cut is test scores and grade point average (GPA).
I don't see gifted classes helping anyone become a better test taker. My beef with gifted classes is where do they get the teachers for these things? Some of my gifted class teachers were good, but some were awful.
Anyway, I can't really defend the system overall. I just know the gifted program didn't really help me with my problems, which had to do with passive aggressive responses to problems I was having at home. I don't know.
P.S. My problems, as far as I can tell, were a refusal to do homework or ask for help. My teachers both before gifted and in gifted would say "You are so smart, but I have to give you a C because you haven't done your homework."
I am both proud and jealous of my sister just older than me, who has a M.D. Ph.D. from U of Chicago. The main difference I can see between us all along is that she was willing to ask people for help.
[ January 16, 2005, 12:19 PM: Message edited by: mothertree ]
Posted by Kama (Member # 3022) on :
High schools are different here. You go to a high school, more or less knowing whether you'd like to continue your education, or whether you want to learn a profession. You choose a school whose profile most suits your needs.
[ January 16, 2005, 12:12 PM: Message edited by: Kama ]
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
quote:at most high schools there are advanced classes, and those advanced classes are available to anyone who gets good enough grades to qualify for them.
Where I went to school, a rigorous track started in seventh grade, and moving in or out of the honors bloc was not a common event or an easy process.
[ January 16, 2005, 12:26 PM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Part of the answer might be that American high schools are really terrible. Getting pounded on because you're smart? Honestly, where does that come from? Would certainly never happen in any school I went to.
Posted by mothertree (Member # 4999) on :
Frimpong is probably right about that. If a kid moves into honors/gifted, it either means the class gets bigger or someone has to leave. And Americans are obsessed about class size. The thing I went on to realize, though, is that you don't have to have done gifted to go to college. You don't have to go to a top tier university as a freshman. You can graduate from a second tier university and go Ivy League for graduate school. But young people are so bounded by the beliefs of the adults in their lives.
I know that in my life, my 3rd grader is brilliant in everything but timed math tests. For a while I was determined to help fill in this one flaw, but it occured to me that it keeps the child mortal in the eyes of the class.
Posted by Teshi (Member # 5024) on :
I tested as "gifted" in Grade Six in both English and Math. It was a waste of my time and a terrible crime to everyone else in the class.
I could do the 'Math' questions simply because I was good a patterns, which was all the test was. English even more so. I read books frequently, therefore my English knowledge was better. In the program, they focused purely on math. Surprise! I had no interest in it and no real understanding. I was the dumb gifted kid.
I scored highest in the interview with the principal and lowest on my parents evaluation of me.
The kids who weren't gifted went like this: those who were gifted in just English or just Math weren't allowed in. Those who missed the test had to have parents like mine who forced the test, despite umming and erring teachers.
So there were slews of people who were very smart and didn't get a chance, and there were people like me who didn't get the math and science, needed the background and were excluded from regular classes.
In grades seven and eight I'm sure I had one of the lowest marks in the gifted class. We learnt Bridge (mathmatically-based), we had to make up inventions (technology-based using a step by step method that I just didn't get at all), the list was endless and I hated every moment of it. I could easily see people who should have been in my place, who weren't.
So the upshot of this? I dislike gifted programs in the way that they are handled. I learnt nothing- I dreaded this awful applied technology and awful applied math that I couldn't do very well at all. Very Smart People are invariably excluded and the curriculum was always skewed. I was a reader and a writer, a drawer and a studier.
In grades nine and ten there was another gifted program, called LEAP. It was done by teacher recommendation. I was not invited in grade nine, but I was invited in grade ten. It was a group-participatory clublike thing full of prizes and leaders and secondary leaders. I sat quietlt through the first meaning of silly bonding games, and never went back.
Gifted programs, if they exist, should make sure they get everyone in a way that is fair and not exclusive. They should also look among their curriculum to make sure there is something for everyone. If there is going to be a gifted program it should divide children into their strengths.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
Irami, I guess it varies with each locale, and if I had gone to a school like that I probably wouldn't have been able to get in to some of the classes I did. I really didn't start applying myself at all until 11th grade. I passed everything, usually with B's, up to that point, unless I didn't care about it or I found a way to pass regardless.
I know that some teachers are not good, even if they win teaching awards. I signed up for an English class with a teacher who had won a national award for teaching excellence, and it was one of the worst classes I had ever had.
She said that the midterm and the final were each worth 40% of our grade, and then the midterm was given on The Martian Chronicles. I read then 5 times, and did practice essays on them. I knew the possible ramifications of each story, what the message was of each, each characters name and how they related to each other....
I got the test, and it was 8 questions.
What happened in the first story.
"the second. "the third. " the fourth. and so on...
with just enough room for 2 sentences between each question. She didn't care if we understood them, she just wanted to prove we had read them.
There are a bunch of stories in that collection, and while I knew each story front to back, I had no idea what order they went in. I got a 68% on it.
I got called into the office, because I was in danger of not graduating...because of my very best subject. I laughed at them, then broke out a pace of paper and showed them that unless I got a 51% on my final I was going to pass.
Then I told them that I wasn't going to turn in another piece of homework for the rest of the year, because I wanted to prove what a horrible teacher she was.
They got really mad at me, but there was nothing they could do.
I passed with a B-, proving my point beyond argument.
Just because they CALL it a good class doesn't mean the teacher is good.
Kwea
[ January 16, 2005, 12:37 PM: Message edited by: Kwea ]
Posted by Kama (Member # 3022) on :
oh, and Dag,
quote: For the same reason we don't teach kids of different grades in the same room anymore.
I had a friend coming from a small village, where there were 8 kids in the class, from 2 different grades.
I think the biggest reason why we do it is that we have too many kids of the same age. Classes are already too big as it is. In theory, wouldn't a small (say, 10-15 kids), but differentiated class be better than an all-gifted class?
Posted by Kama (Member # 3022) on :
quote: Gifted programs, if they exist, should make sure they get everyone in a way that is fair and not exclusive. They should also look among their curriculum to make sure there is something for everyone. If there is going to be a gifted program it should divide children into their strengths.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
Three is a difference between the college prep stuff and the Gifted programs, too. I qualified for every Gifted program, but my math skills held me back. I was among the best nation wide in some things, but my math skills were barely average.
[ January 16, 2005, 01:05 PM: Message edited by: Kwea ]
Posted by Kama (Member # 3022) on :
Isn't there a way to concentrate on what's every kid's gift, instead of setting aside a group based on how well they do in tests?
[ January 16, 2005, 12:49 PM: Message edited by: Kama ]
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
quote:If there is going to be a gifted program it should divide children into their strengths.
It takes a keen eye to know the quality and character of a 9 year-old's mind, and it's easy for the teachers to break egos. Maybe I've seen too many schools where the kids of color end up coloring where the other kids as doing academic work, each according to their strengths.
I'm not an "every kid's gift" type of guy.
[ January 16, 2005, 12:51 PM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by Kama (Member # 3022) on :
How so?
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
Personally, I found the "gifted" programs in my elementary and middle-school classes to be generally less useful than I'd've hoped. They never seemed all that advanced, and because schools were just starting to experiment with "gifted classes" at the time, my school system took the rather useless approach of having one hour a day dedicated to "gifted learning." This was not only exclusionary but, IMO, ultimately self-defeating; the truly gifted kids didn't get enough advanced instruction, and the kids who didn't get that hour a day of more interesting topics must have been resentful.
In high school, though, I noticed an immediate and telling difference between accelerated courses and "regular" courses. Frankly, I would have gone absolutely, climbing-the-walls insane if I'd had to take the "regular" academic track; the few times my classes overlapped with those, I was singularly unimpressed.
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
Kids need to read and write well, not for some economic sense or because they have some gift--which usually corresponds with the interests and intensity of their parents or teachers-- but because it's part of stimulating those faculties that allow people to see and understand vivacity and dignity in the world.
There is something dehumanizing about twelve year-olds thinking of themselves, "I'm a math person," "I'm a science person," "I'm an English person," when as soon as a kid or a school makes that decision on behalf of the kid, it precludes that child from becoming a whole person.
[ January 16, 2005, 01:17 PM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
I agree....I think that everyone should have access to as much learning as they can handle. We hwere a predominatly white school, but considering the mnumber of minority students we had I would say they were better representd in the advance classes than the white students were.
But that is just the area where I was, not a good representation of the whole system, that is for sire.
I saw the same things, Irami, but it was usually the troublemakers who got the limited role in classes. I had a friend who was every bit as smart as I was who never eveen finished school. He rebelled rather tahtn allow people to stick him in a corner, and he missed out on a lot,
Had he been encouraged to learn rather than singled out for poor treatment by some teachers things might have turned out differently for him.
He made his own bed though, and some of the crap he pulled was unexcusable, but that was uin high school. We were in tthe same classes in elementary though, and he did fine...when it suited him.
Kwea
Posted by Amka (Member # 690) on :
Well, I just rambled about my thoughts on gifted programs, so forgive me. But maybe this will give you a different POV.
Gifted programs should be there to meet the needs of the students. Everyone has such different needs to really reach their full potential. I would say this about any child with any kind of special need. High intellegence is a special need. But like I always tell my children, it doesn't make them any better. Just different. Sometimes very different. There is a case in our program of a child who is literally genius status, but has the emotional development in fourth grade of about a 4 or 5 year old. This kid is very different, but amazingly, because he has been with more or less the same group of kids for the last 4 years, the children accept him as he is and protect him from playground cruelty. I don't think that could possibly have happened in any other traditional educational environment for this child.
When I was in first grade, I was put on the 'bad kids' table so I wouldn't distract other kids. My crime? I got easily distracted. The paperwork was boring. And I asked too many hard questions. I asked questions about space, and infinity, and I would always ask 'why?' or 'how?' when the teacher told us some bit like "caterpillars make cocoons and then turn into butterflies". I already knew that, so tell me more, please. Then add to that the fact that I was not neat in my work, I had glasses, and a speech impediment. This all added up to me being merely an annoyance to the teacher, and she showed it. Her putting me on that table also reinforced with the other kids that it was okay to treat me with cruelty. I remember at the time that I wasn't angry for it only being me, but that she had also labled those other kids and I thought it incredibly unfair.
As a parent, I was very reluctant to put my kids in school, for it had caused me a great deal of pain in my early years. When I finally did, the teacher of my oldest daughter told me that she was amazed at connections Tasha would make. She urged me to have Tasha tested for the local gifted program which starts in first grade, here. I did.
While she tested, parents got to sit at a lecture about gifted children. So much of what they said clicked so well. Such children may be intellegent and be able to learn faster, but in other ways they are often quite challenged. They may be challenged socially because they have been so focused on the literal that they fail to read body language. They are interested in things their peers aren't, and they make strange observations. They are also often less aware of consequences, doing things to satisfy their curiosity without thinking about what effect they might have. Just because they are smart in some ways doesn't mean they are smart in every way. They may be highly disorganized.
I was amazed at the perception. I really wished someone had had that philosophy with me. Then I wouldn't have gotten yelled out for figuring out a different way to do my math rather than just following directions. I have found that this program does fit my kid's needs very well. It is one of the things that keeps us here, because in the US, unlike other nations, there is very little program congruity across the land, especially in 1-9 grades.
There is a problem of some people thinking their children are better because of the program and this attitude rubbing off on their kids. These are also the kinds of parents that will yell at the testers if their kids don't get in. They are very much like the pushy sports parents, except in academics. These are the kids that I think will have more social problems in High School as well, because I remember that arrogance. "I am smarter than you, I am better." But their socializing skills never do get a chance to improve.
I knew that my problem was that I simply didn't know the right words at the right time and made too many social gaffs. And that sometimes, well... the subjects the other students were interested in did get boring and socializing was sometimes a chore. It made me a little sad, and I hoped they knew it didn't mean I thought I was better than them. I had wished it wasn't so, but I didn't want to change myself either.
There is a lot of advantage to 'gifted' children getting to socialize with each other and I think this is a great benefit of programs. But care must be taken to socialize them with other kids as well, and I think that the program here has found a good balance. They're homeroom class is the accelerated one, but they are put in rotations with all the other classes and play at recess with them. In middle school or junior high, only about 1/3 of the classes are part of the program, the rest are mainstream. Also, teachers of gifted students in our program are aware of the social awkwardness and our program actually tests for social and emotional development.
I also very much appreciate the openess of the US education system. I was labelled badly early on. Had I been in a system that puts kids on career tracks early on, I would have been miserable. Forgive my US centric view, but this very openness in what an individual can do through their whole life is a great strength of the country, and I think that aspect has a lot to do with our thriving.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Hey, Kwea, didn't they teach you to spellcheck your prose in your gifted class? Re-education for you.
Posted by mothertree (Member # 4999) on :
I was cooking brunch and it dawned on me that gifted programs exist so that there isn't a brain drain to private schools. The trouble with letting all the "brightest" kids cream off to private schoool is that there are values that the public education system likes to inculcate in its participants. Same with the private schools.
Posted by Ela (Member # 1365) on :
quote:Personally, I found the "gifted" programs in my elementary and middle-school classes to be generally less useful than I'd've hoped. They never seemed all that advanced, and because schools were just starting to experiment with "gifted classes" at the time, my school system took the rather useless approach of having one hour a day dedicated to "gifted learning." This was not only exclusionary but, IMO, ultimately self-defeating; the truly gifted kids didn't get enough advanced instruction, and the kids who didn't get that hour a day of more interesting topics must have been resentful.
Tom, I think this was still true when my kids would have qualified for gifted programs. I talked with a lot of parents, and looked at some of the "enrichment" that was made available when my son was in elementary school, and I wasn't too impressed.
quote:In high school, though, I noticed an immediate and telling difference between accelerated courses and "regular" courses. Frankly, I would have gone absolutely, climbing-the-walls insane if I'd had to take the "regular" academic track; the few times my classes overlapped with those, I was singularly unimpressed.
I think this is true for many "gifted" kids - they just don't find the "regular" classes interesting enough and are bored silly.
In my kids' school, they started tracking math only into "regular" and "honors" math in 6th grade. My daughter, who says she hates math, bitched like crazy about being put in honors math. But the first week of school she came home and told me what the "regular" math class was learning (which she heard about from friends in "regular" math) was way too easy for her.
[ January 16, 2005, 02:11 PM: Message edited by: Ela ]
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
Well, I got tired of listing to you complaining about fluff, so I thought wuold gave yoose somtin ot ocnplain baout.
Actaully I am old, remember....I didn't ahve any typing experience in schools, that is why I have been teaching myself these days. I am up to 40 wpm, not too bad considering two-three months ago I was at 16 wpm.....
And they used typewriters in my school, not word processers.....
Kwea
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Typewriters, bah. If I had you in my school, I'd get out the cane. Six of the best for that little lot. See how you like being old then.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
Waht do youu meen?
Posted by littlemissattitude (Member # 4514) on :
When I was in school (lo, those many years ago ), my school district had what they called the Mentally Gifted Minors (MGM) program. The problem with it was that it was only available in the 5th and 6th grades. In order to qualify for the program, a student had to have scored 140 or over on an IQ test (don't ask me what they used; I only took 'em).
My experience was that I was bored to tears from Kindergarten through 4th grade. I'd finish my work before everyone else and then just have to sit there. Or, even worse, the teacher would put me to work helping the other kids. This, of course, did not endear me to the other kids in my class (this started in 2nd grade). I didn't have many friends anyway, and my mother finally had to tell the teacher that she needed to cut it out. Too late; as long as I was in that school, I was stigmatized as being "different".
So, when I was asked to join the MGM program I was quite happy about it. My experience those two years, in 5th and 6th grades was primarily positive. I didn't have that many more friends, but I was doing interesting things and there were enough side projects that we could work on when we weren't doing regular work that I didn't get bored. I don't think the work was that much more advanced than the regular 5th and 6th grade work, but we did a lot more projects and got to use our creativity a lot more. For example, in 6th grade, some of us got to write the script for the Lincoln's Birthday all-school assembly. We did lots of things like that.
But, come junior high, I found myself back in "regular" classes and I got bored again. That boredom turned me into your garden-variety under-achiever. I did all right, grade-wise, in 7th grade, but after that I got to where I just did what I was interested in, which usually wasn't related to anything in any of my classes. I was reading lots of interesting books and pretty much was living in my own mind, but my grades went south at an incredible rate. It just got worse in high school, as I went from just sitting in classes and reading other stuff when I was supposed to be doing my work to skipping classes a lot. My grades got a little better in my senior year, but only because I switched schools. I didn't have an friends there, and there were armed narcs on campus all the time (yes, back in the mid-1970s), so there was no real opportunity to skip class.
All this is the long way around to saying that I don't have that much of a problem with programs for gifted kids in general, but I think that IQ test scores are not the optimum way of determining who gets into them. High grades aren't the way, I don't think, either. I knew too many kids in junior high and high school who got good grades not because they were "smart", but because they simply knew how to play the game. Perhaps in the elementary grades, the way to go with it is to have academic extracurricular activites available to any child who wants to participate. In junior high and high school, I think that something along the lines of having AP classes available to whoever is willing and able to do the work, no matter what the tests say their ability is, is probably the best answer.
Just my two cents' worth.
[ January 16, 2005, 02:24 PM: Message edited by: littlemissattitude ]
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
I had a typing class in high school, actually, and they insisted that we learn on ancient -- '50s style -- manual typewriters. I groaned and complained at the time, but I have to admit that it turned out to be invaluable. Once you can type on an aging, decrepit manual typewriter, graduating to a modern keyboard is like moving from a toy acoustic guitar to a Fender strat.
In order to pass the class, you had to average 40wpm on the manual; to get an "A," you had to average 60wpm with no errors. I typed 80wpm with one error on the manual, and was quite pleased to discover that this translated, in the real world, into 110wpm with no errors on a keyboard.
Sadly, that skill has only served me well here at Hatrack; I wasn't particularly interested in working as a transcriptionist.
Posted by Belle (Member # 2314) on :
My oldest daughter has been in the gifted program at school since third grade and I think it's been overall very positive.
In our school, they go to the gifted teacher once per day, and they get their reading grade from that teacher instead of the classroom teacher.
In a normal class, a reading grade would be an automatic for Natalie, she read on an 11th grade level in 3rd grade. Gifted challenged her and made her think in different ways. She loved the class, and getting an A wasn't automatic - she struggled and worked hard for her A's in that class (and didn't always make it!)
The gifted teacher didn't believe in giving them just more work than other kids, but wanted to challenge them and make them think.
Next year, there is no gifted program anymore, she will have to take an advanced track of math and English courses that will eventually culminate in the AP programs in high school.
Posted by Teshi (Member # 5024) on :
I should add that I think Advanced Placement courses at a high-school level are invaluable. I took grade eleven AP English and although I didn't do brilliantly (I love to learn about books and themes and ideas, but converting those ideas into good literary essays is always difficult for me) but I did enjoy it fantastically.
In grade twelve, due to a course conflict (including getting out of a Calculus class ) I had to take the regular University-Preparation English class. It was awful. We had to turn badly written paragraphs into grammatically correct ones. I had no idea some of these things had names, I just knew how to write, fullstop.
The choice for advanced class should always be available. Perhaps they should extend this self-designation gifted idea to the younger grades and have split classes- English/Language, Gym/Active, Math/Science/Technology, and Arts and children choose according to what they are good at, per recommendations by their teacher (so all the boys don't immediately take the Gym ).
It would accomodate children far better than what was offered for me.
EDIT: AP History saved me, basically. People actually cared.
[ January 16, 2005, 03:15 PM: Message edited by: Teshi ]
Posted by Verily the Younger (Member # 6705) on :
I went to a special school for gifted children for many years in elementary school. I don't think that made me "better" than anyone else, and I don't think I thought so at the time, either. But it was a great environment for me, because I was surrounded at all times by other children who were of a like mindset and at the same level I was. It helped me fit in, and made it so going to school was a fun thing for me. As someone mentioned earlier, it allowed me to be my geeky self without facing constant mocking for being a geek.
That this was good for me was demonstrated when I was suddenly removed from the program in the middle of fifth grade and sent to a "normal" school. I had failed math, and my teacher that year, who didn't really like any of us anyway, decided that I wasn't "fit" for the program anymore. What resulted is that for the final year and a half of elementary school, I was in a very hostile environment. I faced all the mocking you would expect. And I was absolutely miserable there.
Of course, it would have happened in junior high anyway. My particular program didn't extend past elementary school, so come junior high I'd have had to go to a "normal" school no matter what else had happened. And junior high was a lot worse for me than fifth and sixth grade were. I didn't stop being miserable until I got to high school.
Surpringly, I didn't take a lot of AP classes in high school. Actually, AP European History was the only one I took. I kind of wish I had taken more, but it didn't really feel important at the time. In high school there simply wasn't that same hostile environment I had experienced before. Not that high schoolers are necessarily mature and egalitarian--most adults aren't even that--but still, the world in general had moved on. I did face some mocking, but it was intermittent at most. I was having such a good time by then that it didn't much bother me anymore.
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
I think "tracking" kids -- segregating them into groups for all their classes -- is horrible. However, I see many benefits when they are tracked for some classes, and sorted more randomly for others. (Where I teach, the classes are divided differently for Jewish subjects and secular ones, as well as many of the specific subjects being split differently.)
I say this both as a teacher (it is certainly easier -- for me, at least -- to teach a group of kids who are all bright and motivated and WANT to be taking "upper" science) and as a parent.
I think it benefits the "lower" students to some degree as well. Why force girls who are not planning on going to college, and have difficulty with advanced algebra to take chemistry and physics? Science classes they need, but not necessarily those.
Posted by Hobbes (Member # 433) on :
I think that, like several people here have said, gifted programs can lead to overabundent-ego issues, but on the other hand I was kept out of the gifted program for a few years in my elementary school due to atrocious handwritting (really) and I hated it, I hated being stuck in the regular class where I could easily outstip the 4th grade math teacher (this is not a copmliment on me sadly), division was pushing the limits of the class, where as the gifted class was dealing with complex word problems and optimization techniques and I felt entirley left out, left-behind and utterly bored.
Hobbes Posted by Shigosei (Member # 3831) on :
Kama is a gifted program!
I had a very good experience in high school with honors classes. We didn't have a gifted program, exactly. Whether you take an honors humanities class has no bearing on your ability to take advanced math. I think this is a great way of doing things, personally. My classes were pretty advanced--I'm finding classes here at ASU unchallenging compared to what I took in high school.
It's true that segregating classes can lead to "smart" cliques. However, for me it was actually really nice to have smart friends. It's a lot more fun to talk to people who have the same interests and understand your math/science jokes. High school was also the first time where I didn't feel like my abilities made me weird. It was cool to be smart.
Amka, your observation that high intelligence is a special need is right on! Just as it's unfair to put strugging students with average ones, it's unfair to put the advanced students with average ones. Forcing them to do boring things might put them off education forever. When I went to a private school, there was absolutely no segregation. I was with students who had severe learning disabilities. They had a hard time and I was bored to tears.
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
I was not misdiagnosed, I'm sure I was put in the appropriate class for stupid kids. Just be sure that we know that when we create a gifted class, we create a stupid class, and it doesn’t matter how much jive the teacher spins—and even stupid kids sense jive—a stupid class is stupid class. Before we set ourselves about the business of organizing education around the principle that smart kids ought not suffer boredom, let’s make sure that the stupid kids don’t get lost in our priorities, as stupid kids have stupid little dreams and stupid little desires, which are similar in kind and dignity to smart kid’s dreams and desires but often different in execution. On top of that, knowing that they are stupid, they have to come to grips with the fact that they lack skills and will probably fall short on those dreams as they have fallen short on so many spelling, math, and history tests, like their parents did and do in their every day lives.
And since the gifted kids have all of this time on their hands and may for the rest of their life have the entire world will bend to their chair, it may be an exercise in humility to have the gifted kids work in the same group helping the stupid kids, that way the gifted group learns social responsibility while the stupid group learns math, spelling, and history. I think this is especially appropriate when the alternative smacks a little bit of the white flight approach to education. I know what I’m saying comes dangerously close to socialism, and there is something darn near un-American about forcing kids to help people, even though we feel right about forcing kids to learn long division. (I have not long-divided anything in at least a year, whereas I try to help people everyday.) I believe that a sense of civic responsibility and duty are more appropriate to education than getting a half-chapter ahead in so-and-so elementary school subject. As the former is the measure of a man and the latter is the measure of so and so elementary school subject. Furthermore, there is a sense of dignity that goes along with helping your fellow classmates come to understand the beauty of grammar or any other worthy subject being taught. Your mileage may vary, but it shouldn’t vary too much, or I don’t think you get to call yourself a good person.
[ January 16, 2005, 10:44 PM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Then I'll not call myself a good person, and be happy therewith. The thing about stupid kids is that they are stupid. What have the stupid people ever done for me? It wasn't the bright kids who beat me up for being small and transferring in from a different school. Let 'em eat humiliation.
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
quote:What have the stupid people ever done for me? It wasn't the bright kids who beat me up for being small and transferring in from a different school. Let 'em eat humiliation.
I think that's the attitude I'm talking about. If this is gifted, I think I was put in the right class.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
You can inherit the Earth for all I care. Just so long as I don't have to hold a conversation about football.
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
Posted by Shigosei (Member # 3831) on :
Irami, do you think the "stupid" kids aren't going to notice that other students are smarter than they are? They don't need to be segregated to realize that they are not doing as well as the others. How will it help to have their noses rubbed in it every day when the smart kids can answer all the questions and they can't? Or should those kids play dumb to make everyone else feel all right? Because a lot of people on Hatrack have said that they did just that. Some of them did it to avoid being ostracized, but some did it out of a desire not to hurt others' feelings. That's not fair to them.
It's also been my observation that most students don't want other students to help them, at least not at the younger grades and especially not if it's an official set-up.
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
quote:They don't need to be segregated to realize that they are not doing as well as the others. How will it help to have their noses rubbed in it every day when the smart kids can answer all the questions and they can't?
The elementary class I worked with did fine. Those kids just wanted help. I think it's a matter of the approach. And if the smart kids are rubbing noses, then isn't there a different problem, and maybe these "smart" kids lack more important skills. How is it different than fixing bullying problems on the playground?
[ January 16, 2005, 11:15 PM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by Jenny Gardener (Member # 903) on :
Irami, the opposite problem usually arises. Gifted kids like to help, in general, but they quickly become disillusioned by kids who won't pull their own weight because they can ride on the "smart kid"'s coattails.
I've nearly finished my GT license, and I think gifted education a very good thing. Here in Indiana, gifted education is considered a division of Special Education. The philosophies really aren't that different - it's all about meeting a child's intellectual, social, and emotional needs. A school following best practices for their G/T program will have a very clear selection procedure, well-trained staff, a program that clearly meets the needs of gifted children, and exit procedures.
Gifted children are different, in some very fundamental ways. Their brains work at top speed, and they are able to learn more quickly than most kids. Athletics are designed to find physically talented children, nurture them, and train them to use their gifts. Gifted programs do the same.
Also, a good gifted program really can help a child find his or her place in the world - where she can find her skills valued and learn what she needs to know to fully participate in life. A lot of times, gifted children end up stifling their special abilities, hiding their lights under bushels, and never pursuing (and achieving) the things they are capable of.
Posted by Shigosei (Member # 3831) on :
Yes, smart kids sometimes lack important social skills. Which is why they need to be segregated--they aren't going to learn anything about socializing if no one will talk to them. Part of the problem is that those students tend to talk about things that interest them and which don't interest the average student. And part of the problem is that it's not cool to be smart.
The smart kids I knew growing up tried not to rub anyone's nose in it. But when they can answer questions no one else can, and when they ask questions that no one else understands or cares about, then other kids' feelings get hurt.
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
quote:Gifted kids like to help, in general, but they quickly become disillusioned by kids who won't pull their own weight because they can ride on the "smart kid"'s coattails.
On some level, shouldn't these kids learn patience? If a 3rd grader is reading at 10th grade level, it seems more important to me that this kid spends his/her time working with the other kid reading at the 2nd grade level rather than the first kid trying to get to the 11th grade level. I don't understand how this isn't a learning experience. Maybe this is something that reasonable people can disagree upon, and I don't agree with your priorities.
[ January 16, 2005, 11:30 PM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by Shigosei (Member # 3831) on :
*nods* I admit that my childhood is strongly coloring my opinions--I did my best to fit in, short of denying my academic abilities, but I had a lot of trouble making friends until I got to high school and it was suddenly acceptable to be smart and to care about school. All the other students probably figured I had it easy, and I did--in class. But I am still behind my peers socially, and I have a lot of guilt about my abilities, because I know I did nothing to earn them. *shrugs*
I believe that you have very good intentions in your ideas, and your experiences probably tell you that you are right and I am wrong, just as mine tell me the opposite. I respect that, but I stand by my opinion that intelligent children have special needs and ought to be accomodated.
Posted by Space Opera (Member # 6504) on :
Where we live (and where we used to live) in the last few years kindergarden has become all day, 5 days per week. I'm wondering what effect that will have in schools that pull kids out for "gifted" programs in grades 1-2. The standards have changed so greatly it's amazing. When my son was in K, they were happy if they learned the alphabet and letter sounds. My daughter is in an all day K program now, and it is expected that the children be reading halfway through the school year - and they are. The ripple effect on what is considered "gifted" in the early grades should be very interesting to watch in the next few years. Now 5 year olds that can read quite well and write coherant sentences are no big deal.
space opera
Posted by mackillian (Member # 586) on :
Nothing stupid 'bout football.
Posted by reader (Member # 3888) on :
quote:On some level, shouldn't these kids learn patience? If a 3rd grader is reading at 10th grade level, it seems more important to me that this kid spends his/her time working with the other kid reading at the 2nd grade level rather than the first kid trying to get to the 11th grade level. I don't understand how this isn't a learning experience. Maybe this is something that reasonable people can disagree upon, and I don't agree with your priorities.
This is absolutely the wrong area (and the wrong age) to expect a kid to be patient. A third-grader is what, eight years old? Kids are, by nature, self-centered - and not in a bad way, in a healthy way. It's important to teach them morals, and sharing, and patience, and all that good stuff, but not in such a way that they are required to be patient for however many hundreds of hours they spend in school per month. That's just excessive - it's expecting too much. It's not that it's important for the kid to be able to read at an eleventh grade level - it's important for the kid to feel accomplished, and to feel as though they're learning, and achieving, not sitting around stagnating and being bored out of their wits.
Not that a gifted program is necessarily the answer to that. My elementary school didn't have a gifted program, so my teachers just let me bring books to school or choose books from the library and sit quietly and read whenever we were doing subjects that I was way ahead in, and that suited me just fine. I loved reading, and I'm sure I gained tremendously from that reading. I've always been, by nature, a bit lazy about homework and extra-work type activities, so I might very well have thought it unfair if I was given extra work.
Posted by Shigosei (Member # 3831) on :
No, of course not. It's just confusing and kind of boring . Actually, I'm of the opinion that those who can understand football and memorize everything about all the players is perfectly capable of understanding calculus (in Hobbes's non-math style), which is based on relatively straightforward principles and requires no memorization if you don't actually use formulas.
Edit: this was directed at Mack.
[ January 16, 2005, 11:37 PM: Message edited by: Shigosei ]
Posted by mackillian (Member # 586) on :
Why would someone being able to understand Calculus in the non dumbed down way exclude folks who enjoy football?
Posted by Shigosei (Member # 3831) on :
It doesn't. I'm just pointing out that calculus really isn't any more complicated than football. I'm certainly not implying that people who like calculus don't like football or that football fans are dumb.
Posted by mackillian (Member # 586) on :
Okay, THAT I agree with.
I just hate seeing the stereotypes that anyone who likes or participates in sports is stupid. Or that anyone who is smart would never like or be good at a sport.
Posted by Shigosei (Member # 3831) on :
No, I'm actually complaining that people who want to talk about sports but stop listening the moment I bring up math have no basis for complaint--anyone who can understand sports is obviously reasonably bright, smart enough to get at least the basics of science or math.
I promise, stop boring me with sports and I'll stop boring you with math Posted by mackillian (Member # 586) on :
Math hates me.
Posted by Jenny Gardener (Member # 903) on :
There's a big difference between learning patience and being a doormat. Gifted kids get used by their peers, or sometimes outright abused. Is it fair or right to tell a kid who reads classic literature at age 8 to be patient while his classmates practice phonics and read Dick and Jane? What about the kid who uses advanced math principles while his age-peers are working on simple addition? And when did it become the right thing to group kids by chronological age, anyway? It's not a great way to teach children.
One of the methods most advocated by gifted educators is differentiation. This means you take a basic concept and teach it at various levels. Sometimes you break the kids into small groups, so they can work with their mind-peers. Other times, you bring the groups together. It depends on what you want the kids to learn. I think you would very much like to see a clasroom in which differentiation is practiced.
It's hard, though, to teach it. You have to be darn good at teaching. It's not for the lazy teachers. But oh, so worth it.
Posted by Hobbes (Member # 433) on :
I took advanced social studies (history, geography, these things) classes my Freshman year in High School, along with advanced everything else (English, Math, Science, all that jazz), and hated it so took regular History the following year. I actually really loved that class, the teacher was great and in a subject like history you really get as much out as you put in, it doesn't matter where the other students are, but almost all the kids in the class strongly disliked me. This was highschool and I had enough self confidence and personal ... something that escapes me.... that I didn't get in anyway maltreated by the other students, but most of them spent their time mad at me, and I spent a significant portion of the class monopolizing the teachers time, getting into discussions with her about the material she was teaching, and the other kids had every right to be mad at me for that since it was like half the time they had class and half the time they had a discussion forums series: Hobbes and company.
It was kind of a combination of the lot of the problems of not having advanced classes, it made the class less applicable for other students, and should this have been early (elementary school) I'm sure I would've suffered through the other student's hands, even if that was just emotional seperation from them.
Hobbes Posted by mothertree (Member # 4999) on :
I actually had a very painful experience in the special needs vs. gifted interaction just last year as an adult. I went to a reading volunteer program and we had a seminar to get us started, and in doing some exercises together, I was paired with a woman who it turns out wanted to help the program because she had dyslexia herself.
I don't remember exactly what was going on. I hadn't announced that I had finished college or that I was in linguistics, and I hadn't flashed around any weird terminology. But something I said made this lady really insecure and she got really angry at me. Things kind of deteriorated from there. I finished out the program for that year but haven't gone back to help. I doubt she has either.
She also got hired for a job I got passed over for last spring. Oh well. Life is sure funny.
Posted by ketchupqueen (Member # 6877) on :
I got very little out of the gifted program. I was in a district with very high standards to begin with, and their idea of "GATE" (Gifted and Talented Education) was to pull us out of class for a couple of hours a week and give us extra work and projects to do, while still requiring us to do the regular work. Who wants more homework? I really could have cared less. The cirriculum was based on what adults thought gifted kids our age should be interested in, usually either boring stuff or stuff I'd learned years ago. If I was interested in something, I learned; I didn't need a teacher drilling me in extra work I didn't care about. In Jr. HS, there was a cool summer program in the arts for GATE kids because the only summer school offered was remedial; I liked that. The gifted program in HS was better than elementary school; it helped our interaction to be with kids who, say, read at the same speed as us. However, I'm glad not all classes were separated by ability, because I gained a by being paired with people who had a lot more trouble understanding than me, and discovered my aptitude for patience and teaching. Overall, I'd say that the most important thing to do for gifted children is to make sure they have access to information, books, and opportunities to explore the world, and to make sure they know what my mother taught me: "It's not how smart you are, it's how you treat others". Honestly, I have learned more from my (admittedly high-functioning, but still technically retarded) friend with Down Syndrome than from any gifted program I have ever been in. Enrichment is fine, as long as it doesn't detract from what really matters.
Posted by Kama (Member # 3022) on :
We seem to be concentrating on extremely intelligent kids. While I understand that they have needs a regular school won't satisfy, I submit that average kids have such needs as well. Don't average kids need stimulation? Don't they deserve individual attention from the teacher? And what about, to quote Irami, "stupid" kids, who are extremely gifted in one area or other, but since they're not bright enough, won't qualify in a gifted program? I'd like to see a program where all of these are taken into account.
[ January 17, 2005, 10:41 AM: Message edited by: Kama ]
Posted by K.A.M.A. (Member # 6045) on :
And thanks, Shigosei Posted by Anna (Member # 2582) on :
Just my two cents : When I was a kid, I would have liked to be in a "gifted program" but it does not exist here. I was constantly bored at school. If my parents hadn't been here to support me, I think I could have let my schoolwork down, because it was so very boring ! But I would have liked on the other end to be with "as talented as me" (which mean not at all) in sports classes, because I was so bad it was my nightmare.
[ January 17, 2005, 06:04 AM: Message edited by: Anna ]
Posted by Katie DeShane (Member # 7026) on :
quote: P.S. My problems, as far as I can tell, were a refusal to do homework or ask for help. My teachers both before gifted and in gifted would say "You are so smart, but I have to give you a C because you haven't done your homework."
I am both proud and jealous of my sister just older than me, who has a M.D. Ph.D. from U of Chicago. The main difference I can see between us all along is that she was willing to ask people for help.
To begin my tale, I am a Third and a middle child all in one. Born with two older brothers, and a younger sister who soon joined the world, I was the only one born with hearing and speech disabilities. All four of us were smart. All four of us were bright enough to be in "gifted programs". However, enviroment and lack of funds prevented us from taking the opportunities that were handed over. Most disappointing was out of the four, I was especially looked over due to my disabilities.
There are many many memories I have embedded in my mind of time and time again in which I took numerous "IQ" tests and passed with high-flying colors and yet due to whatever obstacle, I never partook in the gifted programs.
One I vividly remember is being tested for the TIP program in seventh grade. My mother, for whatever reasons, did not mail in my application acceptance letter. I asked her later that year about it and her answer was "I don't have the money". *face turns red and faint wisps of steam float above head*
I'm still peeved at all the missed opportunities I had in my life to show myself among my peers and my elders in the school system. However, I didn't give my mom much to prove that she was wrong to begin with. My teachers (the ones who actually took time to care that is) would try at the beginning of each school year to prove their claims that I was highly intelligent. They would show my mom test scores after test scores. They usually gave up by mid October and left my mom alone. That stopped in I got to high school cos by that time, my high school had too many people to look after and I unfortunately quietly slid thru the cracks.
I say this all of course not without my own doing. Once I got into the new school after my mom remarried when I was eight, the enviroment I knew went from friendly to hostile. The new teachers didn't understand my speech and I didn't have the patience nor the attention span to listen to what they taught.
My brothers made the grades as well as my sister did. Growing up, I was always being compared to my younger sister. "Why can't you make good grades like her?" The reason was cos I didn't turn in homework, I didn't care, I didn't want to work. My sister is not as easily intelligent as I am (no not a peacock statement), but I have to say this.. she is smarter than me cos she worked harder at being smarter than me. She put in the long hard hours of doing homework and projects to get the A's she got. I, on the other hand, didn't turn in assignments and in school, most of your grade is based on assignments and not tests. If it was the other way around, I would have always been an A student and not the C/D student I usually ended up being. I tested high but I had a "didn't care" attitude.
I would steal into my brothers' room at night and steal their library books so I could have something to read while at school the next day. I would spend most of my class time hiding a book under my desk. So if a teacher caught me, she would often think I was sleeping or something to that effect. Not many of them would appreciate that I was this little kid sitting at the desk reading Stephen King or Ray Bradbury (sorry, didn't find OSC until 8th grade )
Even when I was put into the excelerated reading class, I was only interested in the books we were required to read. I hated doing homework (it distracted me from my books lol) I hated the class discussions cos that meant everyone would have to hear my speech impediment. I just wanted to be left alone with my books.
That being said, no wonder I came into junior high and high school with a love of English and History. I hated worksheets. There was no creativity in cookie-cutter Xeroxed question and answers. I liked math cos I have a knack for remembering numbers and squences but not abstract math like Geometry and all those shape-based maths.
Even now, I am chastized at work and at college for being too long in answer. I have no interest in brevity. What takes a simple man five words would take me more than likely 20 to 50 words to describe or answer. It's not that I love to hear myself talk or whatever, it's just that.. I honestly think.. I think too much I have chronic insomnia.. have since I was a wee one, so what am I supposed to do with myself and my mind for 20 hours out of the day most days?
Ok.. I will stop now. I'm sure people are tired of my drivel for now. Geesh.. blah it's almost 7am and no one to talk to.. that's why you're here reading this now.. Posted by Kama (Member # 3022) on :
Glad you decided to delurk, Katie.
Posted by Megan (Member # 5290) on :
Jenny G, you said everything I wanted to say, but more eloquently!
Peer tutoring is all well and good for some of the time. However, how much of an education is it for the gifted child if their entire day is spent helping their peers? Shouldn't they also be learning new things and developing new skills? That's what gifted programs are for.
Oh, and then there's everyone's education solution in the early 90s, groupwork. "Look, we'll put the kids into small groups with mixed levels of ability! It'll be great! They'll learn from each other while accomplishing a given task!" Horse puckey. What will happen (and what continues to happen even up into grad school, my friends) is that one person, maybe two people, will do all the work, while the rest sit around and watch.
Oh, and forgive me for a sec for going all Ayn Rand-y, but it is not the purpose of the "smart" kids to serve the "stupid" kids (I don't particularly like those terms). All kids come to school (or are forced to come to school) in order to learn. Socialization is an important skill, but as far as I can tell, forcing kids into interaction with either those that resent them or those that they resent doesn't help either. And there is DEFINITELY resentment--take it from someone who spent 5th, 6th, and part of 7th grade being called every name in the book, and pretty much mocked mercilessly by every single one of her so-called peers. People at that age look for a scapegoat--you know how people always say, "You know how there's that one kid that everyone picks on?"
[ January 17, 2005, 08:49 AM: Message edited by: Megan ]
Posted by Hobbes (Member # 433) on :
quote:We seem to be concentrating on extremely intelligent kids. While I understand that they have needs a regular school won't satisfy, I submit that average kids have such needs as well.
No, no, no, NO! Tom! Do you see what you've done?
Hobbes Posted by mothertree (Member # 4999) on :
quote: I'd like to see a program where all of these are taken into account.
Some people believe this program would be called "homeschool". I don't know from personal experience.
Posted by amira tharani (Member # 182) on :
First off, let me say that I didn't read everything in this thread as carefully as I might, so forgive me if I'm repeating something. It's just that something Jenny said surprised me. Jenny, if I have read you aright, you say that differentiation is part of teaching in gifted programmes and something you learned while working on your certification for that. To me, that suggests a huge gulf between American and British teacher training - as a student teacher training to work in mainstream state schools differentiation was right at the top of the priority list. Right now I'm in a school where kids are "banded" by ability (what Rivka called "tracking") but that's pretty rare - most classes in UK state schools are mixed ability, though students are more likely to be grouped by ability for maths, english, science and modern languages than for anything else. The norm is mixed ability teaching and differentiation and one of my main priorities is how to accomodate very bright young people within that. Even in my top sets there are one or two students that are far and away brighter than everyone else - and everyone else is smart, too! It's a real challenge as a teacher to make sure that those kids are being challenged, supported and encouraged while not singling them out. You'd think that the fact that I used to be one such student would help me with this, but actually it's more difficult than I thought it was when I was a student.
I hereby promise to read everything else in this thread that I haven't read - someone hold me to it!
Posted by mackillian (Member # 586) on :
Okay, Hobbes. I'm just going to be honest.
Your longer post made me want to shove your IQ up your nose.
Now, I know you. And I like you. I know you're a good guy. But your post just dripped with that superior sense of smug entitlement that causes people to want to beat up the "smart" kids. The I'm better than everyone else, you should cater to me, it's okay if I suck up all the academic resources available type of personality trait.
I am beginning to suspect that maybe I am just a dumb jock. Supposedly I'm a smart kid. *shrug* I was in a gifted program. *shrug* I hated it. I hated school in general, but that's not what I want to talk about.
But what Hobbes said has bugged me since last night. If I had been next to him, I would've said, "Who the hell do you think you are?"
So, if I pissed folks off or hurt them by saying that, I apologize now. But I couldn't figure out a soft way to say it, and I didn't want to leave it unsaid, because it captured some of the heart of that chasm between "smart" kids and the rest of us.
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
Megan,
quote:Oh, and then there's everyone's education solution in the early 90s, groupwork. "Look, we'll put the kids into small groups with mixed levels of ability! It'll be great! They'll learn from each other while accomplishing a given task!" Horse puckey. What will happen (and what continues to happen even up into grad school, my friends) is that one person, maybe two people, will do all the work, while the rest sit around and watch.
That has to do with administration, where the priority is on getting the project done rather than keeping everyone involved.
quote:Oh, and forgive me for a sec for going all Ayn Rand-y, but it is not the purpose of the "smart" kids to serve the "stupid" kids (I don't particularly like those terms).
I'm sure you don't like those terms, but that's the way it is.
quote:All kids come to school (or are forced to come to school) in order to learn. Socialization is an important skill, but as far as I can tell, forcing kids into interaction with either those that resent them or those that they resent doesn't help either.
The thing about good kids, really good kids as opposed to kids who merely do well on classwork, is that they like helping other kids.
quote:And there is DEFINITELY resentment--take it from someone who spent 5th, 6th, and part of 7th grade being called every name in the book, and pretty much mocked mercilessly by every single one of her so-called peers. People at that age look for a scapegoat--you know how people always say, "You know how there's that one kid that everyone picks on?"
We've all been called names, Megan. It doesn't mean we get to shut off our responsibility.
quote:And what about, to quote Irami, "stupid" kids, who are extremely gifted in one area or other, but since they're not bright enough, won't qualify in a gifted program?
Bless you, Kama, you can take out the "are extremely gifted in one area" because let's be honest, if I can't read, it doesn't matter how well I juggle or play spoons.
Amira,
quote:I hereby promise to read everything else in this thread that I haven't read - someone hold me to it!
You don't need anybody to hold you to it. You said you were going to do it, do it.
__________________________________________
For the record, the entire, "I shouldn't have to deal with people who call me names" speaks volumes about who we are as people.
[ January 17, 2005, 12:29 PM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :
I was homeschooled. I didn't know I was "smart". I used to drive my mother crazy, because when people would ask me what my favorite subject was, I'd say History. (I liked it cause it was basically all reading.) She'd get upset and say but you are so "good" at math. But since I wasn't around other kids my age to compare to I didn't know how advanced I actually was. When I actually passed my mother in math was when I started realizing it. The other thing that made me realize it was that when I went to the community college there were all these adults that couldn't do what I did. I had mistakenly assumed my entire life that I was *normal* and everyone was capable of what I could do. Tutoring for 4 years taught me that while it can be taught to anyone with time and patience, clearly some people's brains just aren't as good at math as others.
I don't know if this was a good thing or a bad thing. I had a lot to learn socially when I went to college, even though I was with a bunch of National Merit Scholars in the dorms. However they were probably more patient with me than ordinary people would have been because they'd had to deal with similar struggles themselves. Now I do a reasonably decent job of blending in.
I don't really want to stick out. I do a bit because my personality is one that will always be a bit attention seeking. But now many of the people that know and like me for my personality don't realize how "smart" I am actually supposed to be. And that is fine with me.
AJ
[ January 17, 2005, 12:34 PM: Message edited by: BannaOj ]
Posted by Teshi (Member # 5024) on :
quote: who are extremely gifted in one area or other, but since they're not bright enough, won't qualify in a gifted program?
Tnis is often the case, and was definately the case in my experience. For the gifted test I took, I had to qualify in four different areas: my parents' estimation of me, an interview, math and language.
One person I know was asked to take the test three times because of her exceptional ability in math but because she was not considered gifted in language was consistantly excluded from the program, which as I've said before, was almost all science and math anyway.
Also, the world is not divided into smart kids of stupid kids. There are plenty of middle-of-the-road children who perhaps have not been helped so consistantly by their parents, or merely are just "normal" kids. Where do they fit in outisde of the gifted/non-gifted divide?
Posted by Ela (Member # 1365) on :
quote:Oh, and then there's everyone's education solution in the early 90s, groupwork. "Look, we'll put the kids into small groups with mixed levels of ability! It'll be great! They'll learn from each other while accomplishing a given task!" Horse puckey. What will happen (and what continues to happen even up into grad school, my friends) is that one person, maybe two people, will do all the work, while the rest sit around and watch.
This is so true. On several occasions, both my kids have ended up doing all or most of the work on a "group" project, because, they said, it was the only way to assure that it would be done right.
And, now that you mention it, something like that happened to me in a grad school group study, also, where I did all the work and everyone got credit.
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
The thing is, if that's what happens, then the project was not "done right," because part of doing the project was the cross-teaching. It's probably more important than whatever material result was achieved. It's a question of priorities.
[ January 17, 2005, 12:36 PM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by ketchupqueen (Member # 6877) on :
I liked the way groupwork worked in my 8th grade (gifted) English and History classes-- each person had an individual part of the project, then also had a group part of the project. On the day you presented your project, you handed the teacher a slip of paper rating, from 1 to 4, the effort each person (including yourself) put into the group project. This counted for 20% of the grade, based on the total score each person gave you. So if you and another person did all the work and two people did none, you could give the people who did none 1s and yourself and the person who helped 4s. (If there was a major discrepancy, suppose the people who did no work gave everyone 4s and the other two gave 1s to them, the teacher called members of the group up individually and talked to them. If she determined that someone had given themselves more credit than they should have for group work or was unfairly giving someone else less credit than they deserved, they failed the project.)
Posted by Belle (Member # 2314) on :
It is not the responsibility of an eight year old child to teach her peers. She isn't qualified to do it, and she shouldn't be doing it, she should be learning herself.
If the classroom she's in can't teach her anything, because it's all below her level, then we need to get her into a class where she can learn something.
Teaching her patience, and teaching her to love and help out her fellow man are all fine ideals, and it can be done, but it needn't be done merely or even primarily in the schools. We have families and churches to help teach moral character, and community responsibility.
In school, I want my children to learn. Not become the kid who the teacher foists all her difficult problem kids on. My children, both of the school age ones, are constantly put in this position. Emily has to sit at a table with three kids who are all trouble makers, they talk in class, they disrupt, and they cause the teacher problems. Why put Emily with them? Because she's quiet, obedient, and doesn't need as much attention from the teacher, she grasps concepts well. The teacher wants my daughter to be a calming influence on the boys.
Instead she gets picked on, and comes home frustrated and upset because of the names she's been called. To the point of coming home in tears sometimes.
How is this helping anyone, least of all Emily? She's learning that when you sit still and keep quiet and do what's expected, the teacher takes advantage of you. What a wonderful lessson to pass along to our talented, intelligent, well behaved children.
Posted by Kama (Member # 3022) on :
quote: Bless you, Kama, you can take out the "are extremely gifted in one area" because let's be honest, if I can't read, it doesn't matter how well I juggle or play spoons.
Sure it does. What about a kid who may have a potential to become a great painter or musician, but won't if their talent is overlooked, just cause the kid isn't smart enough?
I'm not saying they shouldn't learn how to read. I'm saying if they are gifted in something else, this should be noticed and developed, along with their ability to read. And if the kid isn't bright enough, and their parents don't care, this will be neglected.
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
quote:It is not the responsibility of an eight year old child to teach her peers. She isn't qualified to do it, and she shouldn't be doing it, she should be learning herself.
I peer are qualified and that the process of teaching is a worthwhile way of learning.
quote:Teaching her patience, and teaching her to love and help out her fellow man are all fine ideals, and it can be done, but it needn't be done merely or even primarily in the schools. We have families and churches to help teach moral character, and community responsibility.
Kids are in class five and six hours a day. Should we teach that thinking about responsibility is a task for evenings and weekends, and during the daytime, kids have to look out for number one. Character belongs in education, it belongs in family, and it belongs in church, and in no arena at the exclusion of the other.
quote:She's learning that when you sit still and keep quiet and do what's expected, the teacher takes advantage of you. What a wonderful lessson to pass along to our talented, intelligent, well behaved children.
I think there is dignity in that.
[ January 17, 2005, 12:58 PM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by Kama (Member # 3022) on :
Is saying "bless you Kama" a nice thing to say?
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
Kind of, but from my mouth, there are snide connotations. Fly out to Northern California and we can talk about it over dinner. You can take that anyway you'd like.
[ January 17, 2005, 01:29 PM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by Teshi (Member # 5024) on :
quote: She's learning that when you sit still and keep quiet and do what's expected, the teacher takes advantage of you. What a wonderful lessson to pass along to our talented, intelligent, well behaved children.
What is happening to Emily happened to me. I was very aware of it, and knew I was being "taken advantage of". However, at the same time, I felt not only like I was being put in a postition of trust, but also, because I was aware of the teacher's ideas behind this, I felt that in some ways, I had higher ground than the teacher.
It was the awareness factor: If you know what the adults are up to, you're one up on the adults.
[ January 17, 2005, 01:03 PM: Message edited by: Teshi ]
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote: I think that's the attitude I'm talking about. If this is gifted, I think I was put in the right class.
Irami, I think you're cherry-picking quotes here to reinforce your pre-conceived opinions. I note that you've tended to reply only to those things which allow you to continue with your working hypothesis.
Posted by mothertree (Member # 4999) on :
I think another point we are overlooking is that school is not structured the way it is in order to best teach a "normal" "average" child. It is structured the way it is to get the most out of the available teacher manpower. My home schooling remark was based on the idea that we all wish teachers would love each of their 25-40 students like a good parent loves their own children. But this is assumed not to be the case, generally.
Is it better for the teacher to love most of the students at the expense of a few who are either the slowest or the quickest? Or is it better for the teacher to give special attention to those who need it most?
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
The thing is, I think that Belle's kids and Ela's kids are fine.
Take this quote:
quote:In school, I want my children to learn. Not become the kid who the teacher foists all her difficult problem kids on. My children, both of the school age ones, are constantly put in this position. Emily has to sit at a table with three kids who are all trouble makers, they talk in class, they disrupt, and they cause the teacher problems. Why put Emily with them? Because she's quiet, obedient, and doesn't need as much attention from the teacher, she grasps concepts well. The teacher wants my daughter to be a calming influence on the boys.
It sounds as though the teacher has the right idea. The difference we have is a difference of priorities.
[ January 17, 2005, 01:28 PM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by Belle (Member # 2314) on :
Unfortunately not every teacher is as committed and dedicated as Jenny. Not every teacher understands that gifted kids aren't just kids who need more work, they are kids that learn differently, and they benefit from being taught differently.
If we think that kids who are learning disabled deserve more individualized educational programs, why would we deny that to the gifted kids?
You really think a gifted eight year old is qualified to teach concepts to her peers? I personally think they are the last person that needs to be teaching it!
My daughter, at age 4, grasped the concepts of negative numbers. She asked me one day in the car, out of the blue, what would happen if she took five away from three. She said she knew there had to be an answer, but I'd never taughter her any number less than zero. She wanted to know what the names of the numbers were.
Now, is she really the best person in first grade, say 2 years later, to explain to a classmate how to add two plus two? She can't understand why they don't get it! She can't comprehend the complexities of differing learning styles, and that some people are visual or tactile learners, all she knows is she is being asked to explain a concept to someone else that she knows without explanation.
It's not that she wouldn't care, or wouldn't want to help (my Natalie is the most caring and empathic person I know, she deeply cares about others and has volunteered at her middle school to be a mentor to younger students) It's that she couldnt' help. When these gifted kids make such leaps in comprehension, they don't understand why others can't do that, why they need to take everything in steps. So asking them to explain the steps is asking them to do the impossible. It's like saying to someone who flew from New York to CA in three hours to sit down and write driving directions for somebody who's going there by car.
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
quote:When these gifted kids make such leaps in comprehension, they don't understand why others can't do that, why they need to take everything in steps. So asking them to explain the steps is asking them to do the impossible. It's like saying to someone who flew from New York to CA in three hours to sit down and write driving directions for somebody who's going there by car.
I agree. Except instead of, "So asking them to explain the steps is asking them to do the impossible," I'd say, asking them to explain the steps is asking them to think about the leaps they have taken, which is a exercise that properly belongs in education.
[ January 17, 2005, 01:28 PM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:It sounds as if the teacher has the right idea. The difference we have is a difference of priorities.
And a difference in what constitutes personal responsibility. You, apparantly, think it is the responsibility of one child to make up for the lack of responsbility in the other children.
Dagonee
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
Teaching kids that they are their brother's keeper is something I think we should endorse.
Posted by mothertree (Member # 4999) on :
I got an earful from my grandma one day for dissing the art and science of pedagogy. She was deeply offended that I thought I could go get a teaching job with my linguistics degree when people spend their entire undergrad just learning how to teach. That is why I find the idea of peer teaching dubious. There is apparently more to trasmittting information to another than simply having the information to begin with.
If gifted kids didn't have special learning needs, we could just have them keep skipping grades until they aren't bored anymore. My in-laws had most if not all of their children skip a grade. I never understood how skipping just one grade was supposed to cure boredom, but I guess it kind of worked as a magic feather (or acheivement placebo) where instead of being content to bump along the bottom of the grade, they felt challenged to prove themselves.
edit:
If they don't want bible in the school, they have to lose the good as well as the bad Irami.
[ January 17, 2005, 01:33 PM: Message edited by: mothertree ]
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:Teaching kids that they are their brother's keeper is something I think we should endorse.
Sure it is. But part of teaching kids they are their brother's keeper involves teaching them that when their misbehavior effects others, the others will not be the ones to bear the cost.
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
quote:If they don't want bible in the school, they have to lose the good as well as the bad Irami.
Really?
Posted by Eaquae Legit (Member # 3063) on :
Irami, I've done this. I tried for years to tutor my peers in math. In grade eight, my teacher had me try to explain how I got a math solution to the calss. I did, but all I got was blank stares. And this has been the pattern (before and) since. I tried, I tried so hard, to explain how I was arriving at the answers I was. It all made such crystal clear sense to me.
I had to give up. I had to give up tutoring, nto for my sake, but for the sake of the poor souls who got stuck with me as a tutor. it wasn't fair to them. It didn't work. It would just make most people frustrated, even my best friend, who is very bright herself. Eventually, she told me to stop trying, that I would never be a good tutor in maths or sciences. I eventually came to the conclusion that my brain just works differently. It isn't a matter of willingness, even. It just. did. not. work. There's nothign I can do about it. I can't stop thinking, and I can't expect people to think the same way as me. It isn't fair to either of us.
And that is with peers who wanted to learn, wanted me to explain. Asking a child to tutor someone who calls her names and hits her with a hockey stick when the teacher isn't paying attention isn't fair. It's not fair. It hurts the child, it makes her not want to be in school, not want to learn. There's only so much you can ask a child to take. There's a limit.
Yes, there's a certain amount of personal bitterness here.
Teaching fairness and responsibility is a good thing. Yet it's been my experience that it's the children like Belle's who already get this concept (as much as the age can). And then they are stuck with children who disrupt their learning, mock them, and coast along on the work that the one child does. Where is the fairness in that? What are we teaching the other children? That this is okay? It isn't. It can't be.
I'm so sorry, I have a lot more to say, but too many bad memories are popping up in my mind and it's making it difficult to write.
Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
quote:I had to give up. I had to give up tutoring, nto for my sake, but for the sake of the poor souls who got stuck with me as a tutor.
Hey, man, I know how you feel. That's why my wife has to teach our kids how to use the computer.
Posted by amira tharani (Member # 182) on :
Okay, having now read most if not quite all of the comments in this thread, I'm going to weigh in again.
In school, I had the same things happen to me as most of you did - particularly in that I was often asked to explain things to the rest of the class or to people who didn't pick it up as quick as I did. At first, I was pretty hopeless at this for exactly the reason that Belle suggested - I knew things without knowing how or without really understanding why others didn't get it. However, I did find that when I was "teaching" others, even at that age, it helped me understand the concept better, and I got better and better at explaining things to the point where in the later part of my secondary school years most of my breaks were spent doing just that in more or less formalised ways. Perhaps unsurprising that I wound up being a teacher - though at the time it was the last thing I wanted to do. So I think that peer teaching can be a really great learning experience, but it should be one that's available to all the students. You should see the beaming smiles on the faces of my "lower-ability" students when I pretend not to know something and get them to "teach" me, or when they get to explain things to each other! At the same time, as a teacher you have to be willing to teach kids how to do that properly and then manage the process so you don't get animosity between the kids.
On this topic, I have a student in my year 10 class (9th grade?) who is already in the top set but is far and away brighter than everyone else. She's as shy as anything and loathes being singled out, but is quite well liked by the other group, and I think they enjoy having her in the class and getting the more informed and sensitive input that she can provide. But I know she's not challenged and she's getting bored, and I'm not quite sure how to make sure that she is challenged and her learning is extended without singling her out. At the moment, I'm just going for providing differentiated activities - eg "everyone must do this, if you finish that you should do this, and then as an extension you could do this" with the activities getting more in-depth and thought-provoking - and then everyone has the option of accessing the extension work, so it's not a case of "everyone do this, Camila you can do this instead." What else would you guys suggest?
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
"I'd say, asking them to explain the steps is asking them to think about the leaps they have taken, which is a exercise that properly belongs in education."
And while they're learning to explain how they know what they already know to people who don't know that yet, they're frustrating the people they're supposed to be helping and not learning anything new themselves.
Not everyone -- child or not -- is suited to teaching.
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
quote:Not everyone -- child or not -- is suited to teaching.
I'm not willing to commit to that.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
Fine. Go conduct your experiments with your own children, then.
Posted by mothertree (Member # 4999) on :
quote: Really?
Yes, really. Because if you say "well, we'll take the good and leave the bad" then it is only a matter of time before people keep justifying what is good and you end up with the whole bible back in schools. And that would apparently be bad.
Posted by Ela (Member # 1365) on :
quote:However, I did find that when I was "teaching" others, even at that age, it helped me understand the concept better
My daughter just told me she had the same experience, Amira.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
I believe that a child's primary resonsibility is to learn not to teach. I understand that there is more than one type of thing to learn in school, and that there are things that can be learned by assisting a peer, but when that happens so often that it slows down that chils progress in the core subjects then I think it is a bad idea...both for the child teaching and for the child learning.
quote:It's a question of priorities.
I was one of the kids who use to get stuck in the groups of losers who wouldn't contrubute to projects, and I hated it. I basically had two choices...I could let them sit there and do nothing, or I could do it all myself. If I only did my part I would get a failing grade, and if I did all of it we would usually get at leasst a B.
I didn't care much about grades, as long as I passed, and I was even willing to do MORE thanmy sahre as long as everyone at least tried to help. But I was not going to fail and have to take a class over because some dumb ass was going to be lazy and not do his share.
So the other kids learned that they could be lazy and Rob would still do the work, and the group would not only pass but would excell, and I learned that I was screwed no matter what I did....so I stopped trying. I didn;t care, and I only did what I needed to do in order to pass. That way I wasn't forced to do everyones work for them. If I liked a topic I would always get an A, but I stopped trying at everything else because I didn't care.
Caring cost too much. Too much time, too much effort, just too much in general.
Mack, I was just like Hobbes in the classes I liked, and I had the same attitude YOU have about his behavior....who are YOU to hold me back? Why should I care about being too much of a bother, when all I wasnt to do is learn adn most of the other kids don't care to bother at all. I was always willing to help the others if they were at least trying, and some of my classmates would have me run study groups for them, adn I was glad to do it as long as they cared enough to try, but I was not about to let the other kids hold me back.
Kwea
Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
The bible NEEDS to be in schools.
You can't teach Western style symbolisms without it.
'Mom, what's a Christ-figure? Mr. Anderson says Jim Casey is one. . .'
Posted by Ela (Member # 1365) on :
Kwea, I think you hit the nail on the head as to why my kids, and others like them, would end up doing more than their fair share of work on group projects.
Posted by mackillian (Member # 586) on :
I understand that, but do/did you have that sense of entitlement? That you are inherently better and therefore can suck up all the resources and not feel bad about it at all? That the classtime is meant just for you?
Posted by mothertree (Member # 4999) on :
Can I suck up all the classtime if no one else is going to? It's not an entitlement to do it, but it still could happen.
Of course, a lack of understanding as to what is socially appropriate is something a lot of "gifted" kids struggle with.
I guess peer tutoring should go both ways, where the "stupid" (to use Frimpong's preffered label) try to teach the "smart" kids how to not be so geeky. I think it would be about as effective.
I don't know if when Frimpong uses the word it is good or bad. It seems to mean both for you.
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
quote: Fine. Go conduct your experiments with your own children, then.
And that, my friends, is the sound of a big grown man taking his ball and going home.
Scott,
Not to mention taking out the Iliad, or just about any meaningful cultural narratives, you know, the kind of stories that help us make sense our lives and make moral judgments possible, and without which we be an impoverished people living in an affluent slum.
Ela,
quote:Kwea, I think you hit the nail on the head as to why my kids, and others like them, would end up doing more than their fair share of work on group projects.
I don't know if this has to be a problem. I'm also not sure that any project in elementary school is so important that we should be so eager to break our communal ties, for sake of a baking soda volcano or a mobile. I'm also not talking about set projects as much as correcting classwork and reading groups.
Kwea,
quote:I basically had two choices...I could let them sit there and do nothing, or I could do it all myself. If I only did my part I would get a failing grade, and if I did all of it we would usually get at least a B.
That sounds like a problem with the grading.
Mothertree,
Being stupid isn't a good or a bad thing, apparently it's an empirical fact, like being gifted, and as the parents of gifted children properly say that their children tested into gifted programs, my parents can say that their child is giftless. _____
btw, Did anyone see Mr. 3000?
[ January 17, 2005, 03:00 PM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by Ela (Member # 1365) on :
quote:Ela,
quote: Kwea, I think you hit the nail on the head as to why my kids, and others like them, would end up doing more than their fair share of work on group projects.
I don't know if this has to be a problem. I'm also not sure that any project in elementary school is so important that we should be so eager to break our communal ties, for sake of a baking soda volcano or a mobile. I'm also not talking about set projects as much as correcting classwork and reading groups.
Irami, it was not only a problem in elementary school, but through middle and high school, as well. And I am also not talking about set projects such as correcting class work and reading groups. I am talking about things like science fair projects and other projects of that nature.
Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :
quote: The philosophies really aren't that different - it's all about meeting a child's intellectual, social, and emotional needs.
If a child asks to be in a gifted class, wants to be in a gifted class, yet does not have the appropriate test scores, should the state let that child in the gifted class?
[ January 17, 2005, 03:02 PM: Message edited by: Storm Saxon ]
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
I'm not worried about science fair projects or any other "important" projects, though once again, we open up a question of priorites and what's important.
I'm worried about day to day work.
[ January 17, 2005, 03:06 PM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by mothertree (Member # 4999) on :
You say there is no value to stupid or gifted, but you seem very resentful toward anyone who doesn't identify themselves as stupid. (edit: Hope no one quoted that before I fixed it. Oh well.)
I never knew my IQ because my mom thought it would be bad for my self esteem. At least, that is how my sister interpretted the lack of information.
[ January 17, 2005, 03:59 PM: Message edited by: mothertree ]
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:And that, my friends, is the sound of a big grown man taking his ball and going home.
No, it's the sound of a man who refuses to let you make people feel guilty for not wanting their kids to be forced to limit themselves because of the voluntary actions of other children. It's also the sound of a man waiting for you to acknowledge that this responsibility you're always lecturing about goes both ways.
Dagonee
Posted by Ela (Member # 1365) on :
I think we are talking past each other, here, Irami.
In the post you quoted, I was commenting on projects that students are assigned to do in a group, in which one or two students do the bulk of the work, while the others sit back and get the credit all the same. That included science fair projects, English projects, and others of that nature.
If you were not commenting on that, then why did you include my quote in your post?
Posted by Hobbes (Member # 433) on :
quote:Okay, Hobbes. I'm just going to be honest.
Your longer post made me want to shove your IQ up your nose.
Now, I know you. And I like you. I know you're a good guy. But your post just dripped with that superior sense of smug entitlement that causes people to want to beat up the "smart" kids. The I'm better than everyone else, you should cater to me, it's okay if I suck up all the academic resources available type of personality trait.
Did it now? I think you read my post exactly as if you already thought I felt superior, because the whole point was that it most certainly wasn't OK, that it cause problems, I wasn't describing exactly how smart I think I am, if I was I don't think you'd mistake it for dripping sense of superiority.
quote:I am beginning to suspect that maybe I am just a dumb jock. Supposedly I'm a smart kid. *shrug* I was in a gifted program. *shrug* I hated it. I hated school in general, but that's not what I want to talk about.
But what Hobbes said has bugged me since last night. If I had been next to him, I would've said, "Who the hell do you think you are?"
So, if I pissed folks off or hurt them by saying that, I apologize now. But I couldn't figure out a soft way to say it, and I didn't want to leave it unsaid, because it captured some of the heart of that chasm between "smart" kids and the rest of us.
Well for one, I don't recall anything that would suggest that the other kids were anything equivilent to "dumb", or for that matter, "jocks". The difference between me and the other kids in the class had nothing to do with IQ, and I certainly didn't say so, and wouldn't say so.
I admit, I'm not perfect, and I'm sure I did talk down to some of the people I had classes with in High School, and I do think I'm smarter than some of them, some of them are smarter than I am, and that's who I think I am Mack. And now I'm going to stop saying since I've probably already said things I'll regret.
Hobbes Posted by Amka (Member # 690) on :
I've skipped from about 3/4 on page 2, but I really couldn't hold back.
[QUOTEexercise in humility to have the gifted kids work in the same group helping the stupid kids[/QUOTE]
Humility shouldn't be our goal in this. We should be teaching these kids, and every child, compassion and unselfishness. Humility is a side effect of that, I think, and is something to be learned as well but doesn't come from being assigned to teach "stupid" kids.
Frankly, any gift or talent is worthless in my eyes without those traits. I think 95% of our society's problems can be traced to selfish and prideful behavior.
And I don't think it is inappropriate to be giving opportunities to serve in school, even at the youngest ages. We just have to make it age and skill appropropriate.
In our school, the kids who can read well do tutor younger kids who are struggling. The 2 year age difference does much to prevent problems of feeling lesser than a peer, because it is a 'big kid' that is helping.
Posted by Lady Jane (Member # 7249) on :
I haven't read everything, so I apologize.
Am I the only one that flat-out refused to "explain" everything to the people in the rest of the group that weren't too fond of me in the first place? I wasn't too happy to be stuck there at all. "I know the material, I'm checking out now, get back to me when something new happens."
Of course, that has a price - the grading system depended on it getting done. You can only tell everyone to fly a kite of you don't care about grades, and I figured that out very, very early. It still worked out.
They were good at things I that I wasn't, but no one was required to skip their own softball practice or flirting to help me get better at it.
quote:This was highschool and I had enough self confidence and personal ... something that escapes me.... that I didn't get in anyway maltreated by the other students, but most of them spent their time mad at me,
Hobbesy, I'll bet this still happens. You have an air of genial bon homie that hides just how incredibly principled and stubborn you are. In a world of lead or be led, your clear immunity to being handled WILL make some people resent you. I love that you're so stubborn and principled, because it means you're trustworthy and also that you're not going to do something stupid to hurt yourself while trying to please other people. I'd tell you to hold strong, but I doubt you need it, and I'd mention to remember to stay teachable, but I don't think you need that either. I will tell you that I like that about you, very much.
[ January 17, 2005, 03:34 PM: Message edited by: Lady Jane ]
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
Mothertree,
And I don't especially like Christians, white people, or men. The thing is, I like them fine, I just don't like them especially.
Dagonee,
quote:No, it's the sound of a man who refuses to let you make people feel guilty for not wanting their kids to be forced to limit themselves because of the voluntary actions of other children. It's also the sound of a man waiting for you to acknowledge that this responsibility you're always lecturing about goes both ways.
I think that more people should feel guilty. Of course it goes both ways, but we have to understand that stupid group's only distinction is that they are stupid, and part of being gifted comes with understand that responsibility that gift confers.
On a different problem, misbehaving kids need to be taught responsibility also, but it's the same lesson.
Civic responsibility is more important than arithmetic in public school education. The Matthew Shepards, and the Columbines, and the drug abuse, and drunk drivers do not happen when kids have a sense of self and civic responsibility.
Or we can content ourselves to raise society with David Cash's priorities. For the record, the man was a wonderful nuclear Engineer who has probably gone off to make a healthy sum designing a new and better brand of teflon and is considered by many people, in virtue of his degree and job, to be a success.
Ela,
We are talking past each other. I don't really put stock in elementary school grades. It's sounds like we agree on the large scale.
Amka,
It sounds good to me.
[ January 17, 2005, 03:40 PM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by Lady Jane (Member # 7249) on :
quote:I think that more people should feel guilty.
Of course - then they are easier to manipulate.
Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :
/can't help self/ Nuclear engineering has nothing to do with teflon. Teflon is the domain of Chemical engineers.
AJ
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
quote:posted January 17, 2005 03:39 PM --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
quote: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I think that more people should feel guilty. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Of course - then they are easier to manipulate.
If that's where your priorities are.
I'm just thinking about the article I read about felons and businessmen having an extraordinarily high self-esteem.
Aj,
[ January 17, 2005, 03:46 PM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:I think that more people should feel guilty. Of course it goes both ways, but we have to understand that stupid group's only distinction is that they are stupid, and part of being gifted comes with understand that responsibility that gift confers.
Assuming, of course, that a gifted person is able to teach classmates, or even children two grades below. An assumption that is pretty unsubstantiated.
And you seem to be advocating depriving "gifted" children of the chance to maximize their learning if such deprivation will help children you refer to as "stupid."
Dagonee
Posted by Lady Jane (Member # 7249) on :
quote:I'm just thinking about the article I read about felons and businessmen having a high self-esteem.
Those who accomplish things usually do. Those with low esteem talk but don't take action.
And I'm sad for you that you equate the two.
[ January 17, 2005, 03:47 PM: Message edited by: Lady Jane ]
Posted by ladyday (Member # 1069) on :
Jenny, what do you mean by "exit strategies?" When I saw your mention of that what jumped into my mind was that the ultimate goal of gifted and talented programs was to eventually have the student able to function happily in a “normal” setting. _____
The idea behind special education, at least in my daughter's school district, is to create a "least restrictive environment.” This means that the student is integrated into the “regular” classroom as much as possible. In the case of my daughter, she goes to a regular classroom but periodically goes to separate classes to meet special needs ranging from academic issues like language comprehension to social needs like anger management. She is able to keep up with the standard second grade curriculum and be with her peers while getting her needs met.
More advanced students help her by being good role models. Sometimes typically developing peers will be invited to join social groups such as a “circle of friends” group that deals with how to make friends, but they are by no means required to attend.
I’m just thinking out loud here. Some of you stated that being talented and gifted was a special need, so I think it makes sense to look at how special needs are handled. Can approaching gifted and talented programs from a “least restrictive” point of view work, or is being in an average classroom restrictive by nature? Are the special needs of talented and gifted students so severe as to require being pulled out of their classes and put in a small elite group?
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
quote:And you seem to be advocating depriving "gifted" children of the chance to maximize their learning if such deprivation will help children you refer to as "stupid."
I wouldn't phrase it that way, but yep. I think it will make for a richer classroom. I'm not a maximizing for sake of maximizing type of guy.
quote:Those who accomplish things usually do. Those with low esteem talk but don't take action.
I don't know if it's that simple. Should we say of gang murders or corporate theives, "Well, at least they are out there doing something with their lives."
*chuckles* I'm also thinking of Clinton eating all of that junk food in the 90s with pride, and maybe he shouldn't have felt so good about that, either.
[ January 17, 2005, 04:02 PM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by Lady Jane (Member # 7249) on :
Everyone eats. Only some people take action.
[ January 17, 2005, 03:57 PM: Message edited by: Lady Jane ]
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:I wouldn't phase it that way, but yep. I think it will make for a richer classroom. I'm (edit: not a) maximizing for sake of maximizing type of guy.
Of course you wouldn't phrase it that way, but I'm glad you admitted it. If you're philosophy becomes dominant, expect more flight of advanced kids from school systems with such policies.
The classes that were identified as "difficult" in high school were at least tolerable. Those with everyone in the general population (American Government, Spanish, *shudder* P.E.) were absolute hell. If all my classes had been like that, it's likely I wouldn't have finished high school.
Dagonee
[ January 17, 2005, 04:03 PM: Message edited by: Dagonee ]
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
I meant to say that I'm not a maximizing for the sake of maximizing type of guy.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
Yeah, I assumed that when I responded.
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
Good.
Ladyday,
I agree, the problem is that if parents are narrowly looking for their own child's scientific self-interest, then it's not fair for gifted kids to have to use their time-- and the classes time-- to help or model for your kid. A very good argument could be made that the gifted kids are not served by the burden of giftless kids leeching off of them. It's an argument I don't agree with, but that's what we are talking about.
[ January 17, 2005, 04:11 PM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by Lady Jane (Member # 7249) on :
Are you trying to argue against both sides? What's happening in ladyday's classroom is exactly what you've been advocating.
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
I'm trying to flesh out the problem adequately, it doesn't matter which side I am on.
Posted by littlemissattitude (Member # 4514) on :
quote:I think that more people should feel guilty.
I've been trying not to say this, but I can't hold it in any more.
I am sick and tired of people trying to make me feel guilty because I am what is generally called "smart" in our society. Because, frankly, that's all I've been hearing all my life. Never got it from my mom and dad, because they always understood. But from the rest of the family, on both sides, from friends of the family, from almost everyone at most of the schools I ever attended (even support from teachers at every level was very hard to come by). In every way, ever since I was a child, I have been given the message that I should just keep my mouth shut because being "smart" didn't make me anything but annoying. Further, I have always been expected, within my family, to show intense interest in everything everyone else does and is interested in, but no one in the family, outside my immediate nuclear family, has ever acknowleged any achievement or interest of mine. Ever.
Why am I, and other academically talented individuals, singled out? We don't expect the athletically talented to downplay their abilities. We don't expect the musically talented, or the artistically talented (with the exception of writers, sometimes, because that smacks too much of academics), or the musically talented, or the dramatically talented to downplay their abilities. But because my ability happens to be academic, I'm supposed to shut up and act like I don't know any more than anyone else, and to act like I like it that way.
You know, we went through this whole argument when I was attending community college, when some folks in the school felt that the Honors Program (which I was not enrolled in, although I was invited to take some of their classes by individual instructors) and the honor societies should be abolished because they were considered "elitist". Well, these same people were not proposing to eliminiate the Dean's Medallions. These didn't depend on grades so much as someone being a recovering addict or alcoholic, or a rape victim, or having gone through some other hardship in life, even though the Medallions were consdered the highest "academic" award in each division. In other words, even if you had the highest grades and the most achievemets in a given division, you would not be invited to apply for consideration for the Medallions unless you had undergone some "hardship" in life. And they had to be the right sort of hardships; a good friend was not allowed to apply for the Medallion even though she was a young widow, severely dyslexic, raising two children alone who had also lost a third child, who nonetheless was in the honors program with an exemplary academic record.
They also did not propose elmininating athletic honors or artistic honors. Just the academically-oriented honors programs. Because it might make the people not invited to join the Honors Program or the Honor Society feel bad about themselves. You think it didn't make me feel bad about myself in high school when the cheerleaders were considered the ideal just because they were thin and could do gymnastics? But nobody seemed to think that was a problem.
Do I sound defensive? You bet I do. That probably has something to do with the fact that I've been put on the defensive about my one measly little talent - being good at academic things - all my life. And, frankly, I'm a little tired of it.
Posted by Lady Jane (Member # 7249) on :
On one hand, it's irritating that academic honors be eliminated. On the other, school is all just a game, and things sort themselves out. Life in general is Revenge of the Nerds.
Posted by Eaquae Legit (Member # 3063) on :
You know, I honestly had no idea that something liek this thread would open up such a mental can of worms inside myself. And in Hatrack, too.
Irami, I'm going to talk again from personal experience. I don't have any studies or stats to back up what I am going to say, merely the personal experiences of myself and other in this "elite" group.
It was a chance to soar. Once a week, I could be with kids who thought like I did. Kids who read books - they read books! And books like I did! We played card games that taught us pattern recognition and visual thinking. We researched subjects that interested US. Once a week, one precious, glorious day a week, I was interested in school.
The rest of the time, I sat there. After I finished grade five, my teachers were, well, less than equipped to deal with an oddball. Maybe my class went slower than average ones do. Heaven knows we were a tiny number - 11 of us, when I graduated grade 8.
Some time during those years, I learned that there was no point in putting my hand up to answer a question. I already knew the answer. If I answered it, then no one else would have to figure it out. I wasn't learnign anything, there was no point in me answering. Which made for a lot of time spent sitting at my desk pretending to be stupid. Also, I learned, the other kids don't like you when you answer all the questions.
Not that it mattered, they didn't like me much anyway. I put up with all sorts of crap because I was different. I hid who I was and what I loved in a vain attempt to avoid being the outcast. I'm sure there are people who suffered a lot worse, but I don't know their pain. I only know that I still carry a lot of marks today. And I refuse - REFUSE - to feel guilty about the things that brought me joy. I sat through four days of boredom each week in anticipation of that one day where I could be myself.
Who would I be if there was no Mrs Wallce, no Ms Costa? I don't know. Sometimes, when I'm especially down, I wonder if I would even be. The boredom, frustration, and yes, the unfairness, would have left far deeper marks.
Not to mention what happens when a kid learns to caost. A kid who ghoes uncallenged through elementary school can be shocked in high school. A kid who manages to coast through high school will be hit even harder by university. With no challenge, you never learn good work habits. Never stretching, when someone requires you to, you can't.
I will not be guilty. I've spent too long coming to terms with the fact that Who I Am is in fact an Okay Thing to Be.
Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :
*chuckles* Yup Lady Jane. I'd say the thing I'm most proud of at this point in my life is becoming a 24 year old homeowner.
AJ
On another note: My boyfriend, my fellow homeowner, who is as I've mentioned before of Black-Cuban descent, was bored out of his mind *in* the gifted programs in what was the best school system in the state of Ohio (which has pretty decent public schools in general). So, I don't know if he's actually a genius or not, but apparently the gifted programs that were helping everyone else, left him bored. He slept his way through his hardest classes his senior year of high school, infuriating teachers because when they'd wake him up he'd know the answers.
[ January 17, 2005, 04:30 PM: Message edited by: BannaOj ]
Posted by ladyday (Member # 1069) on :
What are you agreeing with? I stated some things that were happening in my kid's class and asked some questions. While I think the concept of inclusion and a least restrictive environment is a good one for my daughter, I'm not sure if it answers the needs of the gifted and talented.
In a way, though, I think it should. It just makes sense to me that kids with special needs should be treated the same whether they be above or below the typically developing spectrum. But I want the experts to weigh in .
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:It was a chance to soar. Once a week, I could be with kids who thought like I did. Kids who read books - they read books! And books like I did! We played card games that taught us pattern recognition and visual thinking. We researched subjects that interested US. Once a week, one precious, glorious day a week, I was interested in school.
Very nicely put. Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
quote:On the other, school is all just a game, and things sort themselves out. Life in general is Revenge of the Nerds.
I don't think it's that simple. I don't think that school is a game or that life is revenge of the nerds or that soldiers and firefighters should decide public policy and that academics do not live in the "real" world.
I think the word "gifted" is morally active and that science is the least important core subject taught in school and that we should think carefully about what qualities we are praising and blaming when label kids gifted and giftless.
Posted by ketchupqueen (Member # 6877) on :
I don't know, Katie. The only reason I survived school was that I knew at least the teachers thought I was worth something. The academic honors and amazement I got from adults were the only reason I didn't go catatonic from the severe harassment and, looking back, sometimes emotional abuse I got from my peers because they saw me as "other" because I was smart and didn't like sports and didn't care about clothes.
Posted by Lady Jane (Member # 7249) on :
quote:I don't think that school is a game or that life is revenge of the nerds or that soldiers and firefighters should decide public policy and that academics do not live in the "real" world.
I know that's what you think. But you're wrong. --
KQ: Hmm...I can believe that. I think my statement is the equivelent to "Hold on, it will get better." It does get better. I probably say that because I DIDN'T play the game at all and didn't even try, and I know I lost opportunities because of it. Not as many I should have, maybe, but some.
[ January 17, 2005, 04:33 PM: Message edited by: Lady Jane ]
Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :
quote: I think the word "gifted" is morally active and that science is the least important core subject taught in school...
I completely and utterly disagree with the above statement
quote: that we should think carefully about what qualities we are praising and blaming when label kids gifted and giftless
But I'll agree with this.
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
Ladyday,
In my estimation, your school has a dignified approach to the problem, an approach it should be proud of and model to schools across the nation.
[ January 17, 2005, 04:35 PM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by ladyday (Member # 1069) on :
Irami, did you seriously mean science is the least important subject taught in school or did I misunderstand?
Edit: And yes, I think this school works really well for my kid. My point as far as peers helping peers is that that "help" can come in the form of simple presence, and that many children will choose to help more if they are simply asked.
I just wonder if those ideas work both ways :\.
[ January 17, 2005, 04:40 PM: Message edited by: ladyday ]
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
If the core subjects elementary are
Math, reading, writing, History, Science, PE, if I were to lop one off, I'm going with science.
Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :
Why?
Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :
Besides reading and writing belong in one subject: English.
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
Because if one has to go, science is the least concerned with virtue. There are stories of good people who can't explain the chemical makeup of anything or think that plate tectonics is cookware, but they know the bible and I think they live good lives.
David Cash is an example of the opposite.
[ January 17, 2005, 04:48 PM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :
Personally I'd place History and Science on the exact same moral plane. So I'd say if you're going to shorten stuff to an absolute minimum and be fair you've got to go: Math, English, PE
AJ
(Incidentally, the Math, English, PE trifecta was the one my mother ran our school days by.)
AJ
[ January 17, 2005, 04:49 PM: Message edited by: BannaOj ]
Posted by ladyday (Member # 1069) on :
I'm just trying to figure out how you -could- eliminate science from the elementary school curriculum, especially at an age where children are deeply curious about the world around them.
Science has a way of making itself impossible to ignore .
Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :
Irami clearly never read Ranger Rick. AJ
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Why PE? It's not the school's responsibility to keep kids from getting fat. The three rs will do nicely.
On a different subject, I want to object to the apparent belief, a few pages back, that the loss of the Bible in schools also means the loss of moral instruction - 'the good bits'. That is an incredibly arrogant attitude for Christians to take, and a major reason I think religion whould be abolished entirely.
Posted by ladyday (Member # 1069) on :
And I'm not willing to concede that science does not concern itself with virtue btw. That comment just stirred up too much in me and I'm separating the wheat from the chaff.
Banna, I loved Ranger Rick .
Posted by Shigosei (Member # 3831) on :
Math is not concerned with virtue. Neither is P.E., really. English is only insamuch as it allows people to read works which are concerned with virtue.
Making moral choices is not just about having the right character. It's also about having as much information about the problem as possible. We cannot decide which action to take if we do not know what the consequences will be. How can we decide whether embryonic stem cell research is moral if we lack the scientific skills to understand it?
Posted by Eaquae Legit (Member # 3063) on :
I had zero science lessons in grades six and seven, and one - count 'em - one science lesson in grade eight.
Every time I think about it, I find it odd that my whole class seems to have passed grade nine science.
Posted by amira tharani (Member # 182) on :
lma and Eaquae Legit, I totally hear what you're saying - I overheard one of the first year students at Oxford discussing the same thing in almost the same terms - she said "Britain is the only English speaking country that uses the phrase 'too clever by half.'" Talking to you guys I'm not sure that's so, but it does worry me that kids are encouraged to hide their light under a bushel when they have so much to give. I don't know if I did the right thing with my very bright student: she gave an unbelievably well thought out and informed answer to a tough question, and the rest of the class applauded her (yay! I like classes like that where everyone supports each other) and I said to them straight up "You should be proud to have this lady in your class." I think they are, and I think that academic gifts are more valued by the school system that I work in than the one I was taught in. But I want to be the sort of teacher that values every kid, whatever their talents or personality - and I think that's no more than they deserve.
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
Math/PE would be second. These are all in the core curriculum, and I think that they should all be in the core curriculum, but I don't think they are all equal with respect to developing good, knowledgable people at the elementary level.
[ January 17, 2005, 05:13 PM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by ketchupqueen (Member # 6877) on :
If that's your criterion, I think P.E. should be dropped from the list.
Posted by Kama (Member # 3022) on :
I honestly think I could live with never learning science, and only the basics of maths.
Wait, I pretty much did. High school science was (luckily) pretty much non-existant, and math was (supposedly) easier than the curriculum. Yay Kama's high school.
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
quote:I honestly think I could live with never learning science, and only the basics of maths.
You could survive without both, but could you live well and responsibly? I think that would be harder.
[ January 17, 2005, 05:20 PM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by Shigosei (Member # 3831) on :
If we eliminate science in the classroom, then we will halt technological development. And yes, that would be immoral. It would be wrong to hamstring our ability to protect ourselves from new diseases. It would be wrong to continue to burn fossil fuels when we could develop a way to use the sun's energy directly and cleanly.
What's the point of learning to be moral when we all die from something we could have prevented?
Edit: Okay, I think I misinterpreted what you said. You obviously don't want to eliminate science or math or anything else. But my question stands: why is understanding the world on a lower plane than understanding literature?
[ January 17, 2005, 05:24 PM: Message edited by: Shigosei ]
Posted by Kama (Member # 3022) on :
Guess that depends how you define the basics.
I need maths for my finances. I need science to know that the lightbulb is not magic. I think what I learned in elementary school (i.e. grades 1 through 8 here) was pretty much what I ever needed to know.
Posted by Kama (Member # 3022) on :
quote:If we eliminate science in the classroom, then we will halt technological development.
Oh, yes, I agree completely. What I'm saying is that there should be a point where you can decide you've learned everything you need to know, and move on to things that really interest you. It should be that way with most subjects, not just science.
I don't exactly know where that point should be. But college is too late, IMO.
Posted by Shigosei (Member # 3831) on :
Yeah, a little more specialization in high school would be nice. However, the universities want to see a broad education, so it wouldn't be feasible to change it now.
Posted by mothertree (Member # 4999) on :
Irami, earlier you said stupid and gifted are empirical terms, and now you are saying gifted is morally active. I think you are being disrespectful of my common sense.
Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :
I kind of tried to explore the point with my question, but since it's being ignored, let me actually explicitly state it and see what people think, because I think it's a point that hasn't been explored.
The problem isn't that there are gifted classes, so much as that these classes are closed to people who are supposedly not gifted. Is it really safe to assume that the tests that the state administers can really know ahead of time how well a student will do in a given class or, more importantly, how that class will effect that student and encourage them to, perhaps, become gifted?
Let me put it another way, do you think that kids in so-called special ed classes should not be able to take regular classes even if their test scores suck, as long as they don't hold the rest of the other kids back?
'Yeah, but they will.'
This is an assumption. A very large one, I think. Just like it's an assumption to say that 'low achievers' can't rise to an occasion.
Am I saying that standards are wrong and that testing should be thrown out the window? No.
What I am saying is that, perhaps, the reality is that the state can't predict things with 100% accuracy, that it's better to err on the side of the individual in this case. The principle should be that the state is not the final determiner of whether or not an individual is worthy to be in a particular class, or with other people, the individual is.
Posted by mothertree (Member # 4999) on :
I find it interesting that the existence of gifted classes is being attacked both by the pro-group and pro-individual mentalities.
To back up to my statement that public school systems need to accomodate the gifted in order to compete with private schools, there is a degree to which the existence of the gifted program in the school is helping the rest of the school. It is analogous to the matter in which some have been saying gifted class members can help out regular class members.
I know that as a student, I became very concerned with the idea of a magnet school where gifted students (gifted in science, in this case) were removed from the other schools and all put in one super sciency school. And yet I had watched "Fame" and thought it was great that all the arty students could go to that school.
Posted by ketchupqueen (Member # 6877) on :
I had a big problem with that when I wanted to opt in and out of GATE as I pleased. They wanted to tell me that if I didn't want to be in it one year, I couldn't be in it the next year, and once I'd been in it that year, I couldn't be let out the next year if I didn't want to. Bureaucracies...
The end solution was to enroll me and not force me to go to things I didn't want to go to. A pain in the rear, especially considering that, as I mentioned before, the program was mostly crap.
Posted by Ela (Member # 1365) on :
quote:Ela,
We are talking past each other. I don't really put stock in elementary school grades. It's sounds like we agree on the large scale.
Irami,
Did you read my post? I specifically said that I was not only talking about elementary school, but also middle and high school.
If you are going to discuss what I wrote, please read more carefully.
Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :
quote: I find it interesting that the existence of gifted classes is being attacked both by the pro-group and pro-individual mentalities
You misread my post if you think it's an attack on the classes.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
Irami, I think it is funny...you are the only person referring to any kids as "stupid", but here you are saying that it is (or should be) the gifted kids who should have to sacrifice to help their "stupid" classmates.
I don't think so, and neither do most educators, thank God.
I make less money than you do....why shouldn't you have to give me part of what you make, because there is obviously a difference in status reflected in one's income, and that makes me less important in the eyes of society...
Do we require sports teams to take on the kids who are not coordinated enough to play well, or who lack the size to be effective?
Why should I have to help the other kids at the things I am good at when all they do is use their skills and size to intimidate and abuse me?
I think that if most kids cared they would learn a lot more, and all the peer counseling and teaching isn't going to motivate those kids to learn better....I believe that if it does anything it would do the opposite. It makes kids resentful of those who already know the subjects, and causes them to label themselves "stupid" even though no one else is calling them that.
Sort of like you did, perhaps.
My sister is a very hands-on type of learner, and she barely graduated high school with a c average. I always knew she was very smart, but she was very social and hated the academic subjects.
When she went to college after a taking a few years off she made the Deans list at her Technical College...and out of all the people she told about making the list for the first time in her life, I was the only person who didn't express surprise.
She learned really well in a different environment, after maturing for a few years, and now she makes more than twice what I do at a job she loves....she is an admission officer at that same college.
quote: Ela,
quote:Kwea, I think you hit the nail on the head as to why my kids, and others like them, would end up doing more than their fair share of work on group projects.
I don't know if this has to be a problem. I'm also not sure that any project in elementary school is so important that we should be so eager to break our communal ties, for sake of a baking soda volcano or a mobile. I'm also not talking about set projects as much as correcting classwork and reading groups.
So when I was held back from learning by lazy classmates doing exactaly what you are suggesting it wasn't a problem? Why? Because I am fairly smart I should have to spend my time babysitting a bunch of kids who are at least a full grade behind me in knowledge?
How is putting me in a group of other kids who are as smart as I am and as eager to learn as I am cutting any ties with anyone? Most of those kids I was in class with had no real ties to me, nor did we ever develop any other than mutual distaste. I didn't like them because they were in to doing all sorts of things I didn't care about....some were into sports, some in to cars....and I was in to music, reading, and science.
How does letting the "normal" speed kids leech off of the "smart" ones help them at all. Most of them don't WANT to learn, all they want is a passing grade. If they can get that without working a lot of them will.
I think that forcing the smarter kids to play teacher is a huge mistake, at least if it is done to the point were it is taking resources and time from the smarter kids potential class time. I would have been glad to read ALL of the classics in high school, and to have been tested on them. I could have done it in a semester, to be honest.
Instead I took a Science Fiction class, with the worst teacher I had ever had, just so I could graduate. That in addition to College Prep English, the same semester.
I literally slept through both.
quote: And you seem to be advocating depriving "gifted" children of the chance to maximize their learning if such deprivation will help children you refer to as "stupid."
I wouldn't phrase it that way, but yep. I think it will make for a richer classroom. I'm not a maximizing for sake of maximizing type of guy.
On the other hand I am in favor of doing the opposite...I think that removing the more advanced kids from the classrooms, at least for a few hours each day, allows BOTH groups to more along faster. The teachers are not being interrupted by the one or two kids who care ever 5 seconds, so the normal kids get a better education and the teachers can spend more time with each student making sure they understand. The more advanced kids get the one on one attention to encourage them to keep on trying and to challenge themselves. They also get the specific knowledge they need to excel in the subjects that need specific skill sets....science and math.
But the kids are still in the same classes for part of the day, improving their social skills and intermingling.
Mack, I did feel I was entitled to the best education possible, and I didn't care if I was asking questions that the rest of the class thought was unnecessary. I didn't care that some of them had a problem with me because I was curious and wanted to learn....and a lot of them did.
I didn't assume I was the best, or that the "jocks" were stupid, but at that point I was SO tired..tired of pretending I was not smart, that I was the same as the rest of the class, that I just went all out in the subjects I liked....and to hell with the rest of them.
I got college credit too, something very few high school kids did, so I guess that the last two years of school were worth the trouble.
Just thing what I could have done if I had felt free to do that every year.
Kwea
Posted by Teshi (Member # 5024) on :
quote: I had zero science lessons in grades six and seven, and one - count 'em - one science lesson in grade eight
I think you went to my school, Eaquae Legit.
Science is very important, however much you may hate it. It should not be taken off the curriculum.
(I am a Humanities/Social Sciences Student)
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
*Cough* Not real science... *cough*
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
KoM<------:::cough:: not real cool :: Cough
[ January 17, 2005, 08:20 PM: Message edited by: Kwea ]
Posted by Audeo (Member # 5130) on :
I have a unique perspective on gifted and special ed programs, because I was in the gifted program growing, and all four of my siblings were in special ed classes ranging from a younger brother who was a little behind in his reading ability to my step brother who is mildly retarded and didn't learn how to read at any level until just this year at age 16.
I was only actually in a gifted program for two years, fifth and sixth grade, but I would say that those were the two best school years of my life. However third grade also stands out as a good year for me. I started out the year with the rest of the class, however as it became clear to the teacher that I wasn't learning anything (I'd already figured out long division and memorized multiplication tables) she broke the class up into sub groups depending on level. After instructing the main class while they were working on an assignment, she'd pull us aside and instruct us for a few minutes in something more difficult. She also had me work with the kids who were struggling. I think it worked out well. I made friends with the kids I was tutoring and played with them at recess. By the end of the school year, I was staying in at recess so that the teacher could give me individual assignments to work on at home, and spending all of my class time working with other struggling students. I enjoyed it because it was interesting to learn new things and I got to help others.
It was harder for me at home, because my older brother had a lot of difficulty with school, but whenever I tried to help him he was very offended. I did feel guilty for being smarter than him, but there was no way to help him without hurting him. Being able to help others at school was a good thing. The problem was that they learned the teachers learned the wrong lesson on how to deal with me.
So the next year in fourth grade, since I was doing all of my lessons by the end of third grade essentially during my recess alone, the fourth grade teacher decided to let me work alone again, but this time she made work alone during class time. So I spent over three quarters of my class time sitting at a table working out of a book. By the end of that school year I was nearly failing because I wasn't turning in assignments. There was no motivation, there was no interaction, the book wasn't really letting me work at my own pace, because I'd have to answer every problem in every chapter. Well after I understood a concept, I'd have another forty or so problems or questions to answer on it. My mom met with my teacher about my potentially failing the class, and I promised to do all the overdue work, so I passed, but the experience was pretty bad overall.
The next year I went to the gifted program. Like in my third grade class, the teacher split kids up according to ability in certain subjects like math. So I was able to work with other kids for a change, but the most important lesson I learned in the gifted program was humility. For the first time in my life I met people my age who were on my level, or in some cases above it. I had taken it for granted that I knew more than anyone else; I probably drove a few teachers crazy with correcting them. The other nice thing about the gifted program is that my teacher tried to teach us on a more comprehensive level. Instead of testing us to see if we had read the material, she was asking us to explain what it meant. I really learned more that year than I have in any other grade college included. More importantly though, I was excited about school again. I felt like I was doing something worthwhile, where the previous year, I felt like I was a burden to the classroom, and isolated from my peers.
In middle school, they had a gifted block of history, writing, and reading (which were three separate classes). Then they put me in a couple mainstream classes and a math class two years above my grade. The gifted block was interesting, and I learned how to work in groups without having to do all the work myself. I was still the primary motivator, but I had learned how to assign others tasks that fit their skills, do my own part, and be available to help the others if they were struggling. In my mainstream classes, I literally brought a book to class and read it. I didn't even try to hide it under the desk. If the teacher asked me a question I was able to answer it with no problem. In the math class I found that my classmates were impressed with me. They were enough older than me that they couldn't be my friends, but they often treated me with a respect that I didn't really deserve. Remembering the kids in the gifted program who were smarter than me helped prevent me from becoming arrogant.
Having that respect was important to me though, along with the approval of the teachers. My home life was pretty bad. My parents constantly held me up as an example to my other siblings. My older brother often times would beat on me when my parents were around to prove that he was still physically better than me. At the same time, if I brought home a good report card, my father would tell me that it was just what he expected, while he became very excited if my brother passed a test with a C. If I didn't have school and a feeling that I was worthwhile there, I probably would have killed myself. As it was it was a close call. I finally decided that there had to be a reason that I was good at school, otherwise my life wouldn't make sense. That feeling that I had something I had to do in order to justify my existence really has been a driving force. We later moved to a new school district without a gifted program, but I forced myself to keep learning more outside school. The few years that I was in the program really made a difference in how I saw myself, and in how I related with other people in general. For the first time I didn't have to make friends with the teacher to find someone interested in what I was interested in, and close friends are something no one can live without. Anyway I realize this after most of the debate, but I couldn't help but put in a bit of my perspective.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:*Cough* Not real science... *cough*
The word science has been coopted by scientists.
We're taking it back!
Posted by Teshi (Member # 5024) on :
Pfft, it's just a name.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:Pfft, it's just a name.
Names have power. 'Science', like 'faith' and 'values', is used today in a lot of contexts where it doesn't belong, because it has considerable prestige among the people. (Rightly so!) When someone calls astrology a science, would you react? Now, the soft sciences are clearly much closer to physics than to astrology on the spectrum of agreement-with-reality. Nevertheless, until there are some real quantised models out there, they are not real sicence.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
They ARE real science, but they are still in the beginning of their life as such. I imagne if you looked at some of the early models of the world you wouldn't reconize them, but they ewre the beginnig of the physical sciences we have now, and without them (or without people taking them seriously in the beginnig) we wouldn;t have anything to build upon.
According to the scientific method, there is no shame in disproving a theory...at least you have excluded a possibility.
Even failed models are an improvment.
Kwea
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
They might legitimately be referred to as protosciences, as opposed to pseudosciences like astrology, yes.
Posted by Jonathan Howard (Member # 6934) on :
quote: Here's my question: do you think they're such a good idea? Why?
I didn't read the three pages, but have an answer.
I have fun at the "Gifted Programme", I have intelligent friends there, I feel competent and compelled.
If I weren't there, I'd never be smart enough for Hatrack.
JH
[ January 18, 2005, 12:31 AM: Message edited by: Jonathan Howard ]
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
Ela,
I went back and reread your posts, and I'm sorry for misreading them the first time.
What kind of support do you think your daughter would have needed that would have been more impressive than the gate program, and would have released some of the anxiety that led her to purposely misspell words? _________
quote:Irami, earlier you said stupid and gifted are empirical terms, and now you are saying gifted is morally active. I think you are being disrespectful of my common sense.
I don't see the problem. One claim is about the quality of a student's intellect, and that claim is made upon the results of some objective test. It's an empirical inference with moral connotations.
The word "gifted" seems to connote that someone is different in a morally relevant way, their responsibilities are different.
[ January 18, 2005, 01:48 AM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by JaneX (Member # 2026) on :
*applauds Kwea's long post*
I completely agree. All through elementary, middle, and high school I found that many kids in my class didn't care about learning - they just cared about passing their classes. And usually, instead of working for their grades, they just leeched off the "smart" kids. They'd do things like fool around during class (or even skip class entirely) and then photocopy people's notes the night before the test. This was especially prevalent during my senior year of high school, when there were literally two people taking notes for almost the entire class.
On the subject of group projects - the idea that the "smart" people in the group can teach the others sounds good in theory, but in my experience it doesn't work in practice. I often found that the others in my group hadn't been listening in class and thus didn't even have the basic knowledge required to do the project. I would have had to reteach almost everything the teacher had said in class, and there simply wasn't enough time for that when we were working under a deadline. That's why I usually ended up doing most of the project myself.
~Jane~
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
Thanks, JaneX...
Don't get me wrong, I thinnk that in the younger groups the social interactions between peers is very important, and most kids at that age are willing to learn most of the time. Some forms of peer teaching are great, as long as it isn't the only form of teaching that goes on.
I also get pissed when people refer to the kids in the mainstream classes as dumb, or stupid. Kids know some classmates learn faster than others, but no one...not teachers, not the kids peers...should be refering to kids as dumb or stupid. They can still learn all of it, it just takes them longer sometimes.
That is what a lot of my sisters teachers did, and look how wrong they were about her.
I was placed in an advanced 5/6th grade class when I was in 5 th grade, and I had to be pulled out of it because I was givng myself an ulcer...at age 11! I couldn't hang with the other kids at the math stuff, so I was having nightmares.
I had to be placed in a "mainstream" class after 3 o months, and I got a lot of crap about it. From my classmates, mostly, but even some of the adults were unkind.
So I withdrew, and read my books, and learned a lot of things on my own. Then when the tests came, I outscored every one of the "gifted" kids in every subject...except math.
My math block meant I had limits on how much science I could take, and that changed my life permanatly. I had always love science, and was really good at it...but I couldn't even take most of the advanced classes without the advanced math classes.
Not every kid is good at everything. To this day I consistantly score extremely well on most tests without even trying, but I have problems with advanced math. Hell, anything algebreic is enough to make me sweat. In basic math I am slightly about average, and I did OK in geometry.....but without algebra you can't really do anything.
I even failed College Algebra....twice. That was YEARS ago, but I still remember how stupid I felt when I took those classes.
I am going back to school here if Jenni and I don't move this winter, and guess what I am going to take? I am going to get a tutor if I need to, but I am not going to let this subject beat me ever again.
Kwea
[ January 18, 2005, 02:01 AM: Message edited by: Kwea ]
Posted by Shigosei (Member # 3831) on :
quote:I am going back to school here if Jenni and I don't move this winter, and guess what I am going to take? [Big Grin] I am going to get a tutor if I need to, but I am not going to let this subject beat me ever again. [Mad]
Good for you, Kwea!
Posted by Kama (Member # 3022) on :
Why are we saying that gifted kids are the ones who want to learn, and average kids are the ones that don't? I've noticed the exact opposite in many, many cases.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
That isn't what I am saying...I like to learn, and was one of the "gifted" ones, but I had major problems with math throughout my school career.
But if a gifted kid wants to learn, why should he be forced to creep along with everyone else, and have to share in the burden of teaching kids who are only going to resent him for knowing the material?
I think that a balance is necessary so that everyone gets the chance to learn at a speed that is right for them. Since we can't afford a tutor for every shild, gifted programs are the only sensible program that has proven it can make a difference in their schooling.
Posted by Kama (Member # 3022) on :
quote: If I weren't there, I'd never be smart enough for Hatrack.
Jonathan, not true. If you like to discuss ideas, and are able to communicate what you want to say, you're smart enough for Hatrack. A gifted class may help you develop those skills, but there's no reason why not being in it would keep you from Hatrack. Or any other discussion board.
Posted by Kama (Member # 3022) on :
The thing is, all kids would benefit greatly from a smaller class with a teacher paying them more attention.
I really like an idea of a program which helps a kid develop, and makes school fun and interesting. What I don't like is that it's being limited to the smartest kids.
Notice that everyone who's enjoyed their gifted classes did so not just because they were being taught more challenging and academically advanced things. They enjoyed it, because the classes were smaller and because they had fun. We're denying this to average kids.
Posted by Shigosei (Member # 3831) on :
It's possible the gifted kids were bored in their classes and lost interest in learning. Now that I am in college, it is beginning to happen to me. Gifted students will be very inattentive in classes which don't challenge them, but tend to be highly engaged in classes which do.
Maybe students should be segregated on the basis of interest rather than ability. And those who are not interested are probably like that for a reason, so perhaps teaching styles that are better geared to their learning styles should be attempted.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
No we aren't. There is only so much we can do, and the "gifted" ones benifit most from the increased speed of the classes.
Every kid would be better off if we could all have a tutor, but that isn't possible.
We are talking about putting kids into an enviroment where they can learn according to their abilities. That allows teachers to teach those who are willing to learn.
Posted by HollowEarth (Member # 2586) on :
quote:It's possible the gifted kids were bored in their classes and lost interest in learning. Now that I am in college, it is beginning to happen to me. Gifted students will be very inattentive in classes which don't challenge them, but tend to be highly engaged in classes which do.
It is part of learning how to learn, to be able to learn things that do not seem immediatly interesting. As a wake up call, there are a lot of things that are boring and uninteresting, that doesn't mean we can just get out of them.
College is a different game all together than grade school and high school. You will generally get as much out of it as you put into it. The goals are massively different too. Consider a high school science class. The primary goal isn't to teach science, thats only secondary. The real goal is how to think, how to approach a problem, and apply some knowledge; that you learn some biology, chemistry or physics is good too, but not nearly as important as the thinking. Part of the problem with teaching there i think is that the students don't understand these things, and likely wouldn't believe you if you told them that (or at least I never did).
quote:Maybe students should be segregated on the basis of interest rather than ability. And those who are not interested are probably like that for a reason, so perhaps teaching styles that are better geared to their learning styles should be attempted.
Part of the idea behind the educational system in America is that what is taught are things that everyone should know. This is part of the whole equality thing, we try to open as many doors as possible for every single person, and the best way to do that is to get an education that is as broad as possible, while still requiring mastery of the basic stills, (reading, writing and basic math). If one could take only those classes that interested you, you wouldn't recieve the education that you're suppose to have when you leave. In the end nothing else matters beyond gaining the education, everything else is just distractions.
In elementary school there is nothing taught that cannot be learned by 99+% of students (this is not to say that the effort will be the same). If this material is not being learned, the first place to look for a cause should be the parents. How much importance do they place on doing homework and getting good grades? Class size, and $/child are massively less important, as long as the school has books, a blackboard, and a teacher that cares.
Elementary school teaching, in my experience attracts 2 extremes of people, some really good teachers, and some really bad teachers. (I would say the worst I've ever seen.) I commend the good ones, it is a job that I could never do. The bad ones, need to be removed, and the unions do way to much to protect them. My brother and I did not spell well in elementary school, and having my third grade teach write a massive misspelling of my brother's on the board so my class could laugh at it, is grounds for loosing her job, yet as a third grader, I didn't understand this, and nothing was done. (This teacher was later suspended for a year for duct taping a students mouth shut. she told our class that she became a teacher to have the summers off.)
quote:The word "gifted" seems to connote that someone is different in a morally relevant way, their responsibilities are different.
No, not at all. What are you implying? A smarter man's burden? That's as much bullshit as the white man's burden. You know how gifted is being used, based on the context, just the same as everyone else reading this dicussion does. This statement is just trolling.
Posted by quidscribis (Member # 5124) on :
quote: It is part of learning how to learn, to be able to learn things that do not seem immediatly interesting. As a wake up call, there are a lot of things that are boring and uninteresting, that doesn't mean we can just get out of them.
For me, most of the time I was bored because I wasn't actually learning anything. I'll use my grade ten math class as an example. I lived in rural Alberta in a hick town where there was no hope of ever having programs for the gifted or the challenged. I'd walk into math class, see the equations the teacher put on the board, and go "oh, yeah, fine." That was as long as it took me to understand everything he was going to teach for the next three months. I'd sit there, while he was teaching everyone else, doing the assignments for the next few weeks, write letters to friends, read books, or whatever. But I didn't pay attention to him. There was no point. I didn't get anything from him. At all.
The next year, I moved to the big city - Edmonton - and started into the IB program, which is sort of an honors program (or equivalent thereof). It was the first time in my life I was actually in a class with my academic equals and I finally had an opportunity to have things thrown in front of me that I didn't automatically understand. We got into calculus in grade 11, and it was cool!
With the first teacher, it had nothing to do with whether the material was interesting or not. To me it was because it was math and I geeked out on math. But it was child's play. All my classes were the same, whether chemistry, biology, physics, or English or whatever. It wasn't that I wasn't making an effort. It was that no effort on my part was necessary - in any way - to understand the concepts so thoroughly that, again with math as an example, I could walk away with 99.9975% as a final mark for the year. (Of course I griped when the math teacher didn't round up. He refused on the grounds that I wasn't perfect in math. Damn that one lousy mistake I made on the final! Put the decimal in the wrong place. Aaaargh!!!)
Posted by Eaquae Legit (Member # 3063) on :
Actually, Kama, there was - minimum - twice as many kids in my "special" class as there were in my regular class.
But then, I'm pretty sure it was a special case.
Posted by Space Opera (Member # 6504) on :
My thank-yous to people such as Kwea who have stood up for the "stupid" kids and have refused to use that word for mainstream, average children.
I have a bright and beautiful 9 year-old. He could care less about school, and brings home average grades on his report card. He also reads about 2 grades higher than the rest of his classmates and hates taking tests. I've learned from him that test scores in a lot of cases mean about as much as a handful of mud.
When you call average kids stupid, you're calling my son stupid. And quite frankly, that pisses me off.
space opera
Posted by Audeo (Member # 5130) on :
quote: Kama- Notice that everyone who's enjoyed their gifted classes did so not just because they were being taught more challenging and academically advanced things. They enjoyed it, because the classes were smaller and because they had fun. We're denying this to average kids.
I have to agree with E.L. A normal elementary classroom would range from 25-30 kids in it, and the school would try to minimize that number as much as possible. A gifted class would always have the full 30 and often had a few extra, because they wanted to make the program available to as many people as possible. Surprisingly when I got into high school and kids were allowed to choose for themselves whether or not they wanted to take more challenging classes, class size plummeted. My average honors class was 15-20 people, and the same 15-20 people were in every one. The all time low was an honors government class that we recieved college credit for, and met an hour and a half before school started. Only seven kids made it to that.
Posted by celia60 (Member # 2039) on :
quote: But if a gifted kid wants to learn, why should he be forced to creep along with everyone else, and have to share in the burden of teaching kids who are only going to resent him for knowing the material?
Because the average kid who wants to learn is also forced to creep along with his peers who don't want to learn and only grow to resent her for actually knowing the material?
quote: I think that a balance is necessary so that everyone gets the chance to learn at a speed that is right for them. Since we can't afford a tutor for every shild, gifted programs are the only sensible program that has proven it can make a difference in their schooling.
So the sentiment is not so much that only gifted kids want to learn so much as they're the only ones who deserve to?
I guess my average brain is failing to see how this distinction of "gifted" is superior to just having different difficulty tracks that students take based on their skills and desires to acheive. Nobody who didn't want to work signed up for Algebra in Jr. High, but anyone with a C average could sign up if they wanted to. Now that sounds like teachers getting to teach kids who want to learn at the level they want to learn at.
[ January 18, 2005, 09:40 AM: Message edited by: celia60 ]
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
quote:[quote]The word "gifted" seems to connote that someone is different in a morally relevant way, their responsibilities are different.[quote]
No, not at all. What are you implying? A smarter man's burden? That's as much bullshit as the white man's burden. You know how gifted is being used, based on the context, just the same as everyone else reading this discussion does.
I'm not so sure. I don't know if responsibilty is the same as burden. But I wasn't trolling, I think there is something here.
Posted by Kama (Member # 3022) on :
Space Opera, I went ahead and did the search for the use of "stupid".
In the majority of cases, it was used by Irami and myself, and was used specifically in defence of the "not gifted" kids. To quote Irami:
"I was in the stupid classes for stupid kids, and it was clear to me that I was not gifted"
"Just be sure that we know that when we create a gifted class, we create a stupid class"
I may be wrong, but my assumption was that Irami used the word ironically, exactly to show that the kids who do not belong in the gifted class are NOT stupid. That is why I kept using it later on.
The only case where the use of the word was out of place, was this quote by King of Men:
"Then I'll not call myself a good person, and be happy therewith. The thing about stupid kids is that they are stupid. What have the stupid people ever done for me?"
to which Irami replied:
"I think that's the attitude I'm talking about. If this is gifted, I think I was put in the right class."
believe me, Space, I'd be equally pissed off about calling any kid stupid, in a way you implied the word was used.
Posted by Lady Jane (Member # 7249) on :
quote:quote: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [quote]The word "gifted" seems to connote that someone is different in a morally relevant way, their responsibilities are different.[quote]
No, not at all. What are you implying? A smarter man's burden? That's as much bullshit as the white man's burden. You know how gifted is being used, based on the context, just the same as everyone else reading this discussion does. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm not so sure. I don't know if responsibilty is the same as burden. But I wasn't trolling, I think there is something here.
What is there? I agree with Space Opera's restating of your position. How is saying that smart = morally responsible for those less gifted NOT a smart man's burden?
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
If I am uniquely suited for something important in virtue of some gift or circumstance, I think there is a responsibility that goes along with that gift or circumstance. Maybe I've been overly influenced by stories of the good Samaritan, but this seems obvious to me, especially as we pass MLK day.
Posted by Lady Jane (Member # 7249) on :
Nothing you just said conflicts with the idea of a Gifted Person's Burden.
Posted by quidscribis (Member # 5124) on :
MLK day? What the heck?
Gotta tell you - that has absolutely nothing to do with my life, and nothing to do with the lives of pretty much the rest of the world outside of the US. If you're an American, and you wish to put extra significance on MLK, go right ahead. But leave me out of it.
Posted by celia60 (Member # 2039) on :
I think Irami is trying to tell us that he's Superman and you're trying to tell him that he's claiming to be Spiderman.
[ January 18, 2005, 10:22 AM: Message edited by: celia60 ]
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote: If I am uniquely suited for something important in virtue of some gift or circumstance, I think there is a responsibility that goes along with that gift or circumstance.
You know, Irami, you're right. Those kids who are uniquely gifted at math, for example, owe it to the world to use their math skills for our betterment.
How, then, do you propose that we identify those kids who are uniquely gifted at teaching? Because I wouldn't want to force those kids who're skilled at math into teaching math to kids, because the skills involved are completely different.
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
On CSPAN yesterday, they had lecture on a new book, "Ask Not," about Kennedy's 1961 speech.
If we are asking not what our country can do for us, but what we can do for our country, doesn't that mean that gifted people receive a different answer, and thereby, have a different responsibility?
Posted by Lady Jane (Member # 7249) on :
Is this more of "I think people should feel guilty" campaign?
I've noticed that you always other people to act like Christians.
Posted by celia60 (Member # 2039) on :
Oh, only people gifted with good. Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote: If we are asking not what our country can do for us, but what we can do for our country, doesn't that mean that gifted people receive a different answer, and thereby, have a different responsibility?
Is it your answer, then, that gifted elementary school children best serve the country by teaching other children? I'm actually a little distressed that you consider education so unimportant; personally, I'd rather see gifted adults teaching children, in the same way that I would be reluctant to entrust brain surgery to intelligent 10-year-olds.
Remind me again, Irami: are you planning to teach elementary school?
[ January 18, 2005, 10:38 AM: Message edited by: TomDavidson ]
Posted by Ela (Member # 1365) on :
quote:Ela,
I went back and reread your posts, and I'm sorry for misreading them the first time.
What kind of support do you think your daughter would have needed that would have been more impressive than the gate program, and would have released some of the anxiety that led her to purposely misspell words?
Irami, there was no gate program at my daughter's elementary school, as I mentioned early on in this thread.
Both my kids attended a small, religious elementary school. At one point, we looked into getting her into the gifted program at the local public elementary school - one of our friends did that with their daughter - but we were unimpressed with the program and didn't think it was worth the effort of disrupting her school day by shuttling her back and forth between two schools.
They did offer a few "enrichment" programs by the time my son was going through the school, but they charged a lot of extra money for them, and when my husband and I looked at them, again, we found they weren't worth the money.
My husband and I basically provided our own enrichment for our kids, by providing them with opportunities to learn and explore their strengths at home, and with frequent trips to the library and local museums.
I should make it clear that I don't really believe in labels, in general. When my daughter was about 2, our pediatrician suggested we have her tested for "giftedness" and I basically said I wouldn't bother, because I wouldn't have done anything with the information for a 2 year old - at least, nothing that I wasn't doing already, which included reading to her, and providing her with toys that would help a 2 year old develop basic motor and problem solving skills.
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
High School
kat,
I grew up in 20th century America. Christian stories are in the common cultural narrative.
[ January 18, 2005, 11:03 AM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by ClaudiaTherese (Member # 923) on :
I think classes with a wide variety of skill ranges in the participants can be very helpful to all. A topic can be assigned with a variety of projects worked on at any one time, depending on what kids are interested in and able to do. It does take extra skill and planning on the part of the teacher.
I entered kindergarten at a high level of functioning, was tested seperately by the state, and found to be at eighth grade reading level and fifth grade math level. School wasn't going to teach me much book stuff, at least not for a long while. But there were very very important lessons to learn -- some painful -- that I couldn't have learned segregated from my age peers. My parents made the decided choice not to have me advanced into an older age group, as they knew I needed to learn how to get along in the world as it presented itself to me.
To some extent, for me it was like religion: just because you are not led in prayer at school, does not mean you cannot pray on your own, whether at school or at home. I learned how to find educational experiences for myself, how to deal with resentment, how to deal with frustration (my own and others').
I couldn't do anything athletic worth a darn. Music class was like being congenitally blind in the land of the sighted. Sometimes I was an utter liability to my peers assigned to group with me, sometimes I was an asset. Sure, I had my share of beng taunted and bullied, but that was wrong because it was taunting and bullying, which is wrong in any circumstance.
I had teachers tell me I couldn't read that fast, that I had lied when I finished the assignment and sat twiddling my thumbs. Could have done without that, too. But again, that was wrong on its own merits. The three basic goals of our educational system, namely babysitting ( ), to ensure a certain minimal level of knowledge and analytic ability, and to enable adequate socialization all were being met, for me as well as for the other children.
I think the best approach (not the easiest, but the best) is to emphasize doing as well as one can in whatever skill or attribute is being taught or assessed. You can do this without labelling someone as an X or a Y. As for me, just learning to walk on a balance beam parked on the floor was a significant achievement. Ain't no way I was going to be pulling myself up a rope to the ceiling. Didn't mean other kids couldn't be working on just that very thing, right next to me.
Mind you, this is not a passive approach when it comes to addressing the special needs of any kid. If you are responsible for the education of children, you need to be able to meet them where they are and help them go to the next place. Some are already going to be on the moon regarding math, but they might not be able to hear harmony or "get" poetry. "Meet them where they are" means you have to be able to go a lot of different places.
I don't know how many teachers are able or interested in doing that. Certainly, none of them are being paid enough.
[ January 18, 2005, 11:04 AM: Message edited by: ClaudiaTherese ]
Posted by Ela (Member # 1365) on :
quote:Why are we saying that gifted kids are the ones who want to learn, and average kids are the ones that don't? I've noticed the exact opposite in many, many cases.
Kama, that seems to be what some people here have observed, in some cases. (My daughter is one of them, if you read JaneX's post.) I don't think that is universally true, though.
I think it can go both ways.
A gifted kid who is bored in a regular class may be uninspired to learn, whereas kids who are "average" may be challenged enough by the material that they have to work at it to learn it.
Children faced with a teacher who is not effective and boring may also be uninspired to learn. I think this sort of thing may happen a lot.
Also, in some school cultures in the US (I am not sure how prevalent this is, you younger people might be able to tell me), it is considered "uncool" to be a nerd, to study, and to show that you are smart. That may be why some of these kids seem to "not want to learn." Fact is, most of them have no trouble learning things unrelated to school subjects, just because they are interested enough to spend the time on them.
Posted by Space Opera (Member # 6504) on :
Kama, you are correct. I didn't mean to imply that your use of the word "stupid" was wrong. 'Course, I should have known better than to bother getting annoyed at KOM's use of the word "stupid" - from what I can tell he uses it as a catchphrase for a lot of people.
But I always do appreciate the people who stand up for the average - this includes you - for several reasons. One is that I think "gifted" and "average" except in extreme cases are pretty relative. Like I implied in an earlier post, a few years ago in my area a 5 year-old who could read and write coherant sentences would be considered gifted - now the "average" 5 year-olds in our school system do that by the end of the school year. Two is that to me it's kind of silly to assume that because a child is "gifted" in one area that they're gifted in all, and a lot of programs in the areas I've lived in do just that. I'm an example of that myself - I'm great at English based stuff, but I completely suck at anything in math or science.
I must have been very lucky in school. I'm not the brightest crayon in the box by any means, but I've got some amount of smarts. I always remember schoolwork (particularly in elementary school) being very easy - but I never remember being "bored." My teachers were great at keeping things interesting for all levels in the classroom, and finishing an assignment early just meant extra reading time.
space opera
Posted by Amka (Member # 690) on :
I tend to think that people do have a responsibility based on their gifts. This becomes especially true to those who believe these gifts and talents are bestowed on them by God. Aren't those of us so religiously inclined commanded to use our gifts to the betterment of both ourselves and others?
Parable of the talents, anyone?
I don't think Irami has been pushing for children to be substituting as teachers. Just to be helping. Sometimes they, being closer in age, may be able to see the problem better than the teacher. Certainly the struggling child benefits from the one on one, and the helping child benefits by serving and sometimes they even learn themselves (as anyone who has ever taught anything can tell you).
I still think that this is better done by kids a bit older than by same age peers, though.
Posted by mothertree (Member # 4999) on :
Storm Saxon- okay, you aren't attacking the classes, but the system by which it is determined who goes into the classes. I guess concern over such a thing presupposes that the classes are a good thing.
Another random experience demon: If I hadn't done my homework, I was kept in from recess. This was in gifted 6th grade. I'm not sure if this was something my parents worked out with my teacher or something she thought of on her own. It's probably why I don't remember having an close friends in 6th grade. I was supposed to be doing the homework, but wouldn't. I have an unfortunate defiant streak.
There was a gifted program for middle school that my sister went to but I didn't, because my mom was tired of running lunches, band equipment, and forgotten homework to the further away school. Anyway, I'm not sure which of all these experiences culminated in me choosing not to do much of anything with my life professionally. But it's been very therapeutic to hash through.
Well, I'm going to bag the gifted label for myself and go with I.Q > 140. The classes were called gifted.
P.S. On my whole family dynamic, it is not that my sister was the star that my mom invested all her energy in. My sister felt less loved her whole life, which is what caused her to engage in attention seeking and probably caused her to push herself to greater and greater achievement. I was the easygoing, pleasant child which my mom naturally appreciated though she protested to love all her children equally. So my sister and I are enmeshed in this envy of what the other had, but we are also the closest, or so I will protest.
[ January 18, 2005, 11:23 AM: Message edited by: mothertree ]
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
"I don't think Irami has been pushing for children to be substituting as teachers. Just to be helping."
Specifically, Irami has argued that children who excel in classwork should not be tracked separately or receive training different from the children who do not, but rather -- if they're so bored in class -- should dedicate their time to helping the ones who're struggling.
There is, I'll freely admit, a certain logic to this. On the other hand, I would have slit my wrists in high school if I hadn't had the opportunity to actually learn something that I hadn't already picked up from independent reading.
Posted by Amka (Member # 690) on :
Space Opera, I tend to agree. I think kids, in general, are underestimated enough that when an adult (usually the parent) actually gets them to work at levels they are capable of, they suddenly appear gifted. That is why homeschooled kids are often academically well ahead of their peers.
One of the reasons I keep my kids in this program is because it requires the teachers to be more highly qualified and recommended. Basically, all I'm doing is guaranteeing my kids a competent teacher. My youngest did not get in the program this year, and I am not too disappointed. I was worried about how she would fit with the first grade ALPS teacher. The one she has now, I think, is a far better fit.
Posted by Amka (Member # 690) on :
In reply to Tom,
Ahhh. Okay, well...
Speaking as someone who was tracked with kids of all levels, and tutored same age peers, I don't think that would work well. These really were the same kids that called me names. If you are asking that of elementary students, you are asking a great deal more maturity than many adults have. You really can't expect a kid who is staring at her paperwork, wishing she didn't have to do fractions yet again and then starting to daydream to get up and start helping the kid who, moments before in recess, completely humiliated her. You also really can't expect the kid getting help to accept it well. They were likely involved in such behavior to impose their superiority over the 'gifted' child and would not take to having that ripped away from them by having the same child help them. Having the teacher make assignments to that effect only reinforces the social tension.
In a HS setting, where such tutoring was private and assigned, I experienced just this same thing.
As has been mentioned, many of these kids who are more intellegent are socially and emotionally less mature than their average counterparts. They may very likely even be unable to offer help, because what they are doing is so intuitive to them they can't explain it to someone else. They haven't yet learned the skill to track the steps they took.
I actually got marked down a lot because I'd just write the answer down.
"Well, how did you do it?"
"I don't know, I just knew the answer."
"You are going to have to learn to show your work."
This is why, while I do advocate peer tutoring, it should be from older kids to younger kids, not just gifted to average.
One of the reasons kids of high intellegence have special needs is because they are decidedly not gifted in other areas. They often have huge gaps that need to be addressed. People lump them together as having some big advantage, and they often don't really have much when it comes to real world functioning.
Posted by Space Opera (Member # 6504) on :
I have to agree with Amka on the peer tutoring. I've always seen it work best when it's older/younger as well.
My son is 9, and he would be absolutely mortified if another kid in his class was supposed to tutor him. So I would think you'd have comfort issues with both kids - the tutor and the child being tutored.
space opera
Posted by ladyday (Member # 1069) on :
CT:
quote:I think classes with a wide variety of skill ranges in the participants can be very helpful to all. A topic can be assigned with a variety of projects worked on at any one time, depending on what kids are interested in and able to do. It does take extra skill and planning on the part of the teacher.
I changed schools a great deal in elementary school, but I do remember one class being set up so that the teacher had multiple assignments going at once. It was a pretty successful model as far as I remember, and the teacher was very skilled. Not kind at times, but skilled.
To use Language Arts as an example, we would all take turns reading a story together. Then we would get our assignment for that day depending on which group we were in. No one else needed to know what group you were in, and no one was really sure what the different groups meant. We would turn in our assignment and take whatever time was left to either study spelling or write in our journal. Then the teacher would go through some of the questions. She would usually read some good answers to questions aloud, and sometimes she would go over questions that gave many people trouble. If there was time, she would talk about our journal entries. The journal was generally for “free writing,” but we could also use the journal to ask questions and express concerns. The teacher would respond to our entries (we were asked to leave blank pages between our entries for the teacher to respond). If many people in the class had a similar concern, she would address the issue with the whole class. She spent one such session talking about homework and studying. Of course one of the first questions asked was “why does group B always seem to have the most work?” I don’t remember exactly how she answered this, but she really nailed it without making it appear that any group was better or smarter.
At any rate, it seemed to work pretty well. It was a shame I had to move halfway through the year. My whole class wrote me letters though .
quote:I think the best approach (not the easiest, but the best) is to emphasize doing as well as one can in whatever skill or attribute is being taught or assessed. You can do this without labelling someone as an X or a Y. As for me, just learning to walk on a balance beam parked on the floor was a significant achievement. Ain't no way I was going to be pulling myself up a rope to the ceiling. Didn't mean other kids couldn't be working on just that very thing, right next to me.
I like this approach. I think one of the challenges of doing things this way is that kids are going to compare themselves to one another, so how do you make each individual see that what they’re doing is an accomplishment?
quote:Mind you, this is not a passive approach when it comes to addressing the special needs of any kid. If you are responsible for the education of children, you need to be able to meet them where they are and help them go to the next place. Some are already going to be on the moon regarding math, but they might not be able to hear harmony or "get" poetry. "Meet them where they are" means you have to be able to go a lot of different places.
I’m still unsure of how to approach this, probably in part due to the fact that I have a kid who’s all over the map as far as skill sets. Her teachers want to see her more even across the board, and right now it kind of has to be that way because she’s still mastering some basics that she’ll need to go further. I’m just wondering if/when it’s appropriate to push a kid according to her strengths. Not that I condone giving up on weaker areas at all, but why shouldn’t kids with a specific strength feel good about achieving and mastering that area? Give them the motivation to make it through the classes they struggle in, or at least some relief, and make them feel good about themselves.
As far as kids helping kids, I think “cross platform” classes answer this in a more…organic way. Not so much “Susie, help Mary do her work since you’re finished,” but just exposing everyone to children who read, children who play sports, children who behave themselves in class, children who participate and ask the teacher questions…it’s good for everyone. I like the idea of kids contributing to a class rather than kids holding their classmate’s hands.
Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :
quote: Storm Saxon- okay, you aren't attacking the classes, but the system by which it is determined who goes into the classes. I guess concern over such a thing presupposes that the classes are a good thing.
CT's thoughts on the matter closely parallel mine, except that I am not opposed to letting, or allowing, groups of children to segregate themselves from other groups of children. CT's goals seem to be education and socialization, whereas my goal is just to encourage individuals to be the best they can be. Let's look at it this way, even with gifted programs, you are still going to have some children whose needs aren't being met, who are 'super gifted'. What about these kids? I think they should be encouraged to seek their highest level, just as every other child should be encouraged to seek their highest level.
The problem with this is that sometimes children are apathetic about school or hostile. In this case, I think the ideal school system would encourage them to do better. The goal here is for the child to reach his or her maximum potential, not to say, well, you've achieved X, now just sit there and shut up.
Edited to more clearly reflect what I was going for.
[ January 18, 2005, 01:20 PM: Message edited by: Storm Saxon ]
Posted by littlemissattitude (Member # 4514) on :
quote: If I am uniquely suited for something important in virtue of some gift or circumstance, I think there is a responsibility that goes along with that gift or circumstance.
Irami...I will agree with you that this is probably true in general. However, in specific cases, I don't think it is necessarily universally true.
First of all, that responsibility is not appropriately put on a seven-year-old child, as it was put on me when I was made to help the other kids in my second grade class. I may have been "smart", but I truly didn't understand why I was so resented by my classmates. I was just trying to help, and I didn't mind helping. But I was being held up to the class as "better" by the teacher; I was not claiming that for myself, but I was treated as if I was. That is not something that a child should be subjected to.
The second argument for what you have said not being universally true revolves around the interests of individuals. I don't believe that just because someone is "good at", say, math or science, that the individual should be forced to follow that path in life just because of their ability. Are you really proposing that someone be forced to go into science because they excel at it, even though they want to be an historian or an executive or a preacher or a cabinet maker? Please tell me if I am misreading your meaning. If I am not misreading what you mean here, I just cannot assent to that proposition.
Posted by Annie (Member # 295) on :
My reply contains nothing helpful to the conversation, but expresses an ongoing vexation of mine.
I was in all kinds of gifted and honors programs. In 6th grade, I tested into the CHIPS program in suburban Jefferson County, Colorado, which is a program in certain elementary schools that puts gifted kids in a class together, so you spend your whole school year in the "gifted" program - it's not a twice-a-week or after school thing. The classes rotate, however, for gym, music, and computers, and you're mixed up with the regular 6th grade classes. (my school had 4 6th grade classes, one of which was CHIPS)
I had spent my first 5 years of elementary school at a small rural school with gifted clubs but nothing like this. I really enjoyed my experience, and many of my friends from that school went on to be honors students and go to good colleges. One of my friends from that class went on to kill 15 people and then himself, but I suppose he "slipped through the cracks," eh? (I am not saying this facetiously)
Junior high and high school were tough socially for me, but I took and enjoyed honors classes and kept an almost-flawless GPA. I would have been able to maintain a 4.0 if it weren't for my horrendous habits of slacking. In all the gifted and honors stuff I ever encountered, no one ever called me on my slacking and my half-assed efforts always got me As.
I went to college and graduated with honors and a 3.8. My professors all loved me and all called me smart, and I never wrote a single paper earlier than the night before it was due. Ever. I learned how to research, but my research turned formulaic and the papers I wrote were all last-minute conflagrations of sizzling conjecture. Very few of my professors offered me more help than an A and a "nice work!" but a few of them were on to me.
I had a good conversation with my French advisor over Christmas break regarding the 35-page thesis I'd done for him. "This is a flawless and excellent synthesis," he told me, "but it could have been a lot more, and you know it." He gave me an A-.
I'm grateful for the programs that gave me their best effort and the good teachers I had that tried to push me. (Art, actually, was wonderful for me - you can't BS your way through something so subjective) I'm mad, though, and I know that I mostly have myself to blame, that I never had to do something great, I only had to do something better than everyone else. I know how to write the best darn paper in the MSU Art History department, but I don't know how to write a good paper. I never had to work hard and I have an almost pathological resistance to doing so now.
Posted by celia60 (Member # 2039) on :
I don't think I could possibly compose a civil reply to that post.
Posted by Annie (Member # 295) on :
Do you think I was being uncivil?
Posted by Lady Jane (Member # 7249) on :
I had basically the same experience in college. I got A's from teachers who let me get away with things, but I respected the few that didn't.
Annie, you're not actually me, right?
Posted by celia60 (Member # 2039) on :
If I thought you were, I would have bothered to type out one of the responses that came to mind.
Posted by Lady Jane (Member # 7249) on :
I've noticed that - that I'm on the list of people you think it's okay to swear at. Why is that?
Posted by celia60 (Member # 2039) on :
Heh, it's funny because I was just reopening this thread to type out a long rant that started with "**** this shit, you pretentious bitch," but katie's just gone and sucked all the fun out of it.
because i know it gets under your skin. i could cuss myself blue at, say, pat and he wouldn't even bat an eye.
[ January 18, 2005, 01:53 PM: Message edited by: celia60 ]
Posted by Lady Jane (Member # 7249) on :
It was a serious question. Posted by celia60 (Member # 2039) on :
it was a serious response. i really was going to go on a rant. Posted by Lady Jane (Member # 7249) on :
I know. That's why I asked the question. Why am I on the list of people you think it's okay to swear at?
[ January 18, 2005, 02:03 PM: Message edited by: Lady Jane ]
Posted by celia60 (Member # 2039) on :
quote: because i know it gets under your skin. i could cuss myself blue at, say, pat and he wouldn't even bat an eye.
Posted by Lady Jane (Member # 7249) on :
That's an answer to a different question. I'm not asking why you do it; I'm asking why you think it is okay to do it.
Posted by celia60 (Member # 2039) on :
Do you actually think I'm going to answer that one on a public board? Ha!
Posted by Belle (Member # 2314) on :
[quote] I'd rather see gifted adults teaching children,[quote]
Thank you Tom.
I am going to continue to stand by my belief that kids should not be forced to teach other kids. Not everyone is cut out for teaching, not everyone has a gift for it, not everyone wants to do it.
Would you really want the average children to be taught by another kid who resents being asked to do something so far outside their own comfort zone? How is this going to help either child? We have on one hand, a kid struggling with a concept and feeling humiliated because another child is teaching it to him, and on the other hand we have a child who feels like he's being punished for knowing something by being asked to do something that should be the job of the adult that gets paid to do it.
Now, that's not going to be the case in every situation, there may well be some gifted kids who love teaching and helping others - my oldest is one. But, I should point out, Natalie likes working with younger children. Not her peers. Her peers resent her.
I wouldn't be averse to encouraging mentoring programs like the one my school system has, where gifted jr. high and high school students assist in the elementary schools. But I most decidedly do not think young kids in the early elementary grades should be teaching their classmates.
Posted by Lady Jane (Member # 7249) on :
quote:Do you actually think I'm going to answer that one on a public board? Ha!
Why not?
Added: You could e-mail me. I'm not trying to trap you into saying something - I don't know what your reasoning is.
[ January 18, 2005, 02:08 PM: Message edited by: Lady Jane ]
Posted by celia60 (Member # 2039) on :
Now I'm just being difficult.
If you're going to ask why I swear, well, I don't consider it unacceptable and do so all the time irl. If you're going to ask what makes you so special, I'm going to have to shatter your little world by letting you in on something. *I* am the center of my universe, not you. You aren't special, no matter how hard you try.
Posted by Lady Jane (Member # 7249) on :
There are some people you will swear at and others that you won't. What makes the difference?
Posted by celia60 (Member # 2039) on :
riiiight.
who here won't i swear at?
Posted by ladyday (Member # 1069) on :
The reason I think it might be a good idea for classes to be more inclusive isn't because the more advanced kids should be teaching the kids that are falling behind, but rather because I think a diverse range of skills benefits a learning environment. I think lots of different kids just being there is help enough and it may be harmful to gifted kids to segregate them all the time. I was taking my thoughts from the way special education works in my county.
I just wanted to clarify that because I think I used the wrong words to say what I meant :\. I don't mean kids should teach other kids by individually transfering knowledge. Kids should teach other kids by being brave enough to raise their hand, by taking pride in their work, and behaving in class, for example.
Posted by Belle (Member # 2314) on :
quote:I just wanted to clarify that because I think I used the wrong words to say what I meant :\. I don't mean kids should teach other kids by individually transfering knowledge. Kids should teach other kids by being brave enough to raise their hand, by taking pride in their work, and behaving in class, for example.
That I totally agree with.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
Dawn, any particular reason you're coming on so strong here?
Posted by Lady Jane (Member # 7249) on :
They are your lists. I don't know your reasoning, so I can't say who is on the various lists. Explain your reasoning.
Posted by gnixing (Member # 768) on :
this thread has been bothering me, and i haven't been able to figure out why.
thanks Tom, for putting it so clearly for me
quote: Those kids who are uniquely gifted at math, for example, owe it to the world to use their math skills for our betterment.
How, then, do you propose that we identify those kids who are uniquely gifted at teaching? Because I wouldn't want to force those kids who're skilled at math into teaching math to kids, because the skills involved are completely different.
quick learners should not be forced to teach slow learners, unless they enjoy it. as Tom has said, it would have also have driven me crazy to be forced to teach kids my age when i was younger. i spent a whole school year in the same class as my older brother in a combined 5th/6th grade gifted class. this wasn't because i or my peers in class were on the same level as my brother and his peers, but because the teacher knew how to teach us, rather than make us teach our peers that were behind.
Posted by T_Smith (Member # 3734) on :
Tom, Shhhhh, Im enjoying this one.
Posted by Lady Jane (Member # 7249) on :
*shrug* Maybe I get under celia's skin without the swearing.
[ January 18, 2005, 02:22 PM: Message edited by: Lady Jane ]
Posted by Space Opera (Member # 6504) on :
*nods at ladyday* Excellant point about special education, and the lessons kids of all skill levels can learn from one another.
I'm not sure how they do special education in our new school system yet, but in our old one it was inclusive. Boy Opera had a child with Down's in one of his classes. I was so proud one year when he was picking out valentines for his classmates and saved the largest for that boy. Even though they didn't interact a ton (the other boy had an aide and often went to another classroom to work with her) I think being around someone with Down's really taught Boy Opera a lesson of "person" value - truly seeing someone for who they are.
space opera
Posted by celia60 (Member # 2039) on :
Yeah, Tom, I'm enjoying it to. Posted by mothertree (Member # 4999) on :
I also had a negative reaction to Annie's post, though nothing like what Celia is sort of restraining herself from saying. But there is a lot of pain in the post as well. The pathological laziness isn't going to fix itself.
Posted by ladyday (Member # 1069) on :
Yeah, it's usually just the people involved that enjoy these things. And Nathan, but Nathan is a special case .
Posted by mothertree (Member # 4999) on :
Nathan is in NH I just never realized that while reading a post from you before.
Posted by T_Smith (Member # 3734) on :
I ride the short bus of the universe!
Posted by Annie (Member # 295) on :
I'm sorry I came off as pretentious. I promise, the last thing I intended to do was couch some blatant showing-off in a story about something else. If I wanted to flaunt my good grades and have someone tell me how special I was, I promise I wouldn't be doing it here. Nothing about my post was backhanded or gloating.
I thought I was in an appropriate environment of intelligent people among whom I could discuss the difficulties of gifted education without getting the typical whining about it not being fair to use words like "gifted."
What I wanted to discuss was the fact that my entire education was centered around my grade point average. No one pushed me to learn or to improve myself - they simply gave me a big number and sent me on my way.
I think Kama's original bafflement about the American system characterizes our problem perfectly. Why all the problems with gifted education? Maybe it's because our entire system is based around big and little numbers. When we get high test scores and high grades, we're smart. When the numbers are littler than everyone else's, we're failing. There's no absolute - there's no actual push to have to comprehend a certain amount of information. Kids aren't learning how to learn, they're learning how to play the system. Kids who are naturally good at the system, who know how to take tests and write formulaic answers, do well.
What my post was trying to illustrate is that you can do really well by the system's standards and never learn a damn thing. I don't think that's pretentious at all.
Posted by ladyday (Member # 1069) on :
How do you think education can be improved for students who don't want to learn?
Posted by PSI Teleport (Member # 5545) on :
It's not as simple as "not wanting to learn." You have to isolate a cause and go from there. Reasons for not wanting to learn can be as simple as not having a decent breakfast, or as complicated as failure to relate to the specific method of teaching. How many kids out there (who do not have significant behavioral problems, or something that needs to be treated another way) honestly do not want to learn, when a subject is presented in a way that is interesting to them?
Posted by celia60 (Member # 2039) on :
and i was just trying to express my displeasure for the wording of your response without having to make a big to do.
i'm sorry katie wouldn't let me do that. in the future i'll probably just start off being witchy since it's so expected of me that doing otherwise automatically brings me criticism.
is this how the learning process works?
Posted by mothertree (Member # 4999) on :
(((Annie))) Did you read the first several pages of the thread? Like where mack had a lot the same reaction to Hobbes' sharing as Celia did to yours?
And of course you can't ever share something on Hatrack without expecting a couple of people to be contrary. But I would like to hear more about your laziness concerns, since I have similar problems.
Posted by Annie (Member # 295) on :
Ladyday: Personally, I think it has a lot to do with the basic concepts Rousseau discussed three hundred years ago in Émile. Children need to learn as part of their life experience. Everything about our education is artificial. "Why do I have to learn Algebra." "To pass the test." "Why do I have to pass the test?" "To get into college and take more tests."
Nowhere does institutional education (except in the occasionally good teacher) overlap with a child's real life. When you begin by teaching mathematical and linguistic concepts in natural situations, the utility of education is established and the child wants to learn as a search for the reality of his natural environment.
Posted by Annie (Member # 295) on :
quote:I don't think I could possibly compose a civil reply to that post.
I'd say you started out pretty witchy.
Posted by celia60 (Member # 2039) on :
Should I have gone with "Oh, poor sweet Annie, what a tragic existance you lead?"
Posted by PSI Teleport (Member # 5545) on :
quote: Nowhere does institutional education (except in the occasionally good teacher) overlap with a child's real life.
I'm not sure I *completely* buy this, although I get the point you're making. Often institutional education *is* a child's real life.
For the record, Annie, I identified with your post quite a bit.
[ January 18, 2005, 02:46 PM: Message edited by: PSI Teleport ]
Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :
What I'm wondering is...why didn't Annie -want- to achieve as much as she could? Why didn't you want to, not just write papers, but write papers that would get published somewhere? What roadblocks are there to achieving that simple attitude of always trying your best and how can education help remove them?
I just struggle with the idea of grades being intended as a cap on ambition; there is always more to learn and do.
Posted by Ralphie (Member # 1565) on :
celia - Stop being so snarky. If you really thought Annie's post was inappropriate or offensive, call her on it in a tactful way. Being snarky only makes you look like you're lashing out about something that has nothing to do with Annie.
Posted by mothertree (Member # 4999) on :
Annie,
You start out stating a vexation, and don't really get back to that, so that kind of tinted the whole post as a rant against what didn't sound like too bad of an experience. Except you mention something tragic happened to one of your schoolmates, but it seems you accepted that as a random event.
Anyway, I don't want to re-post a bunch of quotes and dissect your story. I'm just trying to express why I felt it was not sympathetic, and why it seemed to exist in a vaccuum from the rest of the thread. Granted, you did say you were not trying to contribute to the general line of reasoning.
P.S. A reading assignment?
[ January 18, 2005, 02:51 PM: Message edited by: mothertree ]
Posted by Space Opera (Member # 6504) on :
I definately agree that some children need a concrete reason to learn, and they aren't getting those reasons in our educational system. My son is never impressed by the fact that he needs to take a test. What's helped with him is to give "real-world" reasons why he needs to know how to multiply, etc. We also learned never to stress the fact that he should do well in school so that he can get into a good college and get a job that makes a lot of money. What works for him is to point out opportunities - "You want to work hard in school so that after college you can choose to do what interests you most."
space opera
Posted by Annie (Member # 295) on :
Trisha, I read the first page and the last page of the thread and missed a lot of vital stuff, as I always seem to.
My current thought is that this laziness phenomenon is related to the huge numbers of ADD we're seeing. I'm not going to say that it's not a valid psychological problem, but I am going to say that even valid psychological problems can have cutural causes. I think the way we learn in today's system compartmentalizes our attention. I read journals of 19th century authors and am amazed by the depth of their discipline and thought processes. I think that while their sort of inegalitarian education certainly left a lot to be desired, there was a sense of discipline and hard work in even basic education that we've totally lost.
I did a paper once on the legacy of Rousseau's theories in contemporary thought, and traced development of Montessori up to modern educational practice. One of the best books I encountered in that study was John Gotti's Dumbing Us Down. The title makes it sound like a lot of contemporary anti-government bluster, but his thoughts are really very insightful.
Posted by PSI Teleport (Member # 5545) on :
I'm not sure why, but I felt very strongly that I was only "allowed" to learn what they taught. I remember wishing that I could learn a musical instrument or a martial art or something, but feeling somehow that it was "not for me." I think I need to explore myself on this one.
Posted by Annie (Member # 295) on :
quote:You start out stating a vexation, and don't really get back to that, so that kind of tinted the whole post as a rant against what didn't sound like too bad of an experience. Except you mention something tragic happened to one of your schoolmates, but it seems you accepted that as a random event.
You're right, and I used my little disclaimer on the front to try to cover up for the fact that I was just rambling and hadn't thought through and framed my argument very well.
The problem with the "tragic event," which was one of my 6th grade classmates becoming one of the killers at Columbine, is one I've struggled with for awhile. I don't know how to relate it to anything yet, so at times I dismiss it in an offhand way. I'm pretty convinced, though, that it's anything but random.
Posted by ladyday (Member # 1069) on :
I notice that attitude (when are we ever going to use this in the real world) more in boys than in girls. Not in this thread, just in general. I wonder why that is.
Anyway, I always thought people who made that argument had a lack of ambition, but now that I think about it...learning things, accomplishing things, even if they were irrelevant...it felt good, it was like an addiction to me. And I'm willing to bet -lots- of people just aren't wired that way.
Posted by Annie (Member # 295) on :
AJ, which book on that list is the best concise thing to begin with?
Posted by PSI Teleport (Member # 5545) on :
I have only recently learned that I can read about and do anything that interests me. I remember thinking that history was so boring and terrible, and that I was so bad at it. Why?
I think it may be because I was told I was a "math and science person" when I was young. I've found out since then that I'm not a math and science person, but rather a learning person. I can pretty much pick something up quickly, no matter what it is. I only thought history was out of reach, so I didn't do as well.
Posted by mothertree (Member # 4999) on :
Annie, that's why when I've "bookended" a thread I always say so in my post I knew there had to be an explanation.
I don't think I have classic ADD. I resist that determination for some reason. I do go off on rabbit trails and not finish things, but I don't work better with music going or move around a lot. I guess my husband has such strong ADD and his mother also that I don't feel like I really could be by comparison. And it seems to be a fad like Harry Potter.
I am so frustrated with my laziness. I wish I knew what caused it so I could get it fixed, but then maybe I think it's just a moral weakness.
P.S. Dang this thread is whizzing right now. I'm sorry to hear about your connection to Columbine. I visit taught a lady who was having a little marriage trouble and then her husband killed the two chldren and himself. It was in the local news a bit. He was actually the second of three suicides in our ward the fall after 09/11.
[ January 18, 2005, 03:08 PM: Message edited by: mothertree ]
Posted by PSI Teleport (Member # 5545) on :
Distractability. Have you ever read the "Messie's Manual"?
Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :
Annie,
I haven't read them all. In fact maybe two on the list.
The one actually called "Summerhill" is a fascinating read and really is the nucleus of his ideas. My mother actually suggested reading it.
I had to do a term research paper for my English 101 class at the community college. I'd never had to do one before since I *didn't* go to a traditional high school. (I've have done a grand total of 2 since on non-technical subjects in my entire college career. A's on all three, and one good enough to be published if I'd been "anything but an engineer") I did it on homeschooling because it was a subject I was already knowledgable about and therefore easier for a first-timer.
However, I had to do a lot of reading, for sources and it made me realize a lot of my mothers inital reasons for homeschooling were founded in fairly solid educational research, especially concerning gifted children, even if it wasn't accepted "mainstream" theory.
Sadly these reasons have been mostly swept under the rug except as parotted defenses to quickly spiel off, and the vast majority of the fundamentalist Christians who are now homeschooling their kids have never read the secular authors that did some of the most ground breaking research.
AJ
[ January 18, 2005, 03:31 PM: Message edited by: BannaOj ]
Posted by Annie (Member # 295) on :
I had forgotten you were homeschooled, AJ. I agree - many of the homeschool families I know did it with amazing research foundations and produced probably the smartest kids I've ever met, but too many people do it for entirely the wrong reasons. If you as a parent don't know how to learn, you're not going to be able to teach your children.
Trisha, I think I'm you in that respect. I'm interested in so many different things, but don't get anything done unless I'm compelled to. (the doctrinal principles of that one are nudging me in the ribs right now) NaNo, for instance, was a fabulous way to make me write. All I need is a deadline and I do just fine. It's the motivation, though... the darn motivation...
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
quote:It's not as simple as "not wanting to learn." You have to isolate a cause and go from there. Reasons for not wanting to learn can be as simple as not having a decent breakfast, or as complicated as failure to relate to the specific method of teaching. How many kids out there (who do not have significant behavioral problems, or something that needs to be treated another way) honestly do not want to learn, when a subject is presented in a way that is interesting to them?
word
Posted by mothertree (Member # 4999) on :
I've been trying to read "Parenting with Love and Logic" and it says I can only teach responsibility by example.
I am so [pick a bad word]-ed.
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
The thing is, Belle, I'm trying to square this
quote:-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ladyday: I just wanted to clarify that because I think I used the wrong words to say what I meant :\. I don't mean kids should teach other kids by individually transfering knowledge. Kids should teach other kids by being brave enough to raise their hand, by taking pride in their work, and behaving in class, for example. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Belle:That I totally agree with.
with this
quote: In school, I want my children to learn. Not become the kid who the teacher foists all her difficult problem kids on. My children, both of the school age ones, are constantly put in this position. Emily has to sit at a table with three kids who are all trouble makers, they talk in class, they disrupt, and they cause the teacher problems. Why put Emily with them? Because she's quiet, obedient, and doesn't need as much attention from the teacher, she grasps concepts well. The teacher wants my daughter to be a calming influence on the boys.
Edit for AJ
[ January 18, 2005, 03:34 PM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :
Irami, one quote is Belle's, and the other is Ladyday's. They aren't the same person.
Oh wait you were talking about her agreement, my bad.
Either way you are creating a dichotomy where none exists. Teaching by the example of raising one's hand and asking questions, isn't "peer group" teaching at all. It's forcing the teacher to answer the questions you have, which is exactly the behavior that gets you persecuted by the other kids. AJ
[ January 18, 2005, 03:36 PM: Message edited by: BannaOj ]
Posted by PSI Teleport (Member # 5545) on :
The response to the first quote is Belle's.
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
I don't know, AJ. I'm reading the same words that you are reading, and the two paragraphs take hard stands that seem unequivocally opposed.
[ January 18, 2005, 03:45 PM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by David Bowles (Member # 1021) on :
I'm going to be lazy by leaping into this without having read the entire thread and by essentially pasting in stuff I wrote somewhere else on the same topic: I can tell you that, despite a supposed theoretical (and legal!) impetus toward integrated, homogeneous classrooms, legal stipulations that special education students and GT students receive "services" (i.e., special treatment, attention, methodology, etc.) often results in districts' setting up Pre-AP classes (heh) in which (though these are theoretically open to all) the GT students are funneled and separated from the rest. A side-effect of this is that all the classes tend to become stratified, and problem students and those with undiagnosed needs end up in separate (if unlabeled) classes.
The model at the charter school where I'm the English chair is that all students, regardless of ability (including special ed, whoa) are in the same advanced classes (IB model). Auxiliary services are then provided to spec. ed. students. GT students, well, they are challenged in class, just like everyone else. And they tend to bring more mediocre students up, because the so-so kids get caught up in the discussions the GT kids initiate. It's a much better system. In fact, last year, by pushing my special ed students to read incredibly tough material (with significant support, of course), I got them to advance two grade levels in reading. All students need to be challenged, bottom line, no matter the extent of their "giftedness."
Plus, we have small classes (18-22), really focused and prepared teachers, and parents who (by defintion) are more interested in their children's getting a better education that those of most kids.
Posted by Space Opera (Member # 6504) on :
Here's a question - is it ok for a child *not* to want to learn? Does not wanting to learn something always imply laziness or lack of curiosity?
Heck, we can throw adults in too, for that matter. I have to confess that I have no real idea how my lightbulbs light up or how my cell phone works. Sure, I learned about electricity in school, but to be honest, I could give a flip. But on things I'm passionate about, such as literature, I have a never-ending curiosity to explore.
So when children do this, is it simply differentiating in interests, or is it laziness? Or am I just lazy?
space opera
Posted by PSI Teleport (Member # 5545) on :
I can't think of a child who isn't interested in learning "something" even if it's just wrestling moves to take an older brother down.
Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :
Space Opera read Summerhill, you'll love it.
One of his biggest contentions is that the educational systems as they are/were set up inherently destroy children's natural curiousity about the world around them, and that if left to one's own devices one will get bored enough eventually and start learning because one is bored with everything else.
Note: He isn't saying that there aren't individual excellent teachers that do invigorate natural curiosity but that the system is self-defeating in many ways.
AJ
Posted by Space Opera (Member # 6504) on :
Yes, and I think that's based on interests. So is this ok?
Maybe I'm not as clear as I thought I was...
Is there ever a situation in school where it's ok for the child not to want to learn? Is it ok for them to learn reluctantly - or does the fact that they do learn reluctantly make them lazy? I'm thinking of some of the things my son dislikes - like learning math facts. He hates memorizing things (as do I) like that. But he will happily memorize the powers of a certain Pokemon, for example.
I think reluctant learners in a lot of cases aren't "lazy." Sometimes I think it's a matter of how the material is presented, and sometimes it's a matter of them just not caring for that particular subject. Boy Opera was an incredibly reluctant reader starting out. Though he loved being read to, he had no desire to learn how to read himself. Now he reads a great deal, and very well, but he hated reading till he was skilled enough to read the good stuff - not the "Dan sees the dog" books that they begin with at school.
But is it ever ok for a child not to want to learn something, or should there always be a reason behind it?
space opera
edit: Will do, AJ. Luckily Boy Opera had a wonderful first grade teacher - she bought special easy to read sciency-type books that were on his level in order to encourage him.
[ January 18, 2005, 03:54 PM: Message edited by: Space Opera ]
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:if left to one's own devices one will get bored enough eventually and start learning because one is bored with everything else
But will they learn the important things to getting along in society, such as reading, math, etc.? I can't tell if he's saying they can learn on their own, or if left to their own devices they'll be willing to learn from a teacher.
Dagonee
Posted by Annie (Member # 295) on :
quote:The model at the charter school where I'm the English chair is that all students, regardless of ability (including special ed, whoa) are in the same advanced classes (IB model). Auxiliary services are then provided to spec. ed. students. GT students, well, they are challenged in class, just like everyone else. And they tend to bring more mediocre students up, because the so-so kids get caught up in the discussions the GT kids initiate. It's a much better system. In fact, last year, by pushing my special ed students to read incredibly tough material (with significant support, of course), I got them to advance two grade levels in reading. All students need to be challenged, bottom line, no matter the extent of their "giftedness."
David, this sounds wonderful, but I think the reason it works is because of good teachers. It's because everyone is being challenged - no one is being brought down. Mainstreaming as practiced in most American schools is not like this.
I did in-school observations at a small rural elementary school with a teacher who raved to me about mainstreaming all the time. What I saw take place in her class, though, was that a little boy who was amazingly gifted in math sat through classes angrily doodling and constantly getting in trouble. He wasn't challenged and wasn't bringing everyone else up. Frankly, I think this teacher liked the concept of "mainstreaming" so much because it allowed her to teach what she wanted to teach and not have to deal with any hard stuff.
I was an elementary education major myself, with the intent of getting a masters in gifted education, but quit my school's program in protest of the dismal level of education that teachers were given. At my state university, which I assume to be pretty standard in terms of where our teachers get their educations, the material being taught, really excellent philosophy ans psychology, was watered down for the huge number of students who were in elementary ed because they thought it would be easy and they could play with kids. In "Math for Elementary Teachers," a course whose description led me to believe we'd be learning why math is taught the way it is, we had to spend three weeks doing long division because a group of women in the class "didn't get it."
I really hope programs like your charter school will set the example for public education, but the only way it will work is to improve the quality of education our teachers are getting.
Posted by ladyday (Member # 1069) on :
*waves to David*
quote:I can tell you that, despite a supposed theoretical (and legal!) impetus toward integrated, homogeneous classrooms, legal stipulations that special education students and GT students receive "services" (i.e., special treatment, attention, methodology, etc.) often results in districts' setting up Pre-AP classes (heh) in which (though these are theoretically open to all) the GT students are funneled and separated from the rest. A side-effect of this is that all the classes tend to become stratified, and problem students and those with undiagnosed needs end up in separate (if unlabeled) classes.
What is the motivation to set things up this way? Are parents unhappy with the idea of their gifted student being in a "regular" class? Is it a problem of budgeting or staffing?
And damn, you've nearly sold me on moving to Texas :X.
Posted by PSI Teleport (Member # 5545) on :
I think it's okay, Space. Everyone's different. Some people just hate certain things. The trick is to make it beneficial for them to learn (at least) the skills that you know they'll need one day, like balancing a checkbook.
Posted by celia60 (Member # 2039) on :
quote: celia - Stop being so snarky. If you really thought Annie's post was inappropriate or offensive, call her on it in a tactful way. Being snarky only makes you look like you're lashing out about something that has nothing to do with Annie.
Uh, for the record, I *am* lashing out at something that has nothing to do with Annie. Of course, lashing out is really the wrong term since I'm just enjoying railing kat.
And really, my first two responses to Annie weren't snarky. I couldn't come up with a civil response but wanted to express that without having to be uncivil. I don't think Annie's post was intended to come across the way it did to me, but it did.
Annie, I'm sorry that isn't how it came across to you. I know the third one was pretty uncivil, I was kind of caught in the moment. I'll try to do a better job of leaving you out of the fights I start around you in the future.
I'm absolutly unapologetic in my responses to kat, however, so I get to retain my status as a bad person and a troll. Posted by Annie (Member # 295) on :
quote:What is the motivation to set things up this way? Are parents unhappy with the idea of their gifted student being in a "regular" class?
Yes. Many parents that I know are upset with bad experiences they've had with mainstreaming and won't settle for it.
Posted by Lady Jane (Member # 7249) on :
quote:At my state university, which I assume to be pretty standard in terms of where our teachers get their educations, the material being taught, really excellent philosophy ans psychology, was watered down for the huge number of students who were in elementary ed because they thought it would be easy and they could play with kids. In "Math for Elementary Teachers," a course whose description led me to believe we'd be learning why math is taught the way it is, we had to spend three weeks doing long division because a group of women in the class "didn't get it."
Awwww...I'm sorry. I think that reflects more about the school's education program than Education in general, though. At Utah State, Education was one of those programs people had to apply to enter after they had had two years, and I had several roommates that never made it.
quote:I'm absolutly unapologetic in my responses to kat
It's sweet you're obsessed with me, but it's really not necessary. It's okay honey, I'll notice you anyway.
[ January 18, 2005, 04:37 PM: Message edited by: Lady Jane ]
Posted by Space Opera (Member # 6504) on :
True, PSI. I guess it's just opposite ends of the spectrum - you can have a child who wants to learn everything just for the sake of learning, and another who has to be specifically motivated.
I was just wondering/blabbing out loud because some comments earlier made me wonder when people shared stories of lazy groupmates. Obviously not contributing to a group isn't ok, but I wondered if....bah...I'll stop here 'cause I"m not making sense.
space opera
Posted by Amka (Member # 690) on :
quote: All students need to be challenged, bottom line, no matter the extent of their "giftedness."
I think this is one of the best statements to come out of this discussion.
quote: Plus, we have small classes (18-22), really focused and prepared teachers, and parents who (by defintion) are more interested in their children's getting a better education that those of most kids.
Hence your school's ability to do this. I would say that parental involvement is the key to your charter school being able to function so well. It probably wouldn't have even existed if it weren't for parental involvement.
We've been talking a lot about being gifted in a classroom setting as compared to average or below average. But how are the kids affected by the parents? That has so much to do with it. Children of the same capabilities will appear very different in a classroom setting if one has supportive, education oriented parents and the other has 'school is free daycare' parents. Or worse.
My uncle has taught history and english in a rural, agricultural school. There are some not so few parents that could not only care less about the education their kids recieve, they actually see it as an imposition. Many of them only let their kids go to school until they can legally drop out.
I was suprised. I thought this was an attitude that had long died. But it hasn't, completely. And there are variations on it across the board.
Posted by PSI Teleport (Member # 5545) on :
quote: I guess it's just opposite ends of the spectrum - you can have a child who wants to learn everything just for the sake of learning, and another who has to be specifically motivated.
See, I think it's a bit more complicated. I think some kids want to "learn" for the sake of learning, some want to learn for the sake of having people be proud of them for getting good grades, whereas other kids are only happy with having the best grades so second best isn't good enough and they won't try as hard.
All kids need a motivation to learn something, it's just simpler for some kids than others. For some kids the motivation of being the best is good enough, for some, knowing how to do something that other people is cool is enough, but for some they need to see the immediate usefulness of what you want them to learn.
Posted by mothertree (Member # 4999) on :
It's bad if the parents view school as daycare. It really gets scary when the district superintendent does. When we lived in Salt Lake City, there was a a snowstorm that was pretty bad, even for Salt Lake. The superintendent did not cancel class because too many parents who worked wouldn't have anything to do with their kids. Fortunately that super is gone, but not before she closed our school and drove us out of the district.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
I am laughing so hard it hurts right now.
I read Summerhill a long time ago.
When I was 14-15.
In the middle of summer vacation, because I thought it was interesting.
My grandma, who was a teacher for 45 years, had a copy of it on he book shelf, and when she saw I was half done with it she gave it to me.
That is the sort of thing that gets you picked on, even by the teachers. None of them had ever heard of it, and when I brought it up at school (in private) my teacher made fun of me.
So I brought the book to school with me, and threw it on my teachers desk and said something like " Here, this is what I am talking about. It is over 15 years old by now, I am surprised you haven't heard of it by now." and walked away.
I read fantasy through all his classes after that, and he never made me put my book away again.
I got a B+, too.....
Kwea
[ January 18, 2005, 07:27 PM: Message edited by: Kwea ]
Posted by Ralphie (Member # 1565) on :
quote: Of course, lashing out is really the wrong term since I'm just enjoying railing kat.
Okey dokey.
As a casual observer, it seemed to me like you were attacking Annie for sounding poor me/conceited. I was surprised, and you DID seem caught up in the moment. My apologies if I misjudged the situation.
Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :
quote: What my post was trying to illustrate is that you can do really well by the system's standards and never learn a damn thing.
Great post, Annie. I sincerely agree.
Posted by mothertree (Member # 4999) on :
Annie, I don't agree with your post because you didn't get straight A's. There was always that bit lacking. It is not anyone else's responsibility for you to be the best person you can be. And you could have striven to get higher standardized test scores. (If you had stellar test scores and I missed that, I apologize.) It was your choice to be content with only your GPA. I'm sure no one encouraged you to start your papers the night before. The worst they did was not punish you for it.
Posted by Belle (Member # 2314) on :
Irami, AJ is right - they are two separate things. I don' thave a problem with my student serving as a good example by being who she is. She is an intelligent, sweet-tempered child. She can be a positive role model for her peers and I have no problem with that.
I do have a problem with her being forced to babysit problem kids, and with her being used by the teacher because she is so tractable. She is being put into a situation she shouldn't. Instead of her being able to lead by example, she's being forced to lead other kids around by the nose. I say it doesn't really help either one.
Posted by Shlomo (Member # 1912) on :
My GPA is WAY over 5.0 (Honors- and AP-weighted).
I hate grades.
Posted by mothertree (Member # 4999) on :
How the heck does that system work? I thought the most they could add was a half grade point. Also, not all college use the AP and honors weights.
Posted by Ela (Member # 1365) on :
Some schools add one extra point for honors, and two extra points for AP. So if you get an A in an honors class, it's worth 5 points.
It's true that some colleges don't look at the weighted GPA, but they do notice whether you have a lot of advanced classes or not, so those honors and AP classes help, when you are applying to college.
Posted by David Bowles (Member # 1021) on :
quote:What is the motivation to set things up this way? Are parents unhappy with the idea of their gifted student being in a "regular" class? Is it a problem of budgeting or staffing?
And damn, you've nearly sold me on moving to Texas :X.
First off: hey, kiddo. Missed ya.
Yes, parents are "fed up," they say, with only the students with problems being serviced: they insist something be done to further challenge their kids (and given that a large majority of the parents of GT students are professionals and influential in the community [hrm], they are listened to). Most teachers, btw, are not trained in how to differentiate curricula for mixed groups, and so teach to the lower or higher kids exclusively.
As for your coming to Texas, we've already snared John Lieske (and Bob, if he's still here), so you come on. We'll set up a commune.
Posted by Kama (Member # 3022) on :
Um, Bob's not there.
Posted by David Bowles (Member # 1021) on :
Damn. We really plotted for the Scopatz to be a naturalized Texan, too. Oh, well... the Poland invasion plans are still going forward, so that's one thing.
Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :
Bob still owns the house in Austin and may return when he is old and grey... With Dana!
AJ
Posted by Jenny Gardener (Member # 903) on :
Sorry, I'm not on the 'puter very often, and this is a topic I'm very much into. I'll try to address things that were addressed to me. (I'm still on page 2).
Irami said: quote: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- She's learning that when you sit still and keep quiet and do what's expected, the teacher takes advantage of you. What a wonderful lessson to pass along to our talented, intelligent, well behaved children. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I think there is dignity in that.
This is making me mad, Irami. Are you advocating the position where people take advantage of you? You are asking small children to be saints, in a way that 90% of adults cannot manage to be. Nor should they. If we were all so patient and kind, then only the people who are into power and taking advantage of others would prosper. I'm all over teaching kids to have character, to be patiend and kind, but I am NOT into asking children to hide their gifts and be emotionally messed up in order to conform to society or uphold Irami's ideal of humanity. Not everyone shares your (apparently) masochistic value system.
Irami again: "I agree. Except instead of, "So asking them to explain the steps is asking them to do the impossible," I'd say, asking them to explain the steps is asking them to think about the leaps they have taken, which is a exercise that properly belongs in education."
This is standard practice among good educators, and ESPECIALLY in gifted programs.
Posted by Jenny Gardener (Member # 903) on :
Amira -
I had the good fortune to learn differentiation hands-on when I taught for a semester in England. In America, good teachers have always differentiated to some degree, but it hasn't been taught as a formal practice. Many "old school" teachers expect every child to work at the same pace, which frustrates kids at both the low and high ends. You, my dear, are not one of these teachers. You're one of the gems. Lately, differentiation to meet the needs of all students is coming more to the forefront. It seems we have to prove through all sorts of research that certain practices (which common sense ought to tell you work the best if you really care about kids) are effective before we teach them to teachers.
Posted by Jenny Gardener (Member # 903) on :
Irami again: quote: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Not everyone -- child or not -- is suited to teaching. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm not willing to commit to that.
Well, Irami, I am. Teaching is an art like many other professions. Not everyone is temperamentally suited for it, and not everyone has the training needed. You need to understand where kids are at mentally, socially, intellectually, and physically at the stage you are teaching. You need to learn what works and what doesn't. You need to know how to manage a classroom for optimum learning and minimum chaos. You need to be able to take care of yourself well, and not let the kids get to you. You need to stay sharp in your field of study. You need to be a parent figure, a mentor, and at the same time keep your distance. It is a job for someone with the Character you so highly espouse. And it's not easy. Not everyone can do it, and fewer can do it WELL.
It is unkind and unfair to ask an untrained and unprepared child to take on the responsibility for someone else's learning.
Posted by Belle (Member # 2314) on :
Jenny makes me want to stand up and cheer.
Posted by Jenny Gardener (Member # 903) on :
Mack said: I understand that, but do/did you have that sense of entitlement? That you are inherently better and therefore can suck up all the resources and not feel bad about it at all? That the classtime is meant just for you?
Mack - I suppose some gifted kids might feel that way, especially if their parents fostered that attitude. But a lot of them seem to just feel relief, much the way I felt at Boot Camp. They finally fit in, and they can just be themselves in a safe environment. Gifted isn't "better"; it's "weird". In a gifted program, it's OK to be weird.
Posted by Jenny Gardener (Member # 903) on :
Saxy asks: "If a child asks to be in a gifted class, wants to be in a gifted class, yet does not have the appropriate test scores, should the state let that child in the gifted class?"
The answer is NO. The reason is because that child will not benefit from the program, and may actually experience more harm than good. A good gifted class has been designed to serve kids who are performing/capable of performing at a certain level.
The answer is YES, in some cases. Not all gifted kids test well, for a variety of reasons - learning disabilities, cultural bias in testing, conscious hiding of ability (this happens most often with girls, but boys do it too). For this reason, a gifted program should have a variety of methods for selecting students who would benefit from the program. Test scores are ONE data point, one indicator. There should be multiple indicators used. (Had to take a whole class on this)
Posted by Jenny Gardener (Member # 903) on :
Ladyday asks: "Jenny, what do you mean by "exit strategies?" When I saw your mention of that what jumped into my mind was that the ultimate goal of gifted and talented programs was to eventually have the student able to function happily in a “normal” setting."
Exit procedures are for those kids who are not benefitting from the program. There needs to be an appeal process, and conferences with the parents and student and administrators and teacher. It's all about finding the best environment for the student. Not every kid is going to benefit from the gifted program. Some of them find it too challenging and frustrating.
Posted by Jenny Gardener (Member # 903) on :
More from ladyday:
"I’m just thinking out loud here. Some of you stated that being talented and gifted was a special need, so I think it makes sense to look at how special needs are handled. Can approaching gifted and talented programs from a “least restrictive” point of view work, or is being in an average classroom restrictive by nature? Are the special needs of talented and gifted students so severe as to require being pulled out of their classes and put in a small elite group? "
For some students, the average classroom IS restrictive by nature. These are the ones for whom G/T programs are essential. They cannot work to their potential, or even get close to it, without interventions of some sort.
Posted by Jenny Gardener (Member # 903) on :
littlemissattitude gave a long response in which she claimed:
"I am sick and tired of people trying to make me feel guilty because I am what is generally called "smart" in our society. Because, frankly, that's all I've been hearing all my life.
Why am I, and other academically talented individuals, singled out? We don't expect the athletically talented to downplay their abilities. We don't expect the musically talented, or the artistically talented (with the exception of writers, sometimes, because that smacks too much of academics), or the musically talented, or the dramatically talented to downplay their abilities. But because my ability happens to be academic, I'm supposed to shut up and act like I don't know any more than anyone else, and to act like I like it that way.
Do I sound defensive? You bet I do. That probably has something to do with the fact that I've been put on the defensive about my one measly little talent - being good at academic things - all my life. And, frankly, I'm a little tired of it. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ROCK ON, missy, rock on.
Posted by Jenny Gardener (Member # 903) on :
Irami again: "Because if one has to go, science is the least concerned with virtue. There are stories of good people who can't explain the chemical makeup of anything or think that plate tectonics is cookware, but they know the bible and I think they live good lives."
Ha, ha, ha, ha! Science is full of virtue. It teaches us to test what people say through logic, testing, etc. To not always take people's word for things. It teaches us to be curious, to observe, and to record. Science REQUIRES cooperation and communication between its practitioners. There are a lot of good things to be learned from science, some of them invaluable.
Posted by Jenny Gardener (Member # 903) on :
I agree with Irami for once: "-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If I am uniquely suited for something important in virtue of some gift or circumstance, I think there is a responsibility that goes along with that gift or circumstance. Maybe I've been overly influenced by stories of the good Samaritan, but this seems obvious to me, especially as we pass MLK day. "
And how can a gifted child best learn how to use his or her gifts? Not by sublimating them in childhood. The responsibility is taught through maturity and being able to USE the gifts. As kids explore their giftedness, they can learn what professions and pursuits they are best suited for. They can thrive and grow, and then contribute to the world in powerful ways. They aren't going to want to give back to a world that uses them as kids and forces them to go into hiding. They'll want to give, naturally, to a world that gives them permission to grow and learn at their own pace. And character education is usually considered extremely important in gifted programs. Gifted kids tend to be more morally sensitive than their peers. They care, a LOT, about their world and want to know what they can do to help. Give gifted kids their power, and they will do amazing things to help others.
Posted by Jenny Gardener (Member # 903) on :
Storm Saxon clearly states the goal of all gifted programs: "The goal here is for the child to reach his or her maximum potential, not to say, well, you've achieved X, now just sit there and shut up."
Posted by Jenny Gardener (Member # 903) on :
Ladyday says: "...learning things, accomplishing things, even if they were irrelevant...it felt good, it was like an addiction to me. And I'm willing to bet -lots- of people just aren't wired that way. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yup. That's exactly the case.
Posted by Allegra (Member # 6773) on :
I have read bits and peices of this thread so forgive me what I say has alread been discussed. My friends and I have gone through the GT programs and are now taking honors and AP courses. I think it has done some very good things. We have found people with similar goals and backrounds whom we can relate to. We have also been challenged; which has been nice.
I do notice negatives. I do not know the "regular" kids. I have only had a handful of classes since elementary school that are not honors or AP. I have gotten to know some of the "regular" kids and I can see their merits. I realize that scoring below the 90 some percentile range on tests does not mean you are not worthwhile. Many, if not most, of the people in my classes have not managed to realize this. A rather elitist additude as developed among the GT kids that I know. I do not know how to prevent this. I would not want to be in the regular classes because the advanced ones are easy enough, but I also would have liked to have been exposed to the general population, not just the part that is like me.
Posted by Jenny Gardener (Member # 903) on :
And now a question of my own...
Why the HELL do I have to fight so hard to defend gifted education? We have no qualms giving to the severely physically gifted, the severely intellectually disabled, the severely physically disabled, the artistically gifted, etc. Why is it such an "elitist" or bad thing to do what's best for kids who happen to be born with brains that work faster than the norm?
Am I bad person, to be held back or punished, for being born the way I am? Because that is how our society truly treats the gifted child. Gifted programs have to fight for 7 pages like this just to get a fraction of the funding spent on athletics or special ed or.... It's frankly disheartening.
It's like gifted people are given a mystique. What are you afraid of, Irami (using you as an example, judging by your posts)? Are the gifted kids going to hurt you or society if they are given an education that best meets their needs?
Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :
quote: Saxy asks: "If a child asks to be in a gifted class....
I find your reply really irritating for personal reasons. While I appreciate that you advocate a battery of tests, rather than just one, it still assumes a level of infallibility in testing the actuality and potential of most humans that I don't believe is possible. If you want to say that a child must have a certain proficiency in, say, English or Math before they could take a certain class, that I could understand. Some people will achieve that proficiency before others, but whatever the level a person is at, that doesn't freaking mean they are stuck there as knowledge and intelligence are mutable. There are physical, social and psychological issues that could be reasons for someone being 'stupid'. I believe, experience has shown me, that there are very few physically 'stupid' people in the world. Likewise, there are very few geniuses.
What I find really sad is the fact that there are parents out there who will believe those tests and settle for second rate leftovers for their child and not believe their child is gifted and not encourage their child to push to get into the best classes. Worse, given the difficulty many parents have in finding alternative education outside public schools, the child may be locked out of getting good teachers because of some tests.
You speak of harm that could befall a child if she is placed in a class that is too difficult. What possible harm could come to someone in that situation if there is a reasonably competent teacher in the classroom?
My irritation is not directed at you, Jenny. As I said, it's a personal issue for me.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote: Are the gifted kids going to hurt you or society if they are given an education that best meets their needs?
What Irami is afraid of is exactly what he's experienced: that not all the gifted kids will be correctly diagnosed, and that these misdiagnoses may be systematic for some groups, and therefore some groups will always be disadvantaged because they will not receive the opportunities to learn that the correctly diagnosed children will receive.
This is a perfectly legitimate fear. It acknowledges that some kids do learn faster than others and would benefit from more advanced instruction, but argues that there is a risk associated with misidentifying those children that makes it preferable to make no such distinctions at all.
I would prefer that we work aggressively to improve our ability to recognize the needs of each child than, in the interest of fairness, require that all children be treated in exactly the same way. But I also recognize that implicit in my approach is a form of idealism that may be as far removed from reality as Irami's own.
[ January 19, 2005, 09:48 PM: Message edited by: TomDavidson ]
Posted by Jenny Gardener (Member # 903) on :
I understand your frustration. One thing I have learned about gifted programs is that they are designed for very specific purposes. Some are designed for academically gifted kids (primarily reading and math). Some are designed to enhance creativity. But not all kids are going to benefit. A kid who is put in a G/T class and not benefit will have a terrible time - he or she won't learn anything if the pace is too fast and confusing. That child will benefit more from being in the regular classroom. One thing G/T educators must do on a regular basis is show how their programs are appropriate for gifted kids and NOT for kids in the regular program. There are indeed fundamental differences between gifted kids and "average" kids. Biological differences - they are truly wired differently.
The problem is that these differences are a continuum, not clear-cut. Schools must decide where the cut-offs are. That's when you get into trouble - at the fuzzy edges. The current "best practices" in selection procedures involve a matrix approach. Several different indicators are used, which may include IQ-type test scores, teacher surveys, parent surveys, student surveys, student work samples, interviews, etc. These results are then reviewed by a committee of G/T trained educators and administrators, without any personal information (a randomly assigned student number is used). The ideal is to include as many students as possible, keeping in mind that the G/T program is designed to benefit gifted students.
Posted by Jenny Gardener (Member # 903) on :
So, do we not give treatment because we might misdiagnose an issue? Because there are fuzzy edges to dealing with human intelligence? We might misdiagnose kids with learning problems too, but we seek them out from a very young age and try to get them into programs as soon as possible. Doctors might misdiagnose an illness, but that doesn't mean they should with hold treatment or give up trying to find better ways to serve their suffering patients!
Posted by Jenny Gardener (Member # 903) on :
Also, Tom, then that makes Irami's issue a personal one. More people are benefitted than harmed through imperfect identification procedures.
Posted by Jenny Gardener (Member # 903) on :
By the way, I apologize if I misinterpret or misrepresent anyone's views. I really do love you all. You're just getting me passionate, because there are very few people who understand what gifted education is all about, and they are the ones who fight for the kids. There are so many attackers, and the sad thing is that they are usually very uninformed and uneducated about giftedness.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
*nod* I agree, Jenny; I'm playing Devil's Advocate here.
That said, what if it could be shown -- and it probably can -- that there IS a systematic misdiagnosis of a specific group, and therefore that group is institutionally disadvantaged relative to the rest of the population by the G/T program? Even if the G/T program is beneficial to a majority of people, is it moral if the cost of the program is that a disadvantaged group becomes even more disadvantaged as a consequence of its practice?
In other words, if you could teach seven out of ten kids better by ignoring the other three, and the other three have done nothing to deserve being ignored, is it still okay to ignore them in the interest of the greater good?
Posted by Jenny Gardener (Member # 903) on :
Actually, this is a historical problem with G/T. G/T used to be very white bread. But there have been great strides made to remedy this situation. There are now IQ type tests that don't rely so much on cultural, linguistic, or socioeconomic status to identify gifted kids. And that's another reason to use a variety of selection methods beyond testing. Giftedness doesn't always show up in formal testing. Behaviors of giftedness, however, can be found, as can student products that demonstrate significantly advanced ability. And, too, gifted kids aren't always the "good" kids. Sometimes they're the wild ones.
Posted by Shigosei (Member # 3831) on :
quote:We have no qualms giving to the severely physically gifted, the severely intellectually disabled, the severely physically disabled, the artistically gifted, etc. Why is it such an "elitist" or bad thing to do what's best for kids who happen to be born with brains that work faster than the norm?
Thank you, Jenny.
Posted by ladyday (Member # 1069) on :
quote:We have no qualms giving to the severely physically gifted, the severely intellectually disabled, the severely physically disabled, the artistically gifted, etc. Why is it such an "elitist" or bad thing to do what's best for kids who happen to be born with brains that work faster than the norm?
I think what I'm trying to understand is exactly what is best for such children.
But I'll admit to having an axe to grind as well. I guess we all do. My frustration stems from seeing how the special education system works in my county, seeing it work well...but not being good enough in some way to use for gifted kids. What's wrong with every gifted child having an IEP that lays out the child's strengths and weaknesses and sets up individual goals for the child? What's wrong with parents, teachers, the "gifted and talented team," and the principal coming together and agreeing that this child will get special education X hours per week per subject, some in class and some out of class?
Why is there this fear perpetuated that if a special ed kid isn't in a classroom with typically developing children they will never cultivate the skills they need in this world? Why are the concerns completely opposite when talking about gifted children?
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
quote:Why is there this fear perpetuated that if a special ed kid isn't in a classroom with typically developing children they will never cultivate the skills they need in this world? Why are the concerns completely opposite when talking about gifted children?
Maybe they want to keep the gifted children socially awkward so that they are more easily controlled and don't try to take over the world.
Posted by reader (Member # 3888) on :
quote:Why is there this fear perpetuated that if a special ed kid isn't in a classroom with typically developing children they will never cultivate the skills they need in this world? Why are the concerns completely opposite when talking about gifted children?
Because typically, there is a much greater liklihood that a special ed kid will spend all (or most) of his/her time in a special education setting, whereas the majority of gifted children will typically spend a majority of their time in the mainstream program. The two situations aren't comparable, because the amount of mainstreaming that is currently present is so widely different for the two groups.
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
I don't think I was misdiagonised, and I'm not sure that's the issue.
[ January 20, 2005, 12:35 AM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
quote:You speak of harm that could befall a child if she is placed in a class that is too difficult. What possible harm could come to someone in that situation if there is a reasonably competent teacher in the classroom?
Read my post above, the one that explains why I was not gifted enough for the split class.
I was an 11 year old developing ulcers, for gods sake! I had nightmares that kept me up all night. All my life I had been told that if I learned to apply myself I could do anything, but when faced with advanced math I folded up...I couldn't do it no matter how hard I tried, and I just couldn't keep up. It didn't matter that I was the best reader....at that point I was tested at a 4th year college level...or that social studies came so easy. I couldn't hang in there, and I felt like a failure because of it.
That is what happens when a borderline kid gets in over his head....I didn't learn a damn thing form it.
As far as being disadvantaged by not being in these classes, we are forgetting something....basic skills are still being taught in the mainstream classes, and that is enough to advance if someone really wants to.
It would be a shame if all schooling was determined like this...if the really smart ones were the only ones allowed in schools..but that isn't the case. School is open for everyone here in the US, and the gifted programs for the most part go to those who work hard enough to deserve being in them. Sure, there will always be those who waltz even through these programs due to their natural ability, but that is true for everything, including sports, not just of education.
We don't force people to deny their talents in other areas, and if we did it would be a shame...so why is it always OK to do that to people who are good at studying and schoolwork?
I am in favor of these programs, because without them we are screwed...even with them the rest of the world is outpacing us in many areas of education. Without them we would only be making the problems worse.
Kwea
[ January 20, 2005, 02:18 AM: Message edited by: Kwea ]
Posted by HollowEarth (Member # 2586) on :
quote:I am in favor of these programs, because without them we are screwed...even with them the rest of the world is outpacing us in many areas of education. Without them we would only be making the problems worse.
What are you basing this on? SAT scores? Or is this just what everyone says? Let's keep in mind the differences between schooling systems.
quote:What's wrong with every gifted child having an IEP that lays out the child's strengths and weaknesses and sets up individual goals for the child?
I don't see that there is anything wrong with that. The problem I see is that we are limiting it to the gifted children, that however isn't a problem that can be solved within the system we have. Individual attention would benefit every student, due to resources we have to limit it to those that the general instruction cannot adequetly meet the needs of.
quote:There are now IQ type tests that don't rely so much on cultural, linguistic, or socioeconomic status to identify gifted kids.
This is really part of the problem with gifted programs, the testing to get in. This working well is so very depending on the teachers suggesting the student for testing. This will fail everytime that a horrible teacher is there. In my elementary school, I had 2 in 5 years (the one with the duct tape problem I mentioned earlier, and one who was suspended for shouting in a child's ear). I can't say how it is elsewhere, but if the numbers are similar, the whole idea is a farce.
-----------------------
Irami, I would be interested to hear what you believe the purpose of school is. I'm beginning to suspect that it differs in some key points from what the average seems to be here. (I'd actually be interested to hear this from anyone, but Irami in particular, although this maybe a topic for another thread.)
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
My point is that on a variety of tests the rest of the world has been outscoring us for years, particularily in the math and science areas. I know there are differences in the schooling, and I don;t thnk their way is always better than ours, but the gifted programs are a way of improving the output of our schools particularily in those areas.
I also think that most schools in the USA have plenty of oppertunities for students in the mainstream classes to learn, and College prep and AP classes fit in to that nicely.
In my schools anyone whith a B or higher could enroll in the college prep stuff for the next year...or they could get special premission from the teacher.
Kwea
Posted by Shigosei (Member # 3831) on :
I honestly don't remember what the requirements were for getting into honors classes at my high school. I think it had something to do with passing the previous class with a C or better. I think I may have taken a math placement test, but nothing else. I'm pretty sure that a student can also get in with teacher permission. I estimate that at least 1/3 of my graduating class took honors courses in some subject, or courses well beyond the basics required for a diploma (molecular cell biology, for instance, wasn't honors exactly, but functioned like an honors class because only the science enthusiasts took it).
Someone made a comment about class size, Kama, I think. It's a good point, but the honors classes at my high school were just as large as all the other classes, sometimes larger. I doubt class size is as important as the good teachers, fast pace, and more engaged classmates.
Before you crucify me for my insensitivity over that last comment, let me explain a few things. Because the honors/advanced classes were largely self-selected, they tended to be full of the students who enjoyed learning for the sake of learning, at least at my high school. Gifted students aren't necessarily more attentive; rather, the honors classes filled with attentive students. So if you went to a school where you had little control over whether you took honors classes, or your child does, that proves nothing about you, or your child.
Anyhow, being in class with engaged students made it easier to get together to study and learn things from each other. And it made the classes way more fun. It was an amazing rush to finally be with other people who thought learning was cool, who asked interesting questions, who were willing to talk about science and math and literature outside of class, even if it wasn't going to be on the test. Mainstream the gifted kids if you must, but you have to allow them at least one opportunity during class time to be with others like them. I'm convinced it's vital for their social development.
When the subject of "smart" people comes up, it's good to consider the theory that there may be many different types of intelligence. I happen to be logical/mathmatical and verbal/linguistic smart, which generally translates to success in the classroom. That doesn't make me superior or inferior in any way to those who are (unlike me) body/kinesthetic or interpersonal smart, which translates to success in other areas of life.
We need to recognize, encourage, and validate whatever talents a child may have. All children should have a chance to excel at the things they are good at. And yes, that means that the piano virtuoso is not forced to spend his lesson teaching the brilliant math student how to play a scale, or watching her learn. It means that the brilliant math student is not forced to spend her class time teaching the piano virtuoso how to add fractions, or watching him learn. (I use these as examples, not to say that all musicians hate numbers and all math-lovers are tone-deaf). They may *choose* to help each other *on their own time*, and that is a wonderful and worthy thing to do. But they should not be *forced* to sacrifice their progress in their area of talent to help the less talented, or worse, to make the less talented feel better. And when I say "less talented" I mean "less talented at that particular thing," because everyone has a talent of some kind. All of us have our own knack, so to speak, even if we're not sure what it is yet.
Posted by quidscribis (Member # 5124) on :
I didn't realize that the different types of intelligence thing was still considered a theory.
Jenny, many many excellent comments, and thank you. I'm a bit passionate about the whole thing, too, but I don't have the perspective you have to be as articulate about this as you have been. So, thank you.
Edit for word usage.
[ January 20, 2005, 06:28 AM: Message edited by: quidscribis ]
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
"I don't think I was misdiagonised, and I'm not sure that's the issue."
Then...?
Posted by Space Opera (Member # 6504) on :
"Why the hell do I have to fight so hard to defend gifted education?"
In my own opinion, it's because of the way gifted programs are handled at many schools. (I'm talking elementary school here) A lot of people feel putting so much emphasis on test scores at such an early age and seperating kids physically is a bad idea. I can't say I completely disagree with this. Older kids seem better equipped to deal with differences between "honors" and "regular" classes. If the program isn't run correctly, then you can effectively stratify the "gifted" children and the "average" children.
Stratification isn't a good thing in elementary school, where children are forming the basis of their social interaction education. It isn't a good thing when their forming their sense of self. If the program is bad enough, you can end up with one group of children with enormous egos who consider themselves "gifted" and another group of children who end up with low self-esteem and consider themselves dumb. I think this happens because bad programs set up an expectation that there is no average - there is only gifted and dumb.
Of course, I'm speaking more from the perspective of a parent whose child is not considered gifted. I'm the parent of a boy who in second grade told me he wanted to take a bomb and blow up the school because he hated it so much. Why? Because he struggled, and when he struggled (and the unthinking teacher passed out papers so that everyone could see everyone else's grades) and received "F" papers back, he was mocked and called names by the children with better grades. If that kind of behavior was already happening when the gifted kids weren't pulled out of the classroom, I shudder to think about the things that would have occurred had they been. I don't see that as being good for either group of children. (FYI my son is doing very well now. We did a lot of work on self-esteem and a lot of extra work at home)
But, I do feel that gifted children should not be held back from learning to their potential. However, in my opinion it would be best if all learning is handled in the classroom with minimum time out. And this is speaking from the perspective of a person who was considered "gifted" in elementary school.
Anyway, those are my thoughts. Please don't take this to mean that I don't support good gifted education programs - because I do. But I think the concerns I stated are what holds a lot of people with "average" children from supporting gifted education.
space opera
Posted by Megan (Member # 5290) on :
quote:If the program is bad enough, you can end up with one group of children with enormous egos who consider themselves "gifted" and another group of children who end up with low self-esteem and consider themselves dumb. I think this happens because bad programs set up an expectation that there is no average - there is only gifted and dumb.
In my own personal experience, it was the gifted kids who ended up with low self-esteem because it wasn't cool to be smart, and we were mocked incessantly for it (and I'm thinking from about 3rd grade on--I can remember the first time that someone made fun of me--really made fun of me--for being in the gifted program). I know this isn't the same experience that everyone else has, but the only times I was ever socially comfortable was when I was in gifted, and later, honors and AP classes, in which it was OK to be good at school.
It seems to me that, even if everyone is kept in the same class, the stratification will still occur. The only benefit to having different classes is that gifted kids get the benefit of showing themselves without being mocked, and average kids get to do their thing without always having to compete with that "one little snotty know-it-all who can't shut up during class." I would think that it would help the self-esteem of average kids not to have to compete with the know-it-alls.
Posted by Space Opera (Member # 6504) on :
Good points, Megan. It is interesting how our individual experiences color our opinions on this. See, I had the complete opposite experience you described while growing up. I was *never* made fun of for being smart - so I guess I was pretty lucky.
But, I found your comment about the "know it alls" really thought-provoking. The funny thing is, kids like that bothered me even in my honors classes in high school. There were always a few in every one of my classes who thought that classtime meant a continous dialogue between themselves and the teacher and no one else. I have to admit that after reading the post earlier by Hobbes I thought, "Man, I sooo would have hated being in class with him."
I'm still not sold on the idea of seperation, but I'm always willing to listen. I was just trying to give an honest answer to Jenny's question, and I think honesty is important here. If gifted teachers don't know why some parents don't support gifted education then the problem never gets solved.
space opera
Posted by Zeugma (Member # 6636) on :
quote:Because he struggled, and when he struggled (and the unthinking teacher passed out papers so that everyone could see everyone else's grades) and received "F" papers back, he was mocked and called names by the children with better grades. If that kind of behavior was already happening when the gifted kids weren't pulled out of the classroom, I shudder to think about the things that would have occurred had they been.
I tested into the gifted program in 3rd grade, and in 4th, 5th, and 6th was transferred to a gifted-only class in a different school down the street that had the gifted classes, the regular classes, and the special needs classes. There were generally 3 regular classes for the 1 gifted class. Since we were completely segregated from the other students except for recess, I don't think there was much of a chance for the regular students to feel any sort of pressure about the difference. I know that on our end of it, we were only barely aware that our class was different from the 3 normal classes, it seemed like any other school where the 4 fourth-grade classes would be taught by 4 different teachers. I can't see why it would have been any different on the other side, it wasn't like we had a big sign that said "This is the Gifted Class!", we were just "Mr. Wing's Class".
I'm sure that some of the parents were aware of and upset by the difference in the classes, but I really don't think the students were, until maybe late 6th grade, when we all started to realize that there was something different about our classes. Had we all been mainstreamed through the three grades, the differences in aptitudes would have been painful and inescapable for both the over-achievers and the average kids. By separating the gifted kids, everyone was allowed to work at their own level, without constantly being shown how they stacked up against the others.
Edit: I meant to add that post-elementary school, we were all mainstreamed into regular classes for the two years of junior high. The experience was so bad for me that I've repressed most of my memories of it, but I do remember being spit on at one point by the other students. I spent most of the two years by myself in the library whenever I could.
[ January 20, 2005, 11:08 AM: Message edited by: Zeugma ]
Posted by Space Opera (Member # 6504) on :
I should have clarified. When I talk of seperation, I mean seperation for part of the day (eg half day mainstreamed and half day in gifted classes). I think that sets up the kind of potential problems that I spoke of. Physically pulling gifted children out of the regular classroom for part of the day to send them to the "special gifted class where they get to do fun and challenging activities while the regular kids have to keep ploddding along at their boring old math work" is what I worry over.
space opera
Posted by PSI Teleport (Member # 5545) on :
I always felt bad about leaving the other kids behind during an hour, but they were doing reading and it was something I hated.
Not reading, just reading at my grade level when I was actually somewhere at college level.
If they're going to do it, it needs to be presented in a better way.
Posted by Zeugma (Member # 6636) on :
Space Opera, I totally agree. Had I taken the test earlier, I would have been in the pull-out programs in 2nd and 3rd grades, and I am eternally relieved that I wasn't. Complete separation, while it has its own problems, is a whole lot better than rubbing everyone's noses in the differences between students.
Posted by Space Opera (Member # 6504) on :
Oh, I forgot to add that (in my mind) the kids' old school in Kentucky had a great program for gifted kids that didn't involve pulling them out of the classroom for part of the day. First of all, they one mixed class for each level (1/2, 2/3, etc. - the rest of the classes were just 1,2,3, etc.). Secondly, they had a program available to everyone after school. It was a special club that offered the typical challenging activities and projects. The notice was sent out to all parents, and in the notice it stated that there would be homework for the club involved. Boy Opera, of course, upon hearing that, opted not to join.
space opera
edit: Bad spelling in a gifted classes thread - now that's funny
[ January 20, 2005, 11:25 AM: Message edited by: Space Opera ]
Posted by Lady Jane (Member # 7249) on :
quote:"Why the hell do I have to fight so hard to defend gifted education?"
Because of the tallest poppy syndrome.
Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :
Article on PE in schools. Looks like it is on the way out.
Most of the people I know hated PE. Even if they were extremely athletic and were involved in an extra curricular sports.
I don't think it should be gotten rid of in the curriculum because of the obesity crisis but it appears that most gym teachers don't have the knowledge that Personal Trainers have that would enable kids to make healthy lifestyle choices about their own exercise.
In chemistry class showing a few gory chemical burn pictures tends to get kids pretty conscious of lab saftey. Why not show a couple of decaying hearts after autopsies of overweight people etc. Might get them more concerned about their own health.
Of course I'm imagining a far more individualized PE than actually exists. One where kids would be allowed to choose between various activites, even if just simply walking around the gymn for the entire period.
AJ
Posted by ladyday (Member # 1069) on :
I’m bothered by the idea that people who are for mainstreaming are against gifted education and don’t want gifted kids to reach their full potential. I’m leaning toward mainstreaming because I think it’s a good idea for kids with special needs (and I’m including special education kids and talented and gifted kids in the “special needs” label). I think it could work and I think it’s fair.
Maybe I’m living on my own planet of idealism. I have happy visions of average kids seeing t&g kids reading a book and trying it themselves, and the t&g kid made brave because the special ed kid is willing to raise his hand in class. And then everyone holds hands and sings . I –do- have something to base it on though, both my own experiences in gifted and talented education and my daughter’s experiences in special education.
But I don’t want to turn a deaf ear to what the “other side” is saying :\.
quote:Complete separation, while it has its own problems, is a whole lot better than rubbing everyone's noses in the differences between students.
:\. If we can expect special ed kids to cope, and even thrive, in general education situations, why can’t we expect that of t&g kids?
Posted by ladyday (Member # 1069) on :
Kat, tallest poppy syndrome?
Posted by ketchupqueen (Member # 6877) on :
Every one of my siblings and I have both high IQ and some kind of learning disability/ processing disorder. I am amazed at how many of the kids in my "gifted" classes also had problems with one thing or another of this type. But no attention is paid to this in the program we were in; you're either "special needs" or "gifted", and they have to focus on one or the other. Only two out of four of us were diagnosed. My sister and I were not. She got through college (with a break in the middle for a psychotic break), barely, and then went back to a dead-end job with a fairly useless (to her) degree in something she didn't want to do, but finished just to get it over with. I never made it to college; I was so frustrated with school, I worked instead, then ended up married with a baby, and it will be a long time before I go, if ever. My other sister and my brother were identified as "special needs" as well as gifted. My sister was put in the "gifted" program, and is doing okay, but became so frustrated she eventually dropped out of college after scraping through the program in HS and has never gone back and finished. (She's 34 now, and has been trying to finish a piece at a time, but it's very hard on her.) My brother was put in the "special needs" program, and has picked up the behaviors of other kids in class, and throws chairs and stuff because the work is so dumb, he can't bear it. (He has other problems as well, but I see not being challenged, ever, as a large part of it.)
I have friends who have gone through similar situations, too. I see this as a problem that could be addressed by mainstreaming, but only with a very good teacher. The kids who are "both", not "gifted", "special needs", or "neither", also need to be addressed when planning educational programs.
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
I don't like personal stories, and I hate arguing from there but,
My parents are nice people, but there is a lot that they don't know, and this isn't one of those deals where the older I grow the smarter I realize my parents are. This is just how it is. I learned from other kids, and when you learn from other kids, you can't afford to take your ball and go home. Sure, I was picked on for as many reasons as you can imagine, and maybe the first lesson I learned was, "Even if they are picking on you, take the good stuff from them," For example, the kid who calls me nigger is the same one who knows how to read well, I forget the nigger part and ask the kid how read. But usually it was something more intangible than reading.
I'm not eager to underestimate the importance of cross-teaching at this level, and the subtle ways that this cross-teaching occurs. And to degrade that exercise because some kids are bored betrays and inadequacy in our priorities.
[ January 20, 2005, 12:17 PM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by ketchupqueen (Member # 6877) on :
It's not just being "bored". And I don't see how that's eliminated, anyway.
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
Then there is the maximizing the kid's potential. I'm not sure what that means or how important that is. Potential for what, long division?
Posted by ketchupqueen (Member # 6877) on :
No. If you're not pushing yourself, you don't learn how to learn. I think Annie already addressed this.
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
There seems to be some sort of thoughtless pushing, pushing for the sake of pushing, or pushing for the sake of aquiring data, that is going on.
I think we are going to fall at the base to a difference in priorities.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
What is your priority, Irami?
Posted by Shigosei (Member # 3831) on :
Space Opera, thanks for explaining things from your point of view. I agree that our experiences dramatically color our view of things. Like Megan, I experienced teasing at the hands of the "average" students. I'm really, really, sorry that your son isn't being treated well. No child should ever have to deal with that. The teacher really ought to make it more difficult to see other students' grades, and the students should know better than to mock other people.
It sounds like the situation at Zeugma's school was good: there was a separate gifted class, but it really wasn't labeled as such. After-school clubs are also great.
Ladyday, I think your idea would work great in a more flexible environment than a typical classroom. And Irami, I agree that it's an excellent philosophy to learn from everyone around you. Here's the problem: I don't think most children are mature or perceptive enough for this to be effective. As long as it is uncool to be smart, the things associated with being smart are going to be uncool as well. As long as the special ed kids are seen as inferior or weird, they will be avoided, not imitated. I applaud you, Irami, for finding the good in the midst of a lot of negativity. But not every child can do this, and this could result in the kids at the extremes of the bell curves getting hurt. In my opinion, the risks outweight the benefits. I acknowledge that this opinion is largely due to my experiences.
quote:If we can expect special ed kids to cope, and even thrive, in general education situations, why can’t we expect that of t&g kids?
That's a good point, although I wonder whether putting special ed students in general classes is the best thing for them. The one borderline special ed student that I did know well was also pretty marginalized socially.
quote:There seems to be some sort of thoughtless pushing, pushing for the sake of pushing, or pushing for the sake of aquiring data, that is going on.
It's more like learning for the sake of learning. And most gifted students aren't interested in memorizing a pile of facts and formulas--that's actually the problem with regular classes. Ideally, all classes should emphasize concepts and reasoning rather than just facts, but I've found that honors classes do a better job. Understanding as much as possible is just as worthwhile as any other pursuit. I find truth, beauty, and joy in the realm of science and math.
Maximizing your potential, or rather working toward that goal since it can't be attained, is a vital part of learning to be true to yourself. It's not about picking up a skill-set so you can be successful, it's about doing the things you enjoy doing. It's the dignity of doing the best you can with what you are given. It's about using your gifts for the good of all humans.
Posted by Allegra (Member # 6773) on :
A piano virtuoso is taught outside of school. When in school, they do the same thing in music class as everyone else. Why couldn't there just be a GT after school program?
Posted by Zeugma (Member # 6636) on :
Do piano virtuosos really do the same things in music class as all the other kids? Are they told to play down to the other kids' level? Or do they play as well as they know how to, and earn the hatred, jealousy, and teasing of the other students?
Posted by Allegra (Member # 6773) on :
I don't see how keeping people apart is better then teaching people how to be tolerant.
Posted by Hobbes (Member # 433) on :
Having all the kids in the class be tolerant towards one another would be best, but if we could do that then we wouldn't have just had an extra long weekend.
Hobbes Posted by ketchupqueen (Member # 6877) on :
Ideally, we would live in a world where people, even children, are in an environment where those who need help get it, all children are taught what they need to know and those who wish to learn more have opportunities to do so, and everyone, even a child, is loving, tolerant, and supportive of others.
I don't live in that world, do you?
Posted by Zeugma (Member # 6636) on :
Children are self-centered little monsters. That's why. Posted by Allegra (Member # 6773) on :
In life people are separated by class, profession, education, intellegence, and many other things. I know that children are mean. I think it is better to help children be tolerant then it is to separate them. Intolerant children become intolleant adults. I don't think it is such a bad idea to make children from all walks of life coexist in a classroom.
Posted by ketchupqueen (Member # 6877) on :
Except that when you do that, the persecution gets worse outside the classroom, at least in some cases. *knows from experience*
Posted by Allegra (Member # 6773) on :
Didn't MLK fight for children who are different from each other to be at the same school?
Posted by ketchupqueen (Member # 6877) on :
We're not talking about separating children from each other completely (at least, not in most cases). Kids in gifted classes still have opportunities to be with other kids in most cases, both in and out of school.
And that is opening a whole other can of worms, there.
Posted by Allegra (Member # 6773) on :
There are things that all involved can do to make things work inside and outside of the classroom.
Edit to add: Usually it is not completely, but it often might as well be. Putting a child in a different class is emphasizing the differences not the similarities between students. I think it is important for students to realize how many things are similar.
I know that is another can of worms. I wasn't going to go there, but Hobbes started it. *points*
[ January 20, 2005, 05:11 PM: Message edited by: Allegra ]
Posted by ketchupqueen (Member # 6877) on :
Hobbes, what have you done? Posted by Allegra (Member # 6773) on :
Yeah Hobbes cans of worms are yucky. *puts the lid back on*
Posted by littlemissattitude (Member # 4514) on :
I think the whole issue of putting gifted kids in a class by themselves versus mainstreaming and just releasing them during certain classes or certain times of the day is really problematic.
On the one hand, I think the ideal is to have kids of all abilities interacting as much as possible. After all, the world - as someone pointed out earlier, I think - is made up of all different kinds of people with all different kinds of talents and abilities, and we all need to be able to interact successfully with as many other people as possible. (Even though I'm the one who doesn't always play well with others, and I probably need more private time than most people. )
However, besides growing up as a "smart kid" (and I sigh at this point as I write that), I also grew up with a speech impediment - I had a lisp - and was in speech therapy all through elementary school and my first year of junior high. That meant being pulled out of class once or twice a week for an hour at a time. This was very evident to the other kids in my classes, and was just another reason for me to be singled out for abuse.
So I can see problems with both ways of handling the problem, and I really don't know which way is best, although because I had a generally positive experience in a gifted program that had us in a separate classroom for the whole day, I would probably say that that isn't the worst way to go about the whole thing.
Posted by Zeugma (Member # 6636) on :
Honestly, if you've got an elementary school where kids spend all day in one classroom, how is a self-contained gifted class going to be that upsetting for the non-gifted classes? As long as you don't make a big fuss about the class being different or better, how are the kids in the normal classes going to get the idea that they should feel inferior? They won't have Johnny Smartass sitting next to them getting straight A's while they're getting C's, they won't have to listen to him give book reports on material that's years ahead of where they are.... all they'd know is that they were in Mrs. X's class, surrounded by students that were all more-or-less at the same level, and that these other kids were in Mr. Y's class. When they all went out to recess, they wouldn't see any test scores or book reports, they'd all just be kids, with a reasonably healthy amount of kid socializing and bullying going on.
Posted by Allegra (Member # 6773) on :
What if the guy in the cubicle next to you gets a promotion after a month while you stay in the same job for 10 years? What if the guy in the cubicle next to you is reading War and Peace when your favorite author is Dr. Suess? What if the guy next to you is reading Dr. Suess when you are reading War and Peace? These are all things people should be able to deal with.
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
Sure -- it's part of being an adult.
But we're not talking about adult education, neh?
Posted by celia60 (Member # 2039) on :
I like the idea of a reasonable and healthy amount of bullying. Like, for serious. That's just awesome.
Posted by PSI Teleport (Member # 5545) on :
Well, I hate to bring this up, because there's no tactful way to say it, but I will do it anyway.
It never really occured to me that I was in one of the "smart" classes until I was in fourth grade. I mean, I knew I got to go do the "gifted" activities and I knew I was smart, but it never occured to me that the kids were put in classes specifically because they were "smart." Then I noticed (it's terrible to say this) that almost all my classmates were white, along with all the kids in one other class, and most of the others were black. I lived in Georgia, so white people were pretty much the minority. But that was my first clue something was going on. Then, I noticed that the kids in the "smart" classes had white teachers, and all the other teachers except one were black.
I was starting to be confused.
I asked about it and got basically no conclusive answer, but this was when I learned that the classes were determined by scores on the ITBS and the kids that did the best went into one class, second best into the next class, and so on. Now, I knew that there was no way that the white kids just happened to be smarter than the black kids, but this was the first time I really began to realize that something was rotten in the state of Georgia.
Skin color wasn't the only thing that seperated us. We were also seperated by income. Most of the kids in my class were rich and most of the other kids were poor. There were a couple of rich blacks in my class and a couple of poor whites, of which I was one, but we were basically homogenous.
My point is that there are ways to tell something is up on the playground.
Posted by Allegra (Member # 6773) on :
Tolerance and being able to accept differences are lifeskills that should be taught from a young age. How can you someone who as a child pretty much only had been with people like him/her to become tolerate and accepting of differences as an adult? These ideas seem easier to teach to people when they are young.
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
Absolutely. But that doesn't mean forcing kids to be in a classroom where they are not challenged, and/or subject to lots of teasing just for being smart.
Posted by celia60 (Member # 2039) on :
Heh, yup, they should be teased for normal healthy things like economic differences. That's the real value of a person.
Posted by Zeugma (Member # 6636) on :
Hmm... in my experience, it's the majority kids who do the bullying against the minority kids. So if most of the class is of average intelligence, the 2 or 3 smarter kids will be bullied. If most of the class is white, the black kids will be bullied. If most of the class is poor, the rich kids will be bullied if they're dumb enough to let on that they're rich.
In my elementary school, the poor kids were the ones doing the bullying. Is that what you mean by teasing because of economic differences? :-)
Posted by Allegra (Member # 6773) on :
It seems like there are better (in the long run) ways to stop teasing then to seperate people.
I think there are ways to make sure that everyone is at the right level (or above) w/o seperating. Good teachers are one solution. Having afterschool programs for those who are ahead and behind is another.
Posted by celia60 (Member # 2039) on :
actually, yes it was. then i moved and it reversed. ain't life grand?
Posted by Zeugma (Member # 6636) on :
Allegra, putting gifted kids in a special after-school program solves none of the problems of having gifted kids in a regular class. They're still bored out of their minds and frustrated with the speed of their classmates, and their classmates are still frustrated by the obvious differences in aptitude.
Why not separate the kids for anything academic, but be sure to put them together for anything where they're on a somewhat level field, like sports and music and theater?
Posted by Megan (Member # 5290) on :
The only way we're ever going to get an abundance of good teachers is to pay them more.
But, I think that's a topic for a whole other thread.
Posted by celia60 (Member # 2039) on :
quote: Why not separate the kids for anything academic, but be sure to put them together for anything where they're on a somewhat level field, like sports and music and theater?
and i guess the kid who can't throw or trips over his feet when he runs should get a different gym class, along with the amazing piano protegies, lest they get picked on for performing different than the norm.
it's brilliant!
Posted by Allegra (Member # 6773) on :
I think I will step out of this thread. I think I have expressed my opinion and continuing to post would prolong my agitated mood. No one has said anything offensive to me or over any line. It is just keeping me in a mood that I have been in all day that I do not want to be in. I hope that everyone else has fun talking.
Posted by Zeugma (Member # 6636) on :
Wow, celia, I don't remember you being this snarky. Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
quote:What is your priority, Irami?
Education begins and ends with understanding responsibility and through responsibility, dignity and propriety. Everything else serves responsibility: science, english, art, pe, and the entire gamut disciplines are all subjects of the queen of education, that is, grasping the wealth and complexity of responsibility.
Taking kids out of class because they are being teased for being good at some technique seems to ignore the first virtue of education, which is understanding responsibility. It's the equivalent of finding out there is a male rapist in the class and solving the problem by quietly tranfering the girls to a different class. In other words, it doesn't solve the problem, it just inappropriately takes it off of the table.
I also think that maximizing for the sake of maximizing without a sense of responsiblity is the sign of a society with priorities gone amuck and explains all manners of individual and social indignities. And maximizing arithmetic or science at the expense of teaching responsibility, on the part of the gifted children or the giftless children, places an inappropriate emphasis on arithmetic or science and degrades the role of responsibility in education.
[ January 20, 2005, 10:16 PM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
And I think that you teaching my kid what YOU think ihe should be resonsilble for isn;t a good thing. I will send my kids to learn specific skills and to increase their knowledge, and I understand that some of what you are speaking about is neccessary and good....
But I will teach my kids morals, and I will teach him kidness and respect for others. While I expect the school to reinforce that, I don;t expect it to take upon itself to teach him what his resonsibilities are in life.....who are you to decide for him what they are?
That is what parents are for.
Allegra, you just made All-State, adn first chair, right? That is an exclusive honor, and it segragates you from others who don't play as well. Should you have to give that up and spend all your time either playing poorly to escape notice or teaching other kids who can't play how to play basic scales?
It is the same thing. There are things worth having, worth working for, and the rewards for those programs only go to those who eran the right to them.
Kwea
Posted by Shigosei (Member # 3831) on :
I'm going to have to agree with Kwea that I am the primary moral indoctrinator for my hypothetical children. It's the school's job to teach them how to think. It's my job to teach them how to be good people. Yes, the school should teach morals, but I consider critical thinking and conceptual knowledge to be the heart of a secular education. I doubt that schools will be effective at inculcating morals when those lessons are not also taught at home.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
Irami, I'm not sure I agree with you that the primary function of public schools should be socialist indoctrination.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
quote: And maximizing arithmetic or science at the expense of teaching responsibility, on the part of the gifted children or the gifted children, places an inappropriate emphasis on arithmetic or science and degrades the role of responsibility in education.
I missed this last night..it was late...
Maximizing children's knowledge is what school is for, otherwise we could just all enroll them in soccer programs and after school programs for socialization purposes.
What about teaching the kids to respect their abilities and to strive to better themselves, that they have a responsibility to learn as well as they can?
And demonstrating the fact the the adults DO want kids to learn and are willing to support them in doing so. Kids get all sorts of mixed signals from us as a society, particularly about learning. On one hand adults are always going on about how important it is, but the other kids make gifted kids ashamed of their own intelligence. Being good in school is not a path to popularity...if a gifted kid is popular it is DESPITE being intelligence, not because of it for the most part.
I still have not heard one good argument against gifted programs....lots of concerns, but no plan is perfect...other than Irami's belief that school is lees about learning subject material and more about "social responsibility", whatever that is.
And that is the whole point, that those types of judgments are arbitrary at best, and I really don't think that it is the place of school to assume that role. I want school to be a place where any kid who wants to learn has access to the most advanced base of knowledge he or she can comprehend, regardless of sex, race or religion.
I also feel that it benefits all the kids to have these type of classes, because as frustrating as being stifled is for the more advanced kids, it is equally as frustrating for the mainstream kids to be stuck in with a peer group that has far outpaced them. It is better to have those children placed in an enviroment where they get attention in the specific areas they are weak in, without slowing down the progress of the other students.
Intelligence is truly a special need, as much as any other.
[ January 21, 2005, 08:22 AM: Message edited by: Kwea ]
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
quote: It's the school's job to teach them how to think. It's my job to teach them how to be good people. Yes, the school should teach morals, but I consider critical thinking and conceptual knowledge to be the heart of a secular education.
I'm not sure the distinction between the first two sentences is possible. Looking at the words will shed some light upon this. "Think" is from the old English thencan, the noun of which is thonc or thanc, and still survives in today's word thank. Thinking implies a sense of gratituded. This gratitude is in understanding the thing's responsibilites. A table is not a table because it has four legs and top, it's a table in virtue it fulfilling it's responsibility of holding up my book, or coffee cup, or whatever tables hold. The same with doctors and patients.
For example, take Tom. If I were to think to Tom, yet not understand Tom's responsibility to his daughter, his wife, his job, or his responsibility to truth--which seems to me enough to dignify any human life-- or his responsibility to anything in the world, then whatever is left is an impoverished reckoning of Tom. To tell the truth, this left over accounting of Tom can probably be churned out by a computer.
To speak another away, thinking to a problem is attending to what a problem calls for. The ability to attend to what is called for has the same sense as responsibility: re-again or back, spondere pledge,- abilty.
The greek word, aitia, has a better sense, "for the sake of," there is a sense of propriety that is already lost when words come through Latin. And once we understand problems as pro-ballw, or what is forward-thrown, "thinking" is attending to, with gratitude, what is thown forth, also known as responding.
If you take out responsibility from school you take out thinking, as responsibility is attends that which calls for thought. Let me make myself clear, shiosei, you are advocating the removal of thinking from school. I imagine that would be popular, as attending to what calls for thought is not always popular, but ignoring what calls for thought is stupid, and I say stupid in the dull, insensible way, and it's not understanding that kids come to school to be stupified.
quote:Irami, I'm not sure I agree with you that the primary function of public schools should be socialist indoctrination.
Public schools are vehicles that let students learn. In a way, you can't indoctrinate thinking, you can't inculcate thinking, in the same way we are having a hard time programming computers to understand responsibility, that is, to think.
The following of rules and doctrines and laws, as currently understood, does not require thought. This is even obvious in math or physics, and why we think it's a bad thing when a kid is loaded down with rules and tricks which produce the correct answer, but the kid does not know how or why the rules and tricks work.
[ January 21, 2005, 11:56 AM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :
quote: The following of rules and doctrines and laws, as currently understood, do not require thought. This is even obvious in math or physics,
bullshit
AJ
Posted by Lady Jane (Member # 7249) on :
*loves Banna*
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
AJ, figuring out which rule to apply may call for thought. That phenomena may be attending to the problems that are thrown forth, but the plugging and chugging of rule following, nope, no thinking there.
[ January 21, 2005, 11:23 AM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by Jenny Gardener (Member # 903) on :
Folks, I e-mailed this thread to a couple of my G/T professors. This thread pretty much encapsulates a lot of what I learned in their courses!
Hope you don't mind if I use Hatrack for Brownie points....
Jenny's lovin' on her jatraqueros...
Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :
Then you have no understanding of math and science whatsoever. Solving mathematical problems is an art. No two people come to solutions exactly the same way, even in a toddler beginning to realize that two plus two is four. How they come to that realizeation is a different path for everyone and will actually have a slight different abstract meaning for every one as well. Yes the numbers on the paper might appear identical. But what is going on behind those numbers in one's head most certianly isn't.
If all you've ever learned of numbers is formulas then the educational system has failed you, including college.
I'm sorry for the small world you live in. However I think even though the educational system has failed you, you are responsible. Not the system.
AJ
[ January 21, 2005, 11:29 AM: Message edited by: BannaOj ]
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
AJ, are you so hot to disagree with me that you don't see that that's what I said?
[ January 21, 2005, 11:32 AM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :
I guess it is a semantic thing. If it is "understood" then it isn't just a formula. And I apologize, I did have an emotional reaction to what you wrote. I literally saw red. (I'm not synesthesia but sometimes I do see colors.)
The other thing is, even without the deepest understanding, I believe there is a good mental discipline in the rote plugging and chugging into formulas. It forces ones mind to think in linear and orderly fashions in order to execute even the plug and chug type formula. Most people are non-linear thinkers and this sort of imposed mental discipline is very important in juvenile brain development. (I've seen way too many adults screw up a simple plug and chug so the execution of even a plug and chug is non-trivial.)
It is only with the repitition often that the understanding comes. Sometimes something is so complex that you have to get the rote mechanics down before you can see the big picture. Much like learning Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, before going out and trying to play a Mozart concert piece, since Mozarts variations on Twinkle Twinkle Little Star take the simple theme into an entirely different dimmension.
AJ
[ January 21, 2005, 11:44 AM: Message edited by: BannaOj ]
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
quote:It is only with the repitition often that the understanding comes. Sometimes something is so complex that you have to get the rote mechanics down before you can see the big picture. Much like learning Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, before going out and trying to play a Mozart concert piece, since Mozarts variations on Twinkle Twinkle Little Star take the simple theme into an entirely different dimmension.
I'm good musician. It's not that I'm gifted. It's because I lucked into a few good teachers, and I mix thought with practice. It wasn't enough to do scales everyday, I had to think about the relationship between the notes, and seek to remember the muse, and think of the scale as a totality while performing in order to become a good musician. Many days I merely went through the motions, doing my scales without thought, an inattentive ear wouldn't have heard the difference, but there wasn't any music on those days.
The issue with certain prodigies is that they play all of the right notes but without music. It sounds similar to an inattentive ear, and we could even forget what music sounds like if we aren't around it, right up until you hear a real musician, at which point we really see how impoverished the note-perfect dexterous prodigy was.
It's kind of the same with science and math and maybe even the twinkle twinkle variations. I go back and forth on Mozart. Complexity and harmony and balance are nice, but there is something insular about so many of his pieces that I don't know there is art is there, or maybe I can't figure out how to do my part as a musician. There is a danger in symbolic depth that turns its back on dignity, contradiction, excess, life, death, and pride, courage, responsibility, in the world. There is something hamstrung about it as art, in its rigid temperance. It's almost dishonest or facile. It's like being really good at making peanut butter sandwiches. I mean, it's nice to really good at something, but there is only so much dignity in making peanut butter sandwiches.
It's the danger that gives itself to scientists and tacticians and economists and all cybernetics. It's a problem that's not uniquely American, but we have some cultural tendencies that make not thinking acceptable, even endorsed.
Wow, am I'm feeling breezy today. This week's West Wing, 365, brought attention to this will to plug and chug. Leo was coming back after a heart attack, and took not of all of the plugging and chugging that was going on and took time to think. The brush with death brought him to think. He cleared out his office and did just that, and then at the end of the episode, he brought everyone else to think.
There were a lot of symbols in the episode, and I think it was executed pretty well, almost as well as, "Let Bartlet be Bartlet."
If anyone cares about my interpretation, I can go on at length. It's got to do with memory, being, life, thinking, art, noise, music, and Zeus, but I fear I have brought the thread to its inevitable death.
[ January 21, 2005, 02:08 PM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by Kama (Member # 3022) on :
Well, Jenny, you should give me some of your Brownie points for starting this thread.
<-- Pandora
Posted by Jenny Gardener (Member # 903) on :
Kama, any brownies that come my way will duly be shared with you! Should we have white milk or chocolate to wash them down? to Kama!
Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :
Grin, see music IS math. I was the best in my counterpoint class as a result. Acoustics is Math. But to execute a nuance of phrasing so that one would cry, that is art.
But you *have* to play the scales chords and arpeggios before you get there. You learn those at the beginning, long before your teacher tries to teach you the nuances of phrasing and expression. (I'm coming from the piano here, not a wind instrument where phrasing is a more natural result of breathing.)
That's why learning formulas are good, even without the depth of understanding that might be desired. As I said,before, executing a formula correctly is a necessary skill that not many people are actually very good at.
AJ
Posted by Kama (Member # 3022) on :
Chocolate!!!
Posted by Jenny Gardener (Member # 903) on :
Most of the things that are truly beautiful in life are a combination of skill mastery and art. In elementary school, most kids need to learn the skills they will later build upon and use. Gifted kids often come to school ALREADY KNOWING the skills. They are ready to build upon them and work with them. They usually burn with desire to learn and grow, until bad experiences with school beat that out of them. Gifted programs are supposed to meet the kids where they are and take them further. Not hold them back and kill their spirits.
Remember the conversations we had about The Incredibles? Could someone link to that thread here? It covered a lot of these same issues about giftedness.
Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :
I'm sorry Jenny, I was no longer discussing gifted kids really, I was more defending the teaching of math and science to *all* children in school and as more important than social responsiblity. (I don't think one can be socially responsible without the knowledge available to make sure you aren't being swindled.)
An interesting note, when I started tutoring, I shot myself in the foot as far as my standardized math test scores went, on the SAT and SATII when I was 17. I didn't do horribly (in fact you'd be yelling at me for saying I shot myself in the foot if you knew my score.) But, because I'd forced myself to slow down, and do all the steps while tutoring. I'd gotten in the habit, and forgotten all the little mental shortcuts I took prior to tutoring. Thus, while I'm 100% sure every problem I actually did I had the correct answer for, I ran out of time on the tests and had about 7 problems left at the end. It was rather a shocker, because I'd never ever run out of time on any test before. I took the SAT when I was 13 and didn't run out of time then!
AJ
[ January 21, 2005, 03:17 PM: Message edited by: BannaOj ]
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
quote:Grin, see music IS math. I was the best in my counterpoint class as a result. Acoustics is Math. But to execute a nuance of phrasing so that one would cry, that is art.
Music is short hand for musika techne, art pertaining to the muses, the muses being the daughter of Zeus and Mnemosyne(memory). What sound is math. Dissonance, assonance, and counterpoint, that's math, but that's not music.
quote:Most of the things that are truly beautiful in life are a combination of skill mastery and art.
Yeah, the question is since these are not the same, what is more important? Skill mastery is for the sake of art, and not the other way around.
[ January 21, 2005, 04:02 PM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :
You done much Schenkarian (sp) analyisis Irami? The blooming of the tonic about the harmonic axis is pretty much pure math and science. How it blooms is the music.
AJ
Good art can not exist *without* skill mastery. The foundation has to be right before the structure can be built. Without a good foundation the structure will crumble no matter how beautiful the facade. Therefore the skill mastery is more important.
(Ask Andrew Lloyd Weber, he's making millions on the skill mastery alone, IMO)
[ January 21, 2005, 04:16 PM: Message edited by: BannaOj ]
Posted by Megan (Member # 5290) on :
Close, AJ...it's Schenkerian--though I doubt most Schenkerians would thank you for calling them mathematical. There's quite a bit of argument made, though, for the structure of different styles of music having their bases in math. I could go into detail, but I think it'd be a bit much, and waaaaay off-topic.
Oh, and speaking as both an academic musician and as someone with quite a bit of practical musical training under your belt, I can tell you that without the skill mastery, no will pay a darn bit of attention to how artfully you play. Unless you're just playing for kicks and giggles, of course.
Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :
Grin I was hoping you'd respond, Megan. I admit I only did 4 college semesters of music theory. And admittedly I was coming to it from an extremely scientific backround. My schedule at that time was amusingly schizophrenic: 2-3 classes of "hard science, chemistry, math and/or phsyics" and then 3 classes of Music theory, ear training and chamber music.
But my mathematically trained mind seemed to grasp the theory concepts far more easily and readily than the rest of the class, who ran screaming from trigonometry (and I tutored a few of them). And Schenkerian analysis to me seemed like applied math in poetic terms. I loved it and ate the bit that I was taught up.
While counterpoint was probably historically based more on what "sounded" good with experience, (I'm not talking the John Cage modernist types) the mathematical underpinnings can not be ignored. Calculus was invented by Newton to *explain* physics, the observations of which were already there, things speeding up, slowing down, and falling to the ground. The mathematical underpinnings of music (and you can extrapolate to the rest of life if you wish) are there regardless of whether you acknowledge them are not (including all modern pop music). Is calculus necessary for an average person to enjoy beautiful music? Nope, but it doesn't hurt either.
I also firmly believe calculus concepts should start being taught in kindergarten. The concepts are not hard to understand. It is actually a radical simplicfication of the previous math paradigms which we are still teaching, as a hangover from history 400 years later (Note: I'm not saying the old paradigms should be done away with, but they should be broadend farther than they curently are.) It is just the fact that most elementary teachers have math phobias themselves and never got there that makes it self perpetuating.
AJ
(This nearly set me off into my "Chord Progressions and the Krebs Cycle" diatribe, I'm actually surprised it hasn't been triggered sooner. The gist is that the little bit of tinkering and tiny changes that happen as a glucose molecule goes around the Krebs cycle is a lot like how music is built. lol, I bet Sara/CT would like the analogy.)
[ January 21, 2005, 04:50 PM: Message edited by: BannaOj ]
Posted by Teshi (Member # 5024) on :
(Gah, I just logged out by mistake (first time since registering and I had to go through a million possible passwords before I hit on the right one!)
Since the major problem with the gifted education issue is that students need to be integrated with people of all different talents but they also need to be challenged, how about altering the work that is set instead of the classes it is set by?
For example, when giving out math problems, hand out a sheet that increases in difficulty and ask the students to either "go as far as they can" or "go half way, but if you can go further that's great". It's not oriented towards one-on-one but it could potentially challenge the students who hate doing the same addition/multiplication/problems over and over.
The same concept can be applied to nearly everything that is taught or should be taught in an elementary school. Students should be given work that can be achieved on many different levels, depending on the level of understanding, interest and intellect.
A selection of books for a book review is a good idea. Instead of everyone reading "Ella Enchanted" or something similarly simple (but good ) in grade eight, a selection of books on varying levels is offered. A choose-your-own-book report also works. (I did Little Dorrit in grade 6- oops, that was HARD)
Writing assignments are obviously totally subjective so children who are further ahead will merely work harder and more intelligently to get higher marks, or a few extra words from the teacher. The "if you want to" facotr is key; smart children who are interested will want to, children whose interests and talents lie elsewhere will not but will not (should not) lose any marks.
In Science, since at a grade school level basic knowledge and facts (i.e. the sun is made of blah and blah) is pretty much as high as you're going to get, the option to study different aspects of something is easily applied, which also could engage many different strengths of the class to work on what is in essence the same project.
Homework is another opportunity to vary in difficulty. In highschool, teachers often assign a large chunk of problems and if you already know how to do them you do one or two of each section, then skip to the more challenging ones. At the end is the Bonus Question which the people who want to do it can do if they want.
The same goes for research, which I think should be a much larger concentration on in homework. "Find out such and such" can be tailored to children's needs. The sly and subtle teacher can and should have the ability to give out assignments with varying levels of difficulty without making it seem that way, except to the most keen-eyed teacher psychologists of the class.
School should be more dynamic than endless math drill problems. It should be filled with projects and assignments that do not restrict the quick learner and challenge him or her to do his best but do not confuse or throw up barriers before the average or even slow learner.
For classes in which percentages count, 70% problems correct should be 100%, 100% problems correct should merely have the glow of a challenge well done. There should always always be the option to do more.
Posted by Megan (Member # 5290) on :
While this is getting way off topic, I absolutely agree that counterpoint has a strong mathematical underpinning. All I'm saying is that typically those theorists who work with Schenkerian analysis (warning: very broad generalization ahead!) want to avoid the more mathematical sorts of analysis that are common in the field (such as transformational theory, set theory, and--most mathematical of all--similarity relations in music). As an aside, I'm wondering where you went to school that you did Schenkerian analysis as an undergrad!
quote:(This nearly set me off into my "Chord Progressions and the Krebs Cycle" diatribe, I'm actually surprised it hasn't been triggered sooner. The gist is that the little bit of tinkering and tiny changes that happen as a glucose molecule goes around the Krebs cycle is a lot like how music is built. lol, I bet Sara/CT would like the analogy.)
Now, I barely remember what the Krebs cycle is, but I'm intrigued! Feel free to rant--in another thread, if you feel we've drawn this one too far off topic; I'd love to hear it!
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
quote:Good art can not exist *without* skill mastery. The foundation has to be right before the structure can be built. Without a good foundation the structure will crumble no matter how beautiful the facade. Therefore the skill mastery is more important.
You are getting with a little loose with the "therefores." It's like saying, "children aren't born without sex, so conception is more important than child-rearing."
This is how political wonks get born. They start thinking "How do I get elected" is more important than "what it is to be a statesman?"
And for writers "How do I get published?" becomes more important than "What is it to be a good story?"
quote: (Ask Andrew Lloyd Weber, he's making millions on the skill mastery alone, IMO)
Yeah, so, a measure of success or propriety is how much money you make? I imagine that makes Dan Brown a model author.
________________________________________
I agree that skill mastery is important, but it always serves.
______
quote:The mathematical underpinnings of music (and you can extrapolate to the rest of life if you wish) are there regardless of whether you acknowledge them are not (including all modern pop music).
Nietzsche does some work on this in the "Birth of Tragedy." I'm as much of a technician as anyone else, I'm just not going to elevate technique to a place where it doesn't properly belong, and I'm a little slow to call excellence in technique alone enough to be considered "gifted."
[ January 21, 2005, 05:28 PM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by Lady Jane (Member # 7249) on :
Irami, you're contradicting yourself.
Since skill mastery is important but not the end, then we need to teach MORE, not less.
If you teach only the end goal but not how to get there, then you have failed your students spectacularly.
Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :
Grin, you completely missed my point with Andrew Lloyd Weber (and I'd agree to adding Dan Brown to the list).
My point is you can *survive* with Mastery. Therefore it is Necessary.
And yes conception is Necessary to have children.
You can survive, live a good life, have 2.5 children and a dog, without producing Art. Good art is generally rare, and beyond the ordinary. If everyone could achieve those heights, then it wouldn't be valuable. It doesn't matter what industry. A skilled lapping operator knows the art of getting exactly what he wants out of his machine. It may completely be CNC controlled, but there are certain little nuances and tweaks that one always has to do to get the best out of the machine. So you reserve the Artisan for the work where the art is needed. You have 10 ordinary guys (some of which may become Artisans but some not) for the mundane tasks that don't require inspiration.
It directly correlates back to Gifted Children now that I think about it. You have a *few* that are precocious, for which learning is an Art. For all of the other children, it is ordinary and mundane. Once the other children master the mundane, some of them may be able to attain the Art status, when it comes to learning (however it generally takes a lot more hard work.) Many never will.
Why not let the gifted children do the "inspired" learning, rather than get frustrated with the repetition of what is to them, mundane? The problem is that because it is inspired those children who are, at the time, ordinary can not comprehend it in the same manner, and no amount of peer influence or co-teaching will get them there.
AJ
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
LJ,
I don't understand your point. Maybe we should use an example. Nobody doubts Condoleeza Rice has the right skills to be sec of state, but there is something deficient(in my esteem) about her understanding of the responsibilities of the position. The same can be said about Ashcroft and Gonzolas, and heck, the same claim can be leveled against Kerry, Nixion, and I think that's why I don't especially like Rushdie as a writer.
And I'm putting my money that Obama got them both.
AJ,
quote: You can survive, live a good life, have 2.5 children and a dog, without producing Art. Good art is generally rare, and beyond the ordinary. If everyone could achieve those heights, then it wouldn't be valuable. It doesn't matter what industry. A skilled lapping operator knows the art of getting exactly what he wants out of his machine. It may completely be CNC controlled, but there are certain little nuances and tweaks that one always has to do to get the best out of the machine. So you reserve the Artisan for the work where the art is needed. You have 10 ordinary guys (some of which may become Artisans but some not) for the mundane tasks that don't require inspiration.
It directly correlates back to Gifted Children now that I think about it. You have a *few* that are precocious, for which learning is an Art. For all of the other children, it is ordinary and mundane. Once the other children master the mundane, some of them may be able to attain the Art status, when it comes to learning (however it generally takes a lot more hard work.) Many never will.
Why not let the gifted children do the "inspired" learning, rather than get frustrated with the repetition of what is to them, mundane? The problem is that because it is inspired those children who are, at the time, ordinary can not comprehend it in the same manner, and no amount of peer influence or co-teaching will get them there.
We are just going to have to disagree.
[ January 21, 2005, 05:48 PM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :
I fail to understand how Condeleeza Rice or Ashroft of anything of that nature has anything to do with gifted education.
And as all of those people are extremely well educated from generally "liberal" institutions, I really don't think education, gifted or otherwise has anything to do with your beef with them. Clearly people can have near-identical educations and come out diametrically philisophically opposed. For crying out loud both Shrub and Kerry were in the Skull and Bones Society!
It has nothing to do with education, because clearly education didn't do anything one way or the other for character.
AJ
[ January 21, 2005, 05:48 PM: Message edited by: BannaOj ]
Posted by Lady Jane (Member # 7249) on :
So how does that translate into discontinuing math and science?
It's better to think critically and work to solve problems than to just practice reading, but if you don't read well, you're not going to be able to read the ethicists and create new solutions. How do you create better leaders by eliminating the in-depth classes?
Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :
Here's another thought. I don't believe that the public schools purpose is educate personal character any more than I believe it is Congress' purpose to legislate personal morality.
AJ
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
quote:It's better to think critically and work to solve problems than to just practice reading, but if you don't read well, you're not going to be able to read the ethicists and create new solutions. How do you create better leaders by eliminating the in-depth classes?
I'm giving myself the clarity of purpose award for being able to quote from the first page:
quote:It takes a keen eye to know the quality and character of a 9 year-old's mind, and it's easy for the teachers to break egos. Maybe I've seen too many schools where the kids of color end up coloring where the other kids are doing academic work, each according to their strengths.
I'm not an "every kid's gift" type of guy.
Now I'll be the first to admit that consistancy over the course of nine pages is not necessarily a virtue.
As Robert Louis Stevenson said:
"To hold the same views at forty as we held at twenty is to have been stupefied for a score of years, and take rank, not as a prophet, but as an unteachable brat, well birched and none the wiser."
But in this case, it means that I've thought about this.
_____________
quote:Here's another thought. I don't believe that the public schools purpose is educate personal character any more than I believe it is Congress' purpose to legislate personal morality.
AJ,
It is congress' job to legislate morality, and I wish they took the problematic nature of that job in a society of people with reasonable, diverse, and comprehensive metaphysical doctrines more seriously.
[ January 21, 2005, 06:02 PM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by Lady Jane (Member # 7249) on :
Would you like to tell us what you came up with? Because that didn't do it.
Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :
quote: It is congress' job to legislate morality, and I wish they took the problematic nature of that job in a society of people with reasonable, diverse, and comprehensive metaphysical doctrines more seriously.
Then I assume you are pro-life.
Posted by mothertree (Member # 4999) on :
Because there aren't enough political/abortion threads on Hatrack this week. Until we have a vomit smiley, I give you the smilies that make you vomit.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
Do me a favor...don;t mention math and music in the same post again, I am having cold sweats...
Just kidding, I was a very good flautist, and played 7 other instruments, but I never got the mathematic principles of music. Just goes to show you that there is always some more to learn, gifted or not.
Irami, you should know from experience as a musician that there are varying levels of skill between people, and sometimes that gap is too much to bridge. I am out of practice these days, but I can still play, but while I am sure that you, AJ, Meghan, twinky, and Allegra could all get together and play Twinkle Twinkle little star quite well, none of us would really consider it very good music. At least the rest of you would be bored quite soon....but what if I had only played for a year or so and that was all I could handle?
I would be frustrated with both myself and with all of you because it would be so easy for you to play it, and I would be outclassed. You four would be bored out of your skull, and it wouldn't help your musical skills at all..in fact it would probably hurt your skills a lot if you were forced to play at my level for a few years.
Of course that wouldn't happen..because we would be placed in different groups based on our skills. I would learn more of the fundamentals, because without them I would never be able to advance towards true musicianship...and you all would place in a more difficult class so that you could progress as far as your talent and desire would take you.
Lets take that one step further...how many of you would be able to become a world-class musician? Not all of you....maybe not any of you. It isn't all about desire, or opportunity; some of it is talent. As a person with that type of talent don't you have a responsibility to try to reach the pinnacle of your talent? How would you ever do that if you were always stuck with people at "my" skill level, never able to progress past what the other kids...most of whom are looking for an easy A...can do.
I feel very strongly that we have a responsibility to nurture those types of skills and talents, and that a lot of what has been suggested here in this thread would be the opposite...it would discourage kids from excelling at what they are good at.
That is not to say that we don't have the same responsibility to the kids in the mainstream classes...of course we do! But these types of programs can benefit all kids by allowing teachers to focus on their weaknesses. If a teacher is trying to split everything up it increases the chance of some of them falling through the cracks...both some of the gifted ones and the ones who were like me....gifted in most areas but not in all of them.
Without AP classes and Honors classes I would have never graduated high school. I didn't care about any of it until I found classes that challenged me to do better than I had ever tried to do before then.
As far as 70% being a 100%, I disagree...I hate grading on a curve, and that is what it sounded like to me. It encourages mediocrity across the board.
Extra credit is a good way to go though...that way there is always a way to raise your grade if you care enough to do some extra work. That always helped me in English classes, and it was very effective at allowing me to harness something I was good at to help motivate me to learn.
I think that the socilization process is a very important part of school, and often it is the area that home schooled kids are lacking in. However, I don;t think that socilization should be (or currently is) the main focus of the education process, because it will happen with kids no matter where they are. Specific information can only be imparted in a classroom setting, and I think schools need to focus more on basic skills than on teaching any one brand of social resonsibility.
Not only is it not their responsibility to do so, I don't feel it is their right to do so. What happens if they begin teaching my kids things I don't believe in from a moral standpoint? Who has the right to teach their children those types of things other than a parent?
I would prefer that my child be taught the basic skills necessary to aquire knowledge, and I will teach them the morals I believe they should have. I also understand that some moral teachings are necessary...such as a ban on physical maltreatment of others, how to play nice (so to speak)....and will be taught.
But I don;t want anyone telling my child that it is their resonsibility to teach other kids, particularily if that interferes with their own learning processes. If my kids aren't in the gifted classes, I will teach them to get the most they can out of school despite that.
Mainstream doesn't equal stupid, and god help anyone who trys to tell my child otherwise.
Kwea
Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :
Kwea
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
Aj,
quote:quote: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It is congress' job to legislate morality, and I wish they took the problematic nature of that job in a society of people with reasonable, diverse, and comprehensive metaphysical doctrines more seriously. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Then I assume you are pro-life.
Abortion is a properly controversial issue. It's as problematic for America as death is for the human condition. The positions stem from reasonable, diverse, comprehensive metaphysical understandings of the world, and part of being a moral country is understanding which decisions ought to be made at a federal level and which decisions ought to be made at a state or individual level, as part of being a wise parent is understanding which decisions ought to be made at a parental level but which decisions ought left to the child.
I'm pro-choice, but I'm open to a partial term ban knowing that this is an issue that will always leave people rightfully unhappy. This isn't an issue of shiftless, negligent government, it's issue of humility in the face of a complex decision that properly belongs to the individual.
quote:But I don;t want anyone telling my child that it is their resonsibility to teach other kids, particularily if that interferes with their own learning processes.
I'm inspired by this quote, but it is not directed at Kwea.
I wonder how many people countenance a draft, taxes, jury duty, but rise in righteous indignation at the idea of their kid sacrificing time to help out the less fortunate?
[ January 21, 2005, 09:23 PM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
How many people would countenance sending their kid to war or jury duty?
I'm not thrilled with your desire to add adult responsibilities to primary school children, Irami.
Posted by Dan_raven (Member # 3383) on :
I admit I got bored with this thread about half way through the first page.
Watch "The Incredibles"
That should answer most of your questions.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
quote: I wonder how many people countenance a draft, taxes, jury duty, but rise in righteous indignation at the idea of their kid sacrificing time to help out the less fortunate?
I have no problem with it Irami, that is the funny part of this whole thing. I don't even disagree with some of your points.
As a matter of fact I would probably require it as a parent. I spent Thanksgiving this year at a soup kitchen, serving people who are down on their luck. What did you do?
I have volunteered my time to teach illiterate adults to read...I did it for 3 years. I was an EMT in the Army, and didn't wait to be drafted, I volunteered for it.
I just don't believe it is the public school systems responsibility to teach those moral values to my kids.
It is mine.
I have the right to decide what is proper for them. The schools are there to teach specific subjects, and I think they have enough on their plate with that. I have no chance of teaching my kids calc, but I am sure that I can teach them how to respect others and be good people.
Respect of others and community service are two things I feel very strongly about, which is why I became a Mason. I help raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for needy children every year...
And I didn't learn that from school, I learned it from my parents.
If a school wants to have those type of programs as optional programs then I would support them, but I don't feel that the basic mission of schools should be that type of activity.
And I don't see how making your kids stay in a reading group that reads 4 grades below his reading level will help with any of that.
So let the schools teach subjects in an ever increasing field of knowledge that no parent could keep up with by themselves, and leave the moral indoctrination to me.
I know that a lot of values are taught at school, and I agree with them sometimes...but school is also the first place I ever heard the word nigger, or spic, or wap, so not all of what goes on in school is a good thing....and I barely trust public schools to dispense general knowledge, let alone moral teachings.
I guess we will have to just agree to disagree.
No big surprise there, huh?
[ January 21, 2005, 10:32 PM: Message edited by: Kwea ]
Posted by HollowEarth (Member # 2586) on :
quote:
quote:Good art can not exist *without* skill mastery. The foundation has to be right before the structure can be built. Without a good foundation the structure will crumble no matter how beautiful the facade. Therefore the skill mastery is more important.
You are getting with a little loose with the "therefores." It's like saying, "children aren't born without sex, so conception is more important than child-rearing."
This is how political wonks get born. They start thinking "How do I get elected" is more important than "what it is to be a statesman?"
And for writers "How do I get published?" becomes more important than "What is it to be a good story?"
And this is how foolish ideas about education get started, by placing adult thought processes and depth of understanding on children that for the most part, want to go play kickball. You've placed the cart before the horse just as much as your examples have.
There are some basic skills that the schools must provide. Reading, writing and basic math. Responibility is not one of these because it is best taught not by thinking exercises, but through time and experience. Experience in the form of doing your homework, or doing your chores at home, or in any other fashion that is more than just a thought exercise.
Helping the less fortunate has absolutely nothing to do with having chlidren teach other children. Nothing at all.
So we are defining those that have lesser scholastic acomplishments as 'less fortunate'? I don't think that qualifies, and I don't think I could give them the help today that they need, and deserve to have available.
I hate to break it to you, but we all weren't good enough to understand how everything flows from understanding our responsibilities when we were in grade school.
It is one child in a million or more that honestly wants to learn from those that hurt them. And to think otherwise is merely transfering your beliefs to them, absent a basis in reality.
----------------------- What a word may have meant at one time is really irrelevent to this discussion. The original root of torrential meant "to burn" or "to parch", but a torrential downpour is not understood to be fire raining from the heavens. A good argument should be expressible in simple terms (barring the need for specialized jargon.) Nothing we have discussed here need jargon.
Don't worry we all know you're smart.
Posted by quidscribis (Member # 5124) on :
We do? I don't. I know that Irami likes to use big words. But that isn't the same as being smart. Not saying he isn't. I'm saying that it's not something I know.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
I think he is, he is just coming from a completely different place than I am, that is all.
[ January 22, 2005, 07:59 AM: Message edited by: Kwea ]
Posted by quidscribis (Member # 5124) on :
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), my school district had what they called the Mentally Gifted Minors (MGM) program. The problem with it was that it was only available in the 5th and 6th grades. In order to qualify for the program, a student had to have scored 140 or over on an IQ test (don't ask me what they used; I only took 'em).![[Smile]](smile.gif)
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The reason was cos I didn't turn in homework, I didn't care, I didn't want to work. My sister is not as easily intelligent as I am (no not a peacock statement), but I have to say this.. she is smarter than me cos she worked harder at being smarter than me. She put in the long hard hours of doing homework and projects to get the A's she got. I, on the other hand, didn't turn in assignments and in school, most of your grade is based on assignments and not tests. If it was the other way around, I would have always been an A student and not the C/D student I usually ended up being. I tested high but I had a "didn't care" attitude.![[Laugh]](graemlins/laugh.gif)
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Glad you decided to delurk, Katie.
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I just never realized that while reading a post from you before.
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Jenny's lovin' on her jatraqueros...
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