posted
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.
Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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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.
Posts: 1621 | Registered: Oct 2001
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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!!!)
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posted
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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posted
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.
Posts: 5700 | Registered: Feb 2002
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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?
Posts: 1163 | Registered: Jan 2005
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posted
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.
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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.
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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.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
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?
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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?
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.
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posted
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.
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.
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posted
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.
posted
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.
Posts: 3495 | Registered: Feb 2000
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posted
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.
posted
"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.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
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.
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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.
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posted
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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posted
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.
Posts: 8504 | Registered: Aug 1999
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If I thought you were, I would have bothered to type out one of the responses that came to mind.
Posts: 3956 | Registered: Jun 2001
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I've noticed that - that I'm on the list of people you think it's okay to swear at. Why is that?
Posts: 1163 | Registered: Jan 2005
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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.
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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.
Posts: 1163 | Registered: Jan 2005
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[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.
Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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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.
Posts: 3956 | Registered: Jun 2001
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), 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.![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
