[HPFGU-OTChatter] Gifted children

[Laura Huntley]

Alright...as, um..one of...um..*blushes hard* "Maine's Best and Brightest"..I feel an intense need to weigh in on the whole "gifted" thing.  (BTW:...the whole "Maine's Best and Brightest" thing -- it's sort of the tag-line for the magnet school that I go to..Maine School of Science and Mathematics)


Tabouli said:
>I'm curious, though, to hear the definition of 
>"profoundly gifted".  Should I assume the MENSA 
>definition of an IQ over 150?  Or something else?  
>What percentage of children fit into this category?

Hmm..no one at my school ever talks about IQ tests...SAT, ACSL, AIME, etc. scores, yes...but no one's ever mentioned a straight-up IQ test.

In my experience here at MSSM, however, "gifted" falls into three categories:

1) Kids of above average intelligence who work their asses off (both here and at their sending schools) to get consistently excellent grades in all their classes.

2) Kids of above-above average intelligence who do well in all classes (this is me...*blushing again*)...and never really had to do any work at their old schools, at least.

3) The geniuses.  Normally these people are only amazingly good at one thing though.  We've got math geniuses who can't follow the basic rules of grammar, as well as English buffs who can barely do algebra.  I don't think I've ever met someone who was "genius" in more than one area.

The problem is, if you only accept the third category as "profoundly gifted", you're going to get kids that can solve any math equation set before them, but might also be illiterate.  And to count the second category but not the first seems pretty unfair, IMO.

Shaun said:
> The problem is that over 50% of gifted children are underachievers - and the higher 
>you get up the scale of giftedness (there are generally considered by experts to be 
>three or four levels of giftedness - each with significantly different educational 
>needs) - the higher that proportion is - and a significant number of these kids are 
>underachievers because their school environment is inappropriate to them.

That's the whole premise of a magnet school -- to get gifted students into an environment where they can flourish.  Of course, not all of the Maine students I would consider gifted come here.  Many type 1's are pretty happy at a regular school, while type 2's tend to be pretty miserable at public high schools but might continue to get good grades.  Additionally, not everyone hears about us..or is emotionally ready to leave their family/friends/whatever.  I think you're referring to type 3's the most here.  And I'd like to add to your reasons why they don't do well public high school:

When you say "genius"...most people think "math and science whiz".  However, as I said before, allot of these geniuses have ZILCH for reading skills -- and the entire traditional school system is based upon being able to read well.  To the extent that those who *can't* read well do extremely poorly in school, even if they are geniuses (Albert Einstein is a classic example of this).  This is also manifested in LD kids (like my brother) who might not be geniuses underneath their various disabilities, but are still smarter than most will give them credit for, because of their inability to read well.

Tabouli again:
>I was also identified as one of this gifted children 
>category myself, having the usual high IQ, social 
>difficulties in primary school, placed in the gifted 
<snip>

It's interesting that you mentioned social difficulties here, b/c this is what I, personally, had the most trouble with.  I had no trouble getting "good" grades at my sending school (or at least "good" comparatively...they were nothing to what I would have been getting if I gave a darn about school/friends/anything at all)...but I was miserable.  Even now, I know I'll never be incredibly popular in my own right -- the kind of person everyone wants to be around all the time.  Me and other people -- we have a hard time understanding each other.  But at least at MSSM I'm around kids who I understand/understand me a little bit more.  It's helped immeasurably.

As for gifted programs...we didn't have any at my sending school (it IS Maine, after all), which is why MSSM was founded.  Whereas larger, richer states have programs and such for gifted students at regular schools -- Maine just can't/doesn't fund these things.  So wa-la, MSSM.  

Tabouli again:
>It's not that I no longer believe that children with 
>very high IQs have special needs which are handled 
>very badly by the standard education system.  I do.  
>It's more that I have become increasingly convinced 
>that the way "giftedness" is typically handled by 
>well-intentioned parents and teachers is a disaster, 
>and contributes massively to the sort of life 
>breakdowns I have witnessed. 

Which is another reason I think MSSM is so special.  It was created as a substitute for what most people *really* wanted -- gifted programs in regular high schools.  However, IMO, it's infinitely better than any gifted program.  Sure, it's not perfect...sometimes I can't stand the administrative types.  However, MSSM is such an improvement over my sending school -- I have a hard time expressing why.  It's just that -- people *care*.  The students care, the teachers care...they make me care too.  Plus, the independence of living away from home was something I really needed.  Honestly, I don't think I could ever go back to living with my parents full-time again.  I've just -- changed and grown so much, it would kill all that new growth inside of me to go back to the way things used to be.  Furthermore, I think cutting a "gifted" kid off from all the old is really essential in teaching he or she to be a stronger person.  Gifted programs at regular high schools seem to -- coddle a person so much.  MSSM does nothing of the sort.  It's sort of like -- a mother bird pushing her chick out of the nest to teach him to fly -- there's simply no other way to go about it.  It's not pretty at first, but it's what has to happen for the chick to learn his own strength/weakness and gain his independence.


Kimberly:
>The result of this, for me, was disbelief 
>about half the time, and enormous fear of failure the other half.  
>Any minor failure that I had left me fearing that I was a fraud, that 
>they'd gotten it wrong, and that any moment someone was going to 
>figure it out

I never had this fear -- probably because 1) there weren't, of course, any special programs to begin with and 2) no one was really paying attention to me anyway.  When I was young, it was accepted that I was never going to have trouble in school and therefore no one really paid attention to what I was doing.  My mother, of course, had my little brother to worry about...ADHD and a Learning Disorder really make it hard on a kid to do well in school, and she just expected me to do my work and do it well.  In retrospect, I think that if I ever *had* come home with a bad grade on my report card, she would have been livid, but at the time, I used to wonder at my friend's fears that their parents would get upset if they got bad marks.  It never occurred to me that my mom would get upset with me over bad grades -- it seemed silly.  So I didn't worry and got into the habit of not worrying.

Call it over-confidence, but that really helped me when I went to MSSM.  Allot of kids, unused to receiving bad marks, simply fall apart at first of shame and whatnot.  All I had to deal with was the fact that I was unaccustomed to being challenged.  It was stressful, nerve-wracking, depressing, and TERRIBLE, of course, but I never felt ashamed of myself.  I never fretted about what people would think if I didn't get A's or whatever.  I think that helped me allot.


Tabouli again:
>Precisely.  It's as if that IQ score is magic.  The 
>hapless child, typically aged 4-7, is suddenly told 
>that s/he is a genius, a creature superior to other 
>mortals, who is, and this is the worst bit, Destined 
>For Greatness.  Yes, by the time you're 25, little 
>one, your name will be up in lights, because you are 
>SUPERIOR!  You are Better Than Other Children!  You 
>have magic powers which guarantee you success in any 
>field of endeavour you choose!  You will be rich, 
>famous, a rocket scientist, a brain surgeon!  

Again...I *was* told all of this at one point or another...but these moments were short-lived.  My mom had better things to worry about, and my teachers -- they HATED that I was "gifted" because it meant more work for them...so mostly they just ignored it whenever they could.  This might sound like a bad thing...but honestly, it wasn't -- it let me be a normal kid. 



>It is their identity.  And then, all of a sudden, a 
>new and terrible element enters the success equation: 
>effort.
>The child has never had to stoop to such a thing 
>before.  They see it as beneath them.  Other children 
>have to do that stuff, but not me.  But slowly, 
>inexorably, as the effort component increases in 
>importance, some of those lowly inferior children s
>start to catch up.  How dare they?  At this point, 
>there seems to be a split.  Some gifted children bite 
>the bullet and grudgingly apply themselves to working 
>within the system.  And excel.
>Others seem to hit a point of disillusionment with the 
>whole education process and more or less resign from 
>it.  

EXACTLY.  Again, this wasn't specifically what happened to me -- having to make an effort was horrible and unfamiliar for me, but I didn't feel that it was beneath me -- actually, I just felt incredibly annoyed and stupid.  But allot of other "gifted" people I meet have this problem...we just aren't prepared for hard work, and that is bad enough in and of itself.  My study skills are *still* pretty sketchy.  However, if you've been told from childhood that you will never *have* to work hard -- that just makes things so much worse.  When people like this are faced with hard work and possible failure for the first time, they tend to give up without even trying -- because they never were taught *how* to try.

It's also a bit of a security measure -- to people like that, failure (in their own eyes and the eyes of others) is the worst possible thing that could happen to them.  If they think they're going to fail anyway -- it's less painful to fail when they haven't tried then to fail when they've given it their best and found it wasn't enough.

Which brings me back to what I was trying to get across earlier...that gifted programs stifle a student's ability to have personal confidence in his strengths and acceptance of his weaknesses -- whereas MSSM forces one to do both (again with the mother bird scenario).

anyway...*looks up* Oh wow...if any of that makes any sense to anyone besides me I'll be very surprised...oh well.

laura 



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