I agree that logistics can be difficult, however with the advent of online classes it probably can be managed somehow - at least for the older kids. And flexibility on the teacher’s side can probably cover the smaller kids?
As for the lazy and incapable teachers and administrators - doesn’t it always come to that! Unfortunately, I am yet to see or hear about a school (of any type - private or public, big or small) where all the teachers are excellent and all the administrators are helpful and flexible
I don’t even want to open that can of worms describing some teaching and school administration “geniuses” we encountered - I believe any parent has their own long list of those. And we are in one of the best school districts in the country!
An completely online class with no in person interaction isn’t the education I’d like my kids and grandkids to have. I’d like to see schools use some technology to prepare lessons for kids to go at their own pace with teacher support as needed, and some meeting times of students at the same levels in given subjects. It is not really what schools offer today – but think outside the box a bit to the future.
Why is it that you think a teacher for younger kids can be more flexible than they are today? They have to keep up to 30 kids busy and reasonably under control at all times. I think you are just sort of saying stuff that “might work”, but the logistics are challenging. Again, I think technology COULD be used to provide different levels of instruction with teacher oversight in the classroom at almost all ages.
I also wanted to add that the GATE and Enrichment programs are all very well but the problem is not how to “enrich” the education, especially in the after school hours as those programs tend to do. We can provide that sort of enrichment on our own, thank you very much.
The question is how to make the regular school work challenging and interesting for all the kids, including (and especially for) those who are ahead so that all that potential would not be lost.
Once again, I feel parents and community resources may be utilized to help students who are able to learn faster with just some support. I have a math degree, worked from home for years and I volunteered in the K and 1st grade classroom for literacy, but nobody ever asked for help with math lessons. It’s not only a problem with gifted kids. I’ve signed up for two volunteer tutoring organizations, but they were not able to find me anything on a regular basis.
Our GATE program was regular school hours not enrichment or pull out. Here is how math worked:
The year I am talking about there were 4 GATE classes 4, 5,.6 and a 5/6 combo.
At math time the kids left their home classroom and went to the classroom of the teacher teaching their level. There were also parent volunteers who helped. The levels were roughly 4/5, 5/6, 6/7, pre-algebra and algebra. There was a carpool to ferry the Algebra kids to middle school. (I believe they have since gotten a teacher accredited to teach Algebra, that was the sticking ppont) With common core I believe pre algebra is now called 7/8.
Whem you have a team of teachers and a principal willing to make it happen much is possible.
U.S. is the richest country in the world isn’t? It can educate the top 10% gifted of our population better if it wanted, isn’t it? Maybe the budget deprived school districts can’t. But why can’t the government?
What do you mean by better, doing better on a these tests or preparing them for taking challenging courses in college? The top-10% of HS students in the US do fine, even though 10% stretches the definition of gifted. The real issues is the gifted kids in low-income neighborhoods, that’s where the US system needs to improve. The US will never emulate the Singapore school system, school decisions are local, common core aside. I think Finland has better lessons for the US to learn from.
By the top 10% I was thinking about top 10% in gifted, including those from low-income and unidentified, and not the top 10% academically successful students who maybe already doing fine. And I do think we have a lot to learn from Finland, including allocating more money for education so the local school systems can have more resources.
Finland has a very homogeneous population – they have a much more balanced socioeconomic situation than we do, and their education system is thus able to be quite different from ours.
“The concept of homework in elementary school is for kids to shore up material presented most got in class.”
Homework started getting assigned in elementary school because the parents complained that their kids would fall behind if they didn’t get homework and would have not chance at the ivies. Especially the Asian parents, who did a thousand problems a night (exaggerating for effect) so think their kids should also do that. I try to tell them it’s a totally different system in the US but they don’t get that, or most of them don’t.
Of course, it’s nonsense about “falling behind” with lack of homework but I do think homework belongs to elementary school, too. It’s about learning responsibility, something for kids which they must do on their own and not forget to do it or bring it to class the next day. I saw it somewhere - 10 min/day per grade level, which seems reasonable to me. If only teachers would follow this guideline!
“because the parents complained that their kids would fall behind if they didn’t get homework and would have not chance at the ivies.”
Very true
“Especially the Asian parents”
Not very true. What I have heard locally, white parents at the same competitive schools are just as same or more vocal. The thing about Asian parents is that the Asian culture makes it a bit difficult to complain to teachers, and feel uneasy to ask for more homework. They would rather just give them directly to their kids.
“I try to tell them it’s a totally different system in the US but they don’t get that, or most of them don’t.”
They probably got it right. Except for the tippy top colleges, the academic does matter the most in admission decision. And the Asian parents know that their kids are not likely to go Ivy with sub-far academics, but would likely be welcomed at a just as good college with good academics but without stellar EC.
@intparent, How do homogeneous population and more balanced socioeconomic situation enable them to collect more taxes and spend more on public education?
When I asked a while ago whether people thought that gifted students should need to work as hard as average students, I meant during the class day, and not homework. If your response was based on homework, would you reconsider in the light of what I actually meant? Namely:
I assume that average students have to expend at least some intellectual effort during the school day to understand the material that is being presented at a pace that is geared to them. Most gifted students do not need to exert any noticeable effort during the school day, if there is not some type of differentiated instruction. Do you think this is a good educational practice?
I think it would be fine if elementary school kids had no homework, or only very minimal homework.
SculptorDad brought up the possibility that socially aware gifted kids would learn to hide their giftedness. This reminded me of a comment my daughter made while I was driving her to pre-school, and she was four-and-a-half: “If my friends know I’m smart, they won’t like me.” This is verbatim. I still have no idea where that came from.
“If my friends know I’m smart, they won’t like me.” This is verbatim. I still have no idea where that came from."
I know where it comes from. I have seen it.
Kindergartners maybe very aware of their parents’ competitive expectation. That’s when most of parents still believe that their kids might be the most smart ones with the biggest potential for top colleges. It could be difficult to for a somewhat smart but very precocious kid, who could be the leader of social functions, to accept the gifted one as it could mean them not meeting their parents’ expectation of becoming the most smart one, and end up not liking the gifted one.
At this stage, the kids don’t have enough social ability to process this correctly and would follow the precocious leader. Meanwhile the gifted one is not likely the leader as it may seem too trivial for her, just wants to be left alone while not bullied or isolated. Maybe she has already experienced sudden hostility and bullying after some demonstration of her ability, and correctly worries what would happen if she shows more. At least some morality is learned trait. And innocent young children may lack it.
Needless to say, a highly toxic environment to learn the all-time praised social skills with age peers, if you are already awaken.
I remember all sorts of interesting comments that my son heard growing up, and many were in the homeschool community, interestingly.
When he was 4 and reading (learned on his own), I heard a homeschool parent say, “It’s bad for kids to read so early. I’d never teach my son to read this early.”
When he was in 3rd grade, and expressed his love for math, from another homeschooler: “You’re crazy. I hate math.”
When he was in 8th or 9th grade, from another homeschooler who was an athlete: “You play baseball and play the violin? That’s weird.”
OTOH, his 8th grade baseball coach of his AAU high school baseball team (my son won the Silver Slugger Award for best batter that year, and was co-MVP the next year with a kid who was drafted into the majors several years ago) held him up as an example to the other athletes, sharing his 8th grade SAT score (I still don’t remember how they knew it), encouraging the players to work hard. That was nice that they appreciated his accomplishments off the field as much as on the field.
My son didn’t think about his giftedness since he wasn’t in a school GATE/Seminar program, but he did stick out like a sore thumb often enough for many reasons.
@sbjdorlo, I have met plenty of homeschoolers who were doing it for anti-academics reasons. To prevent the kids from reading until later age or learning to think before accepting faith, etc. The kids learned alternative science and celebrated Columbus day the traditional way and all in the co-ops. Eventually I joined a gifted homeschooling group and didn’t need to associate much with the people on the other side.
In the other homeschooling group, an 8th or 9th grade age boy would express his love for chemistry and his organic chem class, while a girl would admire it. Or vice versa.
Chicken-and-egg problem? I.e. the US has higher SES inequality, which makes it harder to provide equal and good educational opportunity, which reinforces SES inequality as an inherited characteristic across generations rather than something earned through one’s own merit?
Finland’s population may not be as otherwise homogeneous as commonly assumed. 89% speak Finnish as their primary language (may include ethnic minorities who are not tracked in Finland censuses); the largest linguistic minority is Swedish at 5%. In the US, 83% speak English as their primary language, 10% speak another primary language but speak English “very well”, 3% speak another primary language but speak English “well”, and 4% speak another primary language but speak English “not well” or “not at all”.
In a recent survey, two thirds of people in Finland thought that their country was racist, although far fewer admitted being racist themselves. I.e. Finland has racism problems, like the US does.
Personality is independent of giftedness- think of it as such and do not link areas of giftedness with it. Equal intellectual capacity in any given area can come with diverse personality traits that help determine how one deals with opportunities (or lack of). How much “drive” a student has will determine accepting or insisting on changes being made with different results. Laid back or intense- I know of no study that correlates these with IQ although it may correlate with accomplishments.
Learning to not be bullied was an important survival skill for the HS world. In the adult world more mature behavior is expected, but to do well a student needs to enjoy and not fear school. We can delineate all sorts of HS skills that do not translate to the adult world. Think of the “in” crowd and how little it means later- but it helps many kids survive those school years.
So much easier to do things for a small homogeneous population. That takes away so many variables.
When dealing with giftedness we so often forget there are people with many “kinds”. There are people with extreme spikes in one area over others, those with modest spikes, those with fairly uniform abilities across all areas and those globally far to the right on the Bell curve but without extremes in any one area. The gifted verbally and mathematically who will never be at the top in either field but near the top in both. A given single IQ number may be a combination of the same scores in various areas or highs and lows. btw- it is not just an average of different areas as I found out when son was young. Fewer people perform extremely well in both (all) areas so lower scores in both/each yields a number higher than the average of areas. Think probability.
In the real world this may mean a student can excel in math in college plus do very well in verbal skills classes but not be competitive for the most elite grad programs because others can do the math better even if they don’t do as well in other fields. Fortunately there is plenty of room for many more than those who win the prizes.
@SculptorDad, interestingly, the woman who made the comment about reading is not religious, is highly educated (heads a charter school) and has a (maybe very) gifted son. But at the time, we were all part of an unschoolish type group, so I guess that was the mindset at the time. Not sure she’d agree with the statement today.
Not sure son would agree but he had a lot of good childhood experiences even though he didn’t have the top academics available to him like some whose parents post on CC seem to. Balance does not mean giving up pursuing the most one can academically. I may mean getting to HS earlier so one can do more academically plus have sports and music one can compete at a higher level in.
Back to basics. I’m sure we parents have shown how truly gifted (not just in parents’ eyes) kids already are branching out but still need to move upwards/forwards more than some educators think they do.
Yet another anecdote. Son’s third summer 3 week WCATY (gifted) program in HS he was doing an AP class but was obsessed with distance running. We let him come home from the small college campus where it was being held after one week- he got the 5 on its AP exam the following May. The brain of a teenager, sigh. And the stubbornness, strong will… I’m afraid I know where he got all of his traits from (both…). And that circles back to personality being independent of areas of giftedness. And why hard work can trump innate ability.
