"the stubbornness, strong will… "
We can’t hope them to be obedient at home yet still be strong willed out there…
@sbjdorlo , Thinking about it, there are unschoolers among gifted homeschoolers, although they don’t usually openly judge someone else’s philosophy. For some matters, I have to admit I was one too. I has been and am a proponent of delaying writing lessons often till preteen and sometimes much later, as late as until a student’s executive function is ready for that. But I have a good, study and experience based reason for that.
When son was a young child I never had to figure out the punishment because kid complied before I ever reached “5” and so the time out I was planning never materialized. Clash of the Titans as he grew older and challenged parental authority… Proud of how he handled what he and some other students considered an unfair classroom situation- he took care of things without the parental intervention I volunteered if necessary. There were a few other good moments.
Survey question. Did other parents of gifted kids run into difficulties with their teens or were all of the others model children when relating to parents? Perhaps my kid felt safe rebelling at home while being well behaved in school. Still waiting to regain my intelligence and not be considered “stupid” (although kid did have a point when we didn’t leave Tampa when Irma was coming, it became too late…).
Isn’t there a book or such about why smart people do stupid things? I digress.
@apprenticeprof, you wrote:
“I’d never invalidate anyone’s individual experience. But each of us can only speak from our own experience, which only takes us so far in a discussion that has moved on to questions of how many kids are actually experiencing “years of intellectual and social isolation” due to giftedness.”
The thread has moved on, but somehow people do keep sharing their or their kids personal anecdotes and there is a reason for that. Note how I have held out from doing so for almost 20 pages, after accusing the OP of basing her whole schools policy on her own anecdotal experience, but at some point one button pushed has been one button too many. Which I also have in common with a number of other posters here, and which may also say something about how deeply scarring the school experience of a gifted kid can be.
I shared a personal experience in order to invalidate one point I thought you might be making, which is that you didn’t believe that the school experience can be that catastrophic for a gifted kid.
You have since clarified that you only doubt that this is happening in significant numbers.
I believe you won’t get hard data on this. The numbers are just too small for good studies, which is sort of inherent in the subject matter after all. In addition, in order to get a sufficient number of subjects for a study, researchers tend to set the cutoff for giftedness very low.
There is an often quoted and sadly, highly respected, study in my country which purports to track a representative sample of gifted kids and shows that the overwhelming majority of them do just fine. They probably did! The sample was arrived at by first asking every teacher of a given elementary grade in the university town for three recommendations (which probably already skewed the sample towards kids doing well in school), having those three kids tested and including those in the study who tested above 130, and assessed their health and happiness. Fair enough. Years later, when the kids where in high school, they tested again and found that, due to regression to the mean, they’d lose most of their sample unless the set the cutoff at 120. And found that their sample did just fine. Big surprise, 120 - 130 in a university town will fit right in, thank you very much.
It’s kids who test, consistently, above 130, 140, 150, in all SES areas you need to look at to really understand the gifted experience. It’s about being the outlier that makes for the isolation. Good luck collecting a representative sample!
There was a small study I liked, which compared kids who had made the cutoff for the gifted track who chose to enter the gifted track with those who entered regular college prep classes. The kids in the regular classes did well academically, had high self esteem, but were unhappy. The kids in the gifted classes did somewhat better academically but not hugely so, had lower self esteem (had finally experienced not being the smartest kid in the room any more, which is invaluable!) but were much much happier.
I am afraid that beyond that, personal anecdotes is all you are going to get.
@roethlisburger, you wrote:
“The PISA results are interesting. However, if what the PISA test measures doesn’t align with the average US school curriculum in 9th or 10th grade, then the grade to grade improvement would be minimal.”
No, it certainly wouldn’t align with the curriculum of any participating country, given that the test is meant to work for all of them, with one, the US, having 50 different education systems alone. The test makers say that what they test is critical reading and problem solving, not asking dates and facts, with as little national bias as possible. It may play to one country’s strengths more than another. The person heading the OECD department responsible is German, and Germany did shockingly badly the first time the test was administered in 2003 or so.
What I was trying to show by including the international results is that if the gap between the country’s 10th and 90th percentile is consistently between about 200 and 300 points (considered the equivalent of 5 to 7.5 years), despite the countries’ averages varying wildly by just as many points, it tells you something about the human condition and about what a school system in any given country can and cannot do, irrespective of a country’s wealth or politics.
It certainly shows that “grade level”, normed by age, is a completely arbitrary cultural concept.
@yucca10 Have you considered starting a math circle for younger kids or perhaps a Math Counts team for middle schoolers? You can always contact local schools and share the info for your circle and then schedule to hold the meetings at a local library (the library will also advertise the events for you.).
Math circles are a great way for kids to have the opportunity to explore math concepts at a more complex level and have fun while doing it. There are also tons of available resources out there. You can always use competition math resources but just do it for fun without focusing on the competitive aspect. (My ds loved the math, but he strongly disliked competitions.)
https://www.mathcounts.org/programs/math-club
http://www.mathkangaroo.org/mk/default.html
http://www.moems.org
https://www.mathcounts.org
@SculptorDad, @intparent, @ucbalumnus, check out, for instance, Finland’s reading scores. The equivalent of 6 grade levels between the 10th and the 90th percentile. The US isnt that different in that regard, maybe 6.5 years. The purported homogeneity, real or not, only gets you that far. Finland has smart kids and slow kids, rich kids and poor kids. (It may have racism, but with the exception of a few Somali refugees in Helsinki, doesnt really have any kids it might have an impact on). The interesting thing is that not only do all kids somewhat better than in the US, their low scorers do very much better.
What Finland has and hasn’t (I’m not making this up, but quoting research, please don’t make me cite anything, it’s not that important for the discussion).
No residential and thus no school segregation. With the exception of a few cities, not enough people in one place to have it, no distrust between ethnic or SES groups to promote it. It is thus SCHOOLS, and the national curriculum, not so much the population, that are homogeneous.
Universal, though not mandatory, playbased preschool/childcare from age one, again, homogeneous across the country. Almost all kids go, all kids have the same highly qualified teachers, the same academic opportunities, or lack of them if you will, the curriculum being play based. I have read, but am not sure whether that one is true, that kids with Finnish as a second language in the larger cities may be assigned a preschool in a different area to make sure they aren’t clustered.
Universally highly qualified teachers, in primary and secondary schools, drawn from the top 10 percent of high graduates, universally trained according to the requirements of the national curriculum and the universal final high school test requirements. This is HUGE, as well. (They are not very well paid, btw, just highly respected.)
So, very homogeneous schools, teachers, curricula, graduating requirements (thus very little need for constant outside testing and evaluation, though they do spot checks to make sure schools remain that way,
But, very heterogeneous classrooms, probably more so than in most classrooms on earth. How does this work? Are Finnish teachers that much better trained at differentiation? That’s one possibility. Finnish kids are also trained to work very independently, because that’s the only way real differentiation can happen at the same time with just one teacher in the classroom - a teacher can only say or show one thing at a time, at exactly one level. When the kids work on their own is when they work at their differing levels.
However, from what I know about Finnish schools, I have my own personal pet theory, which you may take for what it’s worth.
I believe it’s that Finnish, teachers, having been high achieving students themselves and being highly trained, do not teach the curriculum aiming at an “average”, but an above average level. (And the above average kids In a given classroom will be above average across the nations schools).
This keeps the average kids, be they 30 or 50% of the classroom, working very hard. (PISA surveys also ask for these things, and Finnish kids are among those complaining the have to work hardest, even though the school days, the school year, and homework time is shorter than in many other countries they do better than. They have to think harder).
It keeps the above average kids challenged. It keeps the gifted kids from going nuts. (Finnish educators themselves agree that they do not do enough for gifted kids, but feel implementing gifted education is not feasible in a country valuing equity so much.)
And as soon as some of the average and below average fall behind, they immediately attract the attention of a special ed teacher. It’s their responsibility to help them learn and catch up, not the classroom teachers, who continues to teach at the above average level. They will be considered temporary special ed students, as opposed to the permanent special ed students, who may be taught exclusively by the special ed teachers, often in a different classroom.
By the time Finnish kids start high school, a whopping 50% of the age cohort will have, at one time, been designated a temporary special ed student.
From day one, these kids never get to set the tone or standard of the classroom. If they want to do well, they get every support, but they have to WORK.
It’s a different educational culture from most Western countries, I believe.
“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.”
Well having labels on 4.5 year olds is not a good thing. Yeah if a kids goes around saying she’s smart in pre-school, it’s not going to be received well. There could easily be kids smarter than her who just happen to have humble parents.
Parents teaching kids about smart, dumb, beautiful, ugly, fat, thin at that age are not doing their children any favors.
“lower self esteem (had finally experienced not being the smartest kid in the room any more, which is invaluable!) but were much much happier.”
Lower self-esteem kids cannot be happier, that’s a contradiction that should have been picked up in this survey. By definition kids with low self esteem feel unhappy - incapable, incompetent, unworthy. And you think those are happy kids? That is such flaw in that conclusion that I would believe little else in that study.
“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?”
There definitely should be differentiated (honors, ap etc.) instruction in high school and there usually is. Elementary school does not need differentiated instruction per se, more the allowing to skip ahead, GATE, combo classes, which would mean not only having academic skills but organizational as well. The issue is really around middle school where I agree that there should be differentiated instruction, but it can be tough because of teaching resources for calculus, apush, honors literature etc are in high school.
Again though what is the definition of gifted, is it someone who is a year or two ahead in one subject (not a big issue imo) or a Hamiltonian genius, capable of setting up a financial and economic system in first grade and leading the Fed one day, or perhaps remaking it! Had to go non-stem for that one. Little Alexander or Little Mozart would have issues in a traditional setting, agree there.
@Tigerle my experience exactly matches what you say. I don’t know that my 10th grader is much more academically advanced that she would have been if she had not been placed in GATE magnet classes in elementary school and middle school. I can tell you she was SOOOO happy in those classes. She loved her classmates and her teachers.
“There could easily be kids smarter than her who just happen to have humble parents.”
I am not sure if you are on the same page. It’s not about the gifted kid boasting herself as being smart. It’s about other kids’ parents teaching them about smartness and them noticing the humble but gifted kid and picking on her out of jealousy, and therefore the gifted kid playing dumb and pretending not to know the answer or unable to read what she actually can, lying to the teacher if she has too.
Also, “LOWER” self esteem may not be same as “LOW” self esteem. Whatever that is.
It is basic human nature to be with the likes of you to satisfy instinct of association. Not being the smartest kid in the room can also free you from being pressured, either internally or externally, to be appropriately achieving. They feel that it’s ok to not to perform the best in the room any more, because they are not the smartest in the room anymore. They are likely to objectively achieve more in this situation.
They still know that they are above general population in intellectual capacity and whatever feeling of incapable, incompetent, or unworthy compare to the even smarter kids is not as significant as the above benefits. In facts, it can be the parents who are disappointed while the kids don’t even care and are just happy and feel safe.
@theloniusmonk My smart kid can no more hide it than you can hide your height or skin color, but it is a lonely feeling to not know why you are so different from everyone else. I went through childhood bored and feeling like an oddball for reasons I didn’t understand. I never had to study (wasn’t straight As but a very good student with NO work outside the classroom), twiddled my thumbs a lot in the classroom, and acted out as a teenager out of sheer boredom. I was fascinated with stuff other kids weren’t, and had zero interest in the silliness (makeup, teen magazines, clothes) that my female peers were into.
Only when I was in HS and got my SAT & ACT score back did I get feedback from my HS counselor that I had dusted everyone in our county and most of our state on those tests (and earned a scholarship from the state because of it). I knew I was quicker at school than my peers before that. But it is a lonely existence when no one is even trying to help you find other people like yourself, or even help you understand that you aren’t weird, but just are very smart. It would have been great to have teachers and parents who acknowledged it and, most importantly, fed my academic interests early and often.
People who are not gifted have a hard time “getting it”. I don’t want my kid to be snotty to others, but she is entitled to own and show her talent as much as the football players are. Why is helping my kid know she has above average intelligence and helping her manage and use that inappropriate? She ought to be touted more for it – she is the type who is going to cure a disease or discover a new manufacturing material or figure out a new food distribution or housing system or write a book that becomes a classic. Dumbing down our society isn’t helping our world at all.
I’m very attracted to a lot of the unschooling philosophy. I certainly don’t think one should go out of your way to teach four year olds to read as most of them aren’t ready. But some are. My older kid started learning to read sight words at two. If he asked what something said, I certainly didn’t say you aren’t old enough. In his Pre-K class when other kids were identifying letters at circle time - his teacher gave him words, instead of numbers he got fractions. He’d come how crowing about his teacher tried to trick him that day, but he knew whatever it was. We played a little bit with refrigerator magnets CAT, SAT, BAT sort of stuff. By three and half he could read unfamiliar material. At four he was bringing DH’s anatomy textbook into show and tell. My other kid, gifted, but not nearly so precocious didn’t get reading until second grade, but when he finally did went from Nate the Great to Harry Potter overnight.
My precocious son did not seem to get bullied in elementary school and he was incapable of hiding his intelligence though he didn’t go around bragging. I remember at a family science night he answered the question posed by the visiting scientist/demonstrator. He was asked how he knew the answer and another little girl piped up proudly “Oh mathson is the smartest kid in third grade!” I did not think it was particularly good for him to think that he was always going to be the smartest kid in the room - but it was hard to find good programs with other kids who could challenge him until he was older.
Chess turned out to be a great program for him. The philosophy that you learn from your mistakes was emphasized. Also that if you aren’t losing you aren’t being challenged. He was a top player in his school, but there were lots of better players in tournaments. One thing I believe is true self-esteem comes from mastering something difficult, not from participation trophies.
“it is a lonely feeling to not know why you are so different from everyone else.”
A 10 yo child once asked the parent why young kids able to take college courses may be as numerous as a handful of sand grains yet are so scattered all over the world like the sand grains in the large lawn field of the community college the child had just registered. The child already knew its professor and was excited about the class it was personally invited by the professor. But still might not have registered if it didn’t know that there are other young kids who did that too, many as a (small) handful of sand grains.
They know they are different whether the parents tell them or not. It’s much more healthier to know why and how they are different and what are your expectations about it. Or else they may think their gift as something so bad that their parents don’t even want to talk about except dismissing it as inferior to hard working, every single time the subject surfaces. Talking about self esteem and all of an ugly duckling.
It also helps them to know there are plenty like them scattered all over, but not nearly as much as actually being able to intact with them regularly.
@intparent applaud ur “she is entitled to own and show her talent as much as the football players r”, I think she should own and show off more and not be shunned/ridiculed.
That being said, I think the days of finding a cure/discovering a new material … by oneself is long gone, except perhaps in writing a classic! I always believe the true geniuses in our times r those who have “smarter” people around and work for them as a team, like Steve Jobs.
@intparent wrote:
Absolutely. My son definitely suffers from feeling isolated and different, and often from low self-esteem. That is the major reason we had him tested - for him and us to better understand his giftedness as part of his inherent nature, and to not feel like an “oddball”. The center that we tested at had a sign posted that read “I’m not weird, I’m gifted.” It made a huge difference to my son to understand that his quirkiness was part of his gifted nature, and not something “wrong” about him, and to us in terms of understanding him (including his highly asynchronous development, his near-manic passions and sometimes overpowering intensity, his emotional ups and downs, his auditory processing issues, his heightened sensitivity, and his lack of self-esteem and need for constant reassurance).
@Mom2aphysicsgeek I know, there was in fact a Mathcounts team in our elementary school. I am personally not good in holding the attention of a group and so strongly prefer to work with 1-2 kids at a time. Anyway, I have a different job now and have no free time whatsoever, so this is a moot point. I did try to advertise myself as a tutor for gifted kids on wyzant, but nobody was interested. Maybe later.
Hehe, my son was always a model child at school (starting from daycare at 15 months) but a handful at home. He definitely needed to let out steam and felt safe doing so. I yelled a lot 
He actually is a lot easier to deal with as a teenager, but probably just because we don’t really tell him what to do, somehow he’s doing great without us. I like to think we are still an influence in his life (more so because we’re educated enough to help him with schoolwork once in a while), but I realize that in case of serious disagreement we don’t really stand any chance.
I generally agree with that… BUT would use Apple as a classic example. Jobs needed Apple to execute his vision, but Apple without Jobs is “meh”. They were “meh” when he left the first time, and are (unfortunately) trending “meh” again (dongle for charging and listening at the same time, anyone? Ugh… clunky).
As a project manager, I run teams. And I can tell you that all team members are NOT created equal. There are superstars that you cannot accomplish the work without, along with plenty of serviceable team members who are good enough (and a few that you’d literally be better off without, but that is a different thread!). One of the first things I do on a new project is try to assess the capacities and capacity of my team members, because all team members are NOT created equal. If I can see that there are no particularly talented people, I build a timeline and/or raise risks because the project is going to take longer and/or have trouble delivering with high quality. So yes, I believe that very smart people need to be able to work with others. But sitting in a classroom waiting for others isn’t “working with others”. It is wasting a lot of time. More often in the work world, they will let you accomplish your work at as rapid a pace and as high a capacity as you are able – and that is a great feeling, like getting to run and stretch your legs after being cramped up.
I also think there is still room in the world for a person to have an idea and pursue it without a huge team. Sure, we can’t run something like the CERN experiments without a lot of people. But Peter Higgs had an idea that no one else did, and that is one of the things that team was pursuing testing. I believe the great idea or breakthrough or work of art can still very much come from an individual.