<p>This is from cnn.com. It calls itself a blog but it's on the regular website--not sure it is allowed.</p>
<p>I’ve linked to blogs run by newssites before- but you are right- blogs aren’t allowed.</p>
<p>Personally, I think there is a difference between precocious (young) kids and truly gifted kids but the distinction often isn’t seen until between puberty and adulthood</p>
<p>Does anyone actually believe 1-4 or 6?</p>
<p>It’s not a bad article, but there really isn’t a lot of meat in it. Gifted kids are all different and most would benefit from special programs? Isn’t that pretty much a “duh!” analysis?</p>
<p>Statistics might be useful. For example, the author writes:</p>
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<p>While that it true, the gifted tend to be disproportionately introverts and the highly gifted test as Meyers-Briggs introverts 75-80% of the time.</p>
<p>Funny about #7. S’s new first grade gifted program teacher quit after the first year in the program. Asked whether it was that difficult to deal with the gifted children, she replied, “no, it was the parents it was difficult to deal with.”</p>
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The Meyers-Briggs is NOT a well-validated personality inventory! There are much, much more psychometricly sound ones available, and so its annoying that the Meyers-Briggs is treated as the “gold standard” by so many people when it is anything but!</p>
<p>This topic recurs every so often. </p>
<p>It is true no personality type is associated with high intelligence. I learned the 75% of highly gifted being introverted while 75% of the general population is extroverted (and of course there is a continuum). Makes it even harder for many gifted- they don’t fit general societal norms for preferred social behavior. Also hard to be a gifted extrovert- try getting your college friends to do what you like to do, sigh. And- most teachers will be extroverts and not understand the introverted students. Been there, done that. Wish so much of the literature had been available decades before it came out. Myth #10 is my favorite- I hate it when people try to say every child is gifted (perhaps some of us are just more gifted than others).</p>
<p>Oh.my.word. Yes, this conversation comes up every so often, and I think some of the self-promoting dribble of that article is one of our core issues as a country. So… gifted students shouldn’t help out those who struggle because it’s frustrating? While I might agree that gifted kids should be challenged, it also might help their EQ to find some empathy in helping someone else. And education isn’t just about the academics. We need people who can work together. And pulling all the gifted from the regular classroom only creates a sense of truth to thinking you’re always the smartest guy in the world. Ugh. </p>
<p>I liked my son used to to peer tutor. It taught him to recognize different learning styles and appreciate what others bring to the table. However, I admit we moved him to a private school in 8th grade. While he was still good at peer tutoring, there was no gifted and talented “program” but it definitely pushed him to be as academically challenged as he needed it to be.</p>
<p>It’s one thing to do peer tutoring out of one’s own volition. It’s another thing to expect/force the smart kids to spend less time learning and instead do the job of the teachers. If we do expect this from them, maybe they should get a portion of the salary and benefits of the teachers they are assisting.</p>
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<p>Or they won’t think they are the smartest guy in the world because they will be put in an environment where they aren’t the smartest person in the room.</p>
<p>My daughter’s learning disabled class is ahead of her advanced class in pre-algebra. The LD kids are doing their homework and the advanced kids can’t be bothered…</p>
<p>Must be crazy trying to teach gifted kids. When my youngest was in kindergarten she was not happy about having to “learn” the alphabet. They had to bring in items for show and tell which started with the letter of the week. She had such delightful contributions as dust bunnies, lint, pickled beets (decided that week to concentrate on adjectives rather than subjects…), toe nails.</p>
<p>It seems 20-30% of parents think their first-kids are in the top 0.1%, not quite as high as #10 in the article. But, I don’t see anything wrong with parents being proud of their kids. What is gifted anyway? I’m pretty happy with my kids, labeled gifted or not.</p>
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<p>I’ve always suspected these personality tests are just entertainment. For that purpose, Meyers-Briggs is great. It’s easy to take, easy to understand the results, and readily accessible online.</p>
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<p>When your class peers are smarter, the teacher can teach at a faster pace with less repetition. Friendly rivalries between roughly-equal peers can also cause students to go well above and beyond the class requirements as they seek to show off their advanced skills.</p>
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<p>lol and being surrounded by idiots doesn’t?</p>
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Exactly. We were at some physics demo as part of a Science Fair week and my oldest (3rd grade the year before gifted program started) kept answering every questions. The presenter made some comment and some little girl said “Oh yes, mathson is the smartest kid in 3rd grade!” He really didn’t need to hear that. The only thing I ever wanted for him was for him not to be the smartest kid in the room - he got it in spades in college. He was both precocious and gifted, and luckily for us almost every teacher he ever had recognized it starting in pre-school and most enjoyed him. Never had him tested beyond what the school did, because there was never any question.</p>
<p>My younger son had pretty much the opposite experience. He always seemed to be behind the school program and was not precocious at all, but according to an IQ test, he’s gifted. </p>
<p>I didn’t think much of our school’s gifted program, and for my oldest it was grossly inadequate - he’d have advanced a lot faster with homeschooling and we considered it often, but in the end he wanted to be with friends so we did a lot of supplementing after school and some targeted advancement in math where the boredom factor was highest.</p>
<p>The one that kills me is #4. Not only are all gifted kids seen as uncoordinated, people also think all athletes are stupid. I have seen both sides of this with my kids.</p>
<p>My oldest son had his teacher question whether he belonged in her class (AP World) because she knew he was a football player.</p>
<p>This is such a complicated topic, and I think this article/blog post does absolutely nothing to shed light on the whole issue of educating the “gifted” in our public school system. </p>
<p>Here is what I’ve found in our “Excellent” school system: the gifted and sort of quirky get attention. The gifted who are sort of mainstream get attention only when the parents demand it. The gifted with parents who are just happy that their kids are doing fine, no issues, no idea that they should be doing something “extra” for their child get no attention whatsoever.</p>
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<p>As someone who attended an urban public magnet high school which drew plenty of the most intelligent and gifted middle schoolers in the NYC area, my experience was the exact opposite. Many of us…including myself were humbled by hitting the academic wall at 12-14 years of age. Some of us picked up the pieces and moved on. </p>
<p>Others like a HS friend still have unshakable memories of being one of the “dumbest kids” despite graduating with honors from a respectable college & grad school and having an income/career path which most elite college graduates would envy. </p>
<p>If one wants to believe they are the smartest guy in the room, the best thing to do is to stay in the regular school/classroom. Knew of several neighborhood kids and college classmates who did so and paid dearly for it once they hit undergrad. Sometimes to the point of experiencing academic suspensions/expulsions. </p>
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<p>Agreed. Mandating gifted kids to peer tutor without consideration of their desires and talents was one factor commonly cited by several friends as a reason why they felt their “gifted status” was a curse. Understandable considering how their school systems ignored their academic needs, took time away for them to satisfy those needs on their free time, and the horrid feeling that their status has condemned them into being sentenced effectively into performing corvee labor of the educational type.</p>
<p>I have read (and observed in one case) that truly gifted students actually master some academic skills (such as reading) later than others, perhaps because their brains go deeper. Similar to another observation I have read that a gifted student may often spend more time on a math problem than others.</p>
<p>One other thing I have read is that the majority of high school drop-outs are gifted. I have no idea how this was validated and cannot back it up, but I did read it somewhere.</p>