Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy School funding leaves gifted students behind

I agree completely with the idea that our educational system has unreasonable expectations for many of its students. I've heard educators argue that "everyone needs a chance to try." This is a nice idea in a way, but there are a lot of problems with it when you think about it. A big problem is the assumption that academic pursuits (like doing pre-calculus in 12th grade) are somehow "better" and we should therefore push everyone in that direction, whether everyone's talents and abilities suit this direction or not. And in the process, the cognitively gifted students, who are the ones who are most suited to going in this direction, get largely shut out. An outcome like this seems paradoxical until you factor in the false promises of "equity for everyone" that this system bases itself on. In trying to force a large group of students into a direction that may not be right for them, we have to slow down the ones who could benefit the most from going that way at a higher speed.

So from what I can tell, and I'm not trying to sound strident here, so forgive me if I come across this way: the schools effectively lie to a lot of students about their academic potential, which sets them up for failure and feelings of inadequacy. This policy also hurts the students who are most academically able.

I mean, seriously, who would push a short kid to become a basketball player? Why is this so obvious in sports, but not in academics?

As for IQ distribution among groups, I remember watching segment in a film our national eating habits. The segment was about a school for at-risk students, many of whom were minority students. The school had switched away from the fried and processed fare that's typical in most school cafeterias. They replaced it with fresh fruits and lightly steamed vegetables, and other non-processed foods. The principal claimed that behavior problems were drastically reduced and that student learning increased after the diet change. This is anecdotal, of course, but this and all the reading about our food supply that I've done make me wonder about what would happen if we changed our agricultural policies and stopped subsidizing corn (and, indirectly, processed foods).

Val