Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Gifted teacher ideology sound check

Puffin, if you're referring to my message (unlikely given the timing thing), this was at a private school and the teacher in question was also in charge.

But you're correct that they could be following orders (though this would just move the ignorance a rung or two up the ladder).

Agree-- BUT-- what actually winds up happening there is that if you go "deeper" you're actually covering advanced grade-level material. {sigh} Because-- spiraling.


Hmmmm-- I can actually (somewhat) see the point in NOT accelerating with ELA/social studies in particular since those tend to be areas in which advanced material also tends to place demands emotionally. But I suspect that isn't what was in the speaker's mind, somehow...


Yes, I'd agree.

That is if this is more or less in context.

My question in response to the last statement in fact, is:

Well, sure-- but WHICH children? That seems to be a critical thing to define in that statement.

Unfortunately, I think most gifted teachers understand the high average/slightly gifted student, but not the highly gifted. These accommodations all sound great for the kid that is 75% at grade level, but has the capacity to do more.

The GT teachers that I've encountered do not have any understanding of highly gifted. I've had teachers apologize to me because my kid knows more science than they do. But, there is no effort to do anything different. Then when my child's frustration become apparent, all efforts focus on frustration. No one seems to have thoughts of correlation between an irritated (but behaved) attitude and the fact that they apologize over curriculum. When I've pointed it out, they agree...but nothing changes.

All of the things you've mentioned are not helpful for my kid; he has most of them. Its a band aid on a gaping wound.

Agreed!

I'll throw in my two cents worth on our experience, in the same school system from which your teacher comes, Aquinas. Others have already addressed the substantial body of evidence which does not support the anti-acceleration stance, so I would comment just on the daily reality of living with our province's curriculum, and why teachers seem so resistant to evidence.

Our province and school boards have drunk the kool-aid by the gallon when it comes to truly, honestly, deeply believing that acceleration it is bad for kids. For many, it's not that they are unaware, but rather that they have been taught, with great effort, care and repetition, to fundamentally reject acceleration and all it stands for. Congregated gifted classrooms explicitly do not accelerate or compact in our board, and policy adamantly states that they must do only the normal, grade-level curriculum, though they are allowed to go wider.

Our teachers and principals are truly bewildered when you suggest there is ample evidence for acceleration, and will gently correct you and assure you that the Board/ provincial research PROVES it is bad for children. They will pat you on the head and suggest that you look at *real* research, and not be swayed by a few outlier opinions of extremists. They as teachers and policy makers have tons of experience with acceleration from the days of my youth, and they know for a fact - for a FACT, I tell you - that it is bad for children. Bad, bad, bad.

They are genuine, and truly believe they are doing the best for the kids and - this is critical to understand - saving them from pushy, hot-housing parents. Every word you say, every document you provide, simply reinforces their belief that they must protect this child from your pushing them into an inappropriate situation that will damage the child's self-esteem and social life. The more you attempt to discuss the evidence for acceleration, the more you simply prove their point and strengthen their need to protect the child - from *you*. Maintenance doses of kool-aid are daily slipped into the coffee urn in the teacher's lounge to ensure continued adherence to orthodoxy. Any attempt to provide contrary research is usually refused - gently but politely - because your stuff is fringe and they have *real* evidence from school board experience that acceleration is bad for kids. Don't even think about trying to provide a copy of "A Nation Deceived" - the very title sets their fur on edge and sounds extremist.

Ah - I sound a bit disillusioned this morning, don't I? Pardon the grumpiness.

As for the idea that the science curriculum is cumulative, bah. The sum total of elementary school science could be covered in an afternoon. With a tobogganing break. There is very little science, and what there is tends towards the softer sciences - primarily plant biology and environmental issues. And it's almost entirely about learning lists of facts. DD8 is losing her mind after 6 months spent still memorizing the parts of plants. DS10 is now studying - oh look, it's plants again. In alternate years, we’ll talk about environmental stuff - that means we memorize the carbon cycle - of plants. DS is very into the hard sciences: physics, engineering, computers, math. The sad reality is that even in the early grades of elementary school, it was clear that the first time he is likely to see science that is remotely interesting, even mildly conceptual or explorative, and taught at a depth/ level to have some meaning, will be in high school. That's an awfully long time to wait, and way too much time spent learning that science is excruciatingly boring and irrelevant.

And sadly, I have no doubt that were kids like these put into ANY kind of high school science course in our province right now, the amount of time needed to backfill any info they might have missed in middle school would be minimal. We aren't there yet, so perhaps I unduly disparage the middle-school curriculum.

But I doubt it.

So to say that grade-level courses can be taught with enrichment is more than a bit disingenuous. Of course you could be teaching extraordinarily cool things about plant biology to 6-10 year-olds. I have been talking about all sorts of examples with DD, to try and undo the damage and hatred of the subject caused by the school curriculum. But other than focusing on the same branch of science, there would be absolutely no resemblance between the two courses.

I should add: there are occasional rare gems in our school system, who actually love science (instead of being afraid of it), who have great knowledge of science, and who love teaching things to young children even when they themselves may not know as much to start as the children end up discovering on a particular topic. It is possible to learn some extraordinary science in some classrooms with these extraordinary teachers. But it's because they toss the curriculum out the window and actually teach *science*. And even more importantly, they convey their love of science and discovery.

Sorry Aquinas - your posts about policy do keep pushing all my buttons, don’t they?! I don’t usually get this cynical and grumpy in real life! Well, OK, mostly.

ETA: Sorry about giant soap box rant! But appreciate having a place to let it all out. House full of in-laws, have almost bit my tongue right off, need an outlet...

Michelle, you are hereby officially invited to be the first commentator in every one of my threads. I love your posts!

In lieu of copying your entire post and responding with an ITA, I'm just going to nod my head like a bobble head in LA, say thank you, and call out this deliciously awesome bit:

"As for the idea that the science curriculum is cumulative, bah. The sum total of elementary school science could be covered in an afternoon. With a tobogganing break."

I'm also going to add an image of a willful educator taking a kool aid swig from a stainless steel hip flask with an engraving of a windmill on it during an advocacy meeting with parents.

And then policy makers fret over the productivity gap, as though the nexus between education and skilled labour productivity didn't exist. I'm starting to wonder if there are two credentials floating around locally-- the conventional "Ed" for education, and the lesser known "Ed" for evidence disbelief, which masquerades as the former.

I live in FL...could we take a quick swim in the pool?

Please do not apologize or retract a syllable of this. It is a wonderfully realistic description. Few know this stuff about the modus operandi. Many need to know. To be clear, the parents have the correct view, the system is incorrect. Thank you for this post!

TO be fair, Michelle, I have encountered some of the pushy, Tiger-type parents. They can actually damage their kids, albeit with the best of intentions.

So this might actually be a genuine concern for a small subset of parents. Unfortunately, it then becomes a matter of baby and bathwater for those of us that are not actually "pushy" parents who want to crow about our "genius" child on an international stage, or have visions of Carnegie Hall or Nobel awards in our heads.

{sigh}

Yes, I am feeling a bit cynical as well.

There are times when parenting a child at sufficiently high LOG (or, I suspect, as an outlier in any real sense) relative to local norms places you on the crazy train whether you like it or not.

No matter how thoughtful, measured, and well-reasoned your approach to parenting such a child, you are destined to collect a metaphorical wall of shame filled with your social and parenting "fails" because there is no way to do right by that child-- not really, because you'd need superhuman strength to fight upstream like a spawning salmon attempting to breach Grand Coulee Dam, quite frankly; and also because with every misunderstanding from others comes a social fail, too.

While I look back at DD's K through 12 years with dismay, and wonder what on EARTH we should/could have done any differently to improve the ultimate sum of that experience, and to better prepare her for the realities of post-secondary education, and heyyyyyy, wait-a-minute, wasn't post-secondary ed supposed to be DIFFERENT??

-- well.

The upshot is that while any failure EVER on her part is instantly going to be chalked up to "immaturity" and/or some variation of "accelerated child" or some such thing, the reality is that the entire edifice of primary and secondary education failed her utterly, and we were more or less powerless to do MUCH in the way of damage control, in spite of our very best efforts.

I can't point to a single thing that I'd do differently knowing what I know now. Unless it were to homeschool-- but then again, our calculus on that subject was accurate at the time, as well, and NOT homeschooling allowed for level-appropriate opportunities which would have been unavailable due to chronological age, so there you go. Nope. Wouldn't have homeschooled through HS, either. The system isn't built for it.


Come to that, this is a gestalt summary of the entire problem of being what my DD is. The WORLD isn't built for her.

We accelerated to what her executive function and emotional maturity would bear-- and it wasn't enough, academically. She is paying the price for that now-- she has no idea how to memorize information, has no idea how to really study material that she doesn't know intuitively/ad nauseaum, and struggles to take tests which are memorization-based (because that IS how most people learn the low-level material, evidently). She did not NEED any of those skills to ace everything in high school, including "AP" and "dual enrollment" courses, and to smack a home-run on standardized tests, too. <-- that bit is important. She. did. not. NEED. to really learn to be a "student" in any meaningful way to do those things. Because she is what she is. She has enormous, but almost entirely untamed/undisciplined/untapped raw potential. And no way to deliberately ACCESS it, because nobody has ever asked her to, never mind insisted upon genuine effort in that direction. They THOUGHT that what they were offering was "challenge" for her-- but it most certainly was not.

That's the crystal ball for what happens to kids who aren't challenged sufficiently. "Wider and deeper" sounds awesome until you realize that what is actually being described is systematic stunting of a child's growth as a learner. Kids like my DD run the risk of graduating with top honors only to discover that they have been-- metaphorically, I mean-- raised BY WOLVES. DD is a "feral" student. Surrounded by very bright to bright students who KNOW all the things that she does not. Now, her raw potential is still what it is, and we're hopeful that it will turn right in the end, but this is a rough, rough road through adolescence and college, for sure.

My daughter has no idea how to LEARN that which she does not know. She has no idea how to work for understanding. Period.

I feel a little as though we thought we were walking a tightrope all those years-- thought we were so clever, we did-- and now I've woken up to the fact that we were actually walking on nothing but imagination.

Because she had such stellar academics and wasn't "acting out" or "underperforming" (from what they could see, anyhow-- WE saw that she was), nobody would listen to our concerns. Nobody.

I had just one completely open and utterly frank conversation with a school staffer in nine years. In that conversation, she heard me-- and was struck SPEECHLESS with horror. Her response?

A halting, astonished; "We have failed her. We have completely, utterly failed your daughter-- I am-- so-- so sorry {Howler}-- I don't know what to say to this, and I have no idea how to make this better for her within the mandates that we have to follow, but we-- and by "we" I mean not only us as a school, but the state's mandates, too-- have failed to do the one thing that is most fundamental for her-- she hasn't learned anything FROM us. Because she hasn't learned HOW to learn from us, we've harmed her."

That was four years ago now.