Thanks EmeraldCity. I'm trying. Really I am trying here to make heads and tails of the situation. It's not easy with these 2e kids and I'm finding that there aren't many road maps or guides here. Jake Barnett is seen as an anomaly, I think.
Most pg 2e kids are not featured or identified as easily as people like Terence Tao or Tanishq Abraham -- who displayed profoundly giftedness in infancy or around 2 years old. My son had global developmental delays and other issues so I had dismissed those examples because they didn't reflect my son's asynchronous development which was partly due to his special needs. One of the reasons Jake Barnett has garnered attention is due to the autism and due to him not reaching those early developmental milestones like Tao or Abraham or many pg kids either.
I contacted Dr. Linda Silverman a couple of years ago. I also saw her colleague Dr. Lovecky last June. She inadvertently muddied up my head a bit more, though, by saying she thought my son was more a mixed learner and not a true vsl which I had previously thought. Still, ds8 definitely has visual spatial strengths -- despite being born with visual deficits and been recently diagnosed with convergence insufficiency. And in fairness, Dr. Lovecky gave some sound, practical advice to follow before pursuing future assessments and testing.
I'm thinking about contacting Joanne Ruthsatz or someone like her. I contacted Ellen Winner at BC (who studies prodigies) after reading a NPR article and she responded to my e-mail, but that was it. Annoying. It's not like you can easily find these people to help.
Still, your points about learning style, environment and the focus within the classroom are very valid. VSL gifts are often neglected and underrepresented in g/t and other programs. That's very true. And schools are very much asl-focused and geared to those who are rule-based. That's one of the reasons why math, music, and chess prodigies have been studied so much -- 1) relatively easy to identify, 2) very asl and rule-based who are easy to study and research. They stand out. The same cannot be said for many vsls.
There's also always been less attention and credit given to informal and visual learning. Ian Stewart makes this case for math and how math should be much more visually based than it currently is but won't be because visual maths is seen as being less rigorous or intellectual as formal maths is. And while Benoit Mandelbrot may have shown interest in math in early childhood, he wasn't a math prodigy or a pg either -- yet he's the founder of fractal geometry!
Charles Darwin, too, didn't enjoy school or do well in it. Ditto for Edison, Roald Dahl, Bee Gees, somewhat the Beatles, and many, many others. We just tend to forget those who didn't play by the rules or be more sequential/orderly oriented.
Indigo - your points about the school, curriculum, and environment are accurate and relate to EmeraldCity's points and what we've previously experienced with ds8. But, of course, one of the problems is that most gifted schools do not cater and cannot/will not accommodate pg kids, especially if there's only one pg kid involved. In these situations, it can become, as you've aptly described, a toxic atmosphere.
