Allow me to vent a bit, but as a so-called professional in her field, she should know the answer to these questions....Sorry, but I can't imagine a special ed. teacher saying something this rude about a kid with an IQ of 65. Americans are getting good at discriminating against intelligent people. <end of rant>
Three cheers, Val. The eloquence of your rant is sublime!! Can I rent you out sometime to rant at my DS's school for me, if the occasion should occur???
Thanks! Yes, I'm available as a Rent-a-Ranter (reasonable rates, first rant free).
I agree that kids with IQs over 145 are very rare and many teachers won't ever meet one. Yet kids with IQs <60 are just as rare and educators do learn about the needs of this group, and schools sometimes even give them personal aides or pay tuition to send them to private schools to meet their needs.
Not to mention that people with IQs over 130 comprise 2% of the population and are therefore ubiquitous. So I just can't give schools and teacher training systems a pass here. If they have a responsibility to understand the needs of the 2% with IQs <70, they have the same responsibility to the other end of the curve.
Hmm. I just had a thought. The parents of a disabled child in NYC recently won a lawsuit that now forces the city to pay tuition for a special school for their child. These people were very wealthy and sued on principle to help other less-wealthy families in the same situation. I'm not sure of the details, but I don't think all disabled kids were included. The plaintiffs' argument was that the public schools can't meet the needs of certain kids and therefore they must pay for private school. I wonder if this could be applied as precedent for gifted kids (the HG+ ones are equally rare and their needs are equally unmet)? Something like this could even be valuable as a tool to force the public schools to offer acceleration.
Val
