I guess I feel like you're trying to persuade those of us who were helped by Ruf to renounce her work.
Indeed I would hope that all parents would think about what is good not just for their children but for other gifted children as well. Say our public school system accurately identified one gifted child in ten and gave them an amazing education and let the other ones rot. I'd be against this even if my kid was the lucky one in ten.
While I'm sure this instrument scores more accurately than random chance, we should keep in mind that even with just random chance some people are going to get results they agree with and are happy with. It doesn't mean those results are accurate and it doesn't mean it is a good instrument and it doesn't mean we should support random chance. I'm hearing a lot of circular reasoning on this thread along the lines of "reading her book I thought my kid was a level three and doing this test I found out I was right." All that is telling you is that her test is the same as the book. It isn't telling you that level three has any real meaning. It isn't telling you that early milestones are a good way to identify giftedness. And, it isn't telling you "how smart your child is".
Ruf is telling parents if they see a difference between the talentigniter and a much more comprehensive individual educational assessment then it points to the lack of validity of the individual assessment or of the parent's memories. What message do you see being sent their Kriston? What is being said about parents? What is being said about the rest of the gifted community?
I think parents are smarter and more persistent than you're giving them credit for.
I don't appreciate this. I have a great deal of respect for parents and that's exactly why I have a problem with this sort of program.
It may be hard to understand if you haven't been there, but it can be an incredibly overwhelming and difficult thing to be a parent of a child with complex disabilities. There are only so many hours in the day and getting through the day with therapies, doctor's appointments, and all it takes to care for kids it can be hard to have an unlimited time for research. Parents who already have multiple kids, jobs, etc. can really struggle to wade through a lot of conflicting information.
But I will defend Ruf's work, with caveats about the weaknesses in it.
I'd be much less bothered by the whole thing if Ruf was more honest about the limitations of this approach and made it clear that it doesn't apply to a lot of kids. Instead she is presenting the approach as infallible.
