Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion How do you all define gifted?

Fascinating thread and very educational for me as I am new to this community. What draws me here and thus led me to define myself as a mom of a gifted child? I see that my son is in a neverending investigative process of his experience. And he seems to have an uncanny ability to recall, build, compare and integrate the knowledge he acquires. It is mentally exhausting and awe-inspiring to get to parent such a child.

On playing vs. teaching learning, my thoughts (however unsolicated): playing is a child's work of recreating, understanding, and integrating their world. My son's play has never had the rich, creative expression that I experienced as a child, which disturbed me for quite some time. But I have come to believe that my son's "play" is within the language of concepts. Wondering about numbers, anatomy, geography, chemistry, etc. and activities associated with these provides him escape and a great sense of pleasure.

There's a lot I'd like to discuss in this bit here, but my mind is going in about three different directions. Let's see if I can get this sorted out.

First, let me situate myself. I am a[n allegedly] grown-up PG kid who became a public school teacher after a few careers. Although I have had many gifted kids in my classroom, I have never worked in a school that has a formal, functioning gifted program.

The quirk of my career is that I have much more experience dealing with students who have disabilities, but also working with school to meet the needs of students who do not have IEPs or Modification Plans. My district has allegedly implemented a Comprehensive Student Support System, and when there was funding for it, that was allegedly my job.

With that background, I have to say that the notion that you can only provide services to a certain number of kids, or that kids must compete for slots in a program, is alien to me--unless we're talking about some pretty intensive services that involve agencies outside the school district.

Under IDEA, the question is not "What can we provide with the resources and the staffing that we have in place?" The question is asked, again and again, "How do we meet the needs of the individual student?" If the student has a demonstrated need, the school finds a way, or they find themselves in a world of hurt, paperwork, due process, civil rights complaints, and/or federal consent decrees. However, gifted education is not funded and regulated the way IDEA is in the USA. Even when there are laws on the state books about gifted education, those laws are often just ignored.

When my sister and I were in middle school, the school district got a gifted program [huzzah!], went around testing all these kids by teacher recommendation, yadayadayada. When all was said and done, I made the cutoff, and my older sister did not. OK, fast forward 30 odd years, and I'm a teacher. My older, better-focused sister is a medical doctor, making, perhaps, 12 or 20 times as much money as I am. What Renzulli's 3-Ring concept means to me is that both of us should have been in the gifted program, and that seems right to me.

However, an ideal gifted program would--like a special ed. program--have an array of services for a variety of needs. In SpEd, most students are in general ed classes most of the time. In my general ed class, I provide some differentiation for students with disabilities as well as some challenge assignments for students who can do a little bit more. A tiny percentage of SpEd students have such intensive needs that they end up with home-based instruction, in special schools, or in residential placements.

It's this array of services that we do not generally have for gifted students, even when there is A Gifted Program in the school.

As far as bumping a kid out because they're slacking off, that's a separate issue that I'll call motivation leverage. People whose brains have been fully matured by hard experience are trying to influence the behavior of a brain that is not fully mature in order to make things easier for the immature brain in the long term. That's what parenting and teaching are all about, right?

Well, when you are trying to get motivation leverage on the issue of decent grades, you are very interested in finding positive and negative consequences that actually mean something significant to the child. For a gifted student, participation in the gifted program may be a carrot. To me, that's what the work habits clause is about. Your mileage may vary.

But motivation, executive function, social and emotional concerns are all educational needs that would ideally be addressed in an array of services for gifted students.

OMG! I think I finally ran out of things to say!

This could easily move into one of my other pet peeves: lack of differentiation within gifted programs for HG-PG kids. However, to avoid going off on that rant, I'll try to rein myself back to Renzulli.

I do see the benefit of casting a broader net and I really do think that the ability measures used by schools are poor measures for some gifted kids (and can overestimate the ability of some more average kids as well) which makes that even more important since they may be missing some who are more able than they appear on those measures.

On the hand, if the kids we are talking about are truly right around top 15-20% of intelligence (say 80th percentile kids), I don't actually think that they are gifted no matter how motivated and creative they may be. They are possibly talented, but not gifted in the way I define gifted, which as usual may be a poor definition depending on who you are asking .

I wonder if your school had used a better identifying instrument, if your sister would indeed have been identifying without resorting to Renzulli's 3-Ring concept.

I also question your idea that gifted 'should' in any way result in 'able to make more money.' I think that giftedness is a way of interacting with the world, and for some highly or profoundly gifted folks, that way makes them less likely to find their way to a high paying job. I think character attributes are very important in life, but sort of tangential to giftedness. I've also heard the idea that if identification instruments are any good, they should be able to target and predict who will win a Nobel Prize. I disagree, I think that testing, IQ and achievement are good at helping to design educational experiences for kids, and that is all. I agree that the rest of the traits are important for life, but I think an underachieving gifted kid deserves a subject acceleration, independent of their behavior, just based on their current level of knowledge or someone's suspicion, the same way no one says 'You haven't earned the right to use your hearing aid today.'

I wish that all school adopted Renzulli's methods of enriching the whole talent pool. But I more wish that Renzulli's casual 'of course we place the child where at their current ability level' was uiversally seen as normal. But we live in a world were 1st grade teachers may not even have access to 3rd grade level reading assesments, and see nothing wrong with stopping a reading assesment when the child reaches grade level.

It's almost as if we are concerned with two seperate topics - 1) some kids are intellectually ready for work that is usually only able to be done by older kids (although they many need accomidation for their handwriting, stamina, etc.)
2) the school experience itself doesn't offer enough to the bright child. Children are individuals who have individual interests, and learn more when they have freedom to combine their interests with with learning. Seriously this to me has very little to do with my definition of giftedness and just sounds like a very good idea. I'd be quite suprised if it didn't work well with every student.

Hope that helps,
Grinity

As a PG public school teacher, I would, of course, have to agree with you! Salary, GPA, GRE scores, golf handicaps, fair market value of home and/or stock portfolio are all numerical measures of success for some people that, I, personally reject. Yet, I know few people who would look at me in my little one bedroom attached rental unit, compare me to my sister and her houses, and conclude that I was more successful, and that it must be because I have a higher IQ!

We are not just concerned with two separate topics here, we are concerned with multiple separate topics. It is my opinion that, if you are going to pull highly capable students out of the general ed classroom for instruction that is more in line with their abilities, the students with high cognitive ability and the students with above average ability and task commitment will benefit from being in each other's presence. In many cases, this will be more beneficial than either instructing the students of high ability in very small groups (perhaps a group of one) or leaving them in a heterogenous group for all of their classes.

While I am dreaming of an array of services, such an array would, of course, include both acceleration and enrichment, so that some students would be in classes that did not match their calendar age. I have a fantasy, for example, about a three-year middle school, where students could elect to compact and accelerate a couple of core classes a year, and finish middle school in two years, with a small cohort of capable and motivated students. If they decided they did not want to accelerate any more after the first, second or third semester, they could step out of the program and fill in their schedule with electives.

Other classes could be set up as a tutorial, where students could spend most of the class in the library or computer lab, working on a project that interests them, and checking in with a teacher once a week.

{sigh} Maybe I need to start a new thread: Fantasy Gifted Programs.

Since the topic of making money has been brought up, I think the creativity factor of Renzuilli is at question.

I think you can make serious money at anything, as long as you apply creativity to the model. Whether you are Gates, Bloomberg or Sam Zell. Even on a much smaller model, being a plumber and having a franchise like Rotorooter.

So is the plumber that applied his creativity and was task oriented that created a multi-million dollar franchise system, more gifted than the 150 IQ that trudged through a PhD in biology without thinking anything new.

But we don't have a live specimen of the latter. Or a Henry Kissinger who applies his knowledge of the world to become a gun runner with an old Hong Kong family. Now I digress.

I think the topic is too varied to have one answer. It is like economics. Not pure science.

Intellectuals solve problems; geniuses prevent them.
     - Albert Einstein, 1879 - 1955

Good sense travels on the well-worn paths; genius, never. And that is why the crowd, not altogether without reason, is so ready to treat great men as lunatics.
     - Cesare Lombroso, 1835 - 1909

The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.
     - Oscar Wilde, 1854 - 1900

Talent is that which is in a man's power. Genius is that in whose power a man is.
     - James Russell Lowell, 1819 - 1891

Genius is more often found in a cracked pot than in a whole one.
     - E. B. White, 1899 - 1985

Man is a genius when he is dreaming.
     - Akiro Kurosawa, 1910 - 1998

Genius is another word for magic, and the whole point of magic is that it is inexplicable.
     - Margot Fonteyn, 1919 - 1991

I'm very late to this party, but I just had to comment on this one-- AB.SO.LUTE.LY insightful and probably exactly (no, really) what I'd have said if I were more succinct about these things.

I should probably just leave it at that, but y'all know me...

I think that precosity is just one of the things which is most notable earliest in many gifted persons. That may be why there is a consensus (er-- or a sort of consensus) that it matters and is a useful benchmark for identification.

The earliest signs of giftedness in my own experience?

Keen observation and recall, often from.... well, birth-- and often with it, a complete upending of ND milestones, which seem to not even apply at all to HG+ kiddos. Not only keen observation and recall, but a way of experiencing reality which is deeply constructivist by its very nature. Not all of them communicate with others about this, and not all of them demonstrate any particular skill very precociously... but there is an understanding of things which is so stunningly EFFICIENT that it is a little awe-inspiring. These are not children that make the same mistake twice (unless they are unvestigating what a higher N does to things BTDT ), and many of them learn to think many steps ahead in cause-and-effect long, long, long before they are hypothetically (via ND milestones) 'capable' of that sort of thing.

But that very precosity of intellectual development (as opposed to precocious knowledge/understanding, which I'm pretty sure isn't the case) can produce an entirely different trajectory, I'd say-- so no, it's definitely not like a bullet train on the same tracks as the freight locomotives. It's fundamentally different to have experienced "I don't want to use that object to pull myself up to a standing position, because-- well, THEN WHAT? I'd be stuck. I should consider how to move about better. Or at least how to sit back safely on the floor. I'll think on that."

A ND child is never going to "catch up" to that particular moment. The moment is simply radically different between a gifted infant and one that is neurotypical.

I also detest the focus on precosity because it comes with a LOT of baggage for gifted children who happen to be unusual enough for adults to praise/remark upon it. Because at some point, particular skills will no longer be extraordinary-- then what? Is the child no longer "extraordinary?" That's as obviously ridiculous as praising a person for being an early adopter of a particular technology; being an iPhone owner seven years ago would have been quite noteworthy...now? not-so-much.

Ooooooo you can READ!! Impressive enough at three. Not so much at twenty-three. (I hope.)



So in short, my definition of what it is to be 'gifted' is partly about pacing (sort of) but also about a fundamentally different way in which the hardware works.

It's about having a more efficient processor, basically. Other bits of hardware may get in the way (2e) of demonstrating that processor speed, and there's no way to observe the difference whe TYPICAL tasks are presented without being open-ended enough to allow for divergent methods to be obvious.

I agree completely with MegMeg regarding how blazingly obvious this difference is in some settings that favor the more efficient processor, too. There are some things which cannot be taught. That instinctive grasp of cause-and-effect is one of them. It leads to precosity only in that it makes learning inevitable, instinctive, efficient, and continuous.


I also love Grinity's observations about providing what all students need removing the need for the label in the first place.

And no, I could care less what it's called. You could call it 'double-secret-probationary-school' and as long as it was appropriate, I'd be thrilled to have my kid in that program.

Asynchrony arises in my own understanding of this model primarily because of physical development which lags cognitive development, but also cognitive development which varies from typical (again, resulting in turning the milestones and sequence of "ND" on its head). My DD was quite happy to talk Shakespeare and evolutionary theory at seven. Not so happy to write a paragraph about her neighborhood (or anything else, for that matter).



Great, thought-provoking discussion.

Yes and yes! It is hard to measure, but easy to recognize and I happen to know a lot of kids who score quite highly on achievement tests and some on group ability tests who really don't fit this definition. I don't know as many who've taken IQ tests, but of those I do I've seen more false negatives than false positives although the false negatives tend to have some major scatter that makes it evident that there may be something else going on.

I guess that's why I tend to fall back to my default of requiring high IQ b/c, while the IQ test itself may not be exactly measuring the difference, it seems to correlate well enough with whatever it is that makes gifted individuals different.

On a different topic, I hadn't seen LaTexican's post and liked the EB White quote:
So, I read it to dds and dd11 gets into a discussion of "crack" and "pot" and drug analogies e.g. Lewis Carroll. Lord, I have to worry about this girl!