Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Too Many Geniuses or Not Enough?

With said Byzantine antics ending up as having almost Gormenghastian futility for most of us.

I'd also like to see ability grouping, but here is a theory of why it's not happening.

I live in an affluent suburb of Boston. We have Good Schools. Most of our graduates go to college. Parents think they have secured a good education for their children by moving here. They don't need to worry about how much their child is learning in elementary school, because everyone is promoted to the next grade.

Suppose there were ability grouping starting from 1st grade. If there were three groups per grade, there would be 1/3 of the children in the "bottom" group. Many of those parents would be unhappy. I would be unhappy if my children were not in the top group in each subject. Ability grouping should be flexible, so that children can move up or down at least once a year, based on their performance. But then parents like me would "encourage" our children to perform well enough to stay in the top group and afterschool them if necessary to do so. Now, with ability grouping, there are clear demarcations from grade 1. Just buying a house in a town with Good Schools is not enough to think your child is doing well. I think schools avoid ability grouping until high school in part to mollify parents and avoid the mania you refer to.

Even if such a position accurately reflected their ability?

You just said that it was good that you knew that you *weren't* in the tippy-top of Ph.D.ers so that you could go someplace that was a better fit for your level of potential achievement.

What bothers me the most is the harm infringed upon all of the children involved, regardless of their intelligence level.

For one, promoting an "average" child with an IQ of 105 into a gifted program may place extra stress upon him or her--simply for the sake of appeasing the parents.

Secondly, how troubling would this be for a PG child (IQ of 170 to 180) to be surrounded by those of significantly lesser ability--thereby dragging down the overall level of the curriculum?

The simplest approach is to raise the standards and quality of the schools--that way there will be less mania and need to switch somewhere better. What do you guys think?

Why?

I'm seriously puzzled by that statement; after all, my daughter is an indifferent athlete (and that might be generous), so I would hardly be "upset" if she didn't make the varsity team.

It wouldn't really be an appropriate placement, after all, once one sets aside the prestige.

It's not that I haven't run into this line of thinking-- but that I don't understand it very well. I've always assumed that parents in our town with this set of beliefs were using their kids and their accomplishments as a kind of status/self-image booster, but maybe I'm wrong about that.

I'm pretty sure that isn't Bostonian's rationale, so now I'm curious.

Emm. But the pertinent idea is how each kid feels about placement.

I agree with other people here. It seems odd to want to see a child placed in the top group of a given subject simply for the sake of being there, which is what you've implied.

One of my kids isn't super-good at math. He was placed in the 2nd group last year, and that's great. The work was appropriate for his level and he ended up getting good grades in math and understanding it pretty well last year. this is much better than struggling through lessons that are moving too quickly and placing undue strain on a student. (IMO, too much stress over a subject can make a kid develop a long-lasting dislike of it).

Alternatively, my daughter was in the second group for a while and was crying about it because it was moving too slowly for her. I advocated a bit and they moved her up. She did better in the higher group because the challenge was, well, less below her level and she was less frustrated.

The life prospects of people are unrelated to their athletic ability, unless their ability is in the far right tail, so having a very athletically talented child can be viewed as winning the lottery. People are not saddened by not winning the lottery. The same is not true of academic ability -- it makes a difference whether you are the 25th or 75th percentile. I chose a wife using an indirect IQ filter (doctors passed) to increase the chances of having smart kids. Few people would state things so baldly, but I think this reasoning partly explains the high degree of assortative mating by education seen today. We moved to our town, as other parents did, for the Good Schools. So having kids with merely average IQ would mean things are not going according to Plan (which is part of life, of course).

It has more to do with whether the kid is appropriately placed.

If the kid feels that way because said kid is being whiny and perfectionistic, then that's a problem with the kid's approach to learning.

Okay-- so it's a matter of being unhappy about the NEED for a different placement, as opposed to being unhappy and wanting to CHANGE that placement arbitrarily.

That makes more sense. I may not agree that it is wise to make assumptions about one's offspring, of course, but that isn't the same as wanting an arbitrary change in placement simply because one wishes that something else were reality, er... or so that others will see one's child in a more positive light, or (even worse) see the parent more favorably as a result.

So yes, I can see how if one's children are presumed to be in the top quartile, and there are four groups instructionally, one would also by extension expect, rationally, that those children would be placed in the top group, and that it would matter a great deal since instructional placement can be life destiny from the time they are tiny. (I again may disagree with the particulars of the latter.)



Thank you for explaining, Bostonian. That would not have crossed my mind.

I guess my problem in wrapping my head around it is that that kind of competitive mindset really doesn't register with me, inherently. That's not intended to be judgmental in the least-- it's just alien. Which I suppose my outlook must seem to Bostonian, for that matter.