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

I agree having worked alongside very, very bright asians either directly from East Asian countries or just one generation removed, they all had relatives or friends that had been destroyed by the pressure of being NT in a culture where they were expected to be MG+

Huh?

Expected to be MG+?

Yes, sorry Ipad was going mental and typing the same character (including backspance) way more times than its key was struck.

But yes - in China and Korea children are expected to perform at a mildly to fantastically gifted level. Those that lack that innate ability mey face a life of a life of shame and this pressure on kids can be their undoing.

I do not believe that those not gifted should be made to feel inferior and there should be no shame in not being in the top track if the ability just isn't there.

Tracking by ability, frankly, is the fairest system but unfortunately it will never happen because of the politics that obscure the science around IQ.

There are pockets of this kind of parenting even here in the US.

We live in one. Perhaps not coincidentally, it's also a hotspot for adolescent mental health problems and teen suicide.

There are two main groups of parents here-- the free-range, artsy, Waldorfian, hippy, organic free-love kind... and the TigerParents (only some of whom are ethnically Asian).

TigerParents don't like kids like mine (because even they can see what an impossibility that is for a NT kid to live up to, never mind surpass) and so they want BROAD tracking, not actual GT programming, because most of them fear that their own kids might not qualify for GT if it were truly selective. They fight efforts to make GT programs less inclusive and more rigorous or specialized. Recall, about 30% of our district is ID'ed as "GT" by virtue of being above the 90th percentile on a nationally normed standardized achievement test. (Yeah, yeah... don't.even.get.me.started)

GroovyParents don't like our parenting and are pretty sure that we MUST be abusive for our daughter to have the kind of achievement/ability that she does. Most of them are eventually quite surprised to discover that we're actually not very rigid, controlling, or pushy.

On the other hand, some of the TigerParents eventually conclude that they should "feel sorry" for DD because we are so 'alternative' in our parenting. Either that or they persist in telling themselves that we're really the ones doing it.... (just like some of THEM, perhaps?)

So, it's a bad practical joke.

Nice.

Lol, that's one way of putting it. Our GT id practices create pretty much the same outcome as Howler Karma's area has although they do require something else on top of the achievement scores such as parent or teacher ratings or a part of a group test. What I've always loved, if I am to be sarcastic here, is that it took a fight with our district including having them convene a panel of "experts" for them to accept HG-PG composite IQ scores in lieu of a 95th percentile score on any part of a group test. We got the policy changed, but the district website now specially states that high IQ alone doesn't mean that the child is gifted and is not necessary to be gifted.

I find it fascinating that not only can people accept extremes of giftedness in athletes, they even adulate said athletes. Send the 9-year-old gymnast to the eastern US competition! Move the 12-year-old basketball player to the varsity squad at the high school! Write up stories in the paper and post them on the walls at school!

Yet suggest that a kid is even a little bit cognitively gifted and may require a tiny bit of acceleration and the shutters slam shut.

I tend to think of it a bit differently and I think that's why I bristle so much at ability test prep and retesting until the desired score is achieved. See, to me, the fact that our local advocates for the gifted, our local "experts," and, heck, even NAGC are defining gifted in such a way as to exclude high IQ as a necessity (and even saying that sky high IQ can exist in someone who is not gifted), indicates a fundamental difference of opinion as to what gifted is.

Because I view high IQ (98th percentile or so) as an absolute requisite to be gifted and don't view high achievement, teacher pleasing, or things like "leadership qualities" (another aspect to GT ids where I live) as necessary at all, I really hate to see people messing up an already imperfect measure yet further by essentially cheating. It calls further into question the validity of these tests in determining differences in brain functioning and we're already dealing with too many in the GT community in education who don't consider them to be able to show anything salient about giftedness.

Hmmm. That last sentence in particular leads me to wonder if they understand IQ and gifted minds. And it reminds me of the expectation some districts have that leadership qualities help to identify giftedness and if those qualities aren't there or aren't yet developed or, perhaps more often, aren't recognizable in the standard way, then it must mean the child isn't really gifted.

I think that people are just uncomfortable with the idea that some people are smarter than others and that there are a very small number of people who are really, really smart. And the idea that enrichment and open-access gifted programs won't change this fact makes it even harder to accept.