Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums GT Research Serving the Gifted book... Thoughts?

Saw this on the SENG newsletter recently, and looked at some excerpts from the book (in other words, I'm reacting without reading the whole book, which admittedly can be dangerous).

http://www.sengifted.org/archives/articles/the-emotional-cost-of-prevailing-myths-about-the-gifted?utm_source=Jan%2FFeb+2014+SENGvine&utm_campaign=Jan-Feb-2014-Sengvine&utm_medium=email

I am not sure if this link will work. The summary seems to suggest that gifted isn't necessarily something inherent, but rather, something that develops over time. This seems to put us right back at the achievement = gifted, non-achiever = not gifted after all myth. Curious as to whether anyone has read this book or heard the author speak, and if so, your thoughts?

Updating your link into a clickable one for you.

I had the same misgivings about this one, ConnectingDots. In fact, when I saw the book, I thought, "Oh, look - here's a new book on giftedness. Maybe I should get it for DD's school." Then I read the excerpt, and I decided not to. Probably not what they were going for!

I don't share your misgivings - indeed the tendency I perceive here to see giftedness as an innate, unchangeable attribute is something that bothers me. Moving towards identifying children who right now need something different from what's on offer - whether or not they did last year or will next year - and emphasising that everyone can improve their capabilities with hard work and appropriate challenge and support, seems very positive to me. Sure, I'd expect there to be a large overlap between children who need more one year and those who need it the next, but the black and white "is s/he gifted?" thinking we often see here and elsewhere does noone any favours, IMHO.

hm.


Well, I think he's wrong to call giftedness a mere construct (er-- or "cognitive ability/potential" anyway-- "gifted" clearly IS a construct, but what is MEANT by it isn't).

He's taking a growth mindset (good and correct) starting point and adding in touches of plasticity (also fine) and the notion that any particular evaluation of IQ is merely a snapshot anyway...

and getting "gifted doesn't mean anything anyway because we can ALL be gifted!!" That's where I think he's going wrong with this. It's not that I disagree that the boundary between gifted and bright needs to be fuzzier and softer-- that, I agree with. It's not that I think that IQ is the be-all, end-all of ability and dictates performance, because I don't think that either...

but I do think that this is RIPE for abuse by administrators/teachers who want to say that a child who is DYS level at 6yo "doesn't need anything special" if underperforming at 8yo.


Who's to say that differences in individual IQ "snapshots" don't reflect testing artifacts, anyway?

Clearly the author has confused the words "achievement" and "giftedness." With some judicious editing, he can make sense:


Much better.

I think this is well put, ColinsMum. An emphasis on closing the gap between services offered and services needed is really what's on the table, not a label. Frankly, maintaining focus on services rendered and required would be beneficial for meeting the educational needs of all students, not just gifted ones. I wish that our educators and policymakers could be so lucid as to see needs (and required actions!) existing on a continuum, not just on a truncated distribution.

conflating giftedness with accomplishment/achievement?

yes, I agree with Dude.

I think that Dude nailed this too.

Anything which is correlated to IQ, certainly including academic achievement, provides some information about IQ. So if someone is doing better/worse in school than his score on an IQ test predicts, you should revise your estimate of his IQ up/down, although I can't say by how much.

Here is a thought experiment. For a group of students, you have IQ scores from the Stanford-Binet (SB) and WISC, taken at the end of 8th grade, in addition to middle school (grades 6-8) grade point average. I bet that linear prediction of WISC IQ from SB IQ and GPA would have positive coefficients on both variables.

In a magical world in which every child gets equal and adequate:

- sleep
- exercise
- healthy food
- parental support (in all domains)
- social interaction
- individual instruction
- environmental stimulation
- play
- etc.

Then yes, your hypothesis would be correct... any variation in school performance would require a revisiting of their IQ. Except there are biological influences to consider, so the kids would also have to be clones.

Here in the real world, however, we often have to look at other factors, because life is complicated.

According to your logic a score on an IQ test should not convey much information either, because it too is affected by the variables you mention. In fact, even a child who usually gets adequate

- sleep
- exercise
- healthy food

might take an IQ test on a day when she recently had not gotten enough sleep or eaten much (maybe reduced appetite due to illness). School grades represent work done over an extended period of time and average out some environmental noise but of course not stable features of the environment. They also average in noise from variable and sometimes arbitrary grading standards of teachers.

Indeed. This is a feature of IQ tests that is well-supported by evidence.


School performance does not average out any "environmental noise" that is pervasive and omnipresent. If a child is regularly not getting the support they need from their environment, they will continue to underachieve.

For illumination purposes, I suggest you seek out an online forum where highly-involved and caring parents regularly discuss the lack of support in their schools and communities for gifted children, and all the negative consequences that can come from that, including underachievement. I'm sure you can find one somewhere.

And then consider what happens when parents are not highly-involved and caring.

Ah. So if we don't "blossom," we aren't smart anymore?

When do we make this determination, exactly? What if I'm 40- something (let's SAY) and haven't finished my novel yet (speaking HYPOTHETICALLY?)


Er, whoop de doo? I feel like we see this kind of lability all the time here. 10 points isn't a ton. I don't think WE take it as "Oh, now gifted!/ now not gifted" as much as we sensibly see that tests are imperfect and we need to look at the whole child and complete performance and other indicators. Why not think of it this way, instead of getting into this big thing about "Did you KNOW you can become UNGIFTED?? Huh, huh?" Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see his POV as being about developing the whole child, seeing potential, etc as much as I see someone trying to find a hook to sell a book with.

Someone who does well on an IQ test but never achieves anything may have been lucky on the day he took the IQ test and never have been that smart to begin with. He also may have had bad luck later on. Few people would find objectionable the related idea that someone who did poorly on an IQ test but later did brilliant work had his IQ understated by the test.

I take issue with the idea that one must be an "extraordinary achiever or performer," or one is therefore not gifted. Hogwash. There are a million reasons why one might not be such (LDs, poverty, abuse, racism, mental illness, bad luck, lack of desire to achieve in conventional ways, a wish to focus on other things...you yourself seem to think that gifted women's life focus should perhaps be on raising children). It doesn't mean the ability is gone.

It was also my understanding that the general wisdom was that one cannot "get lucky" on a long-form IQ test.

I think you have an oversimplified view of talent. Talent and the ability to achieve (in school or elsewhere) are far, far more than IQ. There are the factors Dude pointed out, but there are also personal goals, ability to get stuff done/sedulousness, and ability to fit in with others in a work environment who think very, very differently from the HG+ person.

Plus, while anyone with a high IQ can bomb an IQ test with ease, it's effectively impossible for someone with a lower IQ to get "lucky" and be able to remember 12 digits written at the end of 12 paragraphs that had to be read out loud, or draw the next pattern in a series of complex patterns, or get the analogy right if he doesn't know what the words mean. He might lucky on a couple questions, but not 30.

In the middle class suburb where I grew up, there were some kids in the gifted program in elementary school who were not taking mostly honors and AP classes in high school and who were not academic stars. They did not have big setbacks I knew of. There weren't dumb, and they went on to earn college degrees, but they did not present as "gifted" in high school.

Talent search programs typically allow you to qualify in
elementary school based on SCAT or Explore scores, but by middle school, good SAT and ACT scores are required to qualify.
Implicitly they are saying that early indications of giftedness need to confirmed by later results.

That you knew of.

Perhaps they had "checked out" of school by that point.

There is a difference between innate and unchangeable.

Some may agree with this and still hold that giftedness is innate; These are not disparate concepts.

Some may agree with this and still acknowledge that due to being an extreme minority (1-10% depending upon how one measures), gifted students (especially HG, EG, PG students) are an underserved population, and wish to focus on serving their needs. This does not preclude meeting the needs of all learners. By means of analogy, a group established to raise awareness of lung disease does not imply callousness or indifference to breast cancer or any other concern. Those in a lung disease awareness group ought not to have to apologize for their efforts, nor divert their attention to serving other causes out of an imposed sense of guilt or mistaken priority. Similarly, those advocating for an education which better meets the needs of gifted individuals ought not to have to apologize for their efforts or divert their attention to other causes out of an imposed sense of guilt or mistaken priority.

Flexible cluster grouping by readiness and ability, regardless of chronological age?

I hadn't encountered sedulousness until today, interesting concept, I might like to try it out some day.

How much of this discussion is real and how much is semantical?

And what the heck is potential? Potential to match person X's personal definition of success?

Since "gifted" has become overloaded, can we just go back to terms that people just seem to get like smart, really smart, and scary smart?

According to my physics textbook, potential is the amount of work required to move a unit of positive charge from infinity to a point inside an electrical field. We could define this idea in terms of people and their sedulousness, by saying potential is the amount of sedulousness required by Little Johnny so that he moves to a given point in a society's success field, with more work required as one gets closer to the center.

Now, if success is defined as not being exclusive to the center (seems reasonable), it becomes clear that varying combinations of lots of things will get you where you want to go. As just one example, people have varying degrees of charge in different areas. So each person will have to do a different amount of work to get to the same point in the field. Of course, different points may be defined as "success" or "not so successful" in different people, as in "His successes include several platinum albums and finishing high school. He says passing algebra 2 was the hardest thing he's ever done." Yet although passing algebra was pretty easy for me, I will never have even a gold album.

I think I've sone a reasonable semantical job of demonstrating that personal potential is a ferociously complicated idea that is not to be trifled with.

I think that success is the absence of marginalization or insignificance.

Like Survivor.

This may be because I'm a total fangirl of Jon's worldview on this subject. Or it could just be that I'm significant to myself and one of my three cats, and therefore I can never be not successful.

By definition, I mean. That is pretty appealing.

My take on "success" is that it means whatever you want it to mean.

For example, earlier today I had an itch. On my back. It was quite a conundrum. Luckily, I happened to be the right man at the right place for the job. I was equal to the challenge. First, I tried various contortions, stretching my ligaments to their fullest. That wasn't initially successful, but I've learned resilience over the years. At times like this, I remember the Marine Corps maxim: "improvise, adapt, overcome." I spied a book marker with just the right stiffness, slid it down my shirt, turned it on it's corner, and conquered that itch.

Now, many people will accomplish many other things over the course of the day, but I'm the only one who made the world a better place by conquering that itch.

I mean, yesterday we learned that my DD9 won some state competition thingy... that's pretty cool for her, I guess.

There are tons of other people who call themselves "successful" for acquiring large piles of green paper, but what on earth is that good for?

I like the external validation that I get from my cat's approval.

I'm jealous... your cat gives you approval? hmmph

Well, I'm one for three.

Which would be fantastic as a batting average, but it's a bit demoralizing as a job performance rating.

Who knows how big Social Security benefits will be when we retire, and how high Medicare premiums, co-pays, and deductibles will be?

High net worth generally indicates that you have produced more than you have consumed and that you have been a net contributor to society. Once you have acquired wealth, investing it in the stock market makes you the part owner of businesses that produce consumer and capital goods and employ people. Municipal bond investment funds the construction and maintenance of public goods such as school and roads. Bill Gates has used his wealth to do many good works through the Gates Foundation, such as working to eradicate smallpox and funding the Khan Academy.

I think young people who focus on making money may do more good over their lifetimes than the idealists.

Ah, this again.

Matter of perspective, of course.

This is great, thank you!

Yes the hope of attaining fuels the rags-to-riches aspect of "The American Dream". On the other hand, high net worth can indicate other things as well, for example that much has been invested in an individual. Further down the continuum of the broad range of possibilities... as the world economy tightens, there are increasing stories of human trafficking, illegal drug trade & smuggling, and other predatory means of acquiring wealth at another's expense. Therefore many see that wealth as a proxy for positive contribution to society may be somewhat flawed, just as accomplishment/achievement is not a direct correlation to IQ/intelligence.

Apologies to the OP as this thread seems to have been hijacked to a discussion of success/sedulousness. Anyone want to create a separate discussion thread for success/sedulousness?

This isn't the place to debate religion, though.

As a side not, am I the only one who in first seeing the book title immediately thought of the Twilight Zone episode: "To Serve Man"

I go away for a few days and this grows to four pages. And gets hijacked!

Interesting discussion, I may have to find his book and see if he's mixing up as many things as the excerpts indicate.

Yes! As in "Serving the Gifted"... it's a cookbook!

A zombie cookbook!