Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion The Rich-Poor Divide Starts With Kindergarten

We've been asked not to give internet-based homework at my school without an alternative for students who do not have internet at home. At least two of my students have not had electricity at home this semester.

And as far as using computers for schoolwork, our computer labs are largely filled up with classes taking the monthly benchmark tests from our restructuring consultants and the up-to-three-times a year state assessments for math, reading, and science. That reminds me. I need to try to find a computer lab slot for our research project. Wish me luck!

I would agree with that. As a physician, I can see that. Something like 50% of medical residencies are held by physicians who graduated from foreign medical schools. I DO NOT mean to imply that foreign medical grads are not as good as American medical grads.
My point is simply that lots of bright kids who could be doctors choose not to go that route anymore. None of my doctor friends have kids who want or have gone into medicine. They actually limit the hours residents can work, which they never did for me "back in the day." My kids do say they want to be doctors (since I've brainwashed them) and they can "eat lunch with mommy at the hospital." I don't know obviously if they will really become doctors.
I think having a good work ethic is very important for gifted (and non-gifted) children. Otherwise, it's like having an expensive car in your driveway without an engine. It's not going to go anywhere.

I'm just saying that when faced with the choice between downward economic mobility and medicine, if you have a very high IQ, you should be able to get yourself into a med school and go that route, regardless of an actual interest in or desire to practice medicine.

1) The kind of overexcitabilities that make some gifted kids cry because the tags in the backs of their shirts are uncomfortable would make medical school rather horrifying--for all concerned--if they were not intensely interested in medicine.

2) Profoundly gifted kids, especially if they have not been accelerated, especially if their parents are not academically motivated, often are not used to striving for things. They may come to that knack rather later in life, when they finally find a subject that does not bore them. By that time, they probably don't have the GPA to get into medical school.

3) Poor or minority profoundly gifted kids may grow up with the belief that grades are not any kind of reflection of their ability or effort, that they are, in fact, meaningless. As a result, they often underachieve in school.

4) Overexcitabilities and a profoundly developed moral sense may mean that profoundly gifted kids who grew up in an underprivileged environment may choose professions with just as big an impact on people's lives, but without the healthy compensation of medicine or law.

5) I'm a profoundly gifted kid who grew up poor in Appalachia, whose parents had not graduated from college when I left home (my mom graduated at the age of 53). I went to graduate school for six years before becoming a teacher in a Title I public middle-school. Your mileage may vary.

I don't think it's a great idea to take on a demanding job where people's lives hang in the balance if you don't have any interest in it. Most of the smart but directionless people I know either became corporate lawyers or IT people.

FWIW, my husband and I are downwardly mobile compared to our families of origin and are at about average for annual family income in the US, though I only work part-time. Technically, I think we may qualify for reduced-price school lunch. We both work in our chosen fields, neither of which pays much at all. (I used to earn much more, but I hated the work and quit.) I know quite a few bright people whose situations are similar to ours. High IQ and good educations do not automatically equate to high income. I always wonder if anyone is tracking kids like ours, who have a great deal of social capital but are technically middle-class or below.

I'm talking about downward mobility (worse off than parents).

Transitioning from poor to a teacher is upward mobility.

What matters is career track.

Corporate law was ravaged by the last recession and you need a massive book of business. Medicine allows you to be connected to the federal debt origination system.

I guess IT is a good solution, but it doesn't pay as much as a good medical specialty. If you are faced with the choice of being an internist/GP and going into IT, the economic choice that makes sense would be IT, so that gives medicine some of law's lottery element.

I think you're missing her point.

1) Her PG status resulted in a top education, which typically opens up tons of opportunities, and resulted in a career that pays, for that level of educational attainment, relatively badly.

Which brings up another point that has yet to be addressed... the pursuit of wealth is widely regarded as pointless among the highly gifted.

2) Giftedness is related to genetics, so her parents were likely gifted despite being uneducated and poor.

Engineering is another field that can pay quite well, particularly for exceptional programmers, and does not require strong social skills.

Maybe they had poor school experiences themselves, are overwhelmed with other things in their lives (e.g. keeping food on the table and paying the rent), and/or aren't very smart.

Forty or fifty years ago, the US offered lots of manufacturing jobs that paid a living wage, and people who weren't bright enough to be lawyers or engineers or whatever (or who couldn't afford college) could find a decent job.

Now we've outsourced a lot of these jobs, and we've decided that everyone should just go to college and become a knowledge worker. IMO, this is insane. You can't make people smarter by wishing it so, and the results are predictable. People with college degrees end up working as security guards, at Starbucks, and in other low-skill jobs (but they have huge loans to pay off). We're building an entire economy around a fantasy.

On top of this, we put so much effort into average and below-average students, we forget about the bright students who actually have the talent to be high-caliber knowledge workers. This happens through a combination of ignoring them in elementary school and then watering down math, science, and English courses in middle school and beyond.

And then everyone wonders why things don't improve. We hear that the real problem is that we need to throw more money at the issue, while ignoring how we spend the money and the fact that the US education expenditures are above average among OECD countries. We even spend more than the much-vaunted Finland as a percentage of overall public expenditure.

Very few people are willing to admit that we're suffering under a failed educational philosophy. Call me a cynic, but I don't think meaningful improvements will happen unless there are some huge systemwide earthquakes.