Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Gifted, Talented and Separated (NYC)

Our district has the GT program under the overall "Special Ed" department. It's just an organizational thing but I think that's where it should be.

Our district has relatively few minorities as students so the GT program reflects the same diversity as the community. And, although we have lots of kids in the GT program, there is a rigid testing regimen in place. There are other reasons for the large number in the GT program: college+ educated parents, higher income parents, higher tax rate, people move here just for the GT program. I know people who have moved away because the district is very AP focused and all the Middle School classes are what they call "Pre-AP". Every high school student is required to take at least one AP class.

And, if "gifted" is so bad, why does no one complain about the terms "gifted athlete" or "gifted musician" or "gifted artist". Our kids are "gifted students", much in the same way.

That's easy.

They're external and obvious and they do things that other people *love* to watch/enjoy.

I mean, have you ever tried to get any entertainment out of watching a gifted kid sit there and be gifted? Where's the sizzle, the excitement?

I think cognitive giftedness is threatening to people. No one likes to feel stupid.

It's ok to watch an athlete or artist at work because their gifts are specific to one area ("it's ok that I can't sing like her because I can cook really well"), or their performance is partially the result of practice and training ("if I had been in lessons from the age of two I could've been an Olympic figure skater").

This. I've seen survey results where people are self-assessed at above-average intelligence at a rate of 85%. The same rate would probably be true if they were asked if they were better than average looking, funnier than average, etc. People often have an ability to construct a self-identity that looks very little like the one they present to the outside observer.

This self-identity becomes something like a religious belief, so if you challenge that identity, you might as well have peed on their church/temple/mosque/other. It's not a good way to make friends and influence people.

I have seen similar research. I wonder if the gifted are more likely to suffer from "depressive realism" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depressive_realism .

My observation is that my DD is prone to something worse... building an unrealistic self-identity that is incorrect on the negative side. Perfectionist tendencies and an unrealistic set of expectations can easily lead her to a conclusion of "I'm stupid" in the face of failure. And since she's not unique in these traits, I'd expect that this is a common trap for gifted kids.

It's kinda like the anorexic person who looks in the mirror at gaunt features and concludes, "I'm fat."

It has been documented in research that the truly gifted, when asked to self-assess on their intelligence level, will also often respond with "above average."

That's a widely swinging perspective though. To have a perfectionist bent requires having the initial belief of being able to achieve perfection. Then comes the crushing negative self-assessment. With such oscillation, I'd imagine the self-concept has to pass the realism line enroute... like the clock that has the exact time precisely twice a day.

Math provides its own crushing realization of insignificance... 160 IQ is 1 in 30,000... which statistically means there are about a quarter of a million people in the world with 160 or higher IQ.

Probably (I think I do, anyway). Maybe it's some reflex to protect us from being cut from the herd, so we internally downplay our strengths and focus on what we're not strong in. ("See? I fit in. I'm average too.")