Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy gifted program picture in the yearbook

Not at all-- just that public naming/framing is probably inappropriate. For exactly the reasons that aquinas outlines in cases 1 and 2 particularly.

Personally, the non-GT kids? That's between them and their parents unless it impacts my own gifted child's education.

The problem is that it DOES.

School policy (that my DD has to get special permission to circumvent)?

You cannot enroll in most AP courses without having first taken the regular or Honors version of that SAME course.

This is GT for high school kids around here. I think that we can all agree that for truly high IQ learners, that is mostly very inappropriate at meeting their needs for faster pacing and less repetition. It's because some 30% of our district is identified. It's also why I make the claim that there is no real GT here. It's a status thing, pure and simple. And they've watered the difficulty down so much that it lost any meaning that it might once have had for high-ability learners. To no avail, I might add-- because the kids who can't hack the AP course still can't, by and large, after a year-long "prep" class either. The truly GT kids run circles around those struggling classmates, I'm afraid.

Anyway.

Why the need for PUBLIC acknowledgement of individual student's learning needs to begin with?? I'm seriously confused about what positive impact that could have. Again, this isn't about what these children do-- it's about what they ARE.

If we've been so successful at de-stigmatizing learning challenges, (which I agree has taken place and is an advocacy goal) then why wouldn't it be equally appropriate to note those students who are having their educational needs met by "alternative diploma" programs in Special Ed?

I personally don't understand why parents would want either thing in the school yearbook. Class pictures with teacher names-- FINE. Everyone will 'know' which classes are which anyway.

Actively labeling those children rubs me the wrong way; it's outing them to their peers and to other parents. They don't get to CHOOSE to belong to that class or not. Unlike queer clubs or community service clubs, not joining means not having your basic need for FAPE met in a least-restrictive environment. Now, it's not an obligation under the law, to do that for nondisabled students, but it's the SPIRIT of the mission, for sure-- because that is WHY it is a protection afforded disabled students. So that they can be included like their peers.

If not ALL children have to have an IQ range divulged by the school yearbook, then none of them should have to.

You left out the single most important reason for correctly identifying gifted kids: their learning needs are different and they can't be addressed in the absence of what could be called a diagnosis.

All of your reasons can apply equally to special ed. kids. Why is it okay (essential, even) to identify this group but not the gifted group?


Why does an acknowledgement of ability automatically lead to ability trumping effort? In my experience, lack of any diagnosis, be it medical or otherwise, leads to far more problems.


Why? Is talent development in sports hampered by knowing that some people are more talented than others? Of course not. Why is cognitive development any different?

And are you saying that schools don't have a duty to develop their gifted students (sounds that way to me)?

Sorry, but this is really boggling my mind. I'm not sure how it's possible to hold the idea that schools should be providing appropriate learning opportunities for gifted students while also arguing that identifying students as gifted is "damaging" and that they must hide their natural abilities. These ideas are mutually exclusive.

Perhaps, instead, many people are simply:

a. uncomfortable with acknowledging giftedness.
b. conditioned to believe that acknowledging one innate quality (cognitive giftedness) must not be done, but acknowledging other innate qualities (beauty or athletic ability) is allowed.

In the past, most people were very uncomfortable with the ideas of disabilities and LGBT. But nowadays, people are much more comfortable with these realities of life, and these changes have been good for our society. This is because both groups, well, stopped accepting the dogma that they had to hide themselves.

Please, try to think about this. Do you think your reactions could be due to reasons that have been fed to you as dogma for years or decades? Or do they really make rational, logical sense (sorry Aquinas, much of your reasoning didn't pass that test IMO)?

There is no way that a kid could be sent straight to an AP-level class or skip one or more grades while also maintaining the illusion that s/he doesn't have a high IQ. Any form of acceleration is a public acknowledgment of high cognitive ability. Not acknowledging this fact is, IMO, more damaging to the child because it's a tacit instruction to hide what is in plain sight.

I am NOT saying that gifties should run around bragging about having an IQ 2 or more SDs above average.

What I'm saying is that one should not feel obliged to hide one's natural talents as though acknowledging something about themselves is bad or bragging. This practice is especially damaging when those talents are on display by virtue of acceleration.

There is a middle ground between hide and brag. It's a place where people learn genuine humility and where they and others can learn that gifties have strengths and weaknesses just like everyone else.

Agreed, Val. How is grade skipping not public naming/framing?

This book isn't pointing out all the amazingly smarter, better children; it is just pointing out that this is a group, and this is another group. I don't see why it is a big deal.

I wonder to what extent it's possible for posters to view this idea outside of how it would seem in their school's yearbook?

I find competitive sport mystifying and bragging about sport as (or more) icky than bragging about artistic or intellectual talent (all bragging seems icky to me, but bragging about sport seems more so, I guess because I see sports achievement as so irrelevant/meangingless, and yes I know I'm weird). And I have never read or kept a single year book of my own or my kids. Just don't get it at all... I keep their school class photos for their records and I have some of my class photos. Though I'm not sure if my schools even did yearbooks anyway, back when I went to school, I think it's a newish idea in Australia? I might not have thrown it out so much as never had one.

I agree with Val's points - but I wouldn't want anything to do with the yearbook in the first place.

With all the bad things that are going to happen to these kids, if I was one of the parents, I would sue the school for reckless endangerment.

I also don't understand sports, or its purpose. I also don't care for the year book. But if it is to exist then I don't see the problem with a photo of kids in a club.

To state that you should only be publicly acknowledged if you achieve something can be damaging, IMO. I guess that's why there no photo of kids with special needs, right?

Val, the difference is that ID'ing privately for diagnostic purposes is a means to an end, namely securing appropriate educational services. A skip/acceleration is the manifestation of those services.

I would hope that true GT students' abilities would be validated by parents *regardless of the presence of a diagnostic*. HK's daughter is an example I have in mind-- she's clearly PG, and so her parents don't feel the need to seek external validation of her giftedness. She also isn't being publicly identified at her school as gifted. I daresay she is both aware of her PG abilities and is made to feel valued because her achievements are a tangible manifestation of her control over her innate ability.

An implicit assumption in your argument is that people cannot feel validated for an innate trait unless that trait is identified publicly. Maybe we can explore that assumption.

Aquinas I have a 7yr old, ID-ed privately, skipped quietly. And yes she knows she's bright, without being outed publicly and without being smug (mostly). But there are major obstacles we face due to the quiet, private nature of her status as gifted and as a skipped child. And that skip was really only useful for the first year, so those problems are growing, but I can't talk about it in real life because the problem is private and quiet... I just sent out birthday invited with no age because I have no idea who knows she skipped and who doesn't, and its not something I want to awkwardly wrangle the first time I talk to a parent I haven't met before!

If we had a HG school to send her to I'd be looking into it. There's a high end boys school with a gifted stream she would qualify for, but no girls equivalent in our state. Solutions like these aren't without problems either, but having it be open is really appealing right now. And now that I think about it I am pretty sure that private boys school must document that gifted stream in some manner in their newsletters and publications, along with their rowing team, plays, art, high school graduation results, etc... And that would seem reasonable to me. My DDs attended a similar tier (coed) school previously and they tended to promote activities/services of more unusual kids in subtle ways. Disabled kids would show up in sports day photos with the whole school roaring for their achievements, the gifted kids got a mention via their astronomy events... So it may well be more subtle than "here's the gifted class" but maybe not - given there actually is a gifted class...

I actually feel like my DD is at more risk of weird attention in our current hush hush scenario than if there was a class or club she was part of with actual peers...

If a middle-schooler stands over six-foot-three, he doesn't join a club for unusually tall kids. But, given even a moderate level of athleticism, he can pretty easily excel on the volleyball and basketball teams. So when we celebrate athletics, we're largely celebrating innate qualities. Why can't we do the same for intellectual achievement?

My high school yearbook featured the "royal courts" of the prom and homecoming dances. It also contained a page on the Miss Teen [city] pageant, in which several students of my school competed, and one was crowned victor. That's all a celebration of beauty, isn't it?

Anyway, I think all this is really missing the point about yearbooks. They're not for us, they're for the kids. They're for reminiscence. That means it's perfectly reasonable to include any groups, with pictures, so the kids can look back and see their peers in those particular groups. If you did include the sports teams but not the gifted class, what kind of message are you sending? To me, the only fair way to do it is to either include ALL, or include none.

Ultimately, the reader is simply presented with, "Here is a club, here's what they did, and here's their picture." Anything else anyone takes out of it is basically baggage they brought in.