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    Originally Posted by JonLaw
    Originally Posted by Thomas Percy
    Can I be a nihilist if I don't understand or willfully won't understand Nietzsche?

    No.

    Honestly, you seem too logical and goal oriented in your thinking to be useful to even a low-level nihilist.

    Good point. I think I have more potential to be a Tiger Mom than a nihilist. Oh, how I wish my son is a bit more receptive to tiger parenting.

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    It's very sad-- far too many HG+ children resist Tiger Parenting pretty significantly. {sighhhh}



    Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.
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    Originally Posted by ultramarina
    The interesting thing about this thread is that in the end, not all of us in this forum are parents of PG kids.

    So, I think I'm going to close this tab now, having been reminded of the general opinion of what my kids are doing to the education of yours.

    I do realize this is the Davidson board. I guess I forget that sometimes.

    My apologies, UM, if anything that I have said (playfully or otherwise) has given you cause for offense or hurt.

    I do assume that the vast majority of us are here because our kids are HG+, and really-- IF, as Old Dad noted early on-- IF everyone's kids were given reasonably good educational options that didn't mean competing for an "appropriate" (or perhaps just "more appropriate") education, much of this problem would vanish all on its own.

    Sadly, I understand what motivates TigerParents of bright-but-not-gifted students to try to make them appear to be HG/HG+. I do. I just wish that there were somewhere that were functionally off-limits to them so that HG+ kids could be themselves without a lot of holds barred intellectually. frown I consider that to be akin to making sure that penguins and emus don't wind up on the tarmac where they are likely to get run over, and if there are enough of them, they'll prevent the other birds from managing a nice take-off.

    Not all of us live in places where HG+ magnets abound. In fact, I'd venture to guess that the majority of us do NOT live in such places, ergo the high rate of homeschooling parents here. For many of us, this is the ONLY way to get our kids appropriate educational opportunity, but it comes at the expense of our kids ever really enjoying a deep discussion with peers. For some kids that is okay, and for others not so much. The kids who are mostly mathy probably have a lot less trouble this way.

    That isn't my daughter. She desperately wants peers who are equally bright, and she is endlessly disappointed to find that the majority of the kids she runs into are doing what they are doing because someone ELSE thought they should... or because of how it will look to someone else. frown That's rather sad all the way around-- but it's not a surprise that they don't want my DD to get the teacher/leader going on something even more nuanced/difficult if they aren't passionate about it to start with. Therefore, she gets told to "shut up" when things get (in her mind) most interesting and engaging. By TigerCubs and the teachers who have learned to cater to them.

    I really, really doubt that anyone here is a TigerParent like that. SERIOUSLY doubt it.

    But my apology is sincere if anything I've written stings. I would like it most if educating children didn't feel so much like a zero-sum game in this country right now.

    Right. Back to Nihilism, Beliebers and USN&WR.


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    This is the same concern we all have even if our kids are not PG. I don't want the work of my kids watered down by "average" kids or for them to be held back in their learning. I'm not sure what percentile PG is but my guess is that you're never going to find enough of them in a geographic area to even create a class. It would be what? 1 out of 8,000 people? 1 out of 20,000? So each medium sized town or school district would only have 1 or 2 of these kids. Unless you pack up all of these kids that exist in the entire state and send them to a boarding school, there are going to be classes and programs with less gifted kids mixed in. Our magnet here takes kids that are 98th percentile and above in IQ/ability (as long as they also have achievement scores), which is definitely not PG. One thing that they do though is ability group within the magnet. So if DD, for example, goes into 4th grade next fall and scores the same as the older kids in the magnet, she would be put in with them. It spans 3 grades.

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    Our district doesn't have GT programs at all. We are also vastly underwhelmed by the local private schools for GT kids.

    My observation is that the focus of many bright and hard-working kids is not necessarily the same as ours. For example, some parents focus on how their kids do in the state-wide standardized tests, or how fast they move through the materials that the teachers assign. Some parents fight for their kid to have a spot on the school academic team or in a music program. In middle school, the advanced math students fight for space to do high school math. But these are never our concerns because these are not what my kids need.

    Many kids can achieve, but at many different levels. They should all be supported but the ideal resources don't necessarily overlap. It's when there is only this bit of resource available, that people start fighting to steer ar the program toward what their kids need. It's completely understandable--everyone deserves to develop his/her potential to the fullest.

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    Quote
    I'm not sure what percentile PG is but my guess is that you're never going to find enough of them in a geographic area to even create a class. It would be what? 1 out of 8,000 people? 1 out of 20,000? So each medium sized town or school district would only have 1 or 2 of these kids. Unless you pack up all of these kids that exist in the entire state and send them to a boarding school, there are going to be classes and programs with less gifted kids mixed in.

    Yes. So to some extent, I am not sure what is a realistic goal for parents of the PG. It's certainly a difficult road and I don't envy you at all. The DYS Academy and DYS's services are a nice option to have and a great step in the right direction, IMO.

    Anyway, my MG DD is getting an OK education at her GT magnet. It really could be better, but I can't torture myself about it when I know how much worse it could be. I do realize it is a privilege that we have this. I have to have semi-realistic expectations of the public school system. It would certainly be worse if she were PG--but even with her being what she is, even IN a gifted system, I recognize that it would not be possible to fully meet her where she is. I don't see the kids in her class who are less able than she (her achievement is very high) as ruining her experience, though.

    Quote
    Not all of us live in places where HG+ magnets abound.

    DD's magnet is not HG+, btw--not sure if that was meant here. It is 130+. I do appreciate the apology.

    On Tiger Parents--eye of the beholder, I do believe.

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    But-- ultramarina, if students who were, say, 'hard-working, but solidly average' (but whose parents were utterly convinced that they SHOULD be in those seats) were the majority of her classmates, what could that experience be like?

    Because that is the reality for most kids who are HG+, unless they are in magnets for HG+ students. Even in that setting, yes, it is largely the experience for PG students, for whom the gap between themselves and MG is still pretty wide.

    It does become a problem when opportunities intended for HG+ students are given instead to ideally advantaged Tiger Cubs, whose parents jockey for openings. Because it means that somebody else's kids don't get those openings. This is where it turns into a SES problem, because those of lower SES lack the resources to TigerParent.


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    I'm curious what you would envision as an equitable situation for PG students in public schools.

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    I don't mean to sound like they don't deserve a good education. I am simply at a loss to see how an adequately differentiated system at the correct level with full-time direct instruction and no class time with other students considered in any way below their level would work, on a practical basis.

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    I (truly) don't see this problem as being even primarily about PG children, so much as any HG+ student.

    The solution, clearly, is to improve the education for NT students and MG ones, and to figure out some means of devaluing the darned titling/club membership for parents who are using the entire thing as some kind of social status.

    That's the only way that public schools are going to be able to deliver appropriate education to the top 2% of the cognitive ability curve. Otherwise the noise level gets too high, particularly in districts like mine, where the "haves" will do pretty much anything to edge out the kids who are lower-income (or immigrant families).



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