Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums GT Research Book review: Development of GT Across Life Span

www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2008/10/15/08gifted_ep. (i was able to sign up for free and had access to this full article.)

I'm not so keen on this quote, but i guess we'll have to wait and see what the book has to say when it comes out in January.



The review goes on to state this:


Here's the Amazon description of the book:
http://www.amazon.com/Development-G...mp;s=books&qid=1224132886&sr=8-1

Hmm. I'm concerned about this bit:



Sounds dangerously like phony egalitarianism to me.

I'll go back to our hackneyed sports analogy here. No one would seriously suggest that sprinting or jumping talent is something mostly "developable" and not innate. Yeah right, like someone's going to take a kid who runs the 100 in 13 seconds with a tailwind and "develop" her into Flo-Jo without kilograms of steroids and bionic legs? I don't think so.

(Though perhaps Ms. Dweck did indeed come close to making that suggestion?!?)

Yet educators and others continue to claim that we can raise IQ or pretend that it doesn't matter anyway. And now we having giftedness "waxing and waning" as though brains were tide pools. I guess this gives these folks an excuse to keep believing they have no role in creating gifted high schoolers who perform "solidly in the middle."

The review (and presumably the book?) makes some good points about teaching kids to try hard. And the guy from Hunter College made great points. I just get dubious when I see the stuff about giftedness "waxes and wanes."

!

Val
<RANT OFF!>

There's a model that distinguishes 'Gifts' from 'Talents' in that 'Gifts' relate to potential or equipment for learning in various areas, while 'Talents' refers to actual skill that have been developed.

Now it's easy to say that not All Gifts become Talents, and that children with Gifts need adult help to develop Talents. A child with early signs of Giftedness sure can be so depressed or anxious or actin-out in elementary school that they miss developing the orgasnizational lessons of Middle School and don't seem very 'Talented' in by the end of High School. Of course Dweck doesn't address that at least 'some' of these kids will then go on to 'fall in love' with learning in College or even Graduate School and end up 'right back at the top of the pack' where they started.

But yeah, lots don't turn enough of their Gifts into Talents to really feel at home in their skins as adults. LOL - and then the babies come along, and often wipe the slate clean for those of us who have primary child-raising duty.

Where's the chapter on Parenting through the Gifted Lifespan?

((smiles))
Grinity

I agree with the concerns expressed. I do see some hope, though.

The notion that if you don't nurture talent, it can go away seems to me to be a healthy call to schools to do more for GT kids, no? "Use it or lose it" is pretty simple for a teacher to understand, and it could possibly get said teacher to actually challenge a GT kid. It calls the (dumb!) notion that GT kids never need to be taught anything into question.

I agree with Grinity and Kriston. Use it or lose it has been a common attitude about early testing. There have been numerous studies that show kids that score gifted early on can move more to the middle by 7th grade. And others who move into the gifted category.

Also, the studies that showed in the inner city of Los Angeles, that IQs could be raised by 10 points with one year of music lessons on a string instrument or piano.

I don't think anyone is going to suggest you can move an average scoring child into the prodigy range. But I do not think you can take a PG kid and move him into the prodigy range by training.

A prodigy is something very unusual.

I posted a while ago that I was doing the Brain Quest kindergarten while we were in the car. DD had to look for B words. There were 8 items. She said bullrushes. Then she said there were 2 groups of bullrushes, so it should count for 2. Bullrushes were not even in the list, no surprise. Yesterday in the bath, I was the yellow turtle and I got caught in the bullrushes, (a pile of bubbles) and she asked me what bullrushes were.

I thought about how many times weird answers would kick into her head, like math at 2 or sight read. But there is the other side of her brain that has to work at reading or math. And it like one innate side has these magical answers but if she doesn't learn the rules to reading or math, she could lose it. Maybe I am wrong.

She has a strong cognitive reasoning but I could see her losing some skills without the work. I know gen ed wouldn't work for her.

Ren

Sing it, sister! Right on the mark, kcab!

I agree completely with kcab. I believe that the ability for giftedness does not wax or wane, but the expression of that ability - the part that we measure and observe - does. If a gifted child ends up in the middle of the pack in 7th grade, then that is called underachievement. It a *regular* child suddenly shoot ahead in 7th grade, then they were probably a gifted child that never had the fire and love of learning sparked before.

It is the primary job of education to find that spark in all children. The heights to which that spark takes them is based on their giftedness.

Yes, I think it's a wise distinction kcab is making.

I don't think one can become "un-GT," or for that matter, can become more GT. That's ability, and it's what you come with. Luck of the draw at birth.

But nurturing innate ability can make for higher achievement, better use of that talent, sharper skills. Ignoring or abusing ability can dull it, retard its development, and make it effectively get "lost." I like the image of the naturally fast sprinter who doesn't train. Eventually, someone similarly GT--or someone less innately GT, but who works hard to hone the skill--will outrun him. Soon, he doesn't seem all that GT a runner at all.

Both the initial, inherent GTness *and* a real challenge to those abilities are required for a GT athlete or a GT child to achieve as they are capable of achieving.

(And that's not even touching the tendency of some GT kids to mask their talents on purpose in order to fit in better. That's a form of "losing it" too, only it's purposeful on the part of the child. )

I'll just quote ebeth to end this message, because I really love this statement:



You go, girl!

Thanks, Kriston. Kcab inspired me to wax lyrical there for a second. Now back to doing the dishes!

Wanna do mine, too? That's where I'm headed next!