Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Making Sense of this Analagy

I am new here and was just wondering what people thought about this analogy that really hit home for me.

Is it fair to say that a child with an IQ of 130 sitting in a typical classroom all day with kids whose IQs are in the average 100 range, is similar to asking a child with a 100 IQ to spend their schooldays in a classroom with kids with IQs of 70?

Am I missing something? Because it seems so obvious to me that this would be unreasonable, but yet so often it is what is going on in our schools.

Please clarify if I'm missing the point. Thank you so much!

While I can't speak to the actual numbers you gave, the neuropsychologist that tested our DS did say that you would NEVER expect a child 2 standard deviations below the norm to be successful in a regular classroom so why would we expect a child 2 standard deviations above the norm to be successful?

This has helped our close family and friends understand the accommodations we desire for our DS.

Thanks so much! That's exactly why I was looking for an analogy, to explain when we tell our family and close friends. Perfect!

It is an appealing analogy, but it isn't quiet correct. All the point say is how rare a person is in a national population it doesn't actually measure smartness.