Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Why organize school socially?

I was reading the "Beautiful Minds" article in another thread, and this crossed my mind again.

The whole concept of "acceleration" depends on acceptance of the premise that school should be organized around social education and not around intellectual education. We need to do more to refute that premise instead of accepting it and trying to work around it.

Why do we (I would say "as a country", but it appears that we are the same around the world in this regard) just assume that children of the same age should be taught the same things and that any child who learns something earlier is somehow a threat to the system? Does it stem from the fact that we have a certain age for starting school--they all start at the same time, therefore they should all be in the same place for the rest of their education? If we accept the premise, we are forever doomed to working around it and trying to prove that allowing this one child to be "accelerated" won't send the whole educational system crashing down on our heads.

Let's start from the premise that kids will get along socially when they are around people who are intellectually their equals, and see what happens.

I tend to see a bit of a belief among some educators and parents that there is "equal ability" and that all children are capable of being gifted if given challenging work. I have attended a number of school meetings where parents have voiced the opinion that all students should have access to the GT classes/teachers/curriculum b/c they would all benefit from it.

One of the schools my kids attended for a while seems to be trying that premise out by putting almost half of the kids in TAG programming for at least one subject.

When my kids were in a different school, (preschool thru 1st) everyone did their work that felt right to them. If the 10 piece puzzle was a good challenge that was right for them. If they needed more challenge they got the 25 piece puzzle. Some projects were open ended so the kids could work to their level with some teacher encouragment if needed. Everyone learned at different rates so it was ok for everyone to do different things. I wish school could just be as simple as this for us now.

To get back to your original question, I believe that there is a common misperception that children who are intellectually advanced are socially delayed or at least not socially advanced. There seems to be the perception that kids of the same age are all at the same point in terms of social development (or the advanced ones are socially slower) therefore it is unwise to put intellectually advanced kids with older kids b/c they will suffer socially.

A Nation Deceived seems to have discredited this notion, but anecdotal individual experiences of some educators hold more weight in their decisions than research (at least in our experience). We have, of course, had some experiences with wonderful educators who do not subscribe to the socially delayed bright kid concept, though.

Two initial thoughts:

-Public school in the US was designed so that everyone could read the Bible.

-What may appear to the educator as a socially delayed, academically advanced child may instead be an academically, morally, and socially advanced child who has figured out how to tune out the mediocrity of pop culture.

My daughter to a "T".

My guess is that it's somehow related to the assembly line. It works great for cars...but not so much for kids.

Always trust your instincts.

Look up Social Justice some time.

You make a very valid point. Do you think it is only a possibility? I confess to know little if anything at all about the NCLB legislation but I would think the concept of equal outcome/social justice plays a part in it, but then again maybe I'm way off the mark!

Speaking from the inside, "social justice" is something educational theorists talk about constantly but never define, while teachers never talk about it at all.

As to your initial question, Nautigal, it's really set me thinking. Was going to post a reply here but it started getting extremely long so I think I'm going to rework it into a blog piece.

EDIT: The aforementioned blog post isn't up yet. Probably not for a few days.