Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Gifted or Not?

Yippee!
You worked fast! Very brave of you - well done! I believe that this school is your best path into the 3rd grade gifted program in the public school. Strange that a school system that 'gets' highly gifted kids enough to support a full time program can be so clueless about how gifted kids act.

I think you should celebrate by looking through this book

ShrinkLits: Seventy of the World's Towering Classics Cut Down to Size [Paperback]
Maurice Sagoff

I need a laugh after hearing the inside-out logic that was being used against your son.

Sigh,
Grinity

lovemykids....
Your school district is very similiar to ours. the 3rd grade is when our magnet program starts. There is a gifted program for second grade but nothing before. We are finally (in first grade) starting to see differential homework AND class work. Our district will not grade skip and they frown upon subject acceleration... although we will push for it again for math. reading is at level so that isn't an issue for us. Frannie is reading 5th grade level books... just an issue finding content appropriate.

The one positive we have is Frannie will have the same teacher next year for second grade (she is in a multi-age classroom first/second). Her teacher has been great in providing us with gifted advice. She is not her math teacher tho and thats where we have had trouble. She will be her math teacher for second grade.

Our issue was that the school was not seeing my son as gifted, despite his test scores, and therefore was not willing to differentate for us. In fact, his teacher said to me that there are gifted taxi cab drivers - my guess is because of teachers like her who did not look into why someone's ability tests were so much higher than where they are performing and appropriately challenging them.

I am so proud of my son's reading level despite what the public school was doing to him. Imagine what he could have done if someone was there to encourage him more.

Well, need to make our dinner. We are only eating ramen noodles these days so that we can afford the private school.(joking..)

LOL! I think that there is some truth to this, but like to look at it in the larger context:

There exists the idea that working class jobs and gifted don't go together.
The reality is just the opposite. Considering the vast differences in population, my guess is that there are many more gifted kids in working class neighborhoods than in the few 'very best' neighborhoods. I'd love to see some numbers, but I won't attempt it myself.

There also exists the Idea, that the US has a 'pure meritocracy' so that gifted people will rise economically on a consistent basis. I haven't seen this happening in a absolute way at this time, although I think it's a great direction to head in.

Then there is the confusion about economic success being the only important outcome. What I've seen is that for most optimally gifted folks, the usual rewards are just fine, but that as one gets farther and farther into the tail, other things in life become more and more important, sometimes eclipsing economic success to a greater or lesser degree. Females in particular, often find that if they partake in the adventure of parenting, that the deck is quite stacked against making a full economic contribution.

And then we have to take into account personality, drive and twice exceptionality. If a person is PG enough to create a product that is so far ahead of it's time that there is no market for it, economic success would be the worst scale to measure that contribution on.

And -
Phillip Glass, one of my favorite composers, drove a cab for many years.

Love and More Love,
Grinity

Just taking the point about a PG person creating a product so far ahead of its time...

It is not about the market, it is about taking away market sometimes.

I had this conversation last week with this Quality Engineer from GM, while vacationinng in Mexico.

I mentioned that the chief engineer from Oldsmobile had this amazing production engine. Articles were written how it was the best production engine ever designed. You walked into his office in Lansing during the 80s and this engine was right there. It was never put into production. Went against Roger Smith's assembly plan of optimized production along each of GM's cars. Just plain stupidity. This quality engineer told me that Ford has this thing, where you stand behind your trunk and you can wave your foot under the car and the trunk opens -- when your hands are full of groceries -- and mentioned GM had this for years but never put it into the car.

On the other side, I remember someone telling me that Cablevision was shown "tivo" technology years before it came out but they thought it would destroy their service pricing model. Not that the technology wasn't good, but why destroy your money model before you have to.

And I bet many great money makers are not developed by PG because they are simple and cool -- like that Tingler -- which I bought 3. The best engineering designs on the assembly floor at Ford were done because the UAW VP made the engineers -- who usually just sat in their office to design the assembly -- come down to the floor and do the job so that they would know how stupid some of their designs were and how to optimize and create better quality.

Ren

WTG Grinity. I'd wager there are plenty of gifted cab drivers. Especially with the number of immigrants who may have been professionals in their native country.

Also, one of my family members, quite gifted, drove cabs for 20 years--own boss, set your own hours, always a different work day meeting different people and going different places.

Money is not the driving force for everyone.

Nor challenge it seems. So why challenge them in their school work?

Ren

I guess it boils down to what you think school should be. I don't see school as a means to a high paying career. I see it as a means to developing individuals and improving society. A society that needs cab drivers and all sorts of people to keep it running.
Why challenge them in school work? If you stifle a child in school, you are not developing them. They need challenge in order to develop.

Great question -
Answer: Because loving challenge is an aquired taste, so if we don't challenge everyone in school, then we lose the chance for folks to find out if they are some of the ones who enjoy challenge.

You're making straw man arguments. I don't know who has asserted that there are no gifted working class children or that the U.S. is a perfect meritocracy. What has been documented in books such as The Bell Curve is that IQ and socioeconomic status is positively correlated, and that IQ somewhat heritable, which explains the empirical finding that a higher fraction of rich kids than poor kids are gifted.

Do you think that same fraction of cab drivers' kids and doctors' kids are gifted?