Gifted

I promised yesterday that I would continue sharing my disturbing memories from my gifted education experience. Fun times, huh?

My elementary school began a pull-out gifted program when I was in fifth grade. More specifically I should say the school district began a gifted program because it wasn't housed at my grade school. Instead, a couple of times a week, I was bused in the middle of the day to another grade school where the gifted program was housed. As much as I can remember, it was essentially free time in a classroom filled with interesting things we could use and look at. I don't remember having extremely strong feelings about it one way or the other, but did wonder why these cool things weren't shared with everyone. You want to know what I remember most about that year? The school the program was housed in was an open classroom model. (I know that I have just significantly dated myself as open classrooms were definitely a 70's thing.) It was the open classrooms that I remember most. I found it endlessly fascinating that I could watch other classrooms as they did their thing. The fact that I have more memories of the other classrooms than the one I was in makes me suspect that I found it a wee bit distracting. 

The next year, my grade school had it's own gifted program, so instead of getting on a bus, I walked down the breezeway to another class. (I went to school in Arizona. Unlike most mid-western schools, these schools were not housed under one room, but had units connected by covered walkways. Every classroom opened to the outside.) This was the program from yesterday's story. It is also the setting for today's more egregious story.

I loved my 6th grade teacher, but didn't really love the gifted teacher, so I was already less than content about the situation. Add in some interactions such as yesterday's, and I think it was fair to say that I was a reluctant gifted student at best. Then, one day, I can remember the teacher sitting us all in a circle for a discussion. She then asked us, "Do you have difficulty getting along with other children because you are smarter than they are?" 

I'll just let you sit with that for a while. 

I was incensed. I can remember thinking that 1) no, why would I? and 2) if I am so much smarter than everyone else, then shouldn't I be able to figure out how to get along with people? I'm sure I did not say either of these things in class. I was not much for speaking in front of groups at this time of my life. But I can clearly remember coming home and letting my family bear the brunt of my anger and irritation. My anger and irritation was actually doubled by the time I got home because I had to sit there and listen to my friends eagerly describe how, yes, they did have difficulty getting along with other people because they weren't as smart. I didn't buy a single word of it. 

Can you tell it still irritates me 45 years later?

I don't think I actually went back to the gifted class because this is when my mother pulled me out at my request. Interestingly, my mother received some push-back from other parents that she would pull her child out of a gifted program when so many parents were fighting to get their child into it. The gifted parent phenomenon is a thing.

[In full disclosure, in 8th grade there was a phenomenal English teacher at my junior high. For reasons I didn't understand, her class was not the one I was assigned to, though many of my friends were. I came home and told my mom that I wanted to be in the English class where they were doing Shakespeare. So she went down to the school the next day and requested I be put in it. There was some sort of song and dance about how a child needed a certain IQ score to be allowed in that class, but they would go check. As she reports it, this was done in an "we'll be nice, but clearly her child isn't as smart as she thinks she is" sort of way. My mother was most gratified when the school official returned uttering an endless stream of apologies about me not being placed appropriately. My schedule was changed that day, and I happily learned about Shakespeare that year.]

Now, first off, it is clear that I was blessed with parents who actually listened to me and took me seriously. I realize it is not every parent that will pull a child from a gifted program just because the child came home and asked to be removed. I actually didn't think anything about it at the time; I was used to being taken seriously by my parents. Now? Having witnessed a much wider swath of parenting? I am both thrilled and a little overwhelmed by the gift of autonomy they gave me and the sense of volition they instilled in me. 

But more, as I think about these experiences, I am equally overwhelmed by how wrong all of this was. My fifth grade self was wise beyond her years in wondering why everyone didn't have the same opportunity. 

For a while, when W. and B. were young, I signed them up for tennis lessons. (I don't know why. It's what parents did. They signed their children up for things that they thought would be good for them regardless of whether or not the child was actually interested. This season didn't last all that long for me.) Anyway, we are not a sporty family and my children were not destined to go on the tennis circuit. The tennis lessons they were taking were not going to help them improve, though, either. What I found particularly annoying was the teaching methodology. Everything was an elimination game. This meant that if you were good, you got the most play. If you needed a lot more practice, this was exactly what you did not get because you had been eliminated rather early on. The only thing the lessons did was convince the children who needed more practice that they were not gifted tennis players, pretty much insuring that they would never be.

Gifted.

Gifted, as in there is something intrinsic about the child that makes them more able, more capable, just better than other children. It isn't that a child works harder or starts with more opportunities or comes from an extremely well-educated family and thus already starts with a leg up, it is that this gifted child is different. Better. More deserving of resources. Because we would hate to waste resources and time and effort and opportunity on a child who was just mediocre.

Does this offend some of you? It shouldn't because this is at the heart of the entire notion of gifted education. Some are born better, we need to invest in them. Some are born average, we don't need to do as much with them because they won't amount to as much. 

The statistics on the outcomes of gifted children are not great. So many times the gifted child does not measure up to the greatness assumed about them. They are usually just average, as if that is some horrendous thing to have happened. 

The idea that gifted children are going to do better because they are better is actually at odds with current brain science which has found that people who are told they are intrinsically smarter or better actually stop trying. There is too much pressure to prove that they are as wonderful or smart or talented as everyone say they are. Instead, the people who excel are the ones who know they have to work for everything. They are not paralyzed by living up to expectations, instead they work harder.

Wouldn't it be better to communicate to children that everyone will have areas that come easier to them and areas where they will have to work a bit more? Why can't we challenge children where they need more stimulation to reach their point of struggle and support those children who have a lower threshold? Why do we have to put a moral judgement on it? I am of the opinion that children shouldn't actually know if they are performing beyond what is typical. It does them no favors, while learning to fail and push through challenges does. 

Frankly, I think the idea of gifted education is a crock, as is the entire notion of any type of standardized education for anyone. No child is standardized, and the minute that we think they are, then we run into this notion of some children being better than others. I didn't buy it in fifth grade and I don't buy it now.