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From: preece@uicsl.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.kids
Subject: Re: "Talented and Gifted" program - (nf)
Message-ID: <22800011@uicsl.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 3-Feb-84 14:16:00 EST
Article-I.D.: uicsl.22800011
Posted: Fri Feb  3 14:16:00 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 11-Apr-84 01:15:33 EST
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Nf-ID: #R:ihuxr:-86900:uicsl:22800011:000:2777
Nf-From: uicsl!preece    Feb  3 13:16:00 1984

#R:ihuxr:-86900:uicsl:22800011:000:2777
uicsl!preece    Feb  3 13:16:00 1984

I don't know exactly what I'd push if I were on a school board. It's
easy to pick on particular abuses and apparent conflicts between
practice and common sense; it's harder to see how to restructure
things to work better within a standard framework.  Ideally each
student would be able to follow each educational strand at his or
her own pace.  Teachers would be resources for students who drove
themselves and would try to find ways to excite the rest so that
they, too, would be self-driven.  Ideally students would be more
interested in what they were learning than in the fact that they
were ahead of or behind others.  Ideally a student showing a level
of insight or intuition indicative of a special gift would be
matched to a tutor capable of expanding that gift into a talent.

Some private schools are fairly good models of this ideal, but only
for a limited, selected few.  Even there, though, the kids will
ignore the ideal of egalitarianism.  Anything you do to reward
excellence, or even acknowledge it will be mis-used as a stratifier
by the kids themselves.  I don't see how you can avoid this in a
competitive society.  What you have to do is make sure your kids
know that each is unique and special and that any obvious gift is
not 'better' than an unknown one.

But school boards have limited funds. It's hard to see how any
teacher can make each of 35 kids feel special, though there are the
gifted few who manage it.  It's hard to see how a union can lead to
the proper appreciation and promotion of merit and competence and
hard to see how unorganized teachers can be protected from arbitrary
and capricious administrators and school boards.  Students who are
self-motivated need a different kind of teacher interaction than
those who think school is a drag.  It's hard for one teacher to
be both kinds of teacher.  My father's on a school board.  They don't
spend a lot of time trying to find innovative ways to improve the
effectiveness of teaching; they spend a LOT of time trying to figure
out how to support the most basic programs in the face of severe money
problems.

I guess the bottom line is I'd rather they did SOMETHING special with
gifted kids, even if it is half-assed and sometimes inept.  The self
image problem is very real.  Doing something to acknowledge their
specialness in one area may do much to cancel their feelings
of social discomfort.  There needs to a lot more insight in finding
the gifted student hidden by cultural or economic handicaps.  There are
kids out there who should be in gifted programs but are stuck in the
lowest tracks because they lack basic skills.  Somehow we have to look
beyond a superficial ignorance to find a hidden brilliance.  IQ tests
clearly aren't enough.

scott preece
ihnp4!uiucdcs!uicsl!preece