A lot of time and money is spent thinking about special needs children, says Florida State University professor Steven I. Pfeiffer, while there is an assumption that no educational resources need to be provided for 'gifted' kids to help them thrive in school.
"There is a view occasionally expressed by those outside of the gifted field that we don't need programs devoted specifically to gifted students," Pfeiffer, member of the Department of Educational Psychology and Learning Systems, said. "'Oh, they're smart, they'll do fine on their own' is what we often hear. And because of this anti-elitist attitude, it's often difficult to get funding for programs and services that help us to develop some of our brightest, most advanced kids -- America's most valuable resource."
A key problem in working with gifted children is one of definition. What exactly does it mean to be 'gifted'?
Part of Pfeiffer's research has been finding ways to best identify those children. To that end, he led a group that developed a diagnostic test which complements the widely used intelligence test in identifying children who might be gifted. Pfeiffer's test is now being used in more than 600 school districts across the nation and has been translated for use in a number of other countries. (For more information on the Gifted Rating Scales, visit www.fsu.com/pages/2006/11/20/gifted_rating_scales.html.)
"For almost a hundred years, schools used one measure, the IQ test," stated Pfeiffer. "Our own research indicates that the IQ test, although it works fairly well, is not without limitations in identifying giftedness. We launched a project to develop a test that would be a companion to the IQ test in helping educators better identify those children who have potential but perhaps are missed on IQ tests."
But once that is accomplished, how do we help them best? Harder classes isn't necessarily productive.
Pfeiffer discusses the issue of defining giftedness, how to best nurture it and many of the emotional and social challenges facing gifted children in a new paper, "The Gifted: Clinical Challenges and Practice Opportunities for Child Psychiatry," published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child&Adolescent Psychiatry.
"Even within the gifted field, there is considerable controversy regarding definitional, conceptual and diagnostic issues," Pfeiffer said. "However, as a generally agreed-upon definition, gifted children are those who are in the upper 3 percent to 5 percent compared to their peers in one or more of the following domains: general intellectual ability, specific academic competence, the visual or performing arts, leadership and creativity."
In other work involving gifted students, the state of Florida recently asked Pfeiffer and his team to lead an effort to help Florida's best and brightest high school students reach their potential so they can help the state reach its. The result was the establishment of the Florida Governor's School for Space Science and Technology, which was created by the Legislature in 2007. (Visit www.fsu.com/pages/2008/04/08/space_science_and_tech.html to read more.)
"The Florida State University -- in partnership with the Florida Institute of Technology and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University -- was fortunate to be asked to develop a plan to design a state-of-the-art residential academy for Florida's most capable high school students," Pfeiffer said. "Essentially, the Florida Legislature was interested in providing resources for Florida's brightest students in high schools, particularly in terms of a curriculum which would emphasize science, math, engineering and technology."
Pfeiffer is working with the national organization SENG (Supporting Emotional Needs of the Gifted) to develop a certification system so that professionals working with gifted children -- educators, mental health providers, pediatricians and others -- will be able to receive an official designation citing their expertise in this area.
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Anonymous (not verified) | 01/13/09 | 23:31 PM
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My youngest succumbed and believed the system more thoroughly, of course things became more evident as "no child left behind" exhibited its ugly mug. Sleazy administrators now find ways to expel and degrade children more thoroughly. They keep their records pure by using expulsion is a major cleansing tool. Select students, the artistic, the bombastic, many times obnoxious, are tagged and held to a near probationary standard until they can be done away with. The school-ocracy has produced a class of kids who are convinced that they are not going to make it, can't hack it, aren't up to George Bush's standards.
Those who succeed in this system, keep their hands folded and take the repeated pretests to boost test scores, so they can upgrade the schools and the careers of the administrators. Mommys and (sometimes) daddys do the homework, cover for failures and eventually give us a voting populace that chooses to elect a rich kid C grade (really?) student who was padded through the system and eventually ended up in the highest office in the land. What is taught?
Remember "students" keep quiet, game the system, suck up and you can exhibit you skills on Wall Street one day. Remember oh great designators of class. Gates, Jobs and hundreds of thousands had to jump out of the education system early to get going, hell Wozniac was going to get charged twenty thousand dollars by his "place of higher learning" because he snuck in the lab and used the facilities, Einstein failed math.
Find children's gifts (and they all have them) and nurture. I worked with mildly (it was called at the time) retarded young men in a halfway house to integrate them into society. Each of them, with the minimal amount of time invested in observing and interacting showed talents in one area or another, it was a thrilling experience.
Let us tread lightly into the realm of elitism and stun ourselves by developing the individual gifts of each.
Anonymous (not verified) | 01/14/09 | 06:43 AM
http://www.time.com/time/2007/einstein/3.html
Anonymous (not verified) | 01/14/09 | 12:48 PM
So the basic point, the right person held to the wrong standard will still be a failure, is a valid one. We'd be without an uncertainty principle if expert knowledge of a battery made a difference in theoretical physics.
Hank Campbell | 01/14/09 | 14:27 PM
That Einstein cut classes wholesale is proverbial. A few courses held his interest intensely, but he often found that the lectures were not on the portions of physics that fascinated him – and he stopped going to class. What is less often realized is the Einstein spent his time in the lab. And in reading the primary literature, the research literature of physics. Einstein’s route was not the easy way out.
Robert H Olley | 01/14/09 | 14:33 PM
Anonymous (not verified) | 01/14/09 | 02:01 AM
Anonymous (not verified) | 01/14/09 | 03:32 AM
Robert H Olley | 01/14/09 | 14:15 PM
bruce (not verified) | 01/14/09 | 02:12 AM
(on a personal note: This is what happens when a poor kid gets a PhD, despite school systems without gifted classes until junior high.)
MIckey Schafer (not verified) | 01/14/09 | 14:30 PM
Anonymous (not verified) | 01/14/09 | 03:53 AM
Anonymous (not verified) | 01/14/09 | 07:31 AM
Anonymous (not verified) | 01/14/09 | 07:31 AM
I spent years showing up to class, goofing off, and getting 100% scores on any test handed to me. At around the age of 16, we started getting work which wasn't exactly difficult, but which required a small amount of practice to sit right in my brain. Having never needed to practice *anything* relating to schoolwork, I didn't do any practice and so my grades fell off a cliff. This obviously did wonders for my self-esteem.
Combine this with the earlier realisation that the only point in putting me in school with my alleged peers was to hold me back from doing anything useful in my life until I had jumped though a sufficient number of The Man's hoops, and every day of school became a cruel and twisted joke...
The idea that putting gifted kids into mainstream schooling gives them a "social education" is bogus, for the simple reason that most of my classmates were evil, stupid and jealous of my ability. Not that *everyone* was like that. The other intelligent kids being similarly hobbled by the education system were pretty decent company, for the most part, even if we did sort of drag each other down into a common pit of intellectual suffering.
Reading that back makes it look like I'm resorting to hyperbole. Really, I'm not. A lack of challenge and a lack of usefulness during my school years literally twisted my mind, and I'm still trying to recover from it many years on.
I'm sure that some study will eventually find a correlation between "IQ" (for want of a more acceptable term) and academic achievement, which will probably show a strong match at lower levels, then a sudden peak at a sweet spot where the level of challenge is sufficient to tax moderately intelligent pupils and drive them to greater success, and following that a number of kids who looked "gifted" on paper but who "didn't live up to expectations".
Oh, I know that there are plenty of gifted kids who made it through the school system okay, but I'd put that down to brilliant parenting, or a life goal which they were lucky enough to set themselves early. For every one of those guys, there's plenty more of us who slipped through the cracks.
Anonymous (not verified) | 01/14/09 | 08:01 AM
Posted from Work...
Bob Briggs (not verified) | 01/14/09 | 09:18 AM
The idea that putting gifted kids into mainstream schooling gives them a "social education" is bogus
With age I have come to recognize that 'social education' at every level is an organized campaign by the education industry. Kids have to be in a public school with 1000 kids or else they won't adjust properly and learn social skills? Since we got into that mentality, adjusted scores for kids are far below what they two generations ago. I'd rather have more Einstein's and fewer American Idol viewers.
Hank Campbell | 01/14/09 | 09:49 AM
And Schrödinger's cat certainly spent a lot of time on the tiles.
Robert H Olley | 01/14/09 | 14:25 PM
I'm in my 40's now (ugh), and I realize that I could have gone much further if I had swallowed my individualist streak and just conformed (get a degree). I don't envy the kids of today - they see even more pressure, and have even more traps to fall into. I worry about my kids, and hope that my experience can be of benefit to them.
Anonymous (not verified) | 01/14/09 | 12:47 PM
Terese K. (not verified) | 01/14/09 | 11:27 AM
JK (not verified) | 01/14/09 | 11:34 AM
It isn't clear what the main article here is proposing be done. While I agree that gifted programs that do anything meaningful are rare in the US, what is the way forward?
yet another kevin (not verified) | 01/14/09 | 12:33 PM
I'm not convinced that "gifted" programs are the problem. Instead I would suggest that, in the U.S. specifically, there is a marked disregard for education. While many cultures value an education (which is presumably why they do better), the primary focus here seems to be sports and entertainment.
As a result, all one has to do is see how "intelligent" people are portrayed on television and movies, and it isn't too difficult to see where the problem lies.
While "gifted" programs may provide more challenges and be useful, they aren't the solution if the society doesn't respect intelligence or education. Students will always feel that they are having to vie for social acceptance (i.e. not simply be geeks), or to be isolated from their peers by excelling. In my personal experience, it wasn't until well into adulthood that it became acceptable to be smart. Even now, there is resistance (from others) to being intelligent or knowledgeable because if you're not careful then the perception is that you're intimidating to others or holding them to too high a standard.
I suspect many reading these posts may get a sense of discomfort from some of the comments because we've been so conditioned to the idea that even mentioning personal intelligence is a form of bragging that we shouldn't express.
I think it's safe to say that for the majority of people they don't mind helping someone less fortuanate (i.e. "special needs") because it preserves their relative sense of "superiority" and so is not a challenge. However, when confronted by someone smarter than themselves, most people feel resentful because it may cause them to face their own inadequacies or insecurities. It isn't uncommon to see that in any social gathering, the individual that is engaged in more "intellectual" discussions (not to the point of being boorish) will invariably be standing alone unless there are peers in attendance that share those interests.
Gerhard Adam | 01/14/09 | 13:01 PM
Steve Davis | 01/14/09 | 18:33 PM
biker dude (not verified) | 01/14/09 | 19:18 PM
I was bored as hell growing up with what the teachers were talking about. Consequently, I didn't bother to do anything they wanted me to. Instead I found other ways to entertain myself: drawing, playing music, inventing new role-playing games, creating algebra problems to solve, and lifting weights. To this day, I only work hard at things I find interesting. Thankfully, I find a lot of things interesting.
Gerard brought up a related point that I'd like to expand on: basically, the idea that our culture doesn't value intelligence (and maybe more importantly the work it takes to maximize ones intelligence).
I think we live in a culture of apathy. (I grew up in a world that is eerily reminiscent of the one from the TV show "My Name is Earl." I realize that for more middle-class kids, the overall look of their world may be different, but the underlying culture isn't.) One of the key cultural realities in modern America is that kids are apathetic in nearly every way possible. With a massive apathy vibe all around you, it is very hard to get excited about something to the point of working hard, and enduring the opportunity costs, to pursue it. Why bother.
We do value athletes, in principle, but most kids aren't willing to endure the pain of constant workouts anymore than they are the pain of regular study (Note that most of America's greatest NFL and NBA players come from destitute circumstances, and worked hard to "get out" from them). I'm a weightlifting coach in my "off" time, and I see it constantly. Kids, and adults, are lazy as hell. We are not a culture of "pull ourselves up by the bootstraps" Clint Eastwood's. We're all Cheech's and Chong's.
It isn't the school system, it's us.
Nicholas Horton | 01/14/09 | 21:40 PM
Scientists have done themselves no favor wading into the cultural/political arena. It has made people regard the real fringe element as having an agenda. Like scientists who work for Big Tobacco or Big Oil, the perception is that scientists endorsing political causes are not being objective.
Athletes get more admiration because it's one of the few meritocracies remaining. No one suggests quotas for minorities (well, not yet), disabled access, political correctness on the field or anything except performance in the sports arena. Their expertise is not subjective and it's not based on political infighting or favoritism or tenure.
Ummm, how did you get into grad school with bad grades?
Hank Campbell | 01/15/09 | 03:12 AM
I would have to disagree, Hank. While much of what you say is essentially true, I would argue that most Americans aren't that specific in their assessment.
Maybe I'm being too cynical, but the single most significant thing I can identify is the amount of money someone earns. Academic expertise isn't valued, because most don't earn enough money to impress the ordinary citizen. This is why we have such a fascination with entertainers, sports figures, CEOs of large corporations, etc.. This is also why most people don't have a problem with academic achievement, but rather they simply associate it with being doctors or lawyers.
I also think people are skeptical about anyone expressing political opinions when they don't agree with the individual's personal view. I've seen too many programs that were critical of the opinions expressed by entertainers, unless there were entertainers that agreed with the program's political leanings. But why would we even care .... because the perception is that they are rich, and that wealth buys influence which is what people ultimately care about.
In my opinion, if being a physicist was considered a "good job", then students would be lining up to enroll and parents would be encouraging it.
I would also agree with Nicholas in the assertion that the majority of people aren't motivated enough to engage in committing to an education or physical endeavor unless there's a relatively short-term "pay off" associated with the effort. Far too many people in this country think they should be rewarded just for showing up.
Gerhard Adam | 01/15/09 | 11:12 AM
For such children elementary school is a total waste of time.
I was one of them, and I was in gifted programs all though school. They bored me to tears.
They were teaching me algebra in seventh grade--and I was teaching myself advanced calculus, by reading the
Goursat books from Dover publications. They were teaching me Plane Geometry and I was reading
Differential Geometry. They were teaching me to play jingle bells on the recorder in fifth grade, and I was teaching myself to play Chopin on the piano.
Thank god for Dover publications. Today, there are all kinds of things on the internet, such as the MIT open courseware.
The worst thing about gifted classes is that they are most often taught by teachers with two sigma IQ--who have no clue about the thought processes of the really gifted:
Draw a radio wave. ( I didn't have ten dimensional graph paper!). "What planet is closest to the Earth ?" "No, not the Earth." I didn't have an ephemeris. He meant: "What non-earth planet has the closest orbit to the orbit of the earth?"
At home, I was doing star spectroscopy ( thank god for Edmund Scientific).
One teacher tortured me in seventh grade because
I didn't have a notebook. " If you don't learn to have a notebook--no matter how smart you are, you will never get through high school, let alone college." ( What use is a notebook for someone with almost perfect eidetic memory?)
This even though, I had perfect test scores.
I sent him a letter when I was member of the "Institute for Advanced Study" saying: " I still don't have a notebook."
School below university level should be an "opt-out", if you are really gifted--it is a waste of your time. I spent that time
in school staring out of the window. Until 15--when I was allowed to go to university.
Undergraduate school is also a waste--so gifted kids should go right to grad school ( which in math and science is on the right level) at ten years old or so.
Really gifted kids in "gifted classes" : Like ordinary bright kids in classes for dull average kids.
Really gifted kids in " ordinary classes": Like ordinary bright kids in classes for the mentally retarded.
Someone will say that school is needed to teach kids to socialize with "normal " kids. Baloney. The really gifted will NEVER socialize with normals--because that would be like a normal kid socializing with the retarded. They will seek
out other really gifted kids ( even if they need to use the web), because that is their natural peer group. Otherwise, they will grow up insane.
As adults they will never socialize with normals. They will never work with them either. They will become scientists and university profs etc., and will insulate themselves from interaction with normals as much as possible. Or they will find ways to be self -employed inventors etc ( like my dad). In the workplace, they may have to suffer from a Dean or
Chairman who is only somewhat gifted--because life is imperfect. Their solution will be: Do more research, and get enough grants and prestige to be left more alone by idiots.
penny (not verified) | 01/17/09 | 03:02 AM
I don't think most really gifted people CARE about being fawned on by the general population. After all, these people can't understand your work. Here is an Einstein Story:
Einstein was on a boat with his friend Charles Chaplin, and they arrived at the dock, where a crowd of screaming reporters were hailing Einstein ( after Eddington's Eclipse Experiment). He said--in sutto voice--to Charlie ( who was the expert on "fame"): "What does this mean, Charlie?" Chaplin's answer was : " Nothing, Albert, Nothing."
Similarly, Peter Lax was famous for saying: " I don't work for general fame, I work for the grudging admiration of a few
close colleagues."
So given that, who cares if film stars and athletes and CEOs get fame?
However, it would be nice if the employed really gifted earned enough money to not have to waste emotional energy and time on money fears ; This energy would better spent on such things as research--and that would benefit society.,
The reason to accept awards ( Macarthur, Nobel etc.) is to get the resources they will provide to do MORE research etc.
Along these lines, If a kid is a proto-scientist, and highly gifted she will not need to be lured into science by public
acclaim of famous scientists. In fact, that crap was pushed in my childhood--when scientists WERE public heroes--and it took me a lifetime to get the negative psychological effects OUT of my mind. Science is about Science.
Ding in Sich.
Science is not driven by the need for fame. It is driven by curiosity, and to some extent by competition with your research peers--ala Peter Lax.
penny (not verified) | 01/17/09 | 03:27 AM
As long as their are good resources for the gifted on the net, at libraries etc., it is on NO IMPORTANCE to get praise from
society--aka from the general public. They don't understand the work anyway.
If people want to fawn over Hip-Hop, and I can still get classical sheet music --why do I care?
If people want to fawn over football, and can still get the Chess column ( on the net usually)--why do I care?
If people want to watch "Dr. House" and I watch "Gotterdamerung" on You Tube--that's ok with me.
Now that we have the web, things are much better.
I ignore popular culture--I opt out--I ignore it in the same way that I ignore dumb people.
p.s. I know of "Dr House" because it was playing at a Pizza Joint that I ate at. That's how I find out about such things.
Why people need blaring TV to eat by, is beyond me. I ate fast and got out.
penny (not verified) | 01/17/09 | 03:39 AM
There are plenty of such kids, and their has been a surplus of physicists ( and mathematicians) for the last 35 years--so that many Phd graduates can't find tenured jobs at research universities.
Why are people constantly trying to increase enrollment in physics? We should be raising standards and DECREASING
enrollment!!
This holds for all the other sciences as well. We have a long standing surplus of scientists. We don't NEED to get
people interested in this career--we need to raise standards and decrease the supply. Then those who really love the field, and who are good enough at it ,
will have a chance at decent paying and stable career at it.
.
penny (not verified) | 01/17/09 | 03:46 AM
I hope I have said useful stuff.
penny (not verified) | 01/17/09 | 03:49 AM
Céad Mile Fáilte
Penny, it's nice to see you back on the block / blog.
You and many others have raised some important points here. I expect, though, that by the time I have got my own thoughts on the subject sorted the topic will have gone cold.
Robert H Olley | 01/17/09 | 08:30 AM
I have missed you too, kindred spirit!!
penny (not verified) | 01/17/09 | 10:08 AM
Steve Davis | 01/18/09 | 02:29 AM
