Written by: jen h8 on 11/18/98 at 7:12AM.

now that i have all of these memories of public school flooding back,,,

in the public school system, most everywhere, you'll find the "gifted and talented program", a grouping of kids whose iq scores are deemed "above average", via a battery of tests. i was placed into this program in the 1st grade. during the testing, i hadn't a clue what was going on. it seemed that it pleased my parents, so i agreed to be part of the program. now, as i look back, it seems that the program did more harm than good for our social development. it divided the body of students. "look, here are the 'smart kids'. you are just 'average'. you are 'below average'" etc, etc. the gifted kids were kept in the same class all throughout elementary school, unable to socialize with other students. we were kept with our own kind. on the homefront, i was admonished for not keeping grades suitable to my iq score. there was constant stress. (my thoughts on this aren't so clear right now,, i've just woken up) it was also evident that the "gifted kids" were given more opportunities than the other students: special field trips, classes that went beyond the 3 r's, etc,, things that others (say, if some kid had missed the iq score required to enter by a mere one point or if a kid REALLY wanted to learn about) were denied. i'm curious what other's thoughts on this are,, do you think that such programs are good or bad for kids ?

xo jen

Replies:

Reply from: caseycultist on 11/18/98 at 7:35AM. i was in the gifted program from second grade on. i can say that it helped me immensely. i hated school and i was so incredibly bored. in elementary school we were bussed to another school to take special classes and i lived for those thursdays. finally, a whole day where no one ostracized me for being intelligent and female. directly because of the program, i was able to start taking high school foreign language classes in 7th grade and ended up graduateing high school early. i would have dropped out if i'd had to stay in schoo another year.

but on the flip side, i can see how it was classist and biased against non verbal/mathematical intelligence. west virginia public schools just plain sucked and it's sad that all the kids couldn't have oppotunities to take classes on architecture, logic and problem-solving, and ancient egyptian studies.

Reply from: katGurl on 11/18/98 at 7:39AM. i was in the gifted program all the way through elementary , middle and high school. i have a very hard time related to the "mainstream" now....*shrug*

Reply from: katGurl on 11/18/98 at 7:40AM. maybe thats just cause i'm a social deviant though??? :)

Reply from: punkgrrrl on 11/18/98 at 7:44AM. i was accepted to a "gifted" program at my old middle skool, but i didn't go cuz i hated everyone in it and they hated me

Reply from: brock on 11/18/98 at 7:59AM. i was in the gifted program from first grade until when it was discontinued at my school, when i was a junior in high school. the gifted program was basically a joke here, there were no separate classes or anything, but we got to do lots of things that other kids didn't get to do, like go on field trips, hear speakers, etc. the thing that sucked is that like...whenever i got a B on a math test (in elementary school) all the teachers would rag on me because i was supposed to be gifted and the material should just be too easy for me. it was very stressful and dumb, overall.

Reply from: muffie on 11/18/98 at 8:20AM. casey put it best i think.

Reply from: An anonymous viewer on 11/18/98 at 8:22AM. top

Reply from: An anonymous viewer on 11/18/98 at 8:26AM. top

Reply from: esk on 11/18/98 at 8:37AM. my experience was pretty similar to casey's. our TAG program didn't keep us in the same class all through elem. school - we just had one day a week where we were bussed off to TAG classes. i AM really unsocial and find it hard to relate to the "mainstream," but i honestly think i would have ended up that way regardless of whether i was in TAG or not.

i guess i quit going to TAG classes around late middle school/high school. i'm not even sure if my school district had TAG for older students. but i was always involved in weird "gifted" stuff in one way or another. it's probably the only thing that made high school bearable. i do agree with the classist stuff...

Reply from: sweetpea on 11/18/98 at 10:15AM. i was in the gifted program in elementary school. we were tested in third grade, and started the program in fourth. i was made to take the test twice. i didn't pass it the first time, but the teachers thought i could do better, so i took it again...talk about pressure...heh. honestly, i wish i had just failed it again. it was a good opportunity i suppose as far as learning new things, but i was immediatly stigmatized b/c i took the test twice. i definitly did not belong there and spent most of my time crying b/c i was afraid and frustrated. the teacher treated me as a special case and put twice as much pressure on me. and this was only fourth through sixth grade!! when i moved to junior high, i was placed in honors classes, which i also did not belong in, and succeeded in flunking most of those classes. so i would say i had a very negative experience in "gifted" programs...

Reply from: chococat on 11/18/98 at 10:26AM. the idea of a gifted and talented program sounds ideal......................if your white upper class. gifted and talented programs do nothing more but to prep young kids for their future roles as domineering leaders and as for the rest of the students; they can be the followers. what i mean is if your not "gifted and talented" where does that leave you? everyone is intellegent in their own manner. whether it be the rich kid knowing how to solve scientific equations or the poor kid knowing how to prepare their own meals. i know people whose self-esteems are totally fucked up due to classification in grammer school. it takes forever if ever to undo the damage of being officially labeled by our grand education system as "slow".

Reply from: caseycultist on 11/18/98 at 10:39AM. chococat, i totally understand that. i think you're mostly right. the program helped me a lot, but it's very unfair that there weren't things to help people with all types of intelligence and talents.

Reply from: An anonymous viewer on 11/18/98 at 10:45AM. i heart jen h8. awww yeah! mail's here!

Reply from: chococat on 11/18/98 at 10:48AM. in my opinion i think elementary education should focus on everyone's individual talents. i do however know where you are coming from when you say they helped you a lot. i attended a magnet school for business(i'm pro-socialism) just to escape the high school i was supposed to attend. i think a lot of kids need to rescued from school environments that focus more on discipline than actual education.

Reply from: An anonymous viewer on 11/18/98 at 11:24AM. I was in the gifted program from third grade until graduation. I was considered a "geek", but I think that was inevitable. Our gifted program really didn't do much- every once in while, we took a team of kids to a competition (equations, presidents, creative convention, etc.) for a day. The only real difference was that I was placed in English, math, and Spanish classes with the grade above me. I DO NOT agree that gifted programs are just for white, middle-class or affluent kids. The fact is that most white, middle-class gifted kids get to go to private schools. Gifted programs in public schools give working-class kids opportunities that would otherwise be denied them. I do agree that gifted programs should encompass different types of giftedness. Math and English are NOT the only "gifts". I know brilliant kids who were never given the opportunities they needed, and I think it's important to look beyond grades, etc. (Actually, my grades were good, but never fantastic. I was too bored to care, most of the time.) Gifted programs certainly need to be restructured in order to nurture the diverse talents of diverse people, and less emphasis needs to be put on grades. However, these opportunities need to continue! If we take away any chance for advancement in public schools, then it WILL only be the middle and upper classes who get a chance.

Reply from: Towanda on 11/18/98 at 11:25AM. Sorry- didn't mean to post anonymously! That was me above.

Reply from: esk on 11/18/98 at 12:17PM. "everyone is intellegent in their own manner. whether it be the rich kid knowing how to solve scientific equations or the poor kid knowing how to prepare their own meals."

call me crazy, but i don't like the assumptions made in this statement. so just cause i'm good at science i must be a big bad rich kid? so there aren't poor kids who are just as good at science as me? and for what it's worth, the TAG program in my school district had a bunch of arts and music classes as well as science and math.

Reply from: caseycultist on 11/18/98 at 12:20PM. esk, i don't think that was meant to be an absolute statement, maybe they should have clarified. i think the point is that "upper class" children are encouraged more in those type of fields, while in many cases "lower class" children are herded towards vocational training. i saw it happen in my school all the time. there were some exceptions, but it happened a lot.

Reply from: taylor kelley on 11/18/98 at 12:24PM. I was in the gifted program from second grade to eighth grade, and while the idea of a gifted program is really good my school really didn't understand what "gifted" meant. There is a difference between being gifted and being an overachiever.

Reply from: Shannon Riot on 11/18/98 at 12:32PM. I loved my gifted classes! We got to go on super rad field trips! We went boating, hiking, worked on a farm one day, got to meet a bunch of other kids, and I was poor. I grew up in a very urban, drug infested community, but I still got good grades!I'm also puerto rican and it wasn't a problem. There were black kids too. Not everyone who is gifted is white and rich.

Reply from: dark lady on 11/18/98 at 12:55PM. from the perspective of an educator, i can see a lot of pros with gifted programs. i do not, however, believe in using iq as a basis for placement in gifted programs. iq tests contain internal biases that disadvantage students who aren't white or don't go to o predominatly white schools or students who go to inner city schools, etc. i think placement should be based on interest and performance. i tend to think accelerated programs are better than gifted (ie. a student is given different assignment options or an advanced program of study within a regular classroom setting as opposed to being streamed out of the regular classroom). i think such programs are good because they enable students who can and want to work ahead and think higher on the taxonomy of thinking/questioning to do so. i had a brilliant student in my gr 9 class last year. gr 9 english was FAR below him, so he quickly got bored and became a behavior problem and did not complete assignments. that seems to be the case with a lot of gifted kids (and kids in general); boredom = failure. i spoke with him and we made some advanced programs for him to follow and he loved it and did well as opposed to blowing off the work because it was beneath him. unfortunately, not every teacher has or will make the time to create individual programs for students, so sometimes gifted programs are the next best option. i think we do an injustice to keep gifted students at a level below where they are at and not challenge their thinking. i don't think people grow and develop as much as they can if they aren't challenged.

Reply from: purrgrrl on 11/18/98 at 1:18PM. in the current copntext of school, gifted programmes may be ok...but school, in a stand alone kinda context, offers little to a lot of kids. the 'slow' kids, the 'behavioural problem' kids, 'wierd' ostracised kids etc etc are put on the bottom of the heaps, given a kind of 'maintainence' education - just keep them there. cause see, i reckon all these kids have amazing talents too. but the school system, as it stands alone, offers nothing to these 'differently' (as compared to what school considers 'talent' - maths, science, english etc) talented kids. things like, my boy, he's not so good at math, english whatever, but he can spacially visualise like a mother fucker. i can't do it for shit. ie take a space, and know how big it is, its limits, and what can fit there. i dunno, just saying there are more talents than those praised in our schools. and i agree with the comment up there somewhere, that school is developing 'leaders' and 'followers'. its true. education is only REALLY gearing you up to survive in the sdociety they have set up. its not ACTUAL education, oftentimes.

Reply from: purrgrrl on 11/18/98 at 1:20PM. oh but may i just send my props to the rad teachers out there...including my mum and darklady!! the teachers taht spend time with kids and give a fuck save our arses...

Reply from: dark lady on 11/18/98 at 1:25PM. not that a lot of time or attention is currently given to it, but there is now a theory of 8 (it might be 7, i can't remember for certain) intelligences that is circulating around schools a lot. it recognizes music and other such things (i forget all the areas right now - goddess, i really need to do some research again) that were once only viewed as talents as forms of intelligence.

Reply from: Larry-bob on 11/18/98 at 1:41PM. For 4th through 6th grade, I went to a "magnet" school - the idea was that it was located in a largely african-american section of St. Paul, and white people from other parts of the city would want to have their kids bussed there because of the programs it had. I was one of those who was bussed to the school. In addition to reading and math classes ("basic skills" - one trend at the time was "back to basics" which this school tried to claim to be though it wasn't really) and then "applied skills" classes that you would choose two to take each trimester. There were classes like media lab (black & white video studio, making 16mm animated movies, etc. - I took that at least twice), winter camping, science classes, foreign languages, etc.

The english and math classes were divided up into different levels for each grade. Once you were in a certain level, you generally continued at that level for the rest of your time there. I was in the most advanced math and english class. Anyway, if the point of the school was desegregation, this often resulted in an internal form of segregation, as there was only one African-American kid and one Mexican-American kid in the top English class. It also seemed like the best teacher taught the most advanced kids. Later, the school switched to having subgroups within each class, which seems better - people mingle more, but people still get education geared to their needs.

Reply from: grrrl_x on 11/18/98 at 1:45PM. i was in the program from grade 5--->8....all my regular school treachers hated it and marked my assignments and so on late cuz i was away once a week cuz i was at my gifted school. there were a lot of cons like my school friends who hate dthe idea of it. but at the same time it brought together a whole bunch of students from different schools, so it helped in interaction an so on. also some of the stuff like "higher level thinking skills", and sole of the other stuff we learned actually came in useful eventually....however, it does seperate students, and makes everyone feel awkward and down.

Reply from: herbert on 11/18/98 at 1:55PM. i was in our gifted program from fourth thru sixth grade. our school levy kept failing, so we couldn't keep it, which sucked. we went to a difrent school once a week where we did mostly creative sorts of things. every year, we had to do an independant study whici involved doing a report and a project. we used computers a lot and did a lot of problem solving type things too...i got really sick of being asked where i went every week. but it was good because it got the "gifted" kids out of the classroom, and i know i was usually bored in class. we still had to our homework and everything, just like the rest of the class, though.

Reply from: cherry bomb on 11/18/98 at 1:56PM. in elementary school and jr. high we didn't have gifted classes exactly. there was something called the challenge program where you spent one morning a week doing "advanced things". i was NEVER accepted into this program despite the fact that i was incredibly book smart and fucking awesome at mathematics. (and still am). today all those kids in the challenge program are getting "b"s and "c"s in high school classes.. i'm pulling a solid "a" (91% average, thank ya thank ya).

in high school again we didn't have a gifted program. there were a couple gifted classes. there were math and english classes which were offered at the "enhanced" levels (but for some strange reason they started in grade 10, and then got cancelled in grade 11). personally i didn't find these very challenging either. i was no less bored in these classes than i was in grade nine or grade 11 english and math. (btw. i scored a 91% in enhanced english, and in enchanced math i got something like a 94%.) *shrug* my scores in the grade 11 "regular" classes weren't that different... if anything just a tad lower... go figure.

xox angela who realize this is probably a useless opinion.

Reply from: Paul on 11/18/98 at 2:41PM. Im not against gifted classes, however in highschool the most fucked thing is the STAR classes. YOu learn the same things as regular classes but get more credit...grrrr

Reply from: Towanda on 11/18/98 at 2:42PM. I read about the 7 types of intelligence, too-- this is so much more constructive than IQ! I'm trying to remember what they were...there was musical, mathematical, spatial (like art, architecture, visualization stuff, I think), kinetic (physical), language, interpersonal... I can't remember the rest and don't know if this is right, but it does give you a general idea. Sure would be nice if all of these were encouraged, wouldn't it? : )

Reply from: caseycultist on 11/18/98 at 2:51PM. darklady, i totally agree about internal biases on standardized tests. i taught for three years at an all hare krishna elementary school. by state law, we had to give certain tests to the kids. they would ask kids who had been non-egg eating vegetarians their entire lives questions like, "which would you have for breakfast?" and show a pic of an egg, a rock, grass, and a ball. this is on kindergarten level. half the kids would mark grass, because sometime their parents would make wheat grass juice. some would mark rock. none of them would ever consider eating an egg because of religious/cultural reasons.

back