Gifted Education Benefits all of Us
Students with special gifts merit special attention. If you do not believe that is true, why do we
build football stadiums for our high school students when that money could just
as easily build science, math and engineering labs? We are rewarding (properly so, I might add)
their special gifts for athletics. Yet,
the collective “we” of the general population frequently hesitate to provide or
even reject the same special attention (…facilities, instruction, paraphernalia…)
when the recipients are the intellectually gifted. There is also an assumption that intellectual
giftedness can only express itself in STEM classes. Wrong.
It can also show itself in mechanical advantages, entrepreneurial advantages
and artistic advantages. We do not want
a nation of people who know how to get a rocket off the ground but nobody who
knows how to build one!
The
magazine Scientific American published
an article “How to Raise a Genius: Lessons From a 45-Year Study of Supersmart
Children.” I strongly recommend it for
anyone interested in education and the future of this country. What it did not discuss was the fact that our
gifted children are an at risk group. They
have a dropout rate equal to all other students (about 5%) but when we lose a
gifted student we lose a statistically rarer resource. Yet there is precious little sympathy for the
needs of gifted students and no legislation to make sure that none of them are
left behind. Worst, there is an
assumption in the educational “triage” which occurs on an hourly basis in
America’s classrooms that smart kids will always land on their feet. That assumption is wrong.
It is time
to boldly say that all students are not created equal, nor should they be
treated that way. An educational system
designed to homogenize will regress toward the mean at the expense of the
entire society. Those who are more
interested in equality than excellence will start grinding their molars when
they hear this, but if we get more educational bang for the buck by providing
an exceptional education for exceptional students than what is lost by doing
that? Let me make this clear, I am NOT
in favor of taking one penny or an iota of respect away from other school
programs. I want something much more
revolutionary. I want a bold conceptual
change that would mandate schools to provide our gifted students with extra
effort, extra time, special instruction and unique facilities. I want new money, dedicated in
proportionately larger amounts to these students. If the only way to make this palatable is to
provide more money for all education, then we all win.
There is a residual jealousy and
suspicion of people with intellectual advantage. The same exceptional talent, expressed in
sports, music or the arts is lauded. But exceptional intelligence is considered
suspect. Part of this is due to the
American attitude that physical acumen is inherently more meritorious than its
mental counterpart. It is a carryover
from our frontier past when worth was measured in physical evidence of
production. Evidently if you can’t see
what is being done, nothing of importance is happening.
Studies of
productivity and its correlation to intelligence show that this perception is
wrong, but changing 200 years of enculturation is no job for the faint of
heart. So is arguing against a
socialistic attitude of commonality that seeps into modern education like the
choking roots of a weeping willow into the sewer lines. There is an insidious belief in education
that gifted intelligence is to be discouraged and disparaged but disadvantaged
is to be encouraged and elevated. Victim
mentality makes people so much easier to control, just feed their paranoia and
you have them where you can manipulate them.
Support the
gifted and keep the faith.
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