Josh's Crosstime Salute

Saturday, March 16

10 - Noon -- Chess Variations

Noon - 1 -- LUNCH!

1 - 3 -- Magic Systems in Fantasy Stories

3 - 5 -- Building Histories for Your Fantasy, Science Fiction, or Dystopia

Sunday, March 17

9 - 11 -- What Does It Mean to be Gifted? (Kids)

11 - 12 LUNCH

Everything below here is in the Student Center (W20) on the 3rd floor, as part of the Spark Parents Program
Note: These are one hour blocks, as opposed to the 2 hour blocks for the Kids' program.

12 - 1 -- What Does It Mean To Be Gifted?

1 - 2 -- Magic Systems in Fantasy Stories

2 - 3 -- Non-Traditional Students, Non-Traditional College Options

3 - 4 -- Non-Traditional Students, Non-Traditional College Options (Repeat Session)

I have largely left LiveJournal, though I am maintaining the space and prior posts. OTOH, since I haven't told anybody I have done so, I suspect you didn't know it until now! I am joshwriting at dreamwidth, just as I was at LJ.

This entry was originally posted at https://joshwriting.dreamwidth.org/214087.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

This is a tardy entry to the Hoagies Gifted Education Page Blog Hop because the topic is gifted underachievement and how could I possibly not have procrastinated on it?!



Things I know about gifted underachievers:

1. The parents do not know their kids best, the bulk of the time.
2. The schools do not know the students best, the bulk of the time.
3. The kids do not know themselves best, the bulk of the time.

We mostly do not know these kids and neither do they usually know themselves. Sometimes the profile is familiar to a parent, because it fit them or one of their relatives, but that doesn’t mean that anybody figured out how to help that other person and it also doesn’t mean that what the parent thinks they needed is what the child or teen needs.

The schools have been failing underachievers of all stripes for as long as we’ve had schools. See below for more on that.

And if the youngster knew what was going on for them, their lives would be so much easier! Often they can identify a piece of it or maybe two, but it isn’t as simple as just getting more challenging work – or certainly not by the time that the dreaded underachiever label has been plastered on their forehead.

Things I know about not helping gifted underachievers:

What research tells us about the causes of underachievement among gifted students:

Merriam-Webster, Etymonline, and several other sources will tell you that “underachiever” came into the language in 1951 – 1953. They’re wrong. It was first used in 1939, as far as I can tell, in E.G. Williamson’s How to counsel students; a manual of techniques for clinical counselors. In it, he wrote:What research tells us about helping gifted underachievers:

Everything and nothing.

If you’ve read my work before, there is a good chance you have tripped across my complaints about the lack of clear definition of underachievement and this other quote from Williamson:
That means that whether you learn that there are 3, 4, of 5 types of gifted underachievers or what the six steps you must take to meet the needs of your underachiever will be, you are still almost certainly going to be behind the 8-ball, playing catch-up to a problem you wish you had seen coming.

Research tells us that sometimes it is a fit between the child and the teacher. But we also have learned that sometimes it isn’t – and we don’t know the percentages of which is which! Research tells us that sometimes a parenting style is a contributing factor. But we don’t then know why it was a problem for child X, but not Y or Z in the same family! This suggests that it is not simply the parenting style or, possibly, the parenting style at all!

There is very little replication of research with regard to gifted underachievers or underachievers at all, for that matter. This has been a constant complaint since at least 1965, but it isn’t as if Williamson wasn’t aware of the problem: “Additional studies must be made for each school and college to determine the amount of discrepancy for each school.” You and I both know that was never going to happen, but he couldn’t see how an individual school would otherwise know what kind of gap was indicative of a problem.

Thanks a bunch, Josh. Now what should be do?

1. Don’t blame your kid. There is a pretty good chance that if succeeding academically were a matter of volition, you would have a child who was succeeding academically.
2. Don’t blame the school or yourselves at this point, either. You lack data – and when you get the data, if you get the data, still don’t blame them or yourselves! Blame will not help make things better.
3. Talk to your child and the teacher(s) to see what kind of gap you are discussing. See what the teacher’s perception of the problem is. See what your child’s perception of the problem is. Listen.
4. Look at what else is going on in your child’s life. Is it full or overfull? Is your child still doing the stuff they love? Have the dropped anything else that is/was important to them? Is there a new thing (or person or activity) that is absorbing all the time and energy? Is there enough sleep happening and how are eating habits? Was there a building change? (yes, that is a documented disruption for some kids’ educations and lives!) Were they coasting and suddenly hit a topic they could not learn intuitively, but had no skills for learning something that required actual effort? (No, do not talk to me about Growth Mindset!)
5. Ask questions. Don’t assume you know any of the answers. Don’t assume that finding the answers will be quick, either. Be patient! Nothing happening around this at this point in time is going to ruin your child’s life. (I know. This is a nonstandard response, but you’re talking to somebody who had to go through his own life to learn that lesson, several times over. Feel free to ask me about it.)
6. There are books that have half a clue on the topic, depending on whether there is a learning disability (or some such) or not. The last books I liked a lot on gifted underachievers (sans LD issues) are from 1980 (Rand Whitmore) and 1991 (Supplee). The last book I liked (okay, the only book so far) on physically disabled gifted was 1983 (Maker and Rand Whitmore), though I am working on one almost as we speak. Other than that, I wouldn’t bother. They talk about the importance of having teachers whom the underachieving students feel respect them, among other things. Dr. Donna Ford has some books out for you to consider if it seems to be related to racial, ethnic, or multi-cultural issues in or out of the school.
7. Don’t just put the kid in harder courses unless you are ready for floundering. If they have not learned to work, then things that are challenging are almost certain to just make for frustration and an even greater disbelief in self.
8. Don’t conclude that because your child has a disability that therefore your child is not underachieving. That may be true, but one can also underachieve while also struggling with disability or health issues. (This is one of the things that is especially misunderstood by the vast bulk of therapy providers.)

Beyond that, I am not going to give you advice. Because of that long list of potential causes, you are going to need to figure it out or get help to figure it out – but pick your help carefully, please!

Below are some links to other pieces I have written (or gathered) on the topic:
https://philobiblius.dreamwidth.org/9270.html - from The High School Failures (1919).
https://philobiblius.dreamwidth.org/13416.html - A quote from H.H. Goddard in 1924.
https://philobiblius.dreamwidth.org/1152.html - from The Need for Special Education of Gifted Children in White House Conference on Child Health and Protection (1930).
https://philobiblius.dreamwidth.org/2394.html - 1940 research showing that “The fewer American (born) grandparents a pupil has, the higher his achievement ratio is likely to be."
https://philobiblius.dreamwidth.org/1357.html - A Note on the Definition of Underachievement, Milton Kornrich, in Underachievement by Milton Kornrich (ed), 1965.
http://www.joshshaine.com/insideout.html - Underachievement from the Inside Out, Josh Shaine (1999).
http://www.joshshaine.com/charlie.html - Patterns for Charlie, Frances Shaine (1999). (My mother, written at my behest.)
http://www.joshshaine.com/Interests/potential.html - From Overt Behavior to Developing Potential: The Gifted Underachiever, Josh Shaine (1999).
http://www.academia.edu/3769738/Underachieving_Gifted_and_Talented_Students_-_A_Narrative_Overview - Josh Shaine (2010). This is an academic paper, for all that it is written in a narrative format.

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1. Williamson, E. G. 1900-1979. (1939). How to counsel students: a manual of techniques for clinical counselors. New York: McGraw-Hill book company, inc..
2. Ibid

This is a tardy entry to the Hoagies Gifted Pages Blog Hop!

In 2009, as part of an internet meme of sorts, I listed "15 books in 15 minutes." I think I listed 18, with two at #14 and three at #15. This is about the three at #15.

When I was 16, I had the great good fortune to travel to Europe for the summer, first with a group of other high school students, then with two different groups of adults with some transition time on my own, before rejoining the first group. While I was in one airport or another, I picked up two science fiction novels - British Penguin editions of John Brunner's TelepathistThe Long Result.

Telepathist tells the story of Gerald Howson, from birth through age 20, and on into his professional life from there. Brunner constructs a world believably reached from where we are in which the safety of Gerald's mother's world is turned on its head by the effects of terrorism coming where nobody expected it would, and their dealing with the invasion, such as it is, of peacekeepers. Among the peacekeepers is a legendary telepathist. Her presence is brief, but it gives us a glimpse into the world of one sort of professional mind-reader.

Gerald was born with a number of defects, any of which might have been a burden but all of which combine to make his life very difficult. Nor is his mother any too supportive, while dad is not in the picture at all (and we learn why not). All he really wants, he thinks, is to matter - being noticed and noteworthy, even on a small scale.

At age 20, his life changes and then changes again. He realizes he is a telepath, though the only things he knows about that are from movies he has watched. And he has a distrust of the government... But he finds somebody who he thinks he can help and he does so, to the best of his ability. Unfortunately for him, his lack of understanding of his abilities draws him to the government's attention, anyway, and they take him away.

But this is not a dystopian world, even though it seemed so to him as a youth - The government forces are not the bad guys in this tale! They treat his wounds and weaknesses as well as they can, though it doesn't change his underlying conditions. They offer training in how to use his powers. He is... resistant and distrustful. In his hypervigilance, he "listens in" on a difficult situation and he is moved to act.

With his acting, he understands bunches of lessons in short order, lessons that spoke to me then and speak to me now - part of what prompts my writing this.

I have largely left LiveJournal, though I am maintaining the space and prior posts. OTOH, since I haven't told anybody I have done so, I suspect you didn't know it until now! I am joshwriting at dreamwidth, just as I was at LJ.

This entry was originally posted at https://joshwriting.dreamwidth.org/213848.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

All comments are screened. Anonymous posts are permitted (but not required). IP addresses are off.

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For some people, discussing emotions is a fairly simple and straight forward process. If we think of them as colors, they tend to have a basic set of 10 or 30 (or some other number of) colors. This is the genesis of the face charts of emotions we see:



But many of us are aware of experiencing many more emotions than those charts - even those with many more faces. Hence the effort to take advantage of the hexadecimal color system to provide greater variety and gradation of emotional expression.

The way that hexadecimal colors work: each digit has 16 possible values, going from 0-9 with a-f added on the end to count as 10-15. The first two digits of the number represent the brightness of red, f being the brightest, 0 the darkest. the second two are for green, and the last two are for blue.

In this system the first two digits (those representing red) stand in for physical excitement; with 0 being a very slow, and f being high on adrenaline.

The second two digits (those representing green) standing in for mental excitement, or the amount of noise and thought going on in ones head. A 0 here would mean it is very hard to think, while a f would mean the thoughts are tumbling on top of each other too fast to keep track of.

The last two digits (those representing blue) stand in for pain vs pleasure. a 0 here is very painful, and an f very pleasurable.

This gives a way of categorizing emotions using color. for instance: When all are at their highest value (the most physically and mentally excited, and pleasurable), we get white; while the lowest values on all three would show black.

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As this is very much an idea that is early in its development, it would be very helpful if you would use the charts above and the Hexadecimal Color Chooser to provide the colors that would represent those emotions to you and then either post them anonymously below or send them along to kindgrove@gmail.com.

Our intention is to use the information provided to us to develop a better guideline for using the color selector or other system for expressing one's own emotions. We will not use anybody's name or identifying information without advance permission nor do we anticipate doing so with permission.

Thank you for your time and assistance!

I have largely left LiveJournal, though I am maintaining the space and prior posts. OTOH, since I haven't told anybody I have done so, I suspect you didn't know it until now! I am joshwriting at dreamwidth, just as I was at LJ.

This entry was originally posted at http://joshwriting.dreamwidth.org/213341.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

The following questions are aimed at those who have a high sensitivity to others’ emotions, whether they use that sensitivity in any professional way or not. All answers on this page will be kept anonymous unless you expressly wish them not to be. Comments are all screened such that only I can read them, but in addition, if you want to comment anonymously that is an available option. LiveJournal and Dreamwidth sometimes record your IP, but I think I have turned it off for both venues.

This information is going to be used by me in presentations I do and in work I do with adolescents and adults. While there is no immediate plan to formally publish it in any medium, I imagine that at some point I might, depending on (a) whether I actually learn anything worth sharing in that fashion and (b) getting out of my own way!

Preamble, preamble, preamble…

Please direct any inquiries to me: Josh Shaine, josh_shaine@yahoo.com.

Role: _____ Professional in a therapeutic field _____ Former professional in a therapeutic field
_____ Out of College (or school), not working in a therapeutic field _____ Still a student

Information that would be welcome, but which you may choose not to answer:
Race(s): ______________________________ Gender(s) __________________________Birth Year _____

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1. Was there a point in your life at which you either developed or suddenly discovered that you had a high degree of sensitivity to other people’s emotions or have you had it as long as you can remember?

2. Do you remember becoming aware of this being something you did and others did not do? If so, do you know how old you were when you had that realization?

3. Did you (do you) find yourself feeling overwhelmed by too much emotional input when you are in a group or a crowd, whether or not they are directly interacting with you? If so, what have you tried to do about it and has any of it worked for you? Are there particular situations or settings in which the overwhelmed feeling is likelier/likeliest to occur?

4. When you are working with an individual (regardless of whether this is in a professional capacity), do you intentionally seek to be more sensitive, to dive deeper or get a broader sense? If so, do you know how you did it and if it worked?

5. If it did work, have you ever tried that technique in reverse to be less attuned to others’ feelings? Did that work?

6. Have you experienced burnout as a result of your emotional sensitivity, whether or not you had been intentionally using it? If so, have you found an effective way to deal with those burnout feelings? What have you tried and what has worked?

7. Have you talked with any others about your sensitivity to others’ emotions? How did that go?

8. Are there any questions you think I should have asked you? If so, what question and what would be your answer?

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By the way, I have moved over to Dreamwidth, where I am still joshwriting. I will be maintaining this space for the foreseeable future, but largely new posts will appear there and apparently may or may not make it over here, as the auto-repost did not work this time around.

This January, assuming enough students sign up for it, I will start teaching a 15 week course through GHF Online (Gifted Homeschoolers Forum). (See link at bottom.)
Powers Beyond the Ordinary: ‘Super’ Women and Men in Science Fiction and Fantasy
In addition to the titles/topics listed, I am interested in your thoughts on what would be good works to include - books, movies, plays, etc. I know I won't even remotely have time to even check out all of them between now and then, but I know I will look at many of them and make note of the others - including them in a broader list for students who want to go further in the topic. (Students should be 12 years old and up for this course.)

( Collapse )
There is no way that I will even thoroughly cover the topics I already have - but I imagine I will be teaching this again!

Thank you in advance for your thoughts.

Course description as well as outline are at the link.

Click here for the course description and outline.

I don't do regret, as a general rule. It doesn't mean that there are not things that I wish I had done differently, 'merely' that I try to learn from them and move on, aiming to do better next time.

Sometimes, though, even that is not quite enough.

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My mother wrote. She wrote children's books, novels, poetry, and various bits of non-fiction. The novels were not particularly good, I suppose. The children's books were pleasant enough, if not stuff that will live in the literature forever. The poetry was pretty good, but it is a tough field in which to be merely pretty good. Some of the non-fiction is still kicking about - if nothing else, as testimony she gave concerning parental leave.

She knew that I wrote, though what she saw of my writing was the non-fiction about gifted education, underachievement, and Dabrowski. I did not start writing fiction until she was in her last years, mostly past ability to appreciate it. She did not get to see Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate's Daughter - a work she would have enjoyed quite a bit. With the exception of the beginning Tales of the Teddy Bear Forest, my fairy tale writing came after her passing.

And I wish, from time to time, that I could share them with her, both for her editing and her pleasure. I think it would have tickled her that I've become a writer, if not yet either persistent or prolific.

It tickles me.

That will have to do.

In honor of my 60th birthday (which will be next November 12th), I am going to try to write 60 stories and/or chapters between now and then (with some slush days if I need them through the end of the 2016 calendar year).

If you would like me to write a story for you (or one of your loved ones), respond to this message indicating that you want one and what you would like the theme or genre or topic to be. (Western, Children's story, Underachievement, etc.)

If it is not for you, personally, then let me know for whom it is being written and preferably age and gender, as well as preferred theme/topic/genre. Age/gender can be in a private message rather than a post. I prefer one per person/family. If you want more, mention that, too. I *can* do one for a family or a group.

Unlike last time I did something like this (with 11 stories in a year), there is no need for participants to create 10 things for others, though if you did that would be very cool!
The first 58 next 20 people who respond will receive a story or chapter (unless you specify that you want me not to). (If you replied to the Facebook post, please don't reply to this post!)

I think I'm nuts.

(Today's blog entry is dedicated to the late Sharon Lind, a passionate defender of and guide for the gifted, whose succinct explanations of Dabrowski continue to echo in my head.)

For almost 25 years I have been hearing and reading about gifted kids and Overexcitabilities (OEs). Dr. Linda Silverman provided my first view of them at a conference run by the Hollingworth Center for Highly Gifted Children, then my second view of them in her (wonderful) book, Counseling the Gifted and Talented (Love Publishing, 1991).

The thing is that both of those presented me with the OEs but also with Dynamisms, Factors, and Levels, all parts of Dr. Kazimierz Dabrowski’s Theory of Positive Disintegration (TPD). These days, as I read articles on Overexcitabilities, it’s a fortunate event when Dabrowski is mentioned and a pleasant surprise to see TPD mentioned even in passing. Dynamisms, Factors, and Levels do not show up at all and there is very rarely an intimation as to what is being disintegrated, why it might be disintegrated, and what the OEs have to do with any of it!

I understand the attraction of the OEs, really I do. They have a face validity to a substantial majority of parents who have gifted kids and almost as surely for themselves when they reflect on their childhoods or even their current daily lives. “Oh! That’s me!” comes almost as quickly and often as “That’s my kid(s)!”

Having a label for the twitching and bobbing, the sensitivities, the endless questions, the wild stories, the melt downs over seemingly trivial issues or unmanageably large issues, provides a degree of calm for at least a moment and a language for discussing these bits with other people where before it was almost always pure defensiveness. An honest–to-god theory that talks about this stuff?! Hooray!

I get it.
...

Unfortunately, the purveyors of Overexcitability information are largely doing you a disservice, in my opinion, by perhaps giving just a link to more information or, more often, not. There is so much more to the OEs than that first blush would suggest!

To get a small taste of what I am talking about, check out the beginning of Cait Fitz’s OE blog entry on My Little Poppies, where she dives deeper than most into the Theory of Positive Disintegration. (But then come back!)

The Rest of the Story (with apologies to the late Paul Harvey)

Welcome back. :-) Let’s start with a few basic background pieces that might be of interest, that might be obvious to many a reader, or at least won’t bore you too much:

• Before Dabrowski called it overexcitability he called it hyperstimulatability and then nervousness.


• The Polish word that Dr. Dabrowski used for this set of traits, nadpobudliwość, is now one of the translations for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.


• Just as it is the first part of TPD to catch most people’s eyes, it was the first to catch Dabrowski’s attention.


• From a Dabrowskian perspective, OEs exist for several reasons; the reasons vary with the specific OE and one’s Level of Personality Development. (More on this later.)


• One specific purpose, at lower levels, is to create conflict in one’s world. The stronger the OE the greater the chance and degree of disruption and, as Cait pointed out, Dabrowski was a great believer in the “no pain, no gain” school of thought.


• Where there is an individual with more than one OE, there is an individual whose OEs do not exist in isolation from each other. For example, children with both imaginational and emotional OEs might be distraught on behalf of the last leaf of a tree, feeling its loneliness and fear deep in their being.


• With the Intellectual OE seems to travel a ‘sense of justice,’ that looks at unfairness beyond how it might serve or offend one's personal needs.

These points are important and largely disagree with most of what I read:

• There were times when Dabrowski felt a client’s Overexcitabilities might indicate the need for medication and/or psychotherapy.


• Dabrowski believed that the development of inhibition of expression of the Overexcitabilities was appropriate and necessary for development of Personality.

***********

To say that the gifted seem to show more OEs than the average person is not exactly true, though you will read statements to that effect all over the internet. Sensual and Psychomotor OEs seem to be spread out across the population, with no particular regard for giftedness. It’s harder to be sure with Emotional, Imaginational, and Intellectual OEs because a) there is conflicting data and b) our instruments are largely inadequate, at best. (That also means that all those internet questionnaires that purport to tell you how much OE you or your child has are not worth the electrons they are not printed with, because they have not been normed or validated in appropriate ways, IMO.)

I noted above both the conflict function and that there are other uses for OEs according to the Theory of Positive Disintegration. One example of that is Psychomotor, which provides the energy and impetus for growth. Without that energy, a traumatic, potentially transformative experience is likely to result in an individual’s settling back into a familiar life, rather than disintegrating.

Huh – there’s that word again! Disintegrating is a description of the process of growth in personality through a series of transformations in world view:

1. Primary Integration: No sense of alternative world views, no sense of hierarchies of values. A substantial number of Level 1 individuals are about self-aggrandizement. No internal conflict, just external.


2. Unilevel Disintegration: Recognition of alternative world views, but still no hierarchization. (Hence unilevel.) Dabrowski represents Level II as very unstable for the majority of people there. Internal conflict and external conflict as well.


3. Spontaneous Multi-level Disintegration: The realization that some values are higher than others, with the nearly crippling conviction that they are unattainable. Predominantly internal conflict, increasingly so as one develops.


4. Organized Multi-level Disintegration: Generally living without much external conflict, but usually an ongoing drive to grow. Living far more closely in accordance to one’s ideals.


5. Secondary Integration: Personality Ideal; living for the purpose of making the world a better place. Self-promotion is no longer a valid self-concept or goal.

It’s all well and good to list these as if they are clear, distinct ways of being, but one can have a foot in more than one. And even the concept of “being in one” is not really valid because one progresses within each of these, as if there were dozens of steps along the way, even though they are not commonly identified as such in Dabrowski’s works, with the exception of Level 1 for which there is a beginning exploration of the shades of “oneness” one might have gone through or at least which one can identify.

Some brief points about the Levels and how other pieces of TPD and of life fit with them:

• The chances of going past Level 1 or Level II (which seem to have 60-80% of the folks) depend on “Developmental Potential,” again as Cait noted. The more and the stronger the OEs, the more likely there will be progress. But no Psychomotor means reduced chance of development from lower levels.


• Self-Shame and Self-Astonishment and other modes of internal dialog/awareness (referred to as Dynamisms) reflect and affect the growth of the individual. (Dynamisms could be a year of blog posts all by themselves!)


• First Factor is one’s genetic component. A strong first factor is important. A weak one may be impossible to overcome. Second Factor is environmental. More feasible to overcome a weak Second Factor, but it is hard. Third Factor is autonomous drive – to this author’s mind, one of the most poorly defined elements, but dealing with the internal push toward self-perfection.


• OEs (remember them) change in manifestation as one develops, shifting from running an individual’s life to providing some background richness. Where Psychomotor was vital before, the others become far more important for development.


• Everything else in life changes, too, as one becomes less caught up in the regular human/rat race – and the theory includes explanations of just what those look like along the way.


• Yes, there is such a thing as Negative Disintegration. No, no explanation tonight!


• Along the way, as you look at yourselves or your kids, keep an eye out for Positive Maladjustment – when you go against your immediate community or group because what they are doing feels wrong to you. The opposite, negative adjustment, is when you go along to get along, even though what is being done is hurtful and/or inappropriate.

Some of Dabrowski’s material is available currently, though not a lot of it. More is on its way, however!

To get more of my sense of Dabrowski and the Theory of Positive Disintegration, check out either of these links: From overt behavior to developing potential: The gifted underachiever was written in the 1990’s and reflects my first real exploration of the OEs in application. Dabrowski's Theory of Positive Disintegration - A Narrative Overview was written in 2010 and is a more comprehensive look at TPD.

For far more material, wander over to Bill Tillier’s site, www.positivedisintegration.com



Acknowledgements and Credits

This blog article is part of the Hoagies’ Gifted Education Page Blog Hop on Overexcitabilities. I thank my friends at Hoagies’ Gifted Education Page and elsewhere for their inspiration, support, and suggestions. In particular, I would like to thank Linda Silverman, Cheryl Ackerman, Bill Tillier, Patti Rae Miliotis, Leslie Forstadt, and always Susan Shaine for their parts in this journey into Dabrowski.

Please click on the graphic above (created by Pamela S Ryan–thanks!) to see the titles, blog names, and links of other Hoagies’ Blog Hop participants, or cut and paste this URL into your browser: http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/blog_hop_overexcitabilities.htm

(And stay tuned for a few big announcements in the next few months on this topic!)

I am starting with my edit, because while this is an addendum to my thoughts on the funding issue, this is the most vital piece of the response to me.

Why advocating for the gifted in underfunded schools and where kids are in poverty is VITAL

a) Raising the top students of a school tends to raise the whole school more than any other approach we have tried.

b) The argument that one should not ask for specific spending on gifted is, to me, like not asking for SPED money for special education students --> gifted education is not a FRILL. It is a need.

c) When you consider that gifted programs are often getting less than a penny on the dollar, asking for spending on gifted is not exactly asking for much - As a quick example... in the Texas 2011-2012 legislative cycle, Gifted Education got $56 million. The full budget for that cycle was $91 billion. Gifted got .0006 (or .06%).

d) The funding of gifted programs is itself a red herring. Pull-out programs are among the least cost-effective ways to meet the needs of gifted kids.

If you want to serve the kids in poverty, then more attention to gifted kids (or even some!) is going to have a more beneficial result than less attention will. This is the sub-population within the gifted that is hurt *most* by abandonment of the fight.

And dropping the gifted word makes that advocacy harder, not easier.

Children matter - not just gifted children
When I was previously teaching in the public schools, my principal, after observing class, wondered to me: "I get why you are good with the bright kids - it's why I hired you! But why are you good with the slow kids?!"

I explained to him that I teach people, not subjects, and that I sought to understand what each kid knew and how each kid learned and how each kid needed to have their needs met, to the best of my ability.

Why I advocate for gifted children
I advocate for gifted children because they lack sufficient advocacy. I advocate for funds for gifted children because their needs are no less real and because in a vacuum of such advocacy, the voices for other children are heard and gifted children's needs are set aside.

I push for that funding because it is a drop in the bucket compared with the rest of academic funding - and because the argument that if they give gifted kids funding, then they will have to cut funding for other programs is a FALSE argument designed to divide and to set populations against each other, making it harder for BOTH to have their needs met.

In pushing for certain additional children to be included in a certain program, an administrator noted that it was totally to be expected that I would advocate for my program. He didn't get it! If there were no need for them to be in the program, I would not want them there - that would do nothing to help the kids already in it, while possibly being negative for everybody concerned.

I advocate for these kids and these programs because even the mediocre programs do something worthwhile that these kids need.

Alternative Words, Part 1
I do not like the term “children of high intelligence” because that is not (all of) what I mean by gifted!”

I mean children with artistic and emotional gifts, leadership and wisdom gifts, and others less readily defined – I mean children for whom their innate higher aptitude leads them to need a qualitatively different kind of support from their parents, their teachers, and their counselors.

Alternative Words, Part 2
My friend noted that she never wants to tell a kid that s/he is ungifted.

Yeah, that is a pretty harsh thing to say, right?

How about "below average?"

"Not tall."

"Not able to dance well enough."

"Not athletic."

We do all of those things. Is it fun? No. We don't have to use "ungifted" to have a problem. "You are not highly intelligent." "You aren't smart enough to be in this program."

Still pretty harsh.

I don't see how changing the word fixes that problem, either.

Alternative Words, Part 3
I oppose the change in terminology not because I am wedded to the word GIFTED, but because the push to change it is a red herring.

I grew up in a school system in which there were no gifted children – it was school policy – but that did nothing to enhance the education of the children of high intelligence, nor to reduce the bullying behaviors toward the children of big vocabularies or the children of androgynous behaviors or the children who got the answers right too often in class by the children who resented kids who would have been called gifted in other schools but were never called that there (or the adults who felt the same way).

I have lived most of my life in a state in which the NAGC affiliate was named the Massachusetts Association for the Advancement of Individual Potential to avoid offense – but it did nothing to advance our cause or to help our children.

I live in a state in which we have a certification for teachers of Academically Advanced learners, but for which there are no courses offered that would lead to such a degree nor an approved pathway for an organization to base a program upon.

To what end, then, changing the word?

The kids still get bullied, the programs still get short shrift, the teachers still get no training.

I work with gifted children - no matter what you call them.



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This blog is part of the Hoagies’ Gifted Education Page inaugural Blog Hop on The “G” Word (“Gifted”). To read more blogs in this hop, visit this Blog Hop at www.hoagiesgifted.org/blog_hop_the_g_word.htm