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Should gifted students go to a separate school?

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Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#231

Post by bluGill »

John23832 wrote: post #186
lend000 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High income families already send their children to "smart" private schools; why not allow gifted children on the public school track to enjoy similar opportunities?

Why not just make schools better for all, rather than replicating the educational resource hoarding that takes place in private schools?

You are missing the other half of the problem: what about the non-gifted. The majority of kids are average: they didn't get whatever it is that makes some people above average. They need the slower pace of school to learn, otherwise they won't learn.

The right thing for an average student is not the same as what is right for either the gifted, or the "retarded" (I forget what the correct term is.

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#232

Post by lordCarbonFiber »

Aqueous wrote: post #93
habosa wrote: post #85

A lot of comments here sound something like this: "I am smart and when I was in high school the classes bored me because they were taught to the lowest common denominator". This is not an argument for intellectual segregation of schools. While I could put forth a hundred arguments against this, here are a few off the top of my head: 1. When do we decide who is "gifted"? What happens to late bloomers? Are they forever…

4. This idea that education is only for my own individual welfare has to end. It's creating a culture of individual atomism that is instilling the most anti-social, selfish values and corroding the country at its roots. We go to school not just to be educated but to educate each other. If you're smart, you set an example to kids near us who don't feel that way. Hopefully, those who aren't labelled 'smart' gain from t…

N=1 anecdote, but I'd say your thesis is not only wrong, it is diametrically opposed to reality. Having seen both, crumbling local public school[0] and gifted state run boarding school[1] your story of the 'smart' kids setting an example never happened. Mostly, I think, because you underestimate just how far ahead they are. It's not a case of "things come easier"; it's "skip every class and show up on the last day and still out perform everyone else". As an aside, I learned more from my peers and participated more in the community when we had a shared foundation to work with.

What you're advocating is a deeply lonely (and I'd argue psychologically damaging) experience and it really bothers me to see so many people in this thread want more people to experience it.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilson_High_School_(Florence,_... [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Carolina_Governor's_Scho...

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#233

Post by Retric »

John23832 wrote: post #186
lend000 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High income families already send their children to "smart" private schools; why not allow gifted children on the public school track to enjoy similar opportunities?

Why not just make schools better for all, rather than replicating the educational resource hoarding that takes place in private schools?

We don't know how to make schools better for all.

Resources don't cut it, the best students learn more from reading a text book than the average students learn from the best classes. There are a lot of fads in education, but elite schools mostly maintain their status by having elite students not elite instructors.

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#234

Post by scholia »

jmkni wrote: post #77
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you define "work" in this instance? For example, if they made half the kids do better, and half the kids do worse, does that count as working? While you sometimes get claims that it's for their own good that less academically inclined pupils are sent to the non-grammar schools, I'd guess the same people who say this would freak right the hell out if their own kid failed the exam and didn't get in, which kind of u…

I meant that they work for the individual, a child sent to a grammar school will get a solid education. I take your point about the wider ramifications, but I feel as though I got a good education, and if I ever have kids, I would want them to go to a grammar school too.

One of the problems is that kids in the top streams in highly-selective schools do very well. The kids at the bottom often don't so as well, and sometimes become problem cases. These same kids -- who are very bright -- would be stars / top students if they'd gone to a lesser school.

Source: Personal experience. I went a grammar school in the UK. I also taught in a top UK grammar school and a not-very-good comprehensive school. I've seen it happen numerous times.

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#235

Post by _m8fo »

thereisnospork wrote: post #229
_m8fo wrote: post #84

I'm shocked, yet paradoxically unsurprised that so many of the comments here are saying "yes" to the question. In practice, separating gifted students does two things: 1. Accelerates income inequality (there's no way the gifted students on average will do poorer than the 'regular' students) 2. Remove equality of opportunity. What exactly is a gifted school going to do that would help gifted students and not regular s…

How can you argue pt.1 when the kids of high income parents already receive, at great expense but to great personal benefit, the kind of academically segregated education you are arguing against? How is a smart kid from Detroit or Camden supposed to catch up to his intellectual peer who is learning calculus while he/she is stuck in a school right out of Stand and Deliver? Without help one of them is going to Harvard…

I can relate to the situations you describe, but they're not going to happen. The link we're all discussing is not talking about making these schools public, free or even accessible. It talks about, more generally, whether segregation should exist.

As for Detroit. Most of Michigan's "gifted" schools are private and NOT free [1] [2].

[1] http://migiftedchild.org/faq/#zero

[2] http://www.gifteddevelopment.com/sites/default/files/Nationa...

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#236

Post by stoic »

iplaw wrote: post #7

Yes. Without a single doubt. I attended the long-running #1 public school in the nation. The School for the Talented and Gifted Magnet High School in Dallas, TX. The environment fostered creativity and learning. There were no distractions or negative pressures or stressors. Being smart didn't result in being bullied, it resulted in being respected.

boo TAG go SEM!

Glad to see another Townview graduate representing us well. :)

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#237

Post by run4yourlives2 »

mathattack wrote: post #209

My 2 cents as a parent... The "Don't let any kids fall behind" is an extremely laudable goal. Educating everyone, and aiming for a high standard for people of all abilities and socio-economic backgrounds is extremely vital. We may not be achieving that goal well, but it a very worthy one, and will do more than almost anything else to reduce income inequality. The danger is that having this focus in school means that…

Devil's advocate here:

>The danger is that having this focus in school means that kids get neglected once they pass that threshold.

Is this a bad thing? Does it even qualify as neglect?

If a child is so far ahead of his peers, what benefit is it to have them increase that gap? At some point, they will need to interact with the group they left behind, how does that become an easier task when the distance is even greater?

I find it hard to believe that a gifted child is so spectacular that she is miles ahead of her peers in every possible area. It's certainly true that they can be ahead in the small subset of skills we consider 'essential' in school, but there are likely other areas where they are not. There's a reason depression is correlated in a curious way with increased intelligence.

It's certainly true that they could benefit from classes with older kids; but then, the issue is really the age based segregation of school, isn't it?. It seems like the entire "gifted" idea would vanish in a sense if we removed the erroneous idea that intelligence is correlated with age, at least in how it informs the idea of "grades" being "all kids born in x year".

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#238

Post by BigJeffeRonaldo »

Aqueous wrote: post #93
habosa wrote: post #85

A lot of comments here sound something like this: "I am smart and when I was in high school the classes bored me because they were taught to the lowest common denominator". This is not an argument for intellectual segregation of schools. While I could put forth a hundred arguments against this, here are a few off the top of my head: 1. When do we decide who is "gifted"? What happens to late bloomers? Are they forever…

4. This idea that education is only for my own individual welfare has to end. It's creating a culture of individual atomism that is instilling the most anti-social, selfish values and corroding the country at its roots. We go to school not just to be educated but to educate each other. If you're smart, you set an example to kids near us who don't feel that way. Hopefully, those who aren't labelled 'smart' gain from t…

You're asking parents to sacrifice the mental health (via bullying and social issues) (and thus physical issues likely stemming from mental health problems), intellectual development, future earning power, etc. of their gifted children to benefit others. Personally, I am not comfortable with the idea of sacrificing my children to a utopian project. These children also often develop social issues, as different IQ buckets have very different social norms (imagine how a 100iq normal person forced to socialize only with <65iq disabled folks would be affected).

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#239

Post by justin_vanw »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #114
justin_vanw wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. This is a Harrison Bergeron argument. "We can't let people move quickly, because it might be unfair to other people." Effectively this means denying the people you can identify because there are going to be other 'deserving' people you don't identify. Replace 'education' with 'food' and see if this logic holds up: "We shouldn't feed the people we know are hungry, because other people might be hungry and now they w…

RE 1., your analogy to food is both misapplied and unhelpful. The choice here is between "better education" and "standard education", not between "better education" and "no education at all". You can't test the logic of that argument by applying it to the food case and expect a sensible result. Unless you can disprove GP's three arguments, we're talking about a trade-off . Trade-offs should not solved by rhetorics an…

I never said 'better' vs 'none'. I said should you give some resource to someone who could benefit from it when there are other people who also would benefit that you will fail to identify.

Presumably even in my analogy the people not given food had some food, since they were merely weak and not starved to death.

But that ignores my argument anyway! My point is that you should do what you can do, even if it's imperfect. The food analogy was to show that the argument 'don't help some people because it's unfair to the people you don't help' is extremely stupid.

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#240

Post by amyjess »

Pulcinella wrote: post #174
chrisabrams wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh the TAAS...I spent 10 years being told I would finish that crap in the 10th grade...only to find out in the 10th grade that TAAS II was coming out and we were the lucky candidates to take it...in the 11th grade. The #2 pencil is spot on. I carried an entire box of pencils and would trade them for a slice of pizza at lunch.

heh TAAS. For those not from Texas or too young to have experienced it, TAAS was horrible even compared to other standardized tests. Other standardized tests at least pretend to assess a student's learning. TAAS assessed a students ability to parse octuple negatives and poorly typeset mathematics.

Oh god, the TAAS.

So, there were three portions: reading comprehension, math, grammar, and persuasive writing. The maximum score for any of the TAAS portions is a 4, with 3 as the minimum passing grade. The first three were ridiculously easy, but the writing portion was a nightmare.

I don't remember all the details anymore, but IIRC you were expected to include a statistic and a quote from an expert in your paper. The kicker? You weren't allowed any outside materials, and you were expected to make up the statistic and the quote. That's right: the assignment was to write something that would be considered fake news nowadays.

I got a 2. I only passed because I got a 4 on the grammar portion, because for some reason the persuasive writing portion and the grammar portion were averaged together to form what they called the "writing" portion.

My year (10th grade 2000-2001) was the second-last to take the TAAS, and we were the last to take only the TAAS, as it was being phased out in favor of the TAKS. The year behind me took both the TAAS and the TAKS, with only the TAAS counting for graduation requirements (they only had to take the TAKS because the state wanted to do a dry run before switching over), and the people two years behind me only took the TAKS. The timeline went like:

* 2000-2001: 10th grade takes the TAAS (my class)

* 2001-2002: 10th grade takes the TAAS

* 2002-2003: 11th grade takes the TAKS (dry run, same class as above)

* 2003-2004: 11th grade takes the TAKS (for real)

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