philobiblius

The literature on giftedness, what it is, how to raise and/or teach and/or counsel these children, is fairly extensive. It goes back more than 100 years ago, and about 90 years ago, they had a pretty good idea of what worked and what didn't.

Doesn't mean that they did it at any point in the intervening years or that there are many places doing it now. Merely that the failure to do it well is from a failure to do one of a few things: 1) Research; 2) Believe what you read; 3) Learn from your mistakes.

This is the generous view of it...

On the fictional side of things, there are only so many plots that are out there.

The first breakout is that you have one gifted kid or you have a bunch of them. The Odd Johns of the world - both IRL and fiction - are plentiful. The groups are less common, excepting only the super hero genre of comic books and novelizations.

Wilmar Shiras wrote about Children of the Atom years before the X-Men (or the Tomorrow People) came into being. A brilliant boy doesn't quite fit in without calling attention to himself and gets found out by a psychologist. Together, they seek out more like him, find them, and pull them together, only to discover that society is not ready for these kids to be working together. But, they are good kids, and want to make the world a better place.

Stephanie Tolan's Welcome to the Ark tells a similar tale, though there is more to these children than just intelligence.

The X-Men are mutants and, originally, gifted youngsters who need to learn to use their powers. The bigotry against them, as mutants, is usually blind and without regard to circumstance. It doesn't help that not all mutants are altruistic. Some are 'merely' self-serving and/or opportunists. Some have the urge to dominate and control others. Some just want to tear things down.

This, then is the crux of the issue: How do we know that if we have kids with these powers, that they will use them for the good of humanity, or at least our nation?

John Brunner's Children of the Thunder asks that question and suggests that not only do we not know it, but that if there are some of these kids with noble objectives and others with more self-centered goals, that all other things being equal, the negative approach will win out.

There is another wringer to be tossed in here - perhaps the most common type of tale that explores this stuff even slightly seriously. What if the institution that is training the children is corrupt, regardless of the original plan? John Brunner addressed this before he looked at the other - an individual gifted person, escaped from his school where he felt he was mistreated. Much of the novel is spend following our protagonist as he eludes capture in a world made up of plug in employees. (Shockwave Rider - Editor)

Jarod, in The Pretender, a TC series, has a remarkably similar path - escaping from The Center and adopting a variety of guises and careers to find out about his background while being a do-gooder everywhere he goes.

James Patterson's Maximum Ride series takes the perfidy of mad scientists and the evil institution and combines them with kids who are not merely gifted in their thinking. They have wings - and they have escaped from The School, whose owners and directors do NOT have the kids' best interests at heart.
*******

But in many ways, the questions asked, the puzzles shown, are consistent from book to book and show to show. How alone am I? How do I connect with others? If I run, where will I run too? What happens when my friends discover just how weird I really am?

Why am I so alone? And often, What is wrong with me?
******

(originally written Jan. 12th, 2008)

Postscript: This whole topic deserves a longer look. In addition to the titles/topics above, there is the counterpart to Xavier's School for Gifted Children, called Massachusetts Academy, where the Hellfire Club trained its future members (or cannon fodder). An interesting counter to the X-Men version of things is Aaron Williams' PS238, the School for Metaprodigy Children and its internal counter, Praetorian Academy. Also worth a look, at least briefly, is the movie Sky High.

tl; dr: It could have been written today.

The consensus of evidence, biological, psychological, and statistical, indicates that mental ability, like all other biological traits, is distributed in the form of the so-called curve of probability. If this be granted, it follows (1) that mediocrity is the commonest condition, (2) that instances of ability superior to and inferior to mediocrity are of practically equal frequency and degree, and (3) that the more an ability deviates from mediocrity, in either direction, the less frequent is its occurrence. The idiot is rarer than the moron, the genius than the man of talent. The root of this distribution undoubtedly lies in heredity, in native endowment. Education cannot create ability; it can only develop the latent possibilities given by heredity. Educational agencies, however, cannot lose sight of individual differences; educational training cannot be conducted as if all pupils were alike in native endowment. This truth has been clearly recognized in so far as it applies to the lower end of the curve of distribution; we have to-day, in consequence, a flourishing pedagogy of the subnormal. But we are only beginning to realize the necessity of special adjustments of our educational agencies to meet the needs of the upper end of the curve, to develop a pedagogy of the supernormal. And here it may be noted that by supernormal we imply not something abnormal, or beyond the limits of the healthy and the wholesome, but a mental endowment superior to the average, a condition that corresponds on the plus side of mediocrity to subnormal on the minus side. The supernormal child is the gifted child, the talented child, the child of superior ability.

Quantitatively, superior ability may evidently vary all the way from ability just noticeably above the average up to the most extraordinary manifestations of genius. With real genius, the kind of ability that appears in, let us say, one man in a million, the school has perhaps no special concern, chiefly because the appearance of such ability is so rare that administrators cannot be expected to provide special devices for its training — if, indeed, it be amenable to prearranged educational forms. The real problem of the school concerns the children who rank as the best two or three or the best half dozen in every hundred, for these are numerous enough to warrant special educational treatment.

Qualitatively, it is feasible to distinguish between general, or all-round, superiority and specific superiority. The problem of the school treatment of children of the latter type, of children who possess special talent in a restricted field, must doubtless await solution until we have met the larger problem of dealing with the former type. At present we know almost nothing in a scientific way about the genesis, distribution, and training of special talents. Psychologists, however, agree that children may be born with a constitutional tendency favoring superior achievement in music, in mathematics, in various phases of artistic creation, and probably also in linguistic and technical activities. The enlightening experiment of Dr. Kerschensteiner, at Munich, who by a simple test of drawing discovered a number of cases of exceptional ability in this field (ability that had in several instances been unsuspected by parents or teachers), and who was able to direct these children into appropriate careers, may serve as a pattern for similar "censuses" of special talent, which might be undertaken with profit in any large school system. We may hope that in time special "talent classes" may be organized to supply at public expense the training appropriate to children who bid fair to distinguish themselves in music, drawing, painting, dramatics, invention, and other special lines. Meanwhile, it is to be desired that psychologists should make extended analyses of individual children who display exceptional gifts in particular directions.

With regard to the education of gifted children of all-round or general ability, the thesis may be laid down that the needs of society demand special training for such children in the public schools and that this special training must be conducted in special classes, segregated from the regular school grades. To this thesis the following objections are sometimes raised. (1) It is occasionally asserted that there are no supernormal children — an assertion that disregards the cumulative evidence of biological and psychological investigation, as well as the evidence of common sense. (2) More often it is argued that supernormal children exist, but they will take care of themselves. Galton, to be sure, has sought to show that real genius "will out," but this is certainly not true of the lesser grades of superiority with which the school has to deal. We do not believe that a favorable environment can create ability, but we know that an unfavorable environment may hinder its fruition. Experience shows that poverty, ill health, poor teaching, and lack of encouragement may stifle native ability of a high order. We know only those talents that have succeeded. As Lester Ward has pointed out, "Great men have been produced by the co-operation of two causes, genius [innate ability] and opportunity; neither alone can accomplish it." (3) There is a popular notion that the precocious child should be held back, that an early manifestation of ability is an unfavorable sign. It is true that precocity does not guarantee superiority at maturity, but it is equally true that it frequently does precede it. We admit that it is better for a dull child to take a slower pace: why should a bright child, given a healthy body, be compelled to follow the pace of the mediocre child? To hold back a gifted child is to exert a baneful influence upon his development, and not merely mentally, in that he assimilates less information than he might, but more particularly morally, in that he forms pernicious habits of idleness, fails to feel the spur of competition, and fails to develop the higher ethical qualities that the school should bring into play. (4) It is argued by some that the special training of gifted children is not the business of the public school, but of the home. Yet the state has already recognized its responsibility to provide for the instruction of the intellectually fit by its system of state universities, with their research and graduate departments. Again, any argument that defends special provision for the subnormal for the sake of their better training would defend special provision for the supernormal for the sake of their better training. "Any exceptional talent, potential genius, or superior intelligence that remains undeveloped is a loss, not merely for the individuals themselves, but also for the progress of the nation and humanity" (Stern). The state, then, has reason to devote special attention to supernormal children. (5) It is argued by others that though desirable enough, special training for the gifted is too expensive or too difficult of administration. As a matter of fact, however, the additional expense is not great and is more than justified by the return upon the investment, while the administrative difficulties are being successfully met in several cities, as will be shown in a moment. (6) It is sometimes argued that to place the gifted child in special classes handicaps the pupils and the teacher of the regular class by removing the brighter and more capable members. But surely it is, as Kendall has said, "a travesty on the rights of bright children to keep them in classes below their ability for the purpose of helping on and stimulating pupils of less ability." The rights of the individual pupil are more sacred than the desires of the teacher or the classificatory boundaries of the graded system. (7) Finally, it has been objected that to segregate bright pupils would make them priggish, would develop a species of intellectual arrogance. This possibility may be avoided readily enough by due care in administration. Admission to special classes must be looked upon merely as a kind of specialization, as indeed it is, and continuance in them must be conditioned by persistent faithful effort, as well as by intellectual brilliancy.

There are, then, no valid objections to the thesis that supernormal children should be given special treatment in the public schools. It remains to be seen what has been, or might be, the nature of this special treatment. The disadvantages of the standard ironclad grade system are everywhere acknowledged. Various plans are in operation to secure greater flexibility. Do these plans .serve the needs of bright children? Without going into the details of various systems of promotion (see Grading and Promotion), we may distinguish three main types of modification of the standard system. (1) Certain plans aim to keep the class together in promotion. Thus, the so-called "Batavia system" keeps the class together by expending extra effort upon the laggards. Here, it is evident, no attention is paid to the peculiar needs of gifted children. The "North Denver plan" reverses the emphasis and keeps the class together by giving more intensive, more extensive, and more independent work to the brighter pupils. They are, however, kept at the regular pace in their progress through the school system. (2) Certain plans aim to secure a different rate of progress for children of different abilities. Typical are the systems prevailing in Cambridge, Mass., in Chicago, and in Pueblo, Col. In the "Cambridge plan" pupils are classified according to their ability and go forward at three different rates, — slow, regular, and fast, — while at various points transfers may be made from one " track " to another. Bright pupils may accomplish the work of the first six years in four years, and it is worthy of note that these "fast" pupils do first-class work later in the high school. The chief objection to this system seems to lie in the expense. In the "Chicago plan," or "large-school plan," three or more sections are organized in each grade on the basis of ability.

Each section goes forward at its own pace and is promoted as soon as it is ready for the work of the grade above. The bright section may gain one or two months over the slowest section in each half year of work. The plan permits close grading, but is feasible only in large schools. In the "Pueblo plan" each pupil sets his own pace. Extreme individualism prevails. Its promoter, Preston Search, was led to its adoption because he was convinced that " the bright, capable pupil has been retarded in his progress, has spent time in lifeless reviews and valueless repetitions of lessons, and has had his ambition stunted." The plan suffers somewhat from the lack of class competition, and it requires teachers of unusual ability. (3) The "segregation plan," illustrated in Worcester, Baltimore, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Harrisburg, Lincoln, Neb., and perhaps elsewhere, by its system of "preparatory centers," more nearly meets the theoretical requirements of gifted children. Pupils who have done strong work up to a certain grade, usually the sixth, are transferred to a special room, where they complete their preparation for the high school under selected teachers. The work is arranged on the departmental plan and includes, as a rule, the Latin, German, advanced English, and sometimes the mathematics of the first year in the high school. Pupils from these preparatory centers enter the high school with sufficient advanced credit to save one year in their subsequent course. Statistics show, moreover, that their work in the high school is commonly not only successful, but of conspicuous merit. In one Baltimore center, selected pupils have been retained for a third year and are then easily able to finish the high school in two years. In Cincinnati, in 1910, an experiment was instituted in the segregation of bright pupils from the third, fourth, and fifth grades. The results were decidedly favorable; two years' work was accomplished in one year, while the atmosphere of the class was that of joyful industry and orderly intelligent work."

We are evidently only at the beginning of special education for supernormal children. The segregation centers have developed only in the last decade or so. Many problems remain to be solved. When, for instance, should segregation begin? The Cincinnati experiment suggests that it may profitably begin much earlier than the sixth grade. Again, what should be the standard of selection? Thus far, the standard has been relatively low. At Baltimore, for example, the centers contain pupils whose rank is anywhere in the upper 25 per cent of the regular classes. But Goddard's application of the Binet tests to 2000 public school children at Vineland, N.J., indicates that only about 4 per cent are mentally advanced two years or more above their chronological age. Again, Petzoldt, in Germany, has proposed the establishment in Berlin of "elite classes" on such a basis as to select the best child in each 1500 to 2000 pupils. It would be highly instructive to have this experiment tried out. For ordinary purposes, however, classes with a selection of 4 to 5 per cent and with a total enrollment of 20 to 25 would seemingly be most desirable.

Other problems that press for solution are these: what is the relative part played by heredity on the one hand and environment on the other hand in the production of individuals of superior achievement? Is it true that the world is full of children of marked native ability who need only the opportunity to achieve their promise, or must we proceed, according to the tenets of the new science (or religion) of eugenics, systematically to breed human ability? How early in a child's life may exceptional ability be safely diagnosed? What physical, mental, or moral traits afford reliable criteria of superior ability, and how may these be detected or measured scientifically? How can we discover and foster special ability in musical, artistic, literary, mechanical, mathematical, scientific, and other lines? Can we surely distinguish, and by what methods, between mere precocity that does not culminate in final superiority, and real ability, early displayed, that fulfills its promise? Is it in any way possible adequately to meet the demands of the education of gifted children without segregation into special classes? Ought classes for supernormal children to pursue the regular curriculum at a faster pace, or ought they to provide a more intensive and more extensive training by different methods? Ought gifted children to begin formal school work at an early age, or ought they, on the contrary, to be held back from formal training till their eighth year or later? Is it desirable and feasible to subsidize the careers of gifted children?

These and many other scientifically and practically important special problems which the general problem of the supernormal child sets for solution make it evident that an extensive investigation of the whole field by a corps of educational and psychological experts is imperatively demanded. Such an investigation would repay many fold the time and labor expended.
~G. M. W.


Great Britain. — In Great Britain the question of the supernormal child does not assume so much importance as in America and Germany. In fact, it may almost be said that conditions are reversed and more attention is paid to the bright than to the average or poor pupils. In the elementary schools, where each principal is to all intents and purposes autonomous, a system of flexible grading and promotion provides for the rapid progress of the able pupil through the elementary schools, so that in the seventh or highest standard the ages of pupils may sometimes vary from ten and one half years to fourteen or over. The bright pupil has always been provided for by scholarships to the secondary or grammar schools obtained in open competition. A large number of these are frequently gained by poor but able boys from elementary schools at the age of eleven or twelve. As a rule they carry only free tuition; sometimes additional maintenance grants are given. A scholarship is valid for three years and is usually renewable according to grade of work done. More recently, since the central authority in England began to interest itself immediately in secondary education, schools and school authorities have been compelled as a condition of securing government grants to provide free places to pupils between the ages of ten and thirteen coming from elementary schools. The number of free places to be offered is ordinarily 25 per cent of the total number of pupils admitted in the previous year. The percentage may, however, be varied with the consent of the Board of Education. By the aid of scholarships, provided by special endowments or local authorities, and free tuition, pupils can win their way through to the universities. At the same time, the system always makes some demand on the means of the parents, and in some cases school authorities offer maintenance grants as well as remission of fees. For an account of the system of recruiting candidates for the elementary teaching profession, see Teachers, Training op. In Scotland the system of district bursaries provides for the promotion of pupils from elementary to secondary schools.

copied from Monroe's Cyclopedia of Education (1917)
Entry on Supernormal Children written by Guy Montrose Whipple

The following comments concern the special issue (October,2012) of Gifted Child Quarterly, which contains a set of responses to an article, Rethinking Giftedness and Gifted Education: A Proposed Direction Forward Based on Psychological Science, by Subotnik, Olszewski-Kubilius & Worrell (Psychological Science in the Public Interest January 2011 vol. 12 no. 1 3-54). The full paper can be found at the following link, but a shortened (14 page) version is included in the Special Issue.

http://psi.sagepub.com/content/12/1/3.full?ijkey=/bwNip9GMWEg2&keytype=ref&siteid=sppsi

This entry is in response to the first article in the October GCQ issue.
*********


Abstract
This commentary addresses Subotnik et al.’s target article from the perspective of researchers active in the field of giftedness. First, we self-critically examine the current standing of giftedness research within the scientific community. Second, the authors’ critique of gifted education is sharpened in three respects: (a) gifted identification, (b) effectiveness of gifted education, and (c) credentials of gifted education. Finally, four necessary and productive lines for future research are proposed.

The authors make their opinion of the paper clear in the very first paragraph of their paper, in comparing the work with an early 20th century mathematician who laid out the work ahead for future endeavors in his field. They believe Subotnik, et al, have performed an incredible service that will make it possible for the field of gifted education to finally move forward. A bit later, they compare Subotnik's work to drosophila, suggesting that it can be at the core of future research.

I find this comparison to be more than a little over-the-top, but there are several underlying factors that I think contribute to this exaggerated view. A few of the comments that I believe contribute to this:

1) "Over the course of the past decade or so, there have been growing signs that gifted education and giftedness research has entered a phase of crisis."

2) "the major variables or concepts under investigation have usually been published more than 30 years ago, indicating a long process until the concepts of general education and psychology trickle down into giftedness research."

3) "for a long time, research papers on giftedness have not made it into the top mainstream educational and psychological journals with high impact factors."

4) "our neighboring scientific disciplines do not seem to value the results of giftedness research."

These fall under the category of "self-critically examin(ing) the current standing of giftedness research within the scientific community" It is an odd hodge-podge of over-statements and under-statements. Let's look at them one at a time:

1) The crisis... This statement comes out of nowhere and has no support provided for it. No signs are given or ways to know that it is a decade, a year, or a century. Nor do the next three points provide such signs.

2) "More than 30 years ago..." Try 90 years ago! Yes, I think that part of the tale is true. But... "until concepts of general education... trickle down into giftedness research" is false in a twisted way. The concepts of gifted education are slowly trickling down into general education research! This has been a hot topic for years and underlies much of what is talked about in Borland's paper advocating the elimination of gifted programs (http://www.creativitypost.com/education/problematizing_gifted_education_part_i_why_problematize and parts 2-5 as well). There is even something to it, though less than meets Borland's eye.

My best comment on this conflict is this: "There are certain ones of these recommendations that apply to any schoolroom but that, nevertheless, take on, in our opinion, an added significance when the room is devoted to the instruction of gifted children." (Guy Montrose Whipple, 1919)

There is a half-truth to the idea that it takes a long time for "concepts of... psychology trickle down into giftedness research." Unfortunately, this is true of education as a whole, not just gifted education - much of what we learn about the brain and the body do not make it into research about classroom practice. OTOH, there is giftedness research that reflects advances in neuropsychology, and that is wonderful, if ignored in this paper.

3) The absence of "research papers on giftedness" in "top mainstream educational and psychological journals with high impact factors" for a long time... This is just patently false, even without bothering with a definition of "long time."

I read this one and was a tad surprised, as I have written a couple papers and cited articles from those journals. Looking at the JCR list of Top 50 Psychology Journals, I know of articles within that last decade in at least 16 of them. While I don't know of a similar list in Education, I can say that many of the most cited journals over the last decade have had research on giftedness in them. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, Learning and Instruction, and the Economics of Education Review are among the most cited Education Journals that include research about the gifted.

Yes, there are plenty of journals that don't, but I am not sure why the gerontology and schizophrenia journals would be expected to!

4) Neighboring fields don't value gifted research... The two neighboring fields to which they refer are expertise and innovation. Creativity is not, apparently, one of our neighboring fields. And, as mentioned elsewhere, brain science does not seem to be ignoring gifted research - it seems to be adding to it.
********

With the paper's next section, we get to the crux of the matter:
"Despite more than 100 years of research, we are still far away from being able to reliably identify later eminent individuals."

The authors then go on to argue that "to prove the credentials of gifted education and giftedness research to society, we must also be able to answer questions such as:
• Is it more likely that someone who enrolls in a bachelor’s program at an Ivy-league university or someone who enrolls in a state university of good reputation will attain eminence (e.g., is awarded a Noble Prize)?

• What is the probability that the next winner of a gold medal at the Academic Math Olympics will come from China?

• What is the probability that the 2025 world champion in chess will come from an Arabian country?"

I reject that as a goal for gifted education, let alone a required proof!
********

I do not perceive the authors as having "self-critically" examined anything, let alone in the scientific community - they looked at a small corner of that community, a corner with which they were already familiar, and saw what they knew they would see.

I concede the points on identification and effectiveness, given that what the authors are seeking has nothing to do with the goals of the overwhelming majority of identification processes nor the goals of the gifted programs.

If you are not seeking potential eminence, and you are not seeking to develop your students into eminent adults, then you are unlikely to satisfy these authors.

Not "a," "an," or "the." Not even "el" or "de."

Articles as in journal or blog format.

What makes something a good article to you? Do you have standards you apply either consciously or, now that you are thinking of it, automatically?

Is there a consistent balance between statistics and discussion? Do you prefer opinion pieces? How much evidence needs to be present to support the author's conclusions before they become your conclusions, as well?

Do you find, as one person put it, that the sheer volume of references in a piece makes the author(s) better writers?

Please do share your thoughts. (and if you want to amplify the question, I would not mind that at all!)

I was chatting not long ago about the early days of active consideration that one could both be gifted and have a disability - before the term 2e came into being. It was prompted by my having discovered the Australian book from last year, Dual Exceptionality.

In the conversation, I was reminded of books on the topic: Intellectual Giftedness in Disabled Persons (IGDP), by Joanne Rand Whitmore and C. June Maker. As some of you know, they are, separately, authors of two of my other favorite books - Whitmore on underachievement and Maker on curriculum modification.

IGDP was published in 1985, and it starts with a bit of self-awareness. The first chapter is entitled The Emerging Field: Education of Gifted Handicapped Students. Other chapter titles are also informative:

2) Hearing-Impaired Gifted Persons
3) Gifted Persons with Visual Impairment
4) Gifted Persons with Severe Physical Impairment
5) Gifted Adults Incurring Severe Disabilities
6) Intellectually Gifted Persons with Specific Learning Disabilities
7) The Affective Needs of Intellectually Gifted Persons with Disabilities
8) The Intellectual Needs of Gifted Persons with Disabilities

Unfortunately, as a work, IGDP is basically alone. While the field of 2e has paraded along, looking at the confluence of learning disabilities and giftedness where they live together in children (and, to a limited extent, adults), the attention paid to physical forms of exceptionality is comparatively rare. And, as has been noted elsewhere, there is scarce enough attention to the population of gifted adults, let alone to gifted disabled adults! (The exception to this seems to be the ADHD adult.)

Yes, the specific terminology may be dated. The content and concepts are not.

Whitmore & Maker created an amazing book.

Unfortunately, it is perhaps even more amazing today than it was when it came out.

Dr. Borland has returned to the battles of taking gifted children and programs away, in the name of "reforming" gifted education. Here is the first of his blogs on the topic:
http://www.creativitypost.com/education/problematizing_gifted_education_part_i_why_problematize

This is his book on the same theme from 9 years ago:
http://books.google.com/books/about/Rethinking_gifted_education.html?id=ZIZJiXMUYS0C

This was my response to the blog entry:

With all do respect, Dr. Borland -

I start from a different set of premises than yours. The field of gifted education has, at its core, the goal of ensuring that gifted children receive an appropriate education.

The *methods* of how we go about doing so are highly contests. In fact, for all that you talk about going to the roots to have "gifted education without gifted students" as a novel approach to be adopted, it is neither novel nor radical (in the sense of diverging from roots). Gifted education grew out of just such an environment and there plenty of places which have neither gifted programs nor gifted students so far as the schools are concerned.

"Differentiated curriculum" is a lovely notion with its own roots going back to a period before the field of gifted education came into being. Currently, it presents the notion of trying to reach each student (not each gifted student) in the ways that are most effective. However, as research has shown us repeatedly over the last few decades, differentiation happens far more in school literature and even law than it does in the bulk of our classrooms.

Nor has our practice reached a "dead end." It has certainly encountered any number of obstacles, but there is a substantial difference between those and a place in which there is no progress nor from which there can be progress.

There have been successful programs and unsuccessful programs for as long as there has been gifted education. Schools such as the North Carolina School for Science and Mathematics work. To suggest that such institutions are in any way at a dead end seems to me absurd. Conversely, the bandage programs designed to make G/T parents quiet while not providing substantial programming are, as you suggest, at a dead end - but they have been since their creation, because they are not gifted programs!

None of the proposals I have read that follow the notion you have advocated for several years now address the single greatest need of gifted students --> other gifted students. Nor do they address the second greatest need of gifted students in schools --> teachers who understand their needs. Without those two factors addressed, while your new-fangled programs may not seem to be at a dead end, the gifted students may well be.
*************


For 80 years, one drum beat has echoed through the national reports: "that all teachers [should] be given instruction in regard to what they can do for the gifted child."

It is not that our gifted programs have reached a dead end, Dr. Borland.

They have never been given a chance to start.

"The fewer American (born) grandparents a pupil has, the higher his achievement ratio is likely to be."

The time was 1940. The study was of 297 students across 4 (white) Baltimore high schools, each of whom had scored over 120 IQ on an Otis-Lennon (or other) IQ test. Of the 297 students, 125 had 4 American-born grandparents. 91 had none. 24 did not know where all of their grandparents had been born.

A similar split was seen in pupils whose dominant language at home was not English, though that was a bit more skewed by gender than the grandparent question was (with boys being higher than the girls among those with non-English speaking homes).

Achievement Ratio was a comparison between the IQ score and a performance measure.

"...the pupils who were deprived of privileges by their parents as a method of punishment had a lower mean achievement ratio than the pupils who were lectured or punished in any other way. Those pupils who received no punishment at all were ranked next in mean achievement ratio. Apparently, low achievement ratio is associated with being deprived of privileges, and high achievement ratio is associated with whipping and lecturing by parents."


Factors Associated with the Achievement of High School Pupils of Superior Intelligence(pp. 53-68) ~John W. Musselman, The Journal of Experimental Education (Vol. 11, No. 1, Sep., 1942).

We worry much, these days, about our youngsters — possibly over-much. Often they seem to live in a world of their own, far more distant from ours than a difference in decades would justify. They hear talk of peace and they know of three - now four - wars within a span of a half century, the bomb hangs over their heads and the earth shifts before their eyes. They are exhorted to work and yet they see an existence on the dole presented not only a possibility, but as a respectable way of life. They have seen legal group protests get confused with illegal destructive riots; they read about depressions of the past and economic collapse in the future; they have grown so sophisticated that they are embarrassed by their parents' ignorance about the birds and the bees; they tend to welcome change whether it means progress or retrogression in education, industry, morale, clothes, or the dance. Of course, they live apart from us. At least, praise be to the Lord, they have not wholly lost their sense of humor.

A boy came home from school one evening recently, I'm told and handed to his father this printed notice devised by one of his fellow students:

In the event of atomic attack, the law prohibiting prayer in school will be temporarily suspended.

My confidence in young people has been justified many times in war and peace. That does not mean that it can forget about the unfortunate circumstances in which many young people still grow up, trusting that good will flowers out of evil. Such a course would be cruelly irresponsible.

~Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1967




Note: In the 5th sentence, I inserted the phase "economic collapse" in place of "runaway inflation." There are no other changes.

This is one of a series of pieces from the past that capture the state of the present all too well.

by Milton Kornrich, in Underachievement, which he edited in 1965.

One might suppose that a definition of academic underachievement is a simple matter. After all, intuitively, does not the term directly suggest that a student is functioning less well than he or she could? But what is the meaning of "less well" and "could?" Is it less well in terms of a standard established by the student ("I think I could do better"); by the student's parents ("We know he could do better"); by the student's teacher ("He has more ability than he shows"); or by an objective intelligence or aptitude test which predicts a certain level of performance? Some focus on the imperfectness of this prediction: "Underachievement and overachievement are concepts which demonstrate the inability to predict performance accurately due to the influence of factors other than general ability or past record." (Carlson and Fullmer, 1959) Finally, if the researcher decides how "less well" is to be determined, what techniques will be used to measure it?

There are numerous related problems that only a more ambitious paper (i.e. Davis, 1959; Farquhar) would review. The purpose of this brief communication is to stimulate the reader to consider and evaluate a sample of definitions, and to emphasize, perhaps unnecessarily, that the multitudinous definitions reflect our insufficient comprehension of a most significant and obviously highly overdetermined phenomenon.

( various definitions )

A definition that is rather broad and lacking in precision but which more than compensates for it in humor is offered by Russell: "In a very general sense, the 'underachiever' is the person who performs markedly below his capacities to learn, to make applications of learning, and to complete tasks. Speaking figuratively, he is the person who sits on his potential, resisting various motivational procedures to get him off his potential, and possibly needing an adroitly directed kick in that same potential." (Russell, 1958). The humor in Russell's definition appears to be the only indirect reference to the impatience and anger that the underachiever can arouse in us. Often, the underachiever's passive way of coping with hostility is stressed. If underachievement is a highly active* maneuver that indeed achieves something, and I believe it surely does, it would be fruitful for some investigator to describe the underachiever's impact on peers, parents, and teachers.

Newman's definition is thoughtful and novel: "It is our conclusion that a student's own sense of underachievement and voluntary participation in a project such as ours are the essential criteria for the identification and selection of underachievers. We would estimate that 25 per cent of Hofstra (University) students would meet such criteria. (Newman, undated).

Only recently have some investigators (e.g. Davis, 1959; Farquhar; Raph and Tannenbaum, 1961; Thordike, 1963) critically examined the voluminous underachievement literature to account for inconsistent findings, to suggest more sophisticated methodology, or even to challenge the concept of underachievement (Kowitz, 1965; Schwitzgebel, 1965). Perhaps, in Professor Thorndike's words, this effort "Will lead to fewer and better publications in the future." (Thorndike, 1963). It may eventually lead to fewer, less arbitrary definitions of underachievement.

(references to specifics available, but the fingers got tired)

As with many other aspects of education, the approach to gifted children goes through cycles. There is a push, currently, toward seeing giftedness only in the product of ones labors rather than in the individual that is reminiscent of the early days of Joseph Renzulli's Three Ring Conception of Giftedness, which posited the three components of gifted behavior to be "above average ability, above average creativity, and above average task commitment."

In "Rethinking Giftedness and Gifted Education: A Proposed Direction Forward Based on Psychological Science," Rena Subotnik and her co-authors have proposed a definition of giftedness that remarkably has absolutely nothing to do with a person:

Giftedness is the manifestation of performance that is clearly at the upper end of the distribution in a talent domain even relative to other high-functioning individuals in that domain.

No longer are we, the educators, seeking to nurture individuals. We are purely and simply seeking to turn out displays and products, albeit of the highest quality.

Let me set aside the broader issue of whether we wish to return our view of education to the factory model, and the pure linguistic issue of defining a person's attributes in terms of external valuation of their production.

Instead, I would like to focus on the implications for late bloomers and underachievers.

In a view that focuses on the child and the child's potential, there is purpose in looking at what blocks it, at what prevents that child from fulfillment. The child who is stuck is as worth our effort as the child who achieves. Giftedness is the high potential.

In a view that focuses on the fruits of a child's labors, there is no purpose in looking beyond whether the child produces or not. The child's fulfillment has no relevance to schooling or, dare I say it, upbringing. Giftedness is, somehow, in the product and not the child.
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I do not come at this from a detached point of view. My perspective is that of a classic underachiever whose parents, teachers, and counselors were quite frustrated; that of an adult who works with others who have been so labeled.

I have reason to believe that my efforts have made a difference in the lives of dozens of other underachievers, helping them to find their feet. Pardon me if I cannot see how declaring these children a waste of time and effort would make this a better world.