Most people would agree that all children are entitled to an opportunity to learn. What then does it mean to learn? The dictionary defines learning as “acquiring knowledge or skill.” When gifted students are sitting in a classroom being taught material that they already know can we say that they are “learning”? Aren’t they then being denied a basic right that we believe all young people are entitled to?
I have been stunned lately by the disregard for gifted students in our public schools. I hear, “But they can already pass the tests.” or “ We need to focus on the lower students to bring our test scores up.” I even heard, “Let’s just have the gifted students teach the struggling students. That will give the gifted students something to do and will bring up our test scores.” It is well known that people learn material better when they need to teach it but if our gifted students are spending their time being ignored and teaching others, when are they given the opportunity to learn? This goes beyond funding and test scores. This is a civil rights issue and it criminal to have these students sitting in classrooms day after day spending their time doing work that keeps them busy but does not contribute to their learning.
The San Bruno Park School District has budgeted over $300,000 dollars for Special Ed Funding for the 2010-2011 school year. Special Ed. Funding is federally mandated so the district must follow the guidelines and the money must be spent. Funding for gifted education is not currently federally mandated. Guess how much the San Bruno Park School District will spend on gifted education next year. The answer is $0. I do not deny that students in special ed. need special services but it neglect to have so many services for those students and none for the gifted students.
If we think about 100 as a median IQ, students who are two standard deviations below the mean (IQ of 70) are required by law to have special services. Students who are two standard deviations above the mean (IQ of 130) have no federal protection and thus have no services. If a student has an IQ of four standard deviations below the mean (IQ of 40) they would be in a special day class and it would be unlikely that they could be mainstreamed into a regular classroom. For students with an IQ of four standard deviations above the mean (IQ of 160), they are usually stuck in regular classrooms doing the same work that their classmates are doing. Or they are home schooled because parents cannot find a place that will work for them in the school system. Laws have been enacted to make sure that some students are given the opportunity to learn but they have neglected to extend that right to all students.
Underachievement is the number one problem facing gifted students and it comes from the students being denied the opportunity to learn important skills such as perseverance, study skills, and the value of practice. These skills would be learned by engaging in challenging work that is commensurate with a child’s academic needs.
The bigger issue for me is the waste of these young minds. Imagine what a gifted student could do with years of learning under their belt. If they were given the opportunity to make continuous progress in school year after year imagine what they would be capable of by the end of high school. Now imagine the opposite, what they will have gained from years of classroom experiences in which they haven’t been challenged in the least? Gifted students are going to be movers and shakers in our world. They are bright. They are intense. They are able to take many different parts of a problem and put them together in a coherent whole. Why aren’t we shaping this and giving them the tools to learn to be leaders in our world?
This week a group of gifted first graders dutifully completed the page in their math book. They had to circle whether the crayon was “next to” or “far from” the glue bottle. Then they had to circle whether the marker was “in front of” or “behind” the scissors. These are words these students learned when they were two and three years old. I don’t see how this work guides them on their educational path. I don’t see the critical thinking skills and higher order thinking that I would hope would be part of the tool box of tomorrow’s leaders.
I fear for our future. If our students, all of them, not just the gifted ones, are only being taught the most basic material and how to be experts at filling in the blanks, I don’t know how they are going to solve problems in our world that are big and messy and don’t have simple solutions like a fill-in-the-blank worksheet. As we sit and focus on test scores we are losing sight of the fact that we need to teach students to think.
Creating the internet, inventing a computer, developing a hybrid car. I can guarantee these were not things people learned how to do from a worksheet. Who knows what challenges we will face in the next thirty years as the world becomes increasingly complex but I know that I want creative, bright, resourceful people leading the way. It is essential that we fight now for all students to have the opportunity to learn so that we will have skilled leaders to guide us in the future.
Insightful, thank you for sharing. Your article hit this right on for me because I have one child who considered bright or "GATE" by the school district and another on an IEP. Both have needs which are not being adequately met. Their teachers care, but project based learning and such is not on the curriculum, and those who think inside the box do well in our current school system.
ReplyDeleteReading is not a simplistic “how-to” that is once learned well and thereafter applied. Academic reading is multi-faceted and complex. In other words, there is plenty to learn that will challenge gifted students throughout their K-12 experience. In fact, the old learning to read and reading to learn dichotomy is limiting our “best and brightest” students. Let’s un-limit them with Differentiated Reading Instruction for Gifted Students.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comment Michelle. Project based learning and critical thinking skills are often not taught in public schools but they can be. Parents need to demand this more challenging work for their children. Let your school board and your principal know that this is something your child needs.
ReplyDeleteSpeak up at the next board meeting!