Why I pulled my son out of a school for 'gifted' kids

"Smart" is a quantifiable hard limit. The problem with smart people is that as soon as they run up against a challenge/concept/issue they cannot immediately overcome, they get frustrated, because they "should be smarter than this!" Which often results in avoidable frustration/anxiety/depression.

You see this a lot. "Gifted" "smart" kids who coast through school for years, until one day they finally run up against something they cannot do and run away from it screaming. Simply because they're not "smart enough."

Where is the school program that let's the bullshit pseudo concept of "smarts" fall by the wayside and instead replaces it with an atmosphere where failure IS acceptable, and that you just have to work through the hard parts?

I have a kid. My wife's side is second generation "gifted." These people are absolutely obsessed with how smart they are/sound/come across, and get incredibly upset/frustrated/annoyed when they feel "dumb" (i.e. things are hard, they don't get it right away, or they make a mistake).

Unfortunately when I raise the issue of "hey, focusing on an intangible level of intelligence could be damaging [here look at this child research]" I just get eye rolls, because they're so deeply into the concept of how innately intelligent they are, they cannot see a less damaging way of living one's life.

My son (5 years ago) was tested to be "gifted" and after looking at the program we said no.

1) They would move him to a totally different school in our district.

2) They used a different curriculum and class strategies.

3) Being an "4.0 Student" in undergrad I knew the pressure to stand out besides the perfect scores. Kids would be worse.

4) We live in a dirty poor urban school district and I figured the "gift program" was going to get cut. It did the next year and he would have been right where he was anyways.

5) He had cancer and I kind of was mad that they would tell him these were his options without talking to us first, because there were medical needs that a local school afforded us (AKA we could run to school and give him his pain meds if necessary)

Gifted doesn't mean separate because the one thing that people with different brain strategies needs is the ability to figure out how to work with others. If there is no others they are bound to have trouble later on.

Kids need fun and excitement to grow. They'll all eventually learn their ABC's and far beyond. How far beyond, though, is unrelated to how early they learn their ABC's. Rather how confident and interested they are in what they're doing. That, and genetics, which no amount of training will change. This seems obvious when you let yourself step outside the education rat race for a second.

And then going back to the "far beyond" ... How far beyond do we need to get? I personally got to graduate level math and did well enough. Yet I'm still mostly (and happily) writing web software that I could have done with a high-school education or less. And working for (excellent) managers that were not even close to being child prodigies.

We adults are the ones with the experience to know what is important, so why do we warp this knowledge when we apply it to our kids?

The striking difference between my experience and that described in the article is that the educational structure of The Center was not competitive. They were just normal elementary school classrooms other than the level of the content. There are only two plausible reasons that I didn't experience the idea that some kids were dumber than others, either it didn't happen or I was the dumbest and the other kids were compassionate and kind.

Five year olds don't feel pressure to get into the best kindergarden. It's some adult's bright idea to sanction eight year olds competing on spelling day in and out. Once a year for the Scripps National Spelling Bee is plenty enough if not too much. My son goes to school with children who don't get dinner if they get a B on a math test and others whose parents have picked their majors before middle school...in STEM of course.

Yet I think the the most awesome of my classmates from all those years ago are an historian and a public school teacher.

Ducunt volentem fata nolentem trahunt. Seneca.

a) being taught at the speed and level that is at least in the ballpark of your potential. The reason this is needed is obvious: if you are being taught way beyond your capability you won't learn anything, and it's a disservice to be taught way below your capability as well.

b) in the top 50% of your local group of students, for self esteem reasons and also because you'll start to feel like studying and working hard pays off if you seem to be successful in school relative to your peers.

There's a real tradeoff between these two sometimes. Given two identical kids, if you send one to the school that is not up to his "gifted" potential but he is the smartest kid in his class he may well do better in the end than the one you send to a gifted school but he is obviously at the bottom of his class. The first will certainly be happier and perhaps learn the life lessons and habits that will make him super successful in high school, college and beyond.

We can at least start to address a) with these gifted programs and special education for the exceptionally challenged and so on. But addressing b) is also important and the laws of statistics sort of prevent us dividing kids into groups where everyone is above average for their group. In theoretical terms I can envision some sort of frequent rotation system where you're constantly shuffled from class to class so that one week you're top of your class and another you're bottom. Perhaps that would even help illustrate to kids the extremely hard to learn lesson that judging yourself against others is fruitless and destructive.

Is there nothing left that parents are meant to teach? Or is it all now the school's job? If so, why don't we go full Spartan and take the kids away from the parents right after they're born and have schools teach everything.

Basically, among gifted students, their child's position was in the middle of the bell-curve. That is a natural thing when there are smarter kids around, that are a better scoring group then your previous one.

The parents then go on to blame society and the school for not dedicating significantly more resources towards their child, at the expense of the other students.

The schools are not their to raise the child, that is the parents' job.

If you are thinking this is limited to schools alone, you are wrong. What do you think happens to all those employees at Google after they are made to go through all that algorithm acrobatics. You may be listed as someone who aced all interviews, has big grades on your mark sheet. But you will go there only find your self to be another face in the crowd. Your promotions/growth/rewards will come in a trickle. No matter how good you might actually be, you are no special snowflake in a crowd like that. The net result is you will end up demotivated, if not feeling bad about yourself.

Even a performance evaluation in situations like that will make you feel like crap.

And it always happens that the 'low performers' in the group are always given fewer of those plum opportunities. No matter how good you individually might be, you will end up getting labelled as mediocre. And worse, you will be made to believe that you are.

I, on the other hand, grew up in a family of academics and was able to express myself and make mistakes from time to time. Sometimes I wish I had been pushed harder as a kid, but I think I turned out all right.

When I met the father he remarked at how well-spoken I was and lamented that none of his children communicated as well as I did - the kind of skill that cannot arise when your childhood and adolescence is confined to an intellectually rigid model.

Creativity cannot be dictated.

My district's gifted program was the single best thing that happened to my education.

But that's not enough - parents want to make sure their kid is special. The kind that wins Nobel Prizes. We have to find some way to filter these million above-average kids into a few hundred people who truly make a difference. So maybe your next filter could be some competition. Being accepted to [0] means you are in the top 1500 at doing a hobby science project. We have a long series of K-12 filters (olympiads, languages, music, early university, chess, etc.) and each one ends up with its own few (100-10000) best.

We want to set up our kid for success, but the only way we can have any sort of prediction is by putting the kid through filter after filter after filter and hoping they pass all of them. And if they pass the first three and not the fourth? Then now you have to deal with the fact that our prediction says that they will spend the rest of their life with a regular family and a regular job rather than being something spectacular. And if they pass every test they meet? Well there are 50 other people who matched the same set of tests as they did. How do we select which 49 will end up being normal adults? And what if the next Linus Torvalds ends up being someone who passed some of the filters, but not all of them?

There is no predictor for success. Kids should be encouraged to try and prove themselves, but only so long as they enjoy it so much they continue to choose to pursue this during their own free time.

[0] https://student.societyforscience.org/intel-isef

Progressive schools also attract a large number of children with behavioral problems that have been forced out of all other schools. Most progressive schools are tolerant to a fault and don't have the budget or people-power to plan and prepare for these students. They need their own IEPs and in many cases a para-professional in the classroom with them but their parents are often LOATHE to cover the cost.

TL;DR progressive schools can be tolerant to a fault. Your kid will get hit and screamed at and if they are more academic they will complain to you constantly that their classroom is chaos.

It's not that hard to get your child into schools for gifted children without your child being especially gifted. Not saying it's easy but it's not really about how gifted they are.

Here in NY a lot of parents push their kids and focus primarily on the skills thats needed to get into these schools without the kids having a natural urge to want to get into it. Lots of tutoring to get them to they point where they can do it.

And so a lot of children have "read the book" but don't understand it so to speak. And thats where the problem start.

The ideal condition for learning is when you are challenged and things are a bit difficult; not too easy (you get bored) and not too hard (you get discouraged).

If schools are set up to underserve the bottom 1/3 to 1/2 of each class (be it via pacing or competition), it doesn't make sense to work really hard to place your kid in better-and-better schools until they're in that bottom third.

This completely ignores the fact that probably the best way to learn is to be surrounded by people more intelligent than yourself.

Speaking as someone who spent most of my childhood as "valedictorian" I would have craved a competitive peer group much sooner, despite the blow to my self-esteem which confrontation of my own fallibility created.

I was far from a gifted child. My first day of kindergarten, my mom dressed me up in a like a minature businessman, equipped with a small brief case, thermos, lunch box, and a rain coat. (Mom, I love you to pieces, and look back with loving memories. Sorry guys had to say this.)

Back to kindergarten. I walked into that class room, looked at Miss Palmer. Looked at the other children running around, and made a beehive to the little wooden play house on the back of the room. I looked out of 6" X 6" window, and my body tensed up, and I didn't want to leave that playhouse. I opened my lunch case and started to drink my milk. My mother loving put ice cubes in an cleaned, recycled peanut butter jar. I drank my milk, and came out of that playhouse, with the iron fist of Miss Palmer. "Get out of there, or I'll pull you out by your arm!"

I went to my seat, and hated the whole thing. I enjoyed the other kids, but the adults at that school terrified me. I'm still leary of adults, and I'm an adult. Crazy?

I remember being a nervous child. My school just made my anxieties worse.

My biggest fear was twice a month, the children would have to go up to a big wooden calender, and put the date place card in the right spot. When it was my turn, I knew the date, but when I was up on that counter, and everyone was looking at me--I froze, and couldn't remember anything. I would take that placard and move it around the board, like it was a Ouigi board. Even the kids would take pity on me. They would yell, "To the right. Over there. Down. Up.". After thirty one tries, I would finally complete the task. In order to help me, Miss Palmer decided I would put the date up 2-3 times a week--so I would get better. Well, I never got better.

I was so terrified of public speaking, or anyone watching me do anything, I literally would ask my college professors, "Do you require any public speaking in your class?". I got through college with only one sweaty, public speach. It's possible, with a lot of planning.

As a child, I had a hard time learning. I can still see the concern on my father's face when he was trying to teach me the numbers on the big black rotary phone. I had some kind of learning disability? I just couldn't learn the things the adults wanted me to learn. I just wanted to be outside playing, and running around.

Even-though, I was not gifted, I do remember the worst day of my life. I was five, or six? My parents were out, and I was alone in the house. (Just for a little while. I could go to Donna's house if I needed anything.). I was jumping on my parents bed. I got tired. I layed down. At that moment, I realized my parents might die one day. I cried, and cried. I cried for hours, or at least it seemed like hours. That was the beginning of my fear of death. It went from my parents, to my own eventually demise.

My parents arrived, and I never took them for granted again. I hugged them more. I grew up fearing for their safety. In Boy Scouts, I didn't want them to go to the Jamboree; afraid they might get hurt. After all, these log contraptions were put together by crazy adults, and stupid kids.

Back to my learning disability. I finally overcame it in second grade. I just started to learn? I did really well up until high school. With every pore on my face, and back clogged; the only thing I really cared about was girls, sports, (actually nothing formal. Just knock down basketball games), and socializing. It wasen't until my last year I got serious about school, but it was too late. I did make up eveverything I missed in high school in two semesters at a community college, and went on to get a four year degree, and a year of graduate school.

So if you have a kid who's doing terrible in school, things do get better. If you have a nervous, anxious kid, especially if that kid is the first born; I was just about to give advise, but realized there's no advice. You don't want to coddle them? You don't want to fix all their anxieties? In my case, I just got better.

I became a high functioning, educated adult. I felt like I could do anything, and was pretty successful.

I then had a nervous breakdown over--life? I really don't know what made me bust a gasket. I got better from the breakdown, but I'm not a good as before. I am still hanging on though, and not depressed. I just need to make more money. The breakdown had no affect on my learning abilities, or interests. I'm just not the same dude. I sometimes wonder if I would want to go back to my old self. I honestly don't know.

Good luck with your kids, and hug them. Hug, or call your parents. I need to get in touch with my brother, and sister, but we had a huge falling out over a family matter. Yes, it was money, and it was ugly. I just can't forgive them yet.

(Brother--if you are listening--I understand what you did. You needed the money, and you had a kid on the way. I kinda get what you did. As to my sister--you alwready had a multi million dollar shoe business. Two houses. Vacation home in the desert, with a yurt in the backyard. New cars. Health insurance. Good wine. Restaurant meals. I will never understand why you took all the money. I have thought about it over the years, and I just don't get it. You know your mother needed the money? I'm still helping out mom because she can't afford anything. And, you knew I needed the money? You took that expensive sports car, and let your oldest boy drive it around town, like it was a commuter car? I kills me on so many levels, and it will be stolen. Yea, dad was an angry man, but you didn't need to capitalize on a bad situation? Maybe, one day, I can forgive?"

Sorry people--this went to therapy too quick. I know this is not the place. Won't do it again.