Scoring is the base for Mathematics indeed.Well this made more easy at Mental Math
Jesse,
Didn't get beat up but had alot of the same experiences. Gifted program from 3rd grade to 11th. From 5th grade to 9th got pulled out of reg school once a week to go do a bunch of arts and crafts projects at another school. Total waste of time. Never learned how to study until I hit college. Never had to. Always did my homework in homeroom. My 6 y/o was recently tested at high/superior and the school is looking at her sideways. And I'm conflicted about the whole thing. Do I want to put her in something like I went through or just leave her be and try to work with her myself. Is a dilemna. I just don't see the schools doing a better job with kids like this.
Whoa, Doc....I understand, I really understand....I was a skinny, geeky, very thick eyeglass wearing, bad clothes sense....(NO clothes sense)....smart girl kid a long, long time ago. I'm 54 now and I also feel like I am finally there....or at least, getting there.
I lucked out with no beatings and mostly just verbal abuse and some verbal sexual abuse....so what happened to you scares me. I also read that Time article last night. My son is 16 and he's smart, witty, clever and testing right on up the charts too....and I am very pleased that his attitude is that he doesn't give a shit about what other people think of him....I couldn't feel that way at all when I was in high school....but had that epiphany when I hit college. I am glad that he has found things at school to challenge him now, but I hate to think that he might face some of the the things you faced and that it might take him until he's in his 40's or 50's to feel as if he's got an understanding of his role in this world. I think his attitude is way farther along than my understanding of things when I was his age, so I can only hope that maybe his having older parents has been to his benefit.
pure bullsh*t story.
My elementary childhood. Was reading when I was a toddler. It was suggested that I start at fourth grade, but Mom felt I needed some seasoning as a human being before dealing with the big kids. Went to a gifted high school and private high school, but between what I now know is ADD and emotional problems I had at best mediocre grades. Add a bit of family dysfunction to the mix. Became so withdrawn I needed therapy, Began coming out of it when I was in my twenties, but still had self-esteem issues until a few years ago. I finally found myself at 50 and wondering what I would have done if I had found out about my ADD years earlier.
Bullshit story, hah! Probably one of those bullies who would rather not have the victim's stories told. Well, this genious is out of the closet!
Sometimes I think some brilliant person started the internet just so we could find each other.
I had a much, much milder experience. Thank heaven I went to college and found some really bright friends with similar interests. Maybe rather than looking at the school, the teachers and the curriculum (all important) you should think first about whether your kids can find some equally bright peers?
To me, this is about the failure of our entire educational system. The system fails all kids. It simply needs to be changed.
The world has changed and the school system doesn't even begin to reflect that change. We need a whole new approach.
I hate to break it to you Jesse even at lower IQ levels than yours school is rough.
School is just plain boring for anyone interested in real learning. IQ level has nothing to do with it.
Real learning involves risk taking, creativity and making plenty of mistakes. None of those things are valued instead we use cramming and rote learning methods in schools.
All I remember from school is being bored to tears.
The only year of schooling I actually ever enjoyed was my senioe year of college when almost all of my classes were independent study.
Been there done that...
Worse yet, I have a high IQ combined with relatively severe learning disabilities and ADD. I've been classified as EMH (Educably Mentally Handicapped) and Gifted. Most of the daily school beatings came as a result of the severe speech impediment and horrific motor skills. Thankfully my family supported me to the hilt.
Being a Chicagoan I was raised a bit differently on playing by the rules. It doesn't matter how smart you are, ethical rules apply (Leopold and Loeb were an example of what would happen otherwise) arguably to a greater extent ("with great power comes great responsibility"). On the other hand if the rules didn't make sense, figure out the intent and follow the spirit and game the letter. I'm very political, but as invisibly as possible.
Rote learning was hell, spelling and arithmetic are still miserable. Doing sums in my head is orders of magnitude more difficult than Group Theory or Quantum Mechanics. My spelling is worse than moonglum's, I just use a spell checker.
I managed to hang on till I got into a magnet high school. Got speech training to point that people think I'm in radio or public announcing. By later high school I had smart friends, and my grades were turning around as things shifted from rote learning to symbolic manipulation and axiomatic reasoning. Discovered computers, and found out that they worked off of pure reason and were consistent in their actions. College and grad school still had some rough sledding but everything came out well. Got a PhD in physics.
As of now I'm a happy eccentric geek with a good job, a few close friends, less of a social life than I'd like but comfortable in my own skin.
As for if we are failing our geniuses. First off, from where I come from "genius" is a word that is used very sparingly. If you haven't changed the world you are not a genius. Are we failing our gifted, most certainly.
But you have to be very careful in spotting the gifted. Intelligence isn't a scalar value, it's a tensor with more than a few singular values. Don't ask how intelligent people are ask in what ways they are intelligent . Watch out for learning disabilities masking intelligence. Keep in mind that the supposed prodigies with every sign of promise often burn out early, while the squirrelly eccentrics tend to keep plugging along throughout their life. And never take seriously an IQ score which exceeds the IQ of the test authors.
So true. I went to school on Florida, and while it's not the best school system, they had some afterschool things that were more interesting than school, and I'd learned by 7th grade that even if I want to fit in, I couldn't.
IQ may not be the story, SteveK, but gifted children who aren't athletes or musicians are usually left to bumble along as best they could. Without family support (which I didn't have) they can easily fall by the wayside. And like racism and other prejudices, this is a terrible waste of human resources.
Ok so my kids are lookign like smate kids, both my wife and I fell into that gifted catagory...how do i convince them that studying, adn at least trying the busy work is a good idea????any of you smart "good kids?", id ratehr my kids take an easier path then I did, unleraning bad habits is ratehr dificult. (I skated by without cracking textbooks, studying or paying attention in class untill college...ok well untill late college, piss teachers off, perfect scores on all of the tests, never turned in a scrap of homework)
SteveK I combined dislexcya with apathy, its a bad combination...most of the time I break speecheckers 
on the otehr hand didn't have much truble with math...I did advanced calc on my fingers(only one in class not to use a calculator, allwayus done first and best)..not that bright though, liniar algibra(one step beynd def eq) kicked my ass, never learned how to study(never needed to) so I wasn't able to handle it.
I avaoided the school beatings, I have a bad temper, I would pick whop seemed to be the leader of the bullys adn do somethign very bad to him (Jabbed one in the shoder with a pencile and broke it off an inch deep, chocked anotehr till he passed out while his buddies tried to pull me off..lots of other bad things) best way to deal with a group of bullies, let the leadre know that no matter what they did to you he would get very hurt...got me in lots of trouble at school...not advisable today as it would get you expelled...that was in the let boys be boys days, the school bullies only tried ot mess with me once though. Had oen friend (allways called him Mackie don't remember his name) who took a lot longer to snap, he finaly did in highschool, it wans't prety...every day some jock types would walke by our lunch table and smash his cupcake (he allways had a home made cupcake with his lunch, he was odd like that, all my friends where a little off). then one day mackie told the jock "I wouldn't smash that if i where you" the jock laughed and asked what mackie wsa going to do about it while he slammed his hand down...next thing I know the guy is screaming and there is blood every where...mackie hand put a large very rusty and dirty nail in the center of his cupcake, the jock had drivin right through his hand.
mackie never was bothered again.
I don't think I had the social problems so much that you describe, Jesse, but I was a decade ahead of you and that made a big difference.
I went to NYC public schools at a time when they were not into 'feel good' classes and instead tried to place students where they belonged for their best learning potential.
In elementary school, we had a set up like this: Each grade had four classrooms, as in 1-A, 1-B, 1-C, 1-D, with the A class being the kids of higher ability and the D class being the ones of least ability who needed more attention and remedial efforts. From grade to grade up to the 6th, you could be moved up or down depending on your ability and your learning skills as observed by your teachers, and reinforced by IQ and state exams. This was the way it was in the 1950s and into the early 60s.
At the end of the 6th grade, parents of the 6-A class were informed that their children were eligible for a special program in junior high which was designed to combine the 7th and 8th grades into one year, at the end of which, they entered a special 9th grade class which reinforced the accelerated studies and moved them further ahead. They could accept or refuse it. Some parents refused it due to the higher amounts of study and homework and worries about fitting in socially later on in high school for the year-younger entrant. Once you entered high school you were on your own and could run at your own speed. I graduated shortly after my 16th birthday.
On the plus side, it gave the brighter student an education in the company of other students who were also ahead of the pack. Not all were of vastly higher IQ; some just worked much harder to keep up their grades. My memory is that we had little to do with the other classes of our grade level, especially the C- and D-level. But we were challenged, we were supported and we had a surprising lack of serious behavior problems during class -- most of which were reprimands for 'talking' while the teacher was teaching.
I am sure this system bit the dust in the 1960s where 'feel good' for the majority was the rule and the more able students were told to shut up and stagnate. While it probably didn't make many of the kids functioning at a lower level in D class feel great, life is unfair and not everyone can be a football player or a violinist in the symphony either. It was a matter of working with what you got and trying to make the very best of it.
While there are tons of programs to help slower children, there are almost none extant today to challenge the faster kids and they are not getting the education they are entitled to also.
pure bullsh*t story.
The Kool-Aid drinking trolls really hate being reminded how totally out of their league they are here, don't they?
I am very glad you wrote this. I went to a K-12 school for the gifted where I was sort of a darling in my own way. I had friends, hardly ever got bullied. Never learned to study. Crashed and burned in college for a variety of reasons, nobody's fault, some circumstantial, some having to do with not being "prepared," some having to do with my mental and emotional makeup. It's interesting how I could be so smart and yet so stupid. I still deal with my own stupidity all the time.
I'm 44 now and have been starting to "come into my own" for years and years, it seems. So much drifting my my life, so many poor decisions, so much waste.
I know there are lots and lots of people who didn't grow up "gifted" who have the very same issues. Still, it's a comfort being reminded that other "smart kids" have struggled too, and I do wonder if there could have been differences in how I was educated
that would have spared me some of this.
Steve K., you say genius is a tensor, not
scalar, so would that be covariant or
contravariant ? Just wondering.
Jesse,
What a timely post, as my son enters sixth grade today -- a new school (middle school, grades 6-
, a new way of learning (going from classroom to classroom instead of staying in one all day). And most importantly, a new breed of bully. The middle-school bully.
My boy is about two standard deviations above the mean, unlike the girl profiled in Time. But, like you, Jesse, he hates rules. He's not what I'd call rebellious -- yet -- but he's smart, gets bored easily, and realizes that school rules are there to keep the less-smart kids docile and under control.
Sorta reminds me of me. And, boy, when I rebelled, I fucking rebelled. I sure hope he doesn't go down a similar road. He might not survive.
Trouble is, I identify so much with the kid that I can't see him clearly. Does that make sense? So I don't know what advice to give him, what direction to turn him to.
Anyway, he'll go his own fucking direction, thankyouverymuchdad!
If you have more wisdom to impart, Jesse, for us parents of kids who are like you were, I'm all ears.
grades sixth through eight.
Really, Haloscan, you should let us write an 8 following a dash without getting your panties in a wad.
WereBear:
I'm just saying that you have to be careful on your criterion of gifted or you'll miss the kids who need help most. No argument that we're failing the geeks who we depend on.
moonglum:
We seem to be a bit complementary on weaknesses. Just poking a bit of fun, your writing is well worth the effort of decoding it.
Periwinkle Spark Plug:
Both of course, otherwise we couldn't multiply
IQ is variable.
Stick the idiots in a class with other idiots they do not know and tell them they are geniuses, they will perform as such.
Stick geniuses in a class with other geniuses they do not know and tell them they are borderline retarded, they will perform as such.
EQ is the real deal, and for those who say EQ is just social conformity, you're goddamned straight it is. And it's what we're measured by our whole lives.
Yes, there are real geniuses out there measurable by IQ, people beyond 200 and who function at a whole other level. For the rest of us, 150 or 90 matters very little. We have to go along to get along which is what EQ is all about. Evidence? Check out Bobby Fischer and thousands of other genius children.
"Bobby Franks was a snotty kid".
Lenny Bruce
Well, as long as we're telling our "genius" or "gifted" stories (no offense intended with the quotes, I just have to use them when employing those words in reference to myself): Online IQ tests are probably a very inadequate way of engaging your real IQ, but if they give you even a fuzzy notion of what your actual IQ is, I suppose I clock in at about 130. This supposedly puts me in the smartest five percent of the population. [Hope Is Emo] Whatever. [/HIE]
I never really lived up to my potential because during the years of my education, I was struggling with some pretty serious emotional problems. Part of those problems was dysfucntional family stuff, part of it was just my own lazy, selfish, self-pitying personality that was sooo good at making problems a lot worse. I managed to get a mostly decent education, but I never really developed an idea of what I wanted to do in life. That can be very handicapping in this day and age, because very often young adults are expected to have a detailed plan regarding where they're going that they follow so that they hit the ground running when they get out into the real world. If you're like me and you ended up wasting a shitload of time playing catch-up with regard to growing up, you may end up being left in the dust. The good thing that can come of this is that it provides a person an opportunity to define themselves in a way that doesn't depend as much on society's "shoulds" and "supposed tos". And this is good because, as we all know, we live in what is probably the most narcissistic society in the history of civilization. (Not that I have very much love for civilization, but I'll refrain from going into that here. *smiles ironically*)
Imagine being a cute, blonde, dimpled little girl hanging out there in the third standard deviation. Imagine you live in a remote cowtown where most of the kids are destined for the mines and mills -- and knowing almost from birth that you have almost nothing in common with them. Imagine entering kindergarten already reading on a middle school level -- and having to sit through the next several years of ABCs, bored out of your mind and acting out, while everybody else caught up.
They wouldn't let me in the school library until third grade. The downtown library wouldn't let me check out adult books until I was 12. (My mother used to sneak me into the adult section, and check out things on my behalf.) I was tearing through books like they were Snickers bars -- when I could convince the adults to let me have them. But the librarians went out of their way to keep them out of my hands.
Yeah, my education shortchanged me half a dozen ways; and there's almost no way my social circumstances (particularly in high school, where no one knew what to make of me -- even people who can deal with smart boys are at a loss with smart girls, and let's not even talk about what dating was like) were going to be anything but abusive. College was a godsend. That's when my life really began.
There's just so much here that hits buttons. I lived in Silicon Valley when Columbine happened. The Valley, then and now, is a superconcentration of the country's most intelligent people. It was notable to me that, in the weeks following the shooting, every single person I talked to knew viscerally, intensely, exactly why those kids did what they did. They didn't condone it. They thought it was horrible. But they sure as shit understood the feelings that motivated the shooters to kill.
I found that stunning. Even these geniuses, all grown up and very successful, still harbored an unbelievable amount of anger about the way they'd been treated in high school. That shit never goes away. And that, right there, tells you everything you need to know about what it's like to be bright in America.
My kids are being raised by three people who are all hanging out there on the far end of the IQ charts. (My kids' dad has an IQ of 185. Took the SAT at barely 15, got a perfect score, and went straight to college. He's also borderline Asperger's, so none of this helps his social skills, I'm afraid.) The kids themselves are smart enough, but not like us.
And I'm really, really good with that. They've got EQs far and away ahead of ours -- a sign that we've done something right -- and are on their way to very fulfilling lives, minus a lot of the angst and fury we had. All things considered, regression toward the mean has been a blessing, and is serving them well.
I had a terrible experience in relation to IQ tests. Due to a clerical error, or pure sadism, I recieved a very high score on the IQ and aptitude tests which were all the rage in those days. When accurately tested, I scored in the high two-digit numbers. Not dumb enough to be removed from regular classes, but just barely smart enough to wipe my own ass.
So I got all the pain, and none of the benefits, like being able to think.
i guess i've always been the guy from Idiocracy, when people said "lead, follow, or get out of the way", i always got out of the way...got beat up too, but i don't think it was cause i was too smart, i certainly wasn't smart enough to fit in w/ the herd at school...aquitted myself honourably enough tho, so no lingering resentment to carry into adulthood...
EQ sounds interesting, i don't think i've ever taken that test (except in an informal laboratory called life everyday?), but if it's social conformity they're after, i wonder if it's descended at all from these old german military tests i was reading about...didn't see any sample questions unfortunately, but i guess the gist was that rather than testing "intelligence" like the americans or brits, they tested for "character", or Einsatzbereitschaft, the readiness to apply the will to a certain act (leave it to the germans to have a 19 letter word to describe any psychosophical state...)
i'd like to think my EQ would be alot higher now than as a kid, probably the same for alot of people...are these scores supposed to be variable over time?
48, huh? whew, i've still got six years to get my act together...
brilliant post from a brilliant mind.
I really don't want to get anyone down, but IQ tests aren't really a great indicator of any sort of achievement or potential achievement. They were introduced in the US after WWI and were part of the Social Darwinism campaign to show that the aryan white race was superior to all other races. Though I am sure many of the cultural biases associated with that test have been at least attempted to be rectified, they are only one narrow tool to measure potential achievement.
The real problem is having bored kids who are going to act out. Charter schools with no standards and no criteria for accountability in how they spend their federal, state, and local money are not the answers in my eyes. Rather it is the improvement of public school infrastructure, an emphasis of lower class sizes and not simply having a classroom of 30 students with one teacher "teaching to the test".
Under No Child Left Behind, the situation of gifted kids has gotten worse with more time wasting federally mandated testing. I think the time and the effort to help these kids should still be centered in the public schools, though some of the behavioral problems associated with some of these kids requires a more individualized setting.
The thing about learning is that people learn differently. Maybe if we had classes dedicated to how you learn rather than what you learn a lot of the stuff you learned would stay in your head and might actually help you down the road.
Mrs Robinson:
Slashdot had an excellent coverage of the post Columbine geek reaction:
http://slashdot.org/articles/99/...5/
1438249.shtml
Really hits the nail on the head.
Mooser:
Just like I was saying, intelligence can be mismeasured by a lot of masking factors. I spent quite a few hours being on low end vocational training (sorting nuts and bolts and undoing fasteners, including garters and bra hooks, the latter being rather useful later on )
Brian Bell:
a.) Mensa grade IQ is noticeably different although not in the way you'd think. High IQ folks are good at testing, and thus have an affinity for logic problems, some forms of debate, and use of words. Attending Mensa functions tends to show a lot of smart idiots as well as genuinely interesting people who do offer discourse of a different type than the run of the mill.
b.) EQ as a single value or composite criteria scares the hell out of me. I suspect that Dear Leader has a higher EQ than Gore and look where that got us. Unless you actually use fMRI or some other direct measurement the highest EQ scores are going to come from high end psychopaths (Ted Bundy and the like) who know how to game the questions.
c.) As I noted earlier, I'm a believer in multivariable IQs which match peoples intelligence and personality to tasks that are a good fit. For example Steve Jobs and Woz are both remarkable third standard deviation individuals but they are not only not interchangeable, but in many respects complementary in skills and personality.
The author of the Slashdot story, Jon Katz, has given up on geek kids. Now, he writes about dogs.
I love the comments in this thread. Haven't commented yet because I don't want anything to slow the flood of people sharing their stories. Please... keep them coming.
There's something about telling the truth about what happened that frees one up, no matter when you tell the truth, be it a very subjective truth full of personal assessment, of a baldly factual truth. Tell it ten minutes after the fact, or tell it decades later, telling what happened liberates one from having to keep stuff concealed.
I will comment later on my overall sense of all this, but for now please just keep your stories and opinions coming.
Jesse
PS. I will say however I agree with SteveK who said: First off, from where I come from "genius" is a word that is used very sparingly. If you haven't changed the world you are not a genius.
My old boss, Dr. Fernando Flores is a genius. His colleague and co-author Terry Winograd, Ph.D. of Stanford is also a genius as Winograd turned out Page and Brin of Google, not to mention Gods know how many other founders of world-changing companies, not to mention being Flores' colleague; and Flores clearly has changed the world in a number of ways.
Point being, I look not just at the direct changes people have made personally, but at the people turned out by people. Winograd and Flores clearly fit. I'm simply in the gifted category till something I do, students of mine, or a set of distinctions I create becomes so omnipresent that everyone in at least a major discipline must deal with my work in order to do their work. This is the definition I use for mastery in a field, and while there can be mastery without genius (we are not changing the topic to what is mastery?) genius without mastery is "so what?", or at least, for the purposes of this conversation, is a "Damn. If only..."
My contention is the most gifted among us, whatever we want to call them, are capable of becoming masters in the fields of their choice. (Fields. The plural wasn't an accident.) The question, what my and your stories are revealing, is what lies between a world full of many more gifted, fully expressed and satisfied smart people (and thus a better world for everyone), and... this.
Please -- keep the stories coming.
Something interesting is being revealed as you tell what happened to you, as you tell your hopes for your children.
*hugs*
Well, I'm not as smart as most people here, only making a 32 on the ACT. Good at test taking until I actually had to learn to study in college. My sad story about my above average intelligence is that I prefer being an otaku to being a scholar. So I stopped at a Master's degree in physics, since I preferred videogames, anime, & comic books to putting in 80 to 100 hours a week doing research.
I'm useless, but sometimes I am happy.
Three vaguely-associated points:
A spellchecker isn't going to help you if you use "adapt" instead of "adept". That takes intelligence, which isn't yet available for digital minds. (And to be sure, literacy or intelligence don't map to spelling skillz all that well, except in reverse: you can be an avid reader of high intelligence and not be able to spell worth a damn [some great writers are dyslexic, for example, and dependent on good copyeditors] but an excellent speller is likely to be of high intelligence. Same with math.)
Comments on this post haven't quite alluded to the current theory of multiple intelligences. IQ, if it means anything other than what one scores on an intelligence test, is only a general measure of raw intellectual capacity; other parts, including social intelligence (which many mentally gifted minors lack to an almost Asperger's-ish level), are equally important to balanced development.
I guess I have a more old-fashioned idea of genius, which is that it's something you have, not something you are.
Jesse,
Thank you for the article. My childhood experiences were not too different from yours except I doubled as a punching bag for my mother. There were so many similarities found in your story and those told in the comment section that resembled mine that I started to tear up. And at 48 years of age I've almost got a handle on things, almost.
It's great to see the needs of intelligent children being addressed instead of their minds being hobbled by ignorance and neglect.
There's also comfort in knowing there are similar "works in progress" out there.
>I managed to get a mostly decent education, but I never really developed an idea of what I wanted to do in life.
L&L, I could have written this. At (almost) 48, I'm still not all that sure. I didn't act out because I was too scared of what punishment would come my way. So I just stuffed it inside, not a good solution, either.
I came up in one of the better public school districts in the Bay Area during the 60s and 70s, prior to Prop. 13. I was fairly smart but just below what the district considered gifted. We had AP level history and government, which I was able to get into and did very well. From what my nephews (ages 14 and 17) tell me, there's precious little civics and history being taught. It's all about teaching to the english and math test.
Most of the grief I got from other kids was because I kept to myself. Being clumsy and bordering on fat didn't help. In grade 8, I was the new kid, and managed to shrug it off. Good thing, because that middle school's students fed into only one high school so I was stuck with them. Hung out with the newspaper geeks and mostly kept my head down.
When I was 8 or 9, my mom let me cross a couple of busy streets to get to the town library and I didn't need her to get books on my behalf. Still, I got the "don't spend all day with your nose in a book" from her.
Been there. I was expelled from both the parochial school and the public school by age 16, for weird and non-conforming behavior (smoking, drinking, skipping school) basically because I was fu**in' bored outa my skull. A regular jubinile delinkwent I was. However, rather than joining the Army, as was suggested, I took the local college's entrance exams and passed with flying colors. Scheduled for a September entry date, the college asked for my high school records. Hah! sez I. I don't need no fu**in' high school records. However, the great Commonwealth of PA felt differently, and I was not allowed to enter college until I came up with a HS diploma. We managed to come up with one without my attending any school, thank the gods. Thinking back, I went through the year's reader book in one day back in grade school, a crime for which I was soundly beaten.
I feel lucky after reading your story. I was in gifted programs then sent to a "College Prep" private school. I was not socially adept, but played sports. Even with that I always felt like an outsider. A funny thing is that I went to high school in Hazleton, PA ( you know the one where they are trying outlaw undocumented workers from living there) and I am an Indian-American. So I KNOW they saw me as an outsider.
Like a lot of you, I never had to study in high school which ended up kicking me in the ass when I went to college. Dropped out, went back, left needing 7 credits to graduate, worked, then finally got my degree.
I met my wife just before I finished my degree (actually she pushed me to get my degree). At 34, I am coming into my own after nearly 20 years after wandering.
As far as EQ, my family when dealing with me had negative scores.
Sigh.
Dear Jesse. Dear, dear Jesse, I'm still not comfortable in my own skin, and I still don't know what to do with all the smarts, skills, and talent I know is roiling around inside of me.
To compare: My Dutch girlfriend's HS experience was a whole lot different. One week they were taught in Dutch (Nederlandse, for all you purists) and French). They didn't "study" languages so much as they read them, wrote them, lived them. Advanced students were pushed upwards beyond normal progressions, and the state paid for college. How 'bout that, Florida, whose lottery was supposed to do this? By the time she graduated, she had the equivalent of an MS in Special Ed, and spoke 5 (count 'em, FIVE) languages.
My Lithuanian Dep't head was much the same. WTF is wrong here?
I was a freakishly smart kid too. I remember asking about when we would get to negative numbers while in 1rst grade. "Sixth Grade." I knew then I was in for a long hell. I never did homework, A's on tests, c's in class.
I remember my geometry class in high school, doing proofs. Me, no homework done ever. Teacher, an idiotic coach, unable to demonstrate proofs. I would watch, thinking how dumb they all were. Coach/Teacher would struggle, then ask his A students, who were equally helpless. Then, I would stop reading whatever I was hiding under my desk, and go and quickly solve the problem. I would get an F for the day, the idiot A students who could not solve the problem got A's (by writing down my work). Then I wasn't able to continue to algebra 2.
This happened again in high school. I did debate, and did not write cases before my debates. I won way more rounds then the retards who wrote out their cases and then I get kicked off the team, In spite of having the best record.
I got those fuckers beat though. The junior year of high school I did AP and knowledge bowl. My last year I had 5 AP classes. When I graduated, I had 42 AP credits. The next highest was a knowledge bowl friend with 41. The valedictorian had 40. I graduated in back, sitting next to the pregnant girls and special ed kids. I failed my AP English class, but was the only kid in the class to get a 5 on the exam. They actually were not going to let me graduate for a while there.
I think there is a type of teacher who actively encourages mediocracy, and will do everything possible to break down smart kids. My stupid math teacher who stopped me from advancing in math even though I regularly and fluently solved problems he gave up on in minutes. My stupid english teacher who told me I shouldn't even take the test, even though I outperformed all here other students. About 2/3rds of my jr high teachers were like this.
I'm 25 now. I often feel like the best years of my life are already over, and were hell. I had all that fun childhood abuse stuff too. A dad trying to make a "man" out of his kid who hated sports, a broken home, etc. I'm pretty sure I have PTSD from all of this.
Now I smoke pot to deal with all that. Its not perfect, but I can sleep at night and hold down work and do not feel like my head is being held underwater 24 hours a day. Maybe someday we'll have universal healthcare and I'll be able to get therapy
here's how smart i am : i can read moonglum / smile
hello, everybody, i havent been over for awhile and then really really missed the gilly gang / i am so glad i did
love to all, from Katherine
I like to think I'm in the same league as some of you 
I had the intelligence testing in 1st Grade, and was part of the "challenge" (without the d) group in middle school. Along the way though I was bored up till high school - riffing along, never having to study and being able to pull things out of my butt the night before for things like reports. My mother had skipped a grade, so she had some bitter memories of that - and didn't want the same for me. Growing up on the Canadian prairies (in a suburban environment), I had decent public schooling, but never anything stupefyingly challenging (even something like an IB or AP program). I am blessed musically with perfect pitch, and played a lot of piano - and used it as my out more often than not. In the junior and high school bands, I riffed as often as I could on trombone - wherever I could get away with it. But again I was frustrated, I wanted to take it to the next level - but we never did. I did hit a wall with math in high school for some reason (and due to extenuating circumstances was forced to attempt to learn conics on my own).
University hit. For the most part I was bored of classes (or simply saw myself engaging in societal cogpiece preparation bullshit). I enjoyed the beer discussions and ideas that so many other people had - succumbing to the academic utopian views rather than pragmatic ones. I was on academic probation for a lot of my studies (though later on I was a regular teaching assistant for one department). There were a few classes though that I really enjoyed and excelled in. Coincidentally they intertwined my enjoyment of being forced to think out loud in class and form cognitive arguments, international politics and economy (though I hated intro macroeconomics), and bringing it to the real world level from personal experiences.
Self-discipline and focus are my Faustian battles...as is dealing with emotion sucking ignorant people.
I think I have my answer why I like this blog (and other left leaning blogs) so much. The sheer brilliance of individuals (save the trogloditic trolls) is a benchmark for me to aspire to. What has happened in the past obviously affected me. It's up to me though to make sure that I aim for the life I want - with the brilliant people and process mixed in.
Just like I was saying, intelligence can be mismeasured by a lot of masking factors.
SteveK
Yes, I know, but it was hell for all those years, every time I got home from school my Mom would start with the "You're so smart, why are you doing so bad in school, are you doing this just to hurt me?" She took this line on the advice of the school psychologist (all the school bonds got passed then) who told her ""What this boy needs is more pressure, more pressure!"
And then my Dad would come home and say:"If you're so damned smart why ain't you rich, why am I still supporting you" No one had to tell him to say that, he thought it up all on his own.
Getting tested accurately was a relief in some ways, but it didn't relieve the parental pressure. Now my Mom and Dad moped around saying: "How could two such smart, intelligent, saavy,accomplished,beautiful and modest people have such a schlump of a son? Why did you do this to us?"
It was a relief to finally be with my peers in the slow classes, anyhow, and I'm pretty sure my low intelligence got me out of the draft.
mackie hand put a large very rusty and dirty nail in the center of his cupcake, the jock had drivin right through his hand.
Normally I don't condone this sort of thing, but given my own junior high school years, all I have to say is...
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!
nowadays you can't beat a kid because there is bantay bata in our community.maybe in other place too. bully kids is my problem in my young age days but i deal with it its a matter of who is tough and strong right?they cant beat you if you wont let them beat you.
I was simply constantly ridiculed by the other kids and shunned. My biggest problem was the teachers, I knew more than they did and when they found that out I was in constant trouble. I did most of high school on "independent study" so that they could get me out of their classrooms, where I might call them on their ignorance. Yeah, I had a little problem with authority.
I was reading on my own at 4 and taught myself spanish with a college textbook and a phonograph record in the second grade, when I was also learning Latin by reading Caesar's commentaries on my own. My dad got the adult librarian in town to give me borrowing privileges that year and I was studying military history, biology and physics. It was so much fun. Hell, it still is.
I started writing poetry in the third grade and I'm a published poet and author now.
My skin fits now at 53 but it has taken a long time.
American society has a heavily anti-intellectual bias and Americans don't read books. They listen to Rush and Michael Savage rather than thinking critically, a skill no longer taught in our public schools. More people watch Montel than have read a non-fiction book in the last year.
More teachers are teaching to the test and real creativity is being lost.
We are becoming a nation of drones held to a lowest common denominator culture.
Patterns emerging:
Deeply not fitting in, even worse than usual, as a kid
People understanding that there was something about us -- but even our teachers and parents very seldom had a clue, and the tests didn't always catch it, either
Crashing and burning in college (I did this, too)
Struggling with emotional intelligence (not surprising: people with high EQ are the ones who get a lot of support and respect when they're little)
Feeling lost and underutilized until well into our 40s...
...until, one day, the whole complex mess seems to come together.
Thoughts?
The book Gifted Grownups saved my marriage and probably my life. Not because it's a perfect description of what it's like to be profoundly gifted--it's written by a person who is not, and therefore lacks some insights that it would have had it been written by one of us--but it's published.
She finished it and bothered to sell it, which means she was above average as a kid but not in the category that education in this country fails so completely.
It was helpful to me because I learned that it's normal for two people who are extraordinary like us to meet up, match up and hope for the kids to be bright normal, smart people. Not freaks like us. Made me feel a lot better.
I was in a pretty good "gifted program" wasn't tested till 11 yrs old since my mom and dad had me roaming all over to different schools every year till 5th grade...
anyway, my gifted classes and advanced placement classes in HS were the only real learning I felt like I did in school. Best was they were multi-disciplinary. So we would work on huge projects that included everything, math, language, history, science, etc. and at the end I felt like I had really learned something.
My hubby - who is brilliant, had none of that opportunity, dropped out early , went into the service and has taught himself in libraries and book stores throughout his life. He has done well. but when i think how much he would have loved the kind of learning I had compared to his catholic JH and HS... I feel sad.
I was a teacher for 10 years, and one thing I know is, we know most of the answers- what makes a difference to kids at all areas of the spectrum.
we know that smaller classes sizes is a silver bullet.
we know that multidisciplinary works
we know that teaching to different types of intelligences work
we have known all this since 20 years ago or more.
and we don't invest in it
we don't do it
and I don't know why.
really...
There are still things I don't get, and, sometimes, I wonder, not only if I will ever get them, but are they worth getting in the first place?
My hubby - who is brilliant, had none of that opportunity, dropped out early , went into the service and has taught himself in libraries and book stores throughout his life. He has done well. but when i think how much he would have loved the kind of learning I had compared to his catholic JH and HS... I feel sad.
we have known all this since 20 years ago or more.
and we don't invest in it
we don't do it
and I don't know why.
really...
the littlest gator
Okay...
First, me too.
Stopped going to high school more or less after freshman year except for choir and an advanced English class and maths. Dropped out for good as a junior, moved out of the house, went to community college to get my EMT, then joined the service right after I turned 17. Which probably saved my life as I was with a bad crowd.
Did more college while in the Army through CLEP and the occasional class, then did my formal paramedic training the moment I was off active duty.
But what I could have done with Berkeley or Stanford. *sighs* Instead I've had to make do with Cody's, Black Oak Books, and Dark Carnival on the west coast, and WordsWorth on the east Coast. And now with Amazon delivering. (Three full rooms of my home are nothing, literally nothing but books, door to ceiling.)
Yes, I am complaining. *sighs* I envy the shit out of the kids who got to spend ten years at the damn university drinking beer, chasing tail, and learning. I spent one year stretched to my absolute maximum trying to survive the toughest paramedic school (then; no longer) in the country. It was one of the two happiest years of my life.
Afterwards I spent years in the ghetto, in the mountains as the medic for a ropes course program put on by a well-known LGAT, and... chasing tail and drinking tequila. While teaching myself computers. Communication. Getting along with others. Getting fired a zillion times, usually for screwing someone I shouldn't have. Learning learning self-taught learning. And more.
What I didn't get, ever, except for the one year in paramedic training and the years working for Dr. Flores, is formal sit-your-ass-in-a-chair-and-study book learning, get down to the fucking bottom of the discipline and learn the damn thing from the bottom up. Learn the historical roots of the thing, who everyone of significance is, the origins of it all, how it came into being, reinvent the whole field for yourself from scratch and then you truly know it and what you're doing is your work, not simply building on top of someone else's.
Sure, I've actually done much of that on my own in a few fields I was determined to learn, but on my own, and very much scatter-shot. There are huge gaps in my learning. I have the essence of the field, but I can't quote the names of all the people, all the history, all the historical jumps which constitute how we got where we are. The distinctions I own. How we got there, not so much. Makes me good for startups and companies which are result driven; means I suck for companies where formality is more valued than results. Like most schools. Which is a shame.
As for the question, why is it this way, I think the answer is simple. The Congress doesn't see any positive political return in putting funds towards smart kids. In fact, I'm sure they see it -- if they've thought about it at all -- as politically risky. People don't like smart kids. Were Congress to think about it, they would think they would be thought of as elitist, as "spending the taxpayers money on smart kids from wealthy families while poor children don't have health insurance" and so on.
In short, it's institutionalized anti-intellectualism. Jocks and the student council against the science kids and the art class/music kids whom they simply didn't get and wouldn't be caught dead eating lunch with. Total bullshit of course. But it's politically acceptable bullshit which has the majority of the nation behind it -- which has VOTES behind it.
Places the United States further behind the rest of the First World in all the technology which counts which is of course stupid when it comes to money in everyone's pocket, but let us not let what makes political sense in any way interfere with what works. Idiots.
The mentally handicapped are clearly a protected class and thus entitled to funding. Unless someone can make a similar claim for the gifted (which I think they can -- Buhler?), I think the political benefits of beating up on the gifted -- or at least ignoring them -- will continue to outweigh what are to us the obvious benefits of funding them.
As the littlest gator points out, we do know what works. It is simply a question of funding. Funding is a question of politics. Politics is a question of votes. Votes are a result of money, or influence (or mass numbers of people, which you can get if you have money or influence.)
To throw the old saying most of us heard at one point or another back in our face, "If we're so smart, how come we can't get funding?"
Hmmm...
Okay, Jesse.
I...almost didn't want to weigh in on this thread because...well, you know we've discussed this subject offline, and you know about my experiences in this realm. Experiences that were good...and bad, but in the end, beneficial because for a knowledge and learning-addicted, borderline obsessive-compulsive, anything you learn from...is double-ggod everything.
It started for me when I was a toddler. Should I blame my father, who inexpilcably took me to Mount Morris Park with him every day while he convalesced from ulcer surgery, to read the New York Times to me—teaching me to read,when I was two years old?
I can still remember him saying to me, and pointing at the byline: “Now who wrote this? His name is a fruit, remember? R....W...”
And me happily remembering the reporter's name and proudly pointing at the page, “Apple!”
“Yeah! That's my boy!”
From there, he'd read to me, asking me to repeat what he'd read as he moved hiis fingertip across the words. Then, it was hard-core phonics taught in the home. I can still smell the sickly sweet aroma of the plastic-coated flash cards.
“What's the word?”, Mama would say, brandishing a card. “B-at!”, I'd yell.
“Now, kick the 'B' away. Kick it!”, she'd say playfully. And I'd mime kicking the “B“ away as she covered it with her fingers.
“And let's put a “H“ there instead.”, she said, relying in my imagination to place the invisible “H“ there. “What's the word now?” Grape jelly, and icky, kid-stuff covered fingers pointed forcefullly at the dresser where Daddy's fedora rested.
“Hat!”
“Hat”, indeed. It was downhill—or uphill in many respects from there. A family friend, Wayne Grice, an actor who co-starred with Burt Reynolds in the 60's TV series “Hawk”, had a side gig at Time-Life—and he supplied my family with a treasure trove of books. The whole “Ancient Civilizations” series on Greece, Rome, India, et.al. Books on science, diseases, history—everything—I gorged on them. Reading on Greek Kouros statues, and what the Taj Mahal was—not just some tourist spot, but actually a mausoleum for Mumtaz Mahal, wife of Shah Jehan, And I remember reading that stuff and filing it away like it was yesterday—a memory issue which would lead to a change in how my life would be lived. One night, I was awakened by my parents suddenly. I had been talking in my sleep. Not a big deal...but I was calling out names. I was several months from turning four years old, so how the hell would I know the first and last names of a bunch of people. I denied it. Who can remember what they said while talking in their sleep.
“Oh really/ Who the hell is "Aaron Rubin" 'and Ron...Ron Jacobs'?”, my mom asked with some alarm. “And what else, W_____? (My Dad)”
“Um...Executive something.”
Well...I knew exactly who they were talking about then. “Oh...those are the guys who do stuff on 'The Dick Van Dyke Show.' I replied. Daddy did a weird double-take as he looked at my mom as if to say "What the fuck?"
And then I told them about the private game I played where I watched TV show end credits and read the names to myself to see if I could keep up with the "crawl". I guess I had been doing it so often, and with enough focus that the names lodged in my head, and I read them aloud as they went by in my dream state. They had worried looks on their faces, so I showed them, by rattling off a few credits from memory for a few different shows. I yammered about "Madelyn Pugh, and Bob Carroll" from 'I Love Lucy", and how Chrysler supplied all the cars on "the Beverly Hillbillies", and the sound was recorded at Todd-AO, and...”
Not long after that, I was taken to a "doctor" and given a battery of tests—written and visual problems and so on. I would find out later that they were I.Q. tests. Without giving the numerical result, let's just say that my life got really weird after that. I entered school months later—two months after my fourth birthday, after auditioning a day's worth of classes, and being able to easily keep up with and contribute along with the six and seven year-olds.. Not in kindergarden, but 1st Grade, which was a fucking bore...as was second, third and fourth. My brain worked "funny" as a teacher once told me, after an incident in class where I repeated verbatim everything she'd said for the last three minutes, when she thought she'd caught me daydreaming. The "brain works funny" remark wasn't made in front of the class, but in front of my mom and dad who were called in for a meeting with me and several teachers and the school's principal. They looked at my notebooks, which were an odd batch of scribblings of partial lessons.
"Why are your notes like this?", my confused, and angry English teacher demanded. When I told her that the scribbling was something she'd said during a particular class, and I gave her the rundown of what had been discussed that day, she sat back, with her hand on her mouth in what looked like despair."Oh, my.", she said. My record was pretty straightforward. I'd never gotten anything less than an A-minus in any class with kids who were two and three years older than I was. My favorite things to read were Life Magazine, Esquire, and The Times and The Amsterdam News. Oh, I liked the Bank Street Readers from school, but the stories and the way they were put together bored me stiff. "Those books are for babies.", I said guilelessly. I can still remember the odd choking sound from the school's director when I said that.
I didn't assume I was special. What I did assume was that the other kids who were smallish like me in my classes were the same age. They weren't. They were just smallish nine and ten year olds. I had friends. Not close ones, but still, friends. I wasn't an outcast—maybe just a weirdly runt-ish oddball who seemed to know the answer to everything the teacher asked. It came from eating all those books and news programs I sat and watched with my father. I was an auto-didact...a compulsive one. And I got great enjoyment from being in constant “absorb” mode. We went apple-picking on a class trip, and on the way home I remember giving a recipé for applesauce i'd seen one morning on “Dinah's Place”, the Dinah Shore variety show. My teacher kept telling me to slow down with the directions, as it was going to be something we'd do as a class project. It was when I injected a few of Dinah's asides verbatim when she looked at me in that odd way so many other teachers had at some point. Yikes.
It was in the middle of 4th grade when I got skipped again to fifth—and here's where things got bad. They boys were a lot bigger, and meaner. (It was an all boys private school) I still excelled, which now made me enemies. There was a group of troublemakers who used to simply slap me around and knock me down, because I was much younger, and supposedly smart. Eventually I fell in with a clique of boys who's dads all knew mine, and they sorta protected me. But even they could be abusive. They had a code word or something where if we were in a group, they'd all bolt from me at once—leaving me alone—after which I'd run after them maniacally, to catch up. And nearly every time, I'd fall, knocking holes in every pair of pants I owned. Because I just wanted to belong...to be one of them. But I couldn't. Word got out that I was some sort of "genius". Which scanned as “freak”. I was also little. And quite obviously, much younger. These were boys, just on the verge of “cool”. Getting comfortable in their masculinity. They had “swaggers”. Cool nicknames. They were scaled-down men.
Me? I had an elastic belt/holder full of books and didn't really give a damn about how sweet Denise Nicholas looked on Room 222 like they did. And I liked it.
“Fre-ak! Fre-aaaaaak! Free-aaaaaaaak!”
My home life was great. I had a large and loving family. I was free to pursue my obsessions. Model building, model rocketry. I was an alleged art “prodigy”. I could draw anything. I got my first job at ten as an apprentice sign painter. My second job at eleven, doing ad comps for a pre-Bhopal Union Carbide. My dad arranged those things for me—wanting to keep me interested by tossing these little challenges at me. He had friends, like the sign painter I apprenticed with, and his buddy Robert who worked at Carbide. “What am I gonna do with him? Hanging with the other kids is just gonna stunt him.”, I remember him saying in a phone call to someone. “He needs to have challenging stuff to do, or he's gonna end up like his Unlcle R_____.”
“Uncle R_____”, the mad, genius of the family. My dad's brother. Apparently some sort of “genius” as well, but him being in the Jim Crow south in the 30's and 40's, never getting a chance to put his brilliant mind to use. And he supposedly went kinda eccentric...then kooky because of how he was stifled. Actually was locked up in Manhattan State Hospital here on Wards Island after supposdly freaking out in the big library on 42nd St. My dad and Uncle J______ are rumored to have “busted him outta there” somehow and gotten him back down south. We'd be riding past there on the Triborough Bridge and my father would say after a sigh, “Yeah...that's where we busted your Uncle R______outta the crazy house.”
Needless to say, I didn't wanna end up like my dear, (and as I got older, beloved Uncle...who truly was, and still is a mental giant) Uncle R______, so I took every opportunity presented to me. Nearly every opportunity. A dear family friend showed some of my artwork to a “connected” friend, and said “connected” friend was agog, and was making arrangements for me to go to the Florence School of Art—IN FLORENCE-FUCKING ITALY!—to further hone my craft. I panicked and backed out when I realized I'd be living with another family in a strange country, and mastering a new language. Actually, the language was the easy part—i just couldn't bear to leave my family—as wonderful and broadening as the experience may have been. So, I stayed “home”. School was weird. I was growing, but I was still emotionally immature in comparison to my classmates. I bonded as best I could through sports, which I loved—and—thank you God!, my ability to draw comic characters and my own comic books. That weird knack kept me from being pulverized every day, as kids huddled over me in between classes when I drew for myself, and on request. From there, I wound up doing all the art for, writing and editing the school's newspaper, and eventually, the school's newsletter which went out to the parents.
I was pulled from a lot of classes. There was nothing more they could do with me. I kept science and history. Science I loved. experiments, and working with electricity. I wanted to be Tony Stark—the millionaire genius industrialist who in his superhro persona was Iron Man. I sat on symposiums and debated politics with grown men. My dad toted me around with him where I sat in in discussions of politics with his friends, and I debated them, too. Made one fella really mad when I corrected him in a discussion about the late Adam Clayton Powell, where he kept calling him a proud “Cornell Man”, and I noted that Powell went to Colgate, and not Cornell. Guy got so mad that he left to go to the library for verification. He never returned. Daddy told me later that I was right, it was Colgate, as he'd checked it out. But that “friend” of Daddy's never showed up again when it was known I'd be around. Whoops!
Blew up a bunch of Eveready “D” batteries in a science experiment gone awry in me and my brothers' room. A too-powerful motor I'd attached them to—daisy-chaining two five-battery banks, caused the batteries to fail spectacularly, depositing a fine, but ominously lingering cloud of zinc in the room. Mama and Daddy had to get a special cleaner to come and take care of the house while we stayed at a friend's house on the island for a few days. Then, I nearly burned down our house from sparks emitted by a home-made heating element I was using to re-fashion plastic model parts to what I wanted. Sparks came off the thing, and landed behind the couch in the foyer, unbeknownst to me. Went into the house for a minute, came back to the foyer to find smoke and a huge orange glow behind the couch. Uh-oh.
Always curious. Experimenting. Dicking around with stuff. Genius? Nah. Brain just “works funny”. Eventually, there was no further I could go in that school. I'd been skipped a bunch of grades and high school was next.
I had just turned 11. Yeah. eleven. Was headed for the school's high school annex, but that summer, the private school went out of business. No other school would accept the accreditation. An eleven-year-old Black kid from Harlem, supposedly high school skills? Supposedly an art prodigy? What? Afraid not.
I was in limbo. I passed every test to enter high school—public high school, as there were now seven of us kids and money was tighter. They wanted to put me back in 5th grade. Which was crazy, considering 5th grade had bored me a year and a half before. It was a stalemate. I was out of school.
For a year. Then two years.
My parents got me private tutors who had been teachers at my old school for that second year—people who cared about me, thank God. And Daddy brought home books. Boxes of 'em. Trunks full of 'em. Everything James Baldwin ever wrote. Claude Brown. Shakespeare, Ellison. Fanon. Hurston and Hughes. I inhaled them.
The high schools would not relent. So, my parents acquiesced, and considered middle schools. One said yes, but I'd be placed in the lowest 8th grade class because of my time not in school. Tearfully, my parents broke the news to me. I was upset, but guess what? I loved school and wanted to get back in it. So, I sucked it up and said, “Okay.” I went to that class.
And pretty soon, I was back on that damn rollercoaster. Within five weeks, the school moved me from the shit class to the advanced placement 8th grade class. It might have been my multi-page book report on the Ed McBain book “The Heckler” that did it. In the report, I'd cited references to Capote's “In Cold Blood”, and Arthur Hailey's “Airport”—books I'd read within the last year. I can still remember Mr. Klein, my English teacher taking me aside after class to ask me about it, and when I cited the ambivalence of the protagonists in “Heckler” and “Cold Blood”, his eyes went all funny, and he stopped me. “No. I see. I see.” And then, a month into the advanced class, we were called in again. Plans were being made to move me on to high school anyway. 8th grade was cake. Easy. Even with the distraction...of girls. Up until now, I'd gone to school with only boys. And the lovely charms of Editha, and Rosemary, and Collette and Janiffer and Charmaine were something new to study. But the grades stayed high—effortlessly so.
But Mama and Daddy thankfully made a bold decision. “No.”, they said. “Let him stay where he is.” I was happy. I was doing well. I was finally starting to get over my social awkwardness. And for the first time, I was with kids my own age, which made me feel comfortable. Still smart as ever, but the good grades came with minimal effort. I was the district spelling bee champion. Wound up as salutatorian—behind my beloved Editha, who was valedictorian. Could be I was distracted
High school—Art high school, actually—a quantum leap—not in toughness of the work, but socially. It was the summer of '77—The Disco Era. Midtown, NYC. And the girls...looked like women. And tried to act like women. I was in a world of hurt, emotionally. I'd only had one year of socializing in a school setting with girls, and I felt like I was drowning. Spanish class, my table featured the beautiful Ramonita, Diana, Venus, Angela and Pam—and my trembling self. Oh, lord. I was a mess. School? Grades? Fuck that! My brain was fried, but I had to find a way to get my head right. Being around all those beautiful girls had totally discombobulated me.
I remember looking at myself in the bathroom mirror at home before school, asking, “What are you gonna do?” I figured it out. I tricked myself. I pretended to be comfortable around them, so they wouldn't be put off by me. And when they seemed comfortable, and eventually friendly, and soon, really friends, I relaxed. I'd found my “mojo” again. I coasted through high school with a 91 average. I cut so many classes it wasn't funny—but I did all my work. Passed every test. Failed one class—a teacher who hated me because I showed a fellow student the correct way to do a chiaroscuro effect after the teacher had fucked it up initially on his project. It was war. He specifically failed me with a 64 in one marking period. I got back at him immediately, forging a fake letter from a collection agency based on a letter I pinched from his mailbox at school. Put an address in Long Island City for him to go to to rectify the problem that I knew was a defunct warehouse.
Mr. J. was out the next day on the wild goose chase I'd sent him on via the letter I'd crafted and put back in his mailbox. *evilly grinning*
I was pulled from his class and switched to another one after a couple more weeks. Don't know what happened to bring that on, but hey...it happened. Graduated with a Regents diploma and apparently, as a member of the National Honor Society. Saw that stamp on my diploma and thought, “You learn something new every day.” Just missed a scholarship by one place. Got into art college, and found it an utter bore, save for one great writing teacher in my sophomore year. Left school 10 credits shy of graduating because I was making huge money doing what I was in school for, working 25 hours a week—so, why not go for 40 hours. Bye-bye, school. Hello, life.
Still an auto-didact. Picked up playwriting in a few months, co-wrote a few revues, landed a radio gig. Learned radio production in a few weeks, worked in radio a few years. Television beckoned, picked that up—writing and performance-wise and made some good dough. Got married, had kids, settled in for awhile for stability. Picked up computer graphics—a digital way of translating my visual work, then got frustrated with an expensive computer repair, so I took a few months and learned how to tear a Mac down, upgrade it, rebuild it and maintain it. Picked up digital audio editing a couple of years ago, then video editing, which freed my filmmaker's eye.
Found Steve's blog, found it intellectually stimulating, and realized it was a way to communicate—again, so I started commenting, which fired up my dormant policy analysis/debate gene. And my general writing gene. Every creative gene, actually.
And that's the me you have here now, at The Group News Blog. In this age of the internet/computer, I can finally put all of the things I've learned into practice. I'm happy. I'm energized. All the stuff I've ever wanted to do—the stuff trapped in my headI can finally do. As I said, I'm happy. Like Jesse said, “I'm coming into my own.” I've never felt more sure, and in control of my abilities. The brakes are off.
I'm happy!
And damn glad my “brain works funny”.
I fit Mrs Robinson's schema for all except "Feeling lost and underutilized until well into our 40s...".
Was fascinated with computers, robots, electronic music and graphic design when I was a kid in the 60s; as I grew up the technology caught up with what I wanted to do. (As William Gibson sez, the future is here, it's just imperfectly distributed.) I wanted to make recorded music, program computers, design publications, communicate with people, and create beautiful things, and all of that's become dead cheap and easy after years of struggle with primitive tools. (I even anticipated the Net back in the early 80s, though of course not in its actual form and extent. Can anybody understand the Net?)
One advantage I had was finding science fiction fandom when I was a teenager, as at that time it was filled with other smart people who thought reading, talking, and continuously learning about stuff was fun. That way I didn't have to believe I was entirely alone, and could also come to understand that I wasn't required to be the absolutely smartest person in the world, because I wasn't, and deal with any insecurities about that and my creativity early on. (Some entheogen use helped, too.)
Aside from a slight timing issue (I'd love to be in my twenties today, in late adolescence, now that the culture's caught up -- the weird have turned pro -- and there are more people like me to share with) I'm doing passably well and able to help people, especially weird/atypical ones (having known so many of so many kinds), through an informed and nonjudgemental understanding of human nature. And there are so many neat toys to play with!
LM - here's to a funny working brain!
Huzzah!
Wasn't going to say anything here, because my story is pretty dull. Nor am I as far off the charts as a bunch of people here. But Jesse wanted lots of contributions, and maybe there's a moral in mine.
While I've taken my share of the shit dealt out to smart people -- well, it looks to be much less than my share, but anyway I got some of it -- my stock of bad stories is small.
In the Big Lottery in the Sky, I was handed a childhood in which I hardly ran into anyone -- outside of school -- who wasn't seriously smart, and decently educated as well. Home is where you're not the smartest person in the room. This leads to some bad habits, like a bit of snobbery and the usual terrible study habits, but it does make things easier.
On top of that, I have a brother four years older, so I got a lot of the secrets passed to me in comprehensible form. I really do not know which I learned the truth about first: Santa Claus or teachers (to wit, whether they actually know anything).
Anecdote: Brother comes home from sixth grade one day and relates that Teacher said all the great scientists were German. Father, currently spending his spare time (day job: financial analysis) on some materials by Galileo, is not pleased. Brother reports next day to Miss Beamish (That was her name, my beamish boy. Nice name. Nice person, actually.) that she was wrong. She assigns him to write a paper on great scientists who were not German. He does. We have that paper somewhere; I keep meaning to dig it out.
See what I mean about the great fucking lottery? Even the teachers were not all fools. (My fifth-grade teacher, though... )
So I came to a fairly early understanding that it was boring boring stupid stupid boring. Naturally, everyone with a brain figures that out, but with social support it's easier to cope with.
At Hoity-Toity Public High School, I was an outsider for lack of both social skills and money. But in the end I was treated at least as well as I deserved: bright kids can be really, skin-crawlingly in retrospect, little schmucks, you know. A few teachers even took trouble to hand me (and one or two peers) some work worthy of the doing.
Now, where's the useful moral? Well, some years ago when Tiger Woods was a new sensation, some editorial genius pointed out that Tiger didn't have any government do-gooder programs to help him; he had a DAD. What an insight! Just make sure everyone has a Dad (mutatis mutandis, for the little ladies), and you don't need Governments!
No, I guess that's not the moral. It's probably something about honestly trying to give the kids in all communities, and most especially the ones who haven't absorbed the Life of the Mind through their pores, the sort of teachers and the sort of school (for all their serious faults) that that rich and educated community was privileged to have. And on top of that, put far more effort than that school could into making it not mind-numbingly boring for the ones with unusual skills.
(Duhh)
I think the acid has kicked in now
Great, so I hit Publish on my little piece, and it ends up a couple of spots after LM's contribution. Hard act to follow.
So, let's talk about history and trends and academic fads. There's lots of that in the original story and in the postings, and it's all wrong. Well, maybe locally right, but not half as general as the writers think.
People don't know about the advantages of skipping grades? That hasn't been done much since 1985 or so? My mother was telling me in the 1960s about the dumb new idea that was catching on, that skipping was bad for kids because they needed to be always with kids of the same age. (Which, as LM's and others' postings have shown is not invariably false, but it's damnable as universal doctrine.)
All that feel-good stuff de-emphasizing real achievement in the 70s? That old curmudgeon C. S. Lewis was griping about Parity of Esteem (attaching the same value to some kid who's translating Horace as to the one struggling heroically with The Cat Sat on the Mat) in the 50s, if not the 40s. To be sure, England may have caught these diseases earlier. But we who went to school before the 70s can tell you just how unwonderful the achievements of the schools, even the privileged ones, were back then.
Lowering standards? Not teaching much that's challenging? Well, you know how many AP courses there were in that nice high school of mine? Sure you do: none. Not invented. By the way, one teacher/counselor remarked to me confidentially that what he was doing might move things toward some ability grouping, but it was a very dangerous subject. That's how much accommodation there was in that time (1958 ) and place (West Coast) to giving the smarter students something to chew on.
That was in the philistine years of Eisenhower. Was there perhaps a brief shining moment of educational Utopia, say between Sputnik and Reagan? I pretty much missed it, as there was very little in the news during that period but how badly the schools were doing.
Enough. But there is a moral: Things are not what they used to be, and probably they never were. Socrates was probably right when he complained (so I'm told -- does anyone have a citation?) of how rude and ignorant the young people were, compared to how they were when he was young; but I wonder what his grandfather thought about that.
Porlock Junior
I think the point is, smart kids have been treated like shit fairly universally in the U.S. -- with exceptions which prove the rule -- as far back as anyone can tell.
The question I have, given that I believe we do know what can be done, is can we do anything other than individually or in isolated instances or schools/districts? Is there any way to get serious funds going state-wide, or even nation-wide for the gifted or are we on acid? In other words, what is the political solution?
In the meantime, please people, keep your stories coming... *smiles*
IQ.
I had a lot of IQ tests, public and private, in my early years. Found out rather later that my father had been in the old Binet study, so naturally the kids would be tested for comparison purposes. Found it incredible at first, and hilarious ever after, that I out-scored him.
What was the score? Damned if I know, with any accuracy. In those days, telling a kid his IQ -- bad enough to let parents know -- would cause moral degeneration and an early death. OK with me, actually.
Because of course IQ is supposed to measure is multi-dimensional and non-linear. (I haven't the qualifications to call it a tensor, but I like the characterization.) The tests do give some kind of indication, but they're not good enough, and can't be. But they're important, buddy, you better believe it.
Time to confess that I never skipped a single grade, though it hadn't quite gone out of fashion yet. (BTW there's no use in saying people skipped grades in your school until 19xx; the point of my tale of the 1960s is precisely that generalizations about what decade things happened in, correlated with your favorite socio-political anlysis, are of little use.) I almost skipped a half grade in the 2nd grade (you could in those days in this state) which would a few years later have turned into a whole grade. Formally, I did. Then I was unskipped -- a matter handled with the most fantastic rudeness, doubtless more from idiocy than deliberate cruelty. What happened, you see, was that we got some mass IQ test about that time, and that proved that I was barely above average and not qualified to skip. Cf. the Binet test, above. But this one, I guess was OFFICIAL.
So, a thought experiment. Consider all the very bright people who have contributed here. If you like, exclude those whose life is comlicated by ADHD or Aspergers or whatever. (Though how many of us in this group have never thought, "At least I'm a sufficiently high-functioning Asperger's that no one has diagnosed it"?) How many of them could you meet for five minutes without noticing that this is a person suitable for skipping a grade? Don't need no stinkin IQ test to identify the truly bright ones. But you do need to know and care, and be almost a peer, and that's in short supply in schools.
I was identified as 'gifted' at 9 in the late 60s but then was used more as a teaching assistant in class. Went to university in the 70s and got incredibly frustrated at the way original thought was tempered by the need to follow rubric, the need to qualify every idea with 'so and so says'. I remember my professor telling me that original thought was for those who had their initial degrees and had the credentials to convince others. I gave up then with the original thought, played the game, did as I was told and decided to become a teacher of young minds and convince them that thinking outside the box was no bad thing.
Cut to the next generation -my daughter is even brighter, has incredible gifts for languages, art, music. Taught herself to paint, draw, play piano. Can read a book and discuss its ideas at a level that makes your jaw drop. She questions, pinpoints the nut of a problem incisively and has the ability to use logic as well as being artistically talented. Both sides of her brain functioning at full capacity. She is witty, attractive and you'd think the world would be her oyster. Wrong, there's no place for her in our education system. She's just dropped out of uni after grades that were through the roof because to get those grades she had to play the game. She had to write what they were looking for and at a level they were comfortable at. One professor commented when she first started 'this approach is more appropriate to postgrad level'. What??
I could play the game, it was just one of those things to churn out the stuff they required. My daughter couldn't. It bothered her that although she was receiving marks that pleased everyone, they didn't please her -it wasn't the best she could do, she had more to say, and nowhere to say it. It made her ill, stressed beyond belief and slowly everything else stopped. No reading, no painting, no poetry, no music. My daughter was disappearing before my eyes.
She gave up uni and slowly everything has begun to come back. I have no idea what she will do or how she will get her thoughts out into the world yet but health and sanity matter more.
Being gifted can be a curse if people insist that even giftedness has to fit into a mould.
In short, it's institutionalized anti-intellectualism. Jocks and the student council against the science kids and the art class/music kids whom they simply didn't get and wouldn't be caught dead eating lunch with.
What Jesse Wendel said. Remember, in the 1940s and '50s it was THE way to denigrate Democrats and liberals by referring to them routinely as "eggheads" (when they weren't being accused of Communism). People who thought too much, who had ideas outside of the norm, became the original "egghead," Adlai Stevenson.
I know about skipping; I skipped second and fifth grades. Of course my parents wanted me to be with my contemporaries. Can you say three years in sixth grade? Despite that, and the fights, my non-jockiness, the swinging book-satchels I used to defend myself and the black eye I got in sixth grade #3, school was the only place I felt comfortable.
Hated high school. It was a job. If I could have punched a clock I would have. Only drawing kept me sane. Only useful thing about high school was that I could read blueprints and an architect's scale.
I'm still trying to figure out what I want to do when I grow up.
Littlest gator at 9:28 pm--"and we don't invest in [developing children's intelligences to the maximum]/and we don't do it/and I don't know why.
Children whose intelligence is cultivated maximally will grow up to be adults who will refuse to buy shitty products, obey shitty bosses, and vote for or obey shitty politicians.
This has been another edition of "Simple Answers".
I was relatively bright, but only rarely was I attacked physically, even though I was not formidable--so compared to some of you others on this thread, I got off lucky. I had no real intellectual challenges until 2nd-year algebra in 11th grade, and then I didn't really know how to cope. Compared to some of you others on this thread, I'm only half-bright.
On another note, when will the alleged adults ever get serious about protecting youngsters from one another? It's a wonder we don't have fucking Columbines every fucking week.
"Did you ever get the feeling that everything in America is COMPLETELY FUCKED UP?"--"Hard Harry" in "Pump Up The Volume"
[Of course, nowadays Harry would just keep a blog]
Never going back to my old school, Kid Charlemagne [for that closing, that older webname of mine fits better]
It's a shame Gracchus and Marx and Lenin appear not to have shown up here yet. I would have liked to hear what their deal was when they were young 'uns (provided they cared to tell us, of course).
IBW:
I know the feeling. I was the dandy of Gamma Chi.
Reading these stories is starting to make me feel like the dummy of the group.
And also, one thing I should have mentioned in my own story that gives a lot more insight into my here and now: I socially developmentally arrested in late childhood, so badly that when I got to seventh grade, my peers were convinced I was mentally retarded, and I was given a corresponding social status. I remember a story being read aloud in seventh-grade English class one day about a very monstrously deformed child who was kept by his parents as this umentionable "thing in the basement", and I still vividly recall being able to relate to how the "thing in the basement" felt. To this very day, there's part of me that still feels like the "thing in the basement". Fortunately, that part doesn't rule me. Well, that's enough victim-indulgence for today. I've got to start getting ready for work. Later, y'all.
LM
I remember that shocked look from teachers well. Like getting into an argument about a book report and telling the teacher what was said and what page it was on and the location on the page and then quoting it. Or starting AP Chem with the periodic table memorized. Or solving complicated equations in my head in seconds, with no work. Its scary to a kid who its so easy for, to realize the teachers arent that smart, hate you for it, and think you are a freak.
tomk:remeinds me of my school days...
I am damm gald I whent to a gereat HS (lots of acclereated and ap calsses, those who got through the ap classes whent on to calsses at teh junior college) I would eb terrified of the bordom inflected if I whent to a normal public school (I whent to adilia stevenson in IL) I was in the top 1% on ap scores and the bottom 1/3 of the class GPA wise...that drove teachers nuts. had one truly good teacher Mr Berstine, he made a deal with me, as long as I got A's on the test he would mark A's for all of my home work assignment, the rest...while not worthless where not that great...and they would get realy annoyed when I recited the "Apply yourself" speach to them.
Again, any advice on kids, my oldest is 5 now, and we are sure he can read (I have seen him sneaking looks at books, and correcting me on books he has never seen before) but he acts like he can't because he isn't suposed to read at his age (why he relised this I don't know, hes also taller then most 8 year olds adn freakislh good at throwing...we are in trouble)
Porlock Junior you are letting out the screate....
[fnord]
there was no golden age.
[/fnord]
carfull there the romanticists of the past will come to eat you.
Jesse, I tend to go against the grain on this subject, although I recognize the frustrations of a bright child compelled to learn a rate that must be considered agonizingly slow.
I find the vocabulary used to discuss this subject frustrating, "gifted", for example, and the reliance upon IQ testing as a measure of intellectual aptitude alarming, as IQ tests have been known to have racial and class biases for years.
As for "gifted", consider the following, an 12 year old girl who has just immigrated from Hong Kong with her family, and has quickly picked up English and now steers her immigrant parents through the vagaries of American life (paying utility bills, dealing with social workers, department store clerks, etc.)
is she not "gifted"? exceedingly so, and yet, she will not score as such on any IQ test (unless the test is administered in Cantonese in Hong Kong), and will probably find herself shunted into ESL courses
at least, that's what happened to one of my friends many years ago
I do score as "gifted", but I was very fortunate to be brought, as an 11 year old to midtown Sacramento in 1972, when midtown was a lower middle community with a lot of Asian and Latino immigrant families, as well as political radicals seeking refuge
as a result, I learned something very precious: my intelligence, reading ability,. writing ability and communication skills were no substitute for trying to understand people from different cultures, racial backgrounds and class status, because they taught me many things that no instructional program, no matter how specifically structured for "gifted" people could have ever taught me
Richard,
I absolutely agree with your thought experiment.
None the less, there clearly are kids (and adults) who simply are smarter, whatever the hell that is, than everyone around them.
This is different than empathy, compassion, emotional stability, and everything having to do with getting along with others.
Your girl freshly to these shores would no doubt not score well on a test -- but I'm not talking about test scores. They are simply a quick short-hand for pointing at smart kids. The girl in your thought experiment falls squarely inside the group we've been talking of, the kids I call "gifted", what outsiders call "genius." (As SteveK said above and I agree, where I come from "genius" is a word that is used very sparingly. If you haven't changed the world you are not a genius.)
How to find this girl, how to include her... this is a larger problem.
As always Richard, I appreciate your thoughtful remarks. I also agree with you that IQ testing by itself is fraught with racial and cultural basis. That problem is orthogonal to the one I'm laying out.
More stories? Solutions to the political problem?
one thing to keep in mind is that the educational system tends to warehouse people generally, not just the "gifted"
so, a lot of people find themselves emotionally isolated and prone to acting out in various ways, especially the children of lower middle income people, as it is much easier to abandon them, and let them act out, so that they can pushed into the, what do they call it, the remedial school, the school for "problem kids", something like that
this is not the most creative idea in the world, by any stretch, but young people are curious, and my belief is that an educational system that seeks out this curiosity and intensifies it is a system that will serve "gifted" people quite well, as well as a lot of others
an educational system that highlights other societies, other ways of living, encourages group interaction, dialogue and decisionmaking (oh dear, can't quite suppress my anarchist tendencies) is something that we should consider
in other words, an educational system that presents the world to them as new, fresh and full of possibilities for transformation
the problem here, of course, is that, as one progresses through the school system towards high school, conformity becomes more and more a priority, as well as the discouragement of people who insist upon evading it
not to mention, the requirements of a bureaucracy in which everything must be scored so as to meaure illusory achievement
that's the best I can do, I guess
I sort of concede that there are people who are "smarter" than everyone around them, but that does get a little subjective, doesn't it?
I do have some fun stores from the "MGM" (mentally gifted minor, now, a discredited acronym) program of the early 1970s, but they are fun primarily because a lot of the people in my class were, you may have guessed, the children of hippy families trying to survive in the relatively low cost world of Sacramento in the collapse of the aftermath of the "Summer of Love" and the late 1960s
here's one that I can't resist telling, though
my friend and I have just entered 7th grade at Sutter Junior High, and we have an assembly so that candidates for student body president can make campaign speeches
at one point, one of the candidates, who looks like a young Marjoe (man, I am definitely getting old), steps forward and starts ranting into the microphone about the war in Vietnam and how we are napalming women and children and how the war is a crime and should be brought to an end
my friend and I are transfixed, we never knew you could talk like that an act like that at school. we look over to the principal, a older, short balding Italian guy named Sorvino, and he looks extremely uncomfortable, staring down at his shoes and fidgeting, but doesn't do anything
needless to say, both of us thought that anyone who could make the principal that uncomfortable was COOL
please give me the forbearance to tell one more tale, a seemingly innocuous one, but serious, but serious, one that I should have included in my last post
my immigrant friend was in high school, her senior year, and was told by a nun (a Catholic school, of course, which did not track her as an ESL student as her earlier public school tried to do) that there was a parents' meeting for planning for the Senior Ball, which she did not plan to attend
so, she did not tell her mother, who possessed limited English language skills
the nun calls the house after the meeting, being very diligent, and the mother manages to convey to her, she never told me
the nun then confronts my friend, saying, "I'm very unhappy with you, you didn't tell your mother like I told you to"
my friend just kind of bowed her head and shrugged it off, because how could she explain to the nun that she made most of the decisions about her personal life and her education, not her mother?
and, of course, like a lot of immigrant children, she was shy about her parents, and wanted to protect them, whether rightly or wrongly, from what she perceived as potentially embarassong situations
now, this is true about a lot of people these days, but there is a specific phenomenon where the children of first generation immigrant families experience a sort of accelerated adulthood, and I imagine people are a lot more knowledgeable about it, and know how to deal with it more than they did back then
now, those people are gifted
Thank you for writing all of this. What a great posting, and what a great set of comments. I've been trying to formulate my thoughts but between life w/a 14 month old and everything else...so I will try to remain cogent AND say everything on my mind about this.
Background: I was on the phone w/my mom the other day, well I had her on speaker and I was wrestling w/the kid/playing blocks and he was squealing etc.
My Mom: You seem to play alot with him. I never played with you when you were that age.
Me: Well I think it's a good idea to play with him so that he can socialized properly. After all, I don't want to him to be socially inept.
My Mom: Do you think you're socially inept.
Me: Yes I do.
My Mom: But in the end it's all up to the individual child anyway no matter what you do.
Me: Yes that's true, it's all genetics anyway. Maybe it's my way of assuaging any potential future guilt.
My Mom: Guilt? what guilt??
My mom believed the following:
-that her kids were always at fault when it came to school
-that I ruined my siblings life the moment I turned 3 and started to not listen to her. never mind the fact that this is not abnormal but part of NATURAL CHILD DEVELOPMENT.
-that it's best to ignore the kid and to let the kid figure out what to do. which means not picking up a newborn right away when it's crying. Ditto for rocking a child to sleep, they would "get used to it".
-that she couldn't carry my child b/c she didn't want to potentially trigger tennis elbow, not that she actually HAD it.
I had a hard time at school, for a number of reasons. When we moved to Scarsdale during the 70s, there were a couple of minority kids in the elementary school. I had to deal with a 6th grade math teacher who was a Korean War vet pissed that a Korean kid was in his class. I heard chink for the first time, blah blah blah. Plus I was smart and totally bored out of my mind. Plus there was the whole wealth factor on top of it all. And the "of course you're not working hard enough". Yeah of course I wasn't because in my heart I had checked OUT.
Am I the only one who's IQ test made teachers and parents think I was much smarter than I was?
If I could remember what number they said I was, I would tell you what it was, but I can't. Sorry. But all I know is that when accurately tested, it was about half that, like I said, in the high, two digits. It was only when I got kicked out of school, in the eighth(?) grade, I got a chance to prove how dumb I really was!
And then I fell in love and got married, to someone who finally appreciated how dumb I truly was and tells me so, every chance she gets.
heh, this post reminded me of this weird shiz i heard of awhile back...now i know they never tested us for that in school...did they...
I loved Mooser's comments and I loved that LM is happy. I now finally know exactly why I have identified so much with so many of the commenters here.
Far too high intelligence, read too early for my own good {3}, never studied, bored out of my mind for the first 13 years of school and kicked out of every grade and then finally quit, and so on. Similar to many others here.
I'm 55 now and have survived the curse of intelligence.
I am starting to get dumber now. Must be all the blows to the head and the fine drugs we ingested in the sixties and seventies.
Is there a sociologist in the house?
Let me say it again, LM -- I am very happy to hear that you are happy and bloggin' away.
On my Teacher, Teacher website I have an article entitled "We Don' Need No Stinkin' Gifted Programs!"
http://www.teacherblue.homestead...com/
gifted.html
It is also about the way our most gifted students are neglected by our educational system--and often even resented by their teachers. Some manage well in spite of the system, as my gifted daughter did.
Others don't manage as well. My son--who turned out fine in the long run and ended up academically successful as a college student and then in grad school--actually had to go to the alternative high school for his last two years of high school (which he finished almost a year early). You know, the school where they send problem students and students who are at risk of failing or dropping out.
Fully 1/3 of the students at that alternative high school tested as being among the most gifted students in our school district.
My son did well in the long run--mainly because I was there to give him intellectual support and provide what the schools would not. But many of his similarly gifted friends now work at dead-end jobs for barely above the minimum wage, earning just enough to support their beer and weed habits--and sometimes harder drug habits.
I also suffered socially and sometimes physically as a child and adolescent for being "too smart," as though it were something offensive I was doing to other people.
Think about one of the main complaints made against Al Gore during the 2000 campaign--apart from the trumped up tales about his "lying." He was "too smart." He was a "know-it-all." Bush, on the other hand, was dumb enough for people to identify with. No wonder they thought they could have a beer with him.
I hate the American prejudice aginst intelligence and learning!
Oh, BTW, about that gifted daughter of mine--
She is now in her fourth year of med school at Georgetown. She would have graduated this past May, except that she won a Fulbright Fellowship and took a third-year hiatus to earn a master's in social policy at University College in Dublin.
That year of study was actually so easy for her that she simultaneously worked 50 hours a week at a nice restaurant in Dublin, earning enough money in tips to finance an entire summer of travel after she took her social policy degree in May of 2006.
She had traveled extensively around Western Europe during a study-abroad semester in London as a junior in college, and had done a study-abroad semester doing primate research in the Costa Rican rainforest as a college senior. So she used the summer following her year in Ireland to travel around Eastern Europe, Thailand, Maylasia, and Singapore.
She has always figured out how to find and exploit opportunities. I just wish other gifted kids could be that fortunate.
Something that hasn't been picked up on this thread (that I noticed) -- part of the problem is that "gifted" but fvcked-up people will indeed find each other, pair up, and procreate. And despite the mixed blessing of "regression towards the mean", generations of smart fvckups breeding with other smart fvckups also multiplies the chance that ensuing generations will inherit both the polyvalent genetic mixture we label "giftedness" and the biochemical/neurological DNA stew that leads to what we politely call "neurodiversity". People with a tendency towards ADD, mild bipolar disorder, a touch of OCD, borderline Aspergers, have a habit of linking up with each other, if only because who else would have us ? And since non-neurotypical people frequently don't have stable families where they learn good social skills, they in turn tend to be at best peculiar and at worst violently abusive parents. So two people with minimal socialization and little or no support system have a kid, or two or three or six, who's got both mommy's ADD and daddy's Aspergers, plus a little extra. If one or both of the parents hasn't already started experimenting with self-medication (aka "alcoholism" or "drug abuse") dealing with a colicky baby who screams for hours on end, or a toddler who's so wired that he doesn't sleep for more than 3 hours at a stretch and is forever putting himself in jeopardy -- well, that's hard even for *normal* parents to deal with...
Great post and great comments.
LM, you should write a book. I think your comments above were among the most entertaining I've ever read.
I guess this blog attracts high-powered thinkers, but I don't recall ever being tested for IQ when I was in school (in the 70's and 80's). I didn't know IQ testing was so widespread. Once IQ tests became widely available online, I actually avoided them out of fear that I'd get a ridiculously low score and it would shatter my confidence. A couple of years ago I worked up the courage to take one and performed somewhat better than I thought I would. Not genius level or anything though.
I wasn't involved in any 'talented and gifted' programs and my parents never pushed me to excel academically, hence I didn't excel until high school. I think the only reason I did OK in HS was because I largely enjoyed it. But I didn't skip any grades, etc. For me, the one significant thing that happened in high school was that I was the only student, out of about 300, who got a perfect score on a world geography test that basically covered counties, capitols, rivers, moutain ranges, seas, etc. It was no big deal compared to what you folks have accomplished. The teacher said in years past he'd have 2 or 3 students ace it and that scores had been declining in recent years. For me though, it was the first time I realized that I could sort of hang with the smart kids in the school and that I had an aptitude for something. An aptitude for cramming for tests, I think. I liked the Geography teacher/class, also. Generally speaking though, I had almost no pressure on me to go to college (only my mom had some community college education; dad was a HS grad) and until I was about 15 I was thinking more about joining the military - I was interested in the special forces - than college. I didn't take the SATs until my senior year and got an above average (?) 1250 or so. That was when I realized that maybe I could, you know, actually go to a decent college.
I feel college was sort of a waste of time and money for me. Because I didn't really plan for it until the last moments of high school, I ended up going somewhere (UW) that I wasn't really that interested in. And I went from one rainy, depressing city (Portland) to another (Seattle).
Maybe the UW is just too big, but I always felt most of what I learned there, where I was an 'intenational studies' major, could be learned just as easily in the library, for free. It also galled me to think that I was paying for something that I didn't like (report writing, etc.) when I could just as easily do something I don't like and get paid for it. Namely a job. The one useful thing that I learned there, that I couldn't have learned by myself, was Japanese, which I still use as I live in Japan. I made a few friends, too.
I'm meandering... In retrospect, I wish my parents would have been more involved in my education. It sounds like you all make (or would make) pretty good parents. Kids deserve so much more than to be parked in front of the teevee. they deserve engaged parents, good teachers, good learning materials and good school facilities. As a society, I think adults, educators, etc. should make much more effort to respect the potential of children.
Great post and great comments.
LM, you should write a book. I think your comments above were among the most entertaining I've ever read.
I guess this blog attracts high-powered thinkers, but I don't recall ever being tested for IQ when I was in school (in the 70's and 80's). I didn't know IQ testing was so widespread. Once IQ tests became widely available online, I actually avoided them out of fear that I'd get a ridiculously low score and it would shatter my confidence. A couple of years ago I worked up the courage to take one and performed somewhat better than I thought I would. Not genius level or anything though.
I wasn't involved in any 'talented and gifted' programs and my parents never pushed me to excel academically, hence I didn't excel until high school. I think the only reason I did OK in HS was because I largely enjoyed it. But I didn't skip any grades, etc. For me, the one significant thing that happened in high school was that I was the only student, out of about 300, who got a perfect score on a world geography test that basically covered counties, capitols, rivers, moutain ranges, seas, etc. It was no big deal compared to what you folks have accomplished. The teacher said in years past he'd have 2 or 3 students ace it and that scores had been declining in recent years. For me though, it was the first time I realized that I could sort of hang with the smart kids in the school and that I had an aptitude for something. An aptitude for cramming for tests, I think. I liked the Geography teacher/class, also. Generally speaking though, I had almost no pressure on me to go to college (only my mom had some community college education; dad was a HS grad) and until I was about 15 I was thinking more about joining the military - I was interested in the special forces - than college. I didn't take the SATs until my senior year and got an above average (?) 1250 or so. That was when I realized that maybe I could, you know, actually go to a decent college.
I feel college was sort of a waste of time and money for me. Because I didn't really plan for it until the last moments of high school, I ended up going somewhere (UW) that I wasn't really that interested in. And I went from one rainy, depressing city (Portland) to another (Seattle).
Maybe the UW is just too big, but I always felt most of what I learned there, where I was an 'intenational studies' major, could be learned just as easily in the library, for free. It also galled me to think that I was paying for something that I didn't like (report writing, etc.) when I could just as easily do something I don't like and get paid for it. Namely a job. The one useful thing that I learned there, that I couldn't have learned by myself, was Japanese, which I still use as I live in Japan. I made a few friends, too.
I'm meandering... In retrospect, I wish my parents would have been more involved in my education. It sounds like you all make (or would make) pretty good parents. Kids deserve so much more than to be parked in front of the teevee. they deserve engaged parents, good teachers, good learning materials and good school facilities. As a society, I think adults, educators, etc. should make much more effort to respect the potential of children.
>.I guess this blog attracts high-powered thinkers,
Speaking for myself here, it's hard to find people who are operating at the same frequency, so when you find any outpost of it out there, you hold on tight
As for being a good parent, well I try. Mainly because I have perspective now, as hackneyed as it sounds. Becoming a parent was the most profoundly healing experience of my life.
The specific details of everyone else's experience growing up ...so very familiar if not close to identical.
My 20th high school reunion is coming up. We're probably not attending but not for the reasons that you'd think. I'm not bitter, I just don't have time or the burning curiosity to find out how much so and so changed. I am too tired chasing around my kid!
me : just missed my ten year a few years back...some dope decided that a bunch of 28 year olds would love to drop 150 a head on a reuninon at a singles bar in the middle of a health club down town chicago....heard through the grape vine that ~50 showed up out of a class of 650....great job guys. I actualy would have gone, had a good highschool experience though bulies not with standing(there where some, I dealt with them), there where lots of geeks...lots, had 35 people on the robotics team, 50 in the RPG club...it was a school where the cool kids and the A students tended to be the same group.
moonglum -- this is my point about reunions, esp high school ones --- the people who run them are the same people who pretty much set social/school life agenda for 4 years but kept to themselves. then they wonder why it's so hard to get as many people to know about the reunion in the first place. um maybe it's because you've kept to yourself all of these years and made it a policy to be exclusionary from elementary school onwards? and yet what makes a successful reunion of any sort is the number of people who actually show up. and yeah I know people are spread all across the country blah blah blah but in this age of the "internets" you'd THINK that someone would make an effort to really round up people, put a myspace or whatever. it's sad to realize that default "leadership" qualities had nothing do with the sort at all. obviously I knew this all along, which is why I was so checked out.
I think our 10 year was like your 10 year, a bar and random people.
Terri (*waves to Terri*) linked us to her DailyKOS diary: On Mixed Up Kids which points people to your comments and this article. Hey...we've gone self-referential. And loopy. We're all loopy. Heh.
Thanks Terri!
moonglum -- the whole cool kids and A students the same group --- same in my high school but in addition to that they were also uber loaded from the start.
waves to Jesse and all the big brains on the GNB
I don't have a good enough memory to be a genius, but, to be honest, it doesn't bother me - perhaps, given my lives, it's better not to remember Going to Music and Art (one of those gifted kids high schools) was a great opportunity that I pretty much wasted, in a conventional sense. I was able to do well enough to get by, and found my real genius for doing bizarre stuff, experimenting with odd lifestyles and mind-altering comestibles.
Like my first boyfriend, the huge-afro'd, mysterious and suitably tortured Johnanthony Williams and I managed to rent a broken-down apartment in I think the Tremont Ave. section of the South Bronx, and turn it into an artist's garret, when we were 17.
I just wanted to be free to do whatever I wanted to do, whenever I wanted to do it. That meant experimenting, putting myself in situations that tested my EQ a lot more than my IQ (I wasn't thinking about either). Like being the chaste girlfriend of big-brained James Sparks, who was the war leader of the Black Spades, helping him with his case when he went to Rikers (I think I was about 14 or 15 then), working the midnight shift at the Kentucky Fried Chicken on 42nd st, while sometimes going to high school and basically living at the Woodstock Hotel with a group of benevolent prostitutes...singing jazz at various clubs that I wasn't old enough to get into...
If I had a genius, it was for getting into stuff and getting myself and others out of it.
(that's also how I know my parents are in heaven - the fact that they didn't practice post-natal abortion qualifies them as saints
Gifted program? There was no gifted program in the school district that I attended in southwestern PA in the 60s & 70s. I seem to remember talk of skipping me up a grade in lower elementary school, but my parents passed on it. I was terribly bored in school. Great grades, minimal studying. Fell in with wrong crowd in high school... Definitely not in the "in crowd." Once you've been to the wrong side of the tracks in a small town there is no going back... Didn't really care... Offer was made to my parents to let me skip senior year and go straight to college. But there was no money saved to do that. (Remember the days of double digit inflation and exceedingly high interest rates???) So I hung around for senior year, the loner. Did go to college for a year and a half and burned out. Dropped out, married, kids, divorced, remarried, divorced again....finally went back to college and finished. Currently have BS in Ed and MA in School Counseling... Don't get me started on what is wrong with public education... I live it every day...
“Going to Music and Art (one of those gifted kids high schools)”
Terri...you're scaring me. I know M&A all too well. I took the test to go there on a wintry day in January of 1977. I'll never forget fearing for my life as I tried to negotiate that ice-slathered ziggurat of steps walking up into the main building on test day.
I passed it. Passed the test for the arch-nemesis school, A&D. Went to A&D—but knew a slew of M&A'ers. If you were there between '76 and '82, you probably know 'em too.
And The Black Spades? Ho-ho-ho-ho may-un! There's a reason why the movie “The Warriors” resonates so much for NY'ers of a certain age in the 70's—it was cartoony, but crazy, wild-monikered gangs did exist. (A high school friend got a part in it as an extra, too! )
I had another friend—a really talented cat, named Jerry, who was in the Tomahawks out of Brooklyn. I remember the Savage Skulls desperately trying to recruit him for his proficiency in doing up the “Lee” gang jackets and vests.
The mention of the KFC on the “Deuce”—which we frequented while in high school, reminds me of my penchant for Nedicks—and how my dad used to take me to the one in Times Square (where they shot the opening scene from “Sweet Smell Of Success”.) to quench my hunger. We celebrated there one night after I won an art contest, and the prize was $100, and getting the art shown on the old SpectraColor sign in the middle of Times Square.
Stood there, saw the art displayed, went “Yaaaaaaaaaay!”, then, across the street for dogs and frothy, orange sippin'.
And hangin' in the Bronx, as Rap was a' bornin—on Fordham Road, Tremont—“The Hub’. Alexanders, and that funky spot near Crotona Park which was the only spot in town to get the green striped Adidas “Jabbars”.
Maaaa-aaaan!
Get back to NY sometime, kid. We have some hangin' to do.
LM, the feeling is more than mutual - I have to find a way to get back home for a visit to long lost relatives, and I've just decided you're one of them!
Savage Skulls...my god...The Warriors!!!
Fordham Road and Francis Lewis Blvd - the 2 poles, progenitors of the block parties that nurtured what became rap; Nedicks orange...orange... whatever the heck that liquid was...
me humm...sounds exaclty like my school...we where jsut middle to upper middle class so I came from the poor side of the tracks
My experience was pretty different from most of yours. I test in the 4th standard deviation, but I wasn't rebellious. I don't have a good memory. Actually, my memory is pretty bad.
I was a meek, scared, shy kid. My parents refused to teach me to read when I asked, because they had screwed it up with my older sister (average IQ), and it never occurred to me to try to teach myself to read. When I got into school (they taught reading in first grade them), we went through the alphabet -- and that was all i needed to know how to read. I loved to read.
When I read ahead in those first grade reading groups, so I didn't know where we were when they got to me, my really excellent first grade teacher just told me where we were, let me read, and went on. She never bugged me about not following along with the others stumbling through it. I bless her for that -- she clearly knew what was going on.
My parents took care not to let me and my brother know we were "gifted" because my sister wasn't, and they didn't want her to feel bad. It didn't exactly work; since we thought we were normal we thought she was stupid, which she isn't.
The schools in Marin County were excellent in the 50s and 60s. I don't remember being bored, or being ridiculed by teachers -- I did get teased by the kids, but upper middle class kids do it verbally, not physically.
I don't remember doing much homework. I don't remember being given much homework.
I skipped a grade, and my social life improved after that. I got straight A's till high school, when I really discovered being social. By the end of high school, my best friend and I were the center of one of the social groups. My hair, for the first and only time ever, was in style! (straight and very very long) I was still socially inept, but that was "in" in 1967.
I still don't remember much homework. I went to several colleges, got a few degrees, but the thing that really helped me to feel like I was ok socially was when I got involved in Mensa. It was so good for me to be in a group where socially inept little me was the most "ept". Eventually, I had to leave Mensa because of the low EQ of many of the people, but that's another story....
I am now married to a person who is smarter than I am. Also shyer.
I spent some years trying to hide my intelligence, and then I decided that I didn't like that. Now I am the world's most intellectual dental hygienist, which profession I went into temporarily while I decided what I want to be when i grow up... I've been doing it for 33 years and am still not sure what I want to be when i grow up. I have dreams of starting an intellectual retreat center: sort of a university/spa. A UU monastery.
Yes, this culture is very anti-intellectual. Why?
the same problem im having now. maybe should hang myself so i dont have to face them anymore
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