The Bell Curve’s Slippery Slope: How School Gifted Programs Undervalue the Ancillary Needs of Gifted Students.
Michael Moore
PSY 200
Gregory Williams
Word Count: 1156
The Bell Curve’s Slippery Slope: How School Gifted Programs Undervalue the Ancillary Needs of Gifted Students
When I was young I was diagnosed with a malady that, unbeknownst to me at the time, would haunt me for the rest of my life. My disease would forever color the way people viewed me. I would find myself labeled an outcast, and my progress through the American institutionalized learning system would, on occasions too numerous to document, be impeded by misguided intentions and misunderstood actions. The moniker of my illness was one seemingly innocent word, “gifted.” I can still remember that fateful day when the news was broken to me that I was one of the many unfortunately gifted students who haunt the halls of any large school, cut off from the rest of the student body by their outlying position on the curve of a bell.
As soon as I was determined to be a “gifted” child, I was placed in a special class for part of the school day, where I would supposedly be allowed to develop my talents to their fullest potential. According to the National Association of Gifted Children’s website, “we have a responsibility to provide optimal educational experiences for talents to flourish in as many children as possible, for the benefit of the individual and the community.” (NAGC) It is unfortunate that so often these misguided intentions cause more harm than good to those they are trying to help. I know that in my own case, labeling me as different from my classmates, and forcing me into a special class, accomplished certain actions quite well. It made me feel isolated and apart, caused my classmates to ridicule me, my teachers to punish me, and instilled in me a desire to not stand out academically for fear of unwanted attention. It did not, however; necessarily allow my “talents to flourish.”
Thinking outside
the box has long been a talent of mine which I have not had to cultivate. I am
not the sort of “gifted” person who remembers things particularly well, I
oftentimes have no idea where I learned a piece of information, or why I know a
certain fact, but I do have an innate knack for piecing things together and
coming up with solutions that other
people would overlook. According to the American Mensa website, gifted children
have “the unusual ability to relate new learning to
things previously known and regularly transfer learning from one area to
another.” (Cramer) It took me a long time to realize that this sort of behavior
is not always welcomed in a class room setting, and my ignorance of this truth
led to my earning another label, one much less socially acceptable than merely
“gifted”, that of trouble maker.
As part of attempting to adapt and become socially
acceptable to my peers, I found that blurting out seemingly incongruous
thoughts on classroom lectures served to entertain my fellow students, while downplaying
the value of my own intelligence. Little did I realize at the time, but the
positive feedback I was receiving from my classmates in the form of their
laughter at my antics, was conditioning me to change my behavior in an attempt
to overcome the isolation imposed upon me by the gifted label. My classmates
have always seemed somehow threatened, or perhaps just uncomfortable around me
because of my intelligence. By acting out in class I showed that I was willing
to sacrifice my own good standing with my teachers in order to fit in with my
classmates. My teachers predictably did not always appreciate my behavior. If I
was lucky, the teacher would recognize the fact that as a “gifted” student, I
was wont to view any given assignment in my own unique light. More often than
not, I was scolded or punished, and in certain instances the entire class was
forced to listen to a lecture on why they should not encourage me.
In my defense, I was most likely just trying to overcome
the fear and anxiety I felt from being told that I was smarter than most people.
After all, how many times does it take for a child to be made fun of, or picked
on for something beyond his control before he decides to take matters into his
own hands? Through observational learning, I slowly began to time my off the
wall questions for maximum effect, eventually earning the socially accepted label
of “class clown” and avoiding, for the most part at least, being known by the most
dreaded word in any overachieving students vocabulary, i.e., “nerd.” What I was at the time not aware of, or
perhaps more accurately, unconcerned with, was how my behavior was affecting me
academically.
Through selective perception I allowed myself to be
deceived into believing that my grades did not matter as much as whether or not
I was learning the material. Sure I understood the principles of quadratic
equations, but that did not prevent me from failing a test on that same
material because I chose to compose an ode to college algebra in crayon on my
test paper. While I was busy helping my classmates grasp the problems in their
homework assignments, I was at the same time receiving zeroes for not turning
in my own assignments. Eventually I stopped paying attention in class
altogether, dropping out of school only to turn around and receive a full-tuition
scholarship to a private college based on my score on the ACT.
I realize that to those students who have actual learning
disabilities, my situation must seem relatively trivial. In my opinion;
however, if it were not for the coddling and special treatment lavished upon me
merely for how I scored on some standardized test, I would have felt much more
comfortable in school, and been able to perform far better in the long run.
Performance on IQ tests is now seen as merely one aspect of a person’s overall
intelligence (Carter, Bishop, Kravits, 2002, p. 30) Studies have shown that IQ
is no predictor to how one performs in life, or even past the first year of
college (Fraser, 1995, pp. 115-116). I
believe that one reason for this is due to the system’s inability to provide
holistically for the needs of the gifted student. While classes are routinely
designed for accelerated learning, how many include help for those accelerated
learners who are dysfunctional in other areas of intelligence, such as interpersonal,
intrapersonal, or bodily-kinesthetic. While student’s verbal-linguistic or
logical-mathematical intelligence may flourishes, his other, less measurable
ones inevitably start to wan from lack of attention. Encouraging other students
to value educational ability as much as they do athletic ability would also
serve to foster an environment conducive to intellectual excellence. Only when
schools realize that they are responsible for the development of children in
more than the most testable, and therefore beneficial in terms of federal aid
dollars brought in, ways will the label of gifted become more than just a dirty
word to those who receive it.
References
Carter,
C., Bishop, J., & Kravits, S. L. (2002).
Keys to college studying: Becoming
a lifelong learner. Prentice-Hall,
Inc.
Cramer,
R. (n.d.) Gifted Children – Is my child
bright? Retrieved
Fraser,
S. (Ed.). (1995). The bell curve wars:
Race, intelligence, and the future of
National
Association for Gifted Children. (n.d.) NAGC
Parent Information. Retrieved