Brilliant kids who were held back in their age group, following the "inclusion" theory, were far more likely to become depressed, and to fail as adults.
Brilliant kids who were not held back and allowed to progress according to their own skills and talents, following the "acceleration" theory, were more likely to become well adjusted successful adults.
The relationship between intelligence and depression in children is explained by this study. There is a third factor - how the education is handled.
Imagine taking a person of average intelligence and placing them in a class for profoundly developmentally disabled children, children who can not feed themselves or talk. Make them sit in this environment daily for 12 years, as the only person of normal intelligence in the room. Spend hours each day, for years on end, showing them over and over how to use a spoon. A normal person forced to experience this would rapidly become suicidal or crazed.
That is what it is like for exceptionally gifted children who are mainstreamed. Take an 8 yr old child who is doing algebra and calculus on his own and force him to study tables of "addition facts" for an entire year. Punish him if he won't fill in the worksheets and then sit quietly if completed, or raise his hand to receive more worksheets that are the same thing, to keep him busy and out of trouble. This child becomes frustrated, and within a few months, will become depressed and hopeless. The "good ones" stay quiet and contemplate suicide. The "bad ones" start to act up, and nowadays are prescribed antipsychotic tranquilizers. One of the biggest new markets for antipsychotics is in forcing it upon children.
> That is what it is like for exceptionally gifted children who are mainstreamed.
Funny story: I was in special ed classes for my last year of high school. Half my teachers wanted me to be in the hyper-accelerated program, half my teachers wanted me to be in special ed; the latter teachers won. They took my resistance to doing homework and "disorganization" as a profound learning disability, despite never getting less than an A on a test.
A month or two before I dropped out, a story about one of my projects was featured in Forbes and other major publications. The same teachers and administrators who had forced me into that hellish existence were parading it around as this huge badge of honor for my little school; last I heard, it's still hanging up in the office somewhere. I never got an apology, never had anyone say "hey, we fucked up." They justified all of this in their minds; I'll never understand how.
>Funny story: I was in special ed classes for my last year of high school. Half my teachers wanted me to be in the hyper-accelerated program, half my teachers wanted me to be in special ed; the latter teachers won. They took my resistance to doing homework and "disorganization" as a profound learning disability, despite never getting less than an A on a test.
I was in both the 'gifted' and the 'special ed' programs at the same time. the 'special' classes weren't so bad, really, if you only had to do it for two hours, twice a week, and it seems they were mostly worried about my handwriting.
It's funny, 'organizational skills' haunt me to this day, that's the other thing they tried to teach me. (and yeah, even now I'm pretty bad; I dono if I would call it a disability, but it's a big problem that holds me back.) but handwriting? the idea of actually spending time learning handwriting strikes me as very silly.
> the idea of actually spending time learning handwriting strikes me as very silly.
It works like this, in the mind of a (bad) educator:
1. I had to do this.
2. I don't do random shit, so it must be important.
3. Therefore, you have to do this.
This chain of logic breaks down at step 2, so that's where post-hoc rationalizations step in to save the day. That's why I'm going to say this explicitly: For everything you can come up with to justify handwriting classes, there's a better way to learn the same skill that also fosters things that are more important than having neat handwriting.
For example, fine motor control is better learned through PE classes that actually teach sports, which has the added benefit of promoting physical fitness. The aesthetics of handwriting is better learned through calligraphy as part of a good art class, which has the added benefit of transmitting a culture which is left out of handwriting classes.
This seems more common then I thought, because the same thing happened to me in high school. Most teachers thought I was an idiot because I never completed a single homework assignment despite getting high marks on their exams. They held me back in mathematics and wouldn't allow me to enter any honors or AP classes. After many long arguments with the guidance counselor I was able to enter AP Chemistry and AP Computer Science which I passed both with A's. It seemed the only teachers who though I wasn't and idiot at that school were those two AP teachers, go figure.
You've hit the nail on the head with your comparison. That's exactly how I'd felt all these years in school. It's easy to see that putting an averagely intelligent person in a class for developmentally disabled children doesn't make sense, yet for many people it appears impossible that putting a highly intelligent person in a class for regular children might be anything less than optimal.
I mean, it's crazy. If a child is special in any way, they'll probably get treated in a special way, except if they're highly intelligent. Say, in any kind of sports, if someone recognizes you're talented they'll give you special training and everything, so you can actually improve without being held back by others. But in school, if you're exceptionally intelligent, you still need to do the same stuff as everyone else even if it doesn't benefit you.
Comments
Miraca Gross did a long term study of exceptionally gifted students in Australia.
http://www.davidsongifted.org/db/Articles_id_10489.aspx
Brilliant kids who were held back in their age group, following the "inclusion" theory, were far more likely to become depressed, and to fail as adults.
Brilliant kids who were not held back and allowed to progress according to their own skills and talents, following the "acceleration" theory, were more likely to become well adjusted successful adults.
The relationship between intelligence and depression in children is explained by this study. There is a third factor - how the education is handled.
Imagine taking a person of average intelligence and placing them in a class for profoundly developmentally disabled children, children who can not feed themselves or talk. Make them sit in this environment daily for 12 years, as the only person of normal intelligence in the room. Spend hours each day, for years on end, showing them over and over how to use a spoon. A normal person forced to experience this would rapidly become suicidal or crazed.
That is what it is like for exceptionally gifted children who are mainstreamed. Take an 8 yr old child who is doing algebra and calculus on his own and force him to study tables of "addition facts" for an entire year. Punish him if he won't fill in the worksheets and then sit quietly if completed, or raise his hand to receive more worksheets that are the same thing, to keep him busy and out of trouble. This child becomes frustrated, and within a few months, will become depressed and hopeless. The "good ones" stay quiet and contemplate suicide. The "bad ones" start to act up, and nowadays are prescribed antipsychotic tranquilizers. One of the biggest new markets for antipsychotics is in forcing it upon children.
> That is what it is like for exceptionally gifted children who are mainstreamed.
Funny story: I was in special ed classes for my last year of high school. Half my teachers wanted me to be in the hyper-accelerated program, half my teachers wanted me to be in special ed; the latter teachers won. They took my resistance to doing homework and "disorganization" as a profound learning disability, despite never getting less than an A on a test.
A month or two before I dropped out, a story about one of my projects was featured in Forbes and other major publications. The same teachers and administrators who had forced me into that hellish existence were parading it around as this huge badge of honor for my little school; last I heard, it's still hanging up in the office somewhere. I never got an apology, never had anyone say "hey, we fucked up." They justified all of this in their minds; I'll never understand how.
>Funny story: I was in special ed classes for my last year of high school. Half my teachers wanted me to be in the hyper-accelerated program, half my teachers wanted me to be in special ed; the latter teachers won. They took my resistance to doing homework and "disorganization" as a profound learning disability, despite never getting less than an A on a test.
I was in both the 'gifted' and the 'special ed' programs at the same time. the 'special' classes weren't so bad, really, if you only had to do it for two hours, twice a week, and it seems they were mostly worried about my handwriting.
It's funny, 'organizational skills' haunt me to this day, that's the other thing they tried to teach me. (and yeah, even now I'm pretty bad; I dono if I would call it a disability, but it's a big problem that holds me back.) but handwriting? the idea of actually spending time learning handwriting strikes me as very silly.
> the idea of actually spending time learning handwriting strikes me as very silly.
It works like this, in the mind of a (bad) educator:
1. I had to do this.
2. I don't do random shit, so it must be important.
3. Therefore, you have to do this.
This chain of logic breaks down at step 2, so that's where post-hoc rationalizations step in to save the day. That's why I'm going to say this explicitly: For everything you can come up with to justify handwriting classes, there's a better way to learn the same skill that also fosters things that are more important than having neat handwriting.
For example, fine motor control is better learned through PE classes that actually teach sports, which has the added benefit of promoting physical fitness. The aesthetics of handwriting is better learned through calligraphy as part of a good art class, which has the added benefit of transmitting a culture which is left out of handwriting classes.
This seems more common then I thought, because the same thing happened to me in high school. Most teachers thought I was an idiot because I never completed a single homework assignment despite getting high marks on their exams. They held me back in mathematics and wouldn't allow me to enter any honors or AP classes. After many long arguments with the guidance counselor I was able to enter AP Chemistry and AP Computer Science which I passed both with A's. It seemed the only teachers who though I wasn't and idiot at that school were those two AP teachers, go figure.
You've hit the nail on the head with your comparison. That's exactly how I'd felt all these years in school. It's easy to see that putting an averagely intelligent person in a class for developmentally disabled children doesn't make sense, yet for many people it appears impossible that putting a highly intelligent person in a class for regular children might be anything less than optimal.
I mean, it's crazy. If a child is special in any way, they'll probably get treated in a special way, except if they're highly intelligent. Say, in any kind of sports, if someone recognizes you're talented they'll give you special training and everything, so you can actually improve without being held back by others. But in school, if you're exceptionally intelligent, you still need to do the same stuff as everyone else even if it doesn't benefit you.