As someone also measured as gifted and put in gifted classes, there was an interesting discussion that I had with one of the teachers about how the views for approaching gifted education was changing.
For a lot of schools, the “gifted” students are gifts; you don’t have to spend time on their education and they may end up helping the classes they are in. So, it is ok to treat them like normal kids and they won’t become a problem.
However, studies have shown that to be really bad for the “gifted” students. You get a lot of underperforming students who don’t engage with the material as it is mentally underwhelming. Soft skills that they were supposed to learn were never developed because they never had to. You even had issues with developing social skills as the distance in standard deviations between gifted and normal children are the same as between a normal kid and a “special education” kid.
The findings were showing you had to treat the “gifted” students with the same care as those in “special education” as the common teaching techniques don’t work, issues are much more varied between children, and being able to lean on talent in some cases leads to skills not being learned because they never needed to be.
No, I was actually in a class specifically for gifted children.
However, this was over 20 years ago and back then, this was a relatively new concept in my region. That meant the class had to be padded with “regulars” and the special treatment we got, was rather limited. Looking back, it seemed like they dropped the idea almost completely after 9th grade or so.
And even today I’m pretty sure there’s no comprehensive testing going on. So a ton of smart children get labelled as having ADHD or just as delinquents if they’re from a “bad” background.
Funny thing is, Germany actually did have a three tiered school system for decades, where after elementary the children were separated by “performance”, but since this country is laughably bad at creating equal opportunities, this de facto became a class filter. Parents are academics? Off to the Gymnasium with you! Parents are poor/migrants? Well, Hauptschule will have to do. Good luck at being underemployed for life.
Definitely feel the last part… Regular people really don’t realize the distance between them and some of us is the same as them and their dog. It’s cute when it’s a dog; it’s incredibly taxing when it’s a person.
As someone also measured as gifted and put in gifted classes, there was an interesting discussion that I had with one of the teachers about how the views for approaching gifted education was changing.
For a lot of schools, the “gifted” students are gifts; you don’t have to spend time on their education and they may end up helping the classes they are in. So, it is ok to treat them like normal kids and they won’t become a problem.
However, studies have shown that to be really bad for the “gifted” students. You get a lot of underperforming students who don’t engage with the material as it is mentally underwhelming. Soft skills that they were supposed to learn were never developed because they never had to. You even had issues with developing social skills as the distance in standard deviations between gifted and normal children are the same as between a normal kid and a “special education” kid.
The findings were showing you had to treat the “gifted” students with the same care as those in “special education” as the common teaching techniques don’t work, issues are much more varied between children, and being able to lean on talent in some cases leads to skills not being learned because they never needed to be.
Sounds like you were kept with the normal kids.
No, I was actually in a class specifically for gifted children.
However, this was over 20 years ago and back then, this was a relatively new concept in my region. That meant the class had to be padded with “regulars” and the special treatment we got, was rather limited. Looking back, it seemed like they dropped the idea almost completely after 9th grade or so.
And even today I’m pretty sure there’s no comprehensive testing going on. So a ton of smart children get labelled as having ADHD or just as delinquents if they’re from a “bad” background.
Funny thing is, Germany actually did have a three tiered school system for decades, where after elementary the children were separated by “performance”, but since this country is laughably bad at creating equal opportunities, this de facto became a class filter. Parents are academics? Off to the Gymnasium with you! Parents are poor/migrants? Well, Hauptschule will have to do. Good luck at being underemployed for life.
Definitely feel the last part… Regular people really don’t realize the distance between them and some of us is the same as them and their dog. It’s cute when it’s a dog; it’s incredibly taxing when it’s a person.