Articles like "Against Accelerating the Gifted Child" posted in the New York Times (October 14th, 2012) frustrate me. And although I usually don't write opinions on what I post (link included below) I felt compelled to reply to this one. The child in question is Tanishq, a 9 year old college student. The author to this article seems to be against accelerating a gifted child.
Does the author understand that Tanishq is of a level of giftedness that is like 2 in a million (according to Dr. Deborah Ruf in her book 5 Levels of Giftedness)? That Tanishq would not be an ideal example of acceleration for the more “typical” gifted child – if there even is such a thing?
The author also likes to point to a powerful document entitled
“A Nation Deceived”. That the data for research was gathered subjectively from gifted students themselves. Where else is this data supposed to come from? If you are researching the effects of abuse would you not talk to the victims?
The author is found saying that Maureen Neihart, and author for a report in the Gifted Child Quarterly warns that acceleration “may be harmful to unselected students who are arbitrarily accelerated on the basis of I.Q., achievement, or social maturity,”. Sure but what this author fails to mention is there is a great tool frequently used to ensure that all areas of a child’s live/world is considered before making an acceration decision “The IOWA Acceleration scale”. This tool was created for that very purpose of making sure that the decision was made looking at the whole
child and all of their needs. Anything is harmful if you don’t weight the pro’s and con’s seriously.
This author also mentions that “many of these students opt to repeat an eighth-grade year in order to gain maturity”. Well I’d like to meet one of those students of today’s world. She ends er article with wanting to give students “the gift of time. Time to develop, time to grow up, time to feel secure in themselves and their achievements.” Wonderful. Let’s do that. But why does it need to be wasted time. How are they going to feel secure in themselves if they are not allowed to achieve at the level they are capable. What message of self-confidence are we giving them?
How about we give them the gift of for our accelerated students on the other end? Time between high school and college to travel. Time to explore their passions. Time to put their own unique mark on the world. That is truly a gift of time.
Does the author understand that Tanishq is of a level of giftedness that is like 2 in a million (according to Dr. Deborah Ruf in her book 5 Levels of Giftedness)? That Tanishq would not be an ideal example of acceleration for the more “typical” gifted child – if there even is such a thing?
The author also likes to point to a powerful document entitled
“A Nation Deceived”. That the data for research was gathered subjectively from gifted students themselves. Where else is this data supposed to come from? If you are researching the effects of abuse would you not talk to the victims?
The author is found saying that Maureen Neihart, and author for a report in the Gifted Child Quarterly warns that acceleration “may be harmful to unselected students who are arbitrarily accelerated on the basis of I.Q., achievement, or social maturity,”. Sure but what this author fails to mention is there is a great tool frequently used to ensure that all areas of a child’s live/world is considered before making an acceration decision “The IOWA Acceleration scale”. This tool was created for that very purpose of making sure that the decision was made looking at the whole
child and all of their needs. Anything is harmful if you don’t weight the pro’s and con’s seriously.
This author also mentions that “many of these students opt to repeat an eighth-grade year in order to gain maturity”. Well I’d like to meet one of those students of today’s world. She ends er article with wanting to give students “the gift of time. Time to develop, time to grow up, time to feel secure in themselves and their achievements.” Wonderful. Let’s do that. But why does it need to be wasted time. How are they going to feel secure in themselves if they are not allowed to achieve at the level they are capable. What message of self-confidence are we giving them?
How about we give them the gift of for our accelerated students on the other end? Time between high school and college to travel. Time to explore their passions. Time to put their own unique mark on the world. That is truly a gift of time.
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