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California's most neglected group of students: the gifted ones

(www.latimes.com)
412 points tafda | 4 comments | 26 Nov 24 16:53 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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dogprez ◴[26 Nov 24 17:17 UTC] No.42247609[source]▶
She makes some good points, but my take is that we in the 21st century are more bound to the success of our weakest links. Our world has become so complicated, one small mistake can have dire consequences. So, it's the state's priority to spend its limited resources helping those struggling to tread water. Gifted children will get the stimulus they need at home via independent study or from their family. I know since I gave myself an almost complete college education in computer science before I graduated from high school. Splitting gifted kids apart can warp them socially for life too.
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Dilettante_ ◴[26 Nov 24 17:26 UTC] No.42247709[source]▶
>Gifted children will get the stimulus they need at home via independent study or from their family.

That's extremely optimistic.

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nostrademons ◴[26 Nov 24 17:31 UTC] No.42247760[source]▶
Well-off gifted kids will get the stimulus they need at home. Poor gifted kids are out of luck. And thus, the policy serves to entrench socioeconomic disadvantage in the name of making everybody equal.
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dogprez ◴[26 Nov 24 17:43 UTC] No.42247896[source]▶
I don't believe it. Almost every kid in America has access to the internet, a public library and a teacher. How many don't have access to any of those? That's a different problem.
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1. nostrademons ◴[26 Nov 24 18:19 UTC] No.42248335[source]▶
The issue is time, attention and guidance. Well-off kids have parents who are usually well educated and who (if they arrange their priorities appropriately) can make time to spend with their kids. Poor kids do not have such parents; their parents usually wouldn't know where to begin, and even if they did, they don't have time to spend with their kids if they're working multiple jobs that they get fired from if they're late.

If you let a random kid loose on the Internet, they will probably find propaganda / political / incel / gaming / porn / alt-right bullshit, because that is simply what the majority of the Internet is. I remember folks doing experiments back at Google in the '00s where they set a user-agent loose to follow links at random on the web, and the result was that you always ended up back at porn. Kids need some form of guidance to say "This is worth pursuing, this is not worth pursuing", and for a gifted kid, it needs to be someone who can personalize this guidance to their own interests. An involved parent can do that, but a teacher who is literally trying to keep their 30 other students from killing each other cannot.

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2. dogprez ◴[26 Nov 24 20:02 UTC] No.42249434[source]▶
I appreciate what you are trying say. I'm having a hard time believing it because I was one of those kids. The only thing my parents gave me was access to books, technology, love and free time. They possessed zero experience in engineering or technology, gave zero guidance. In fact they told me I was wasting my time being on the computer so much. I think people like to inject themselves as some sort of necessary mentor but gifted kids are gifted.
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3. nostrademons ◴[26 Nov 24 20:44 UTC] No.42249880[source]▶
> love and free time

I think that kids who got those tend not to realize both how important and how non-universal these are.

I grew up the child of an elementary school teacher and a househusband (formerly a nuclear chemist), and didn't have a whole lot of money but did have a whole lot of curiosity. Taught myself to program and a whole bunch of other things. For most of my teens and twenties I was very much like "Anyone can do what I did - all it took was a public library card, Internet access, and a lot of time spent reading and tinkering."

But then as I grew up I met lots of other people who were gifted too, sometimes very much so, sometimes with a lot more financial resources than my family had. But they lacked the "love, attention, and free time" part. What'd happen is that their brain wouldn't let them focus on anything long enough to really master it or apply it effectively. They'd be off chasing the void that the lack of love left in them, often in extremely self-destructive ways. Many of them are dead now.

We all need the "love and attention" part, but it functions at such a subconscious level that people who have it just assume that everybody else does too, while those who don't keep seeking it, oftentimes in ways that won't build anything durable for themselves, to the detriment of everything else in their life.

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4. dogprez ◴[26 Nov 24 21:40 UTC] No.42250345{3}[source]▶
You're right, but I don't think giving a dollar to gifted programs instead of intervention for struggling kids solves that problem. In fact if a kid is gifted but is struggling because of household issues, again, the money is better spent on struggling kids and they'll benefit from it.

There are a lot of reasons a kid may be struggling in school and it doesn't mean they are dumb or their future is worthless, as your hypothetical kids shows. I live in an area with one of the top public schools in America, they have a well funded gifted program. I know several parents whose dyslexic children are not getting the support they need.