Posted on 04/01/2013 10:15:01 AM PDT by marktwain
Imagine that the CIA uncovered a Chinese plot to attack the American economy by undermining our educational system, specifically by making sure that we no longer cultivated the smartest of the smart? The response would be outrage, and rightly so. Some might even call it an act of war, far worse than the usual cyber attack. Alas, what our foreign enemies dare not attempt, we inflict on ourselves. This is a war on gifted education, killing off the intellectually demanding programs targeting the top 3 or 5% of our national brainpower.
This war is a barely noticed guerilla war, one school district at a time but rest assured it will be lethal. Time to sound the alarm and explain how it works.
The latest installment of this nefarious stealth battle was reported in a March 4th in a Wall Street Journal articles-"Gifted Class Imbalance." The article told how New York City's classes for the smartest kids were disproportionately white and Asian. Specifically, while whites and Asians make up a third of all students K-5 they comprise 70% of all students in the city's 110 gifted programs.
The implication was that this imbalance is "unfair" and enrollments should reflect the city's overall demography (yes, this is the Wall Street Journal). The article reported that several educators were "disturbed" by the pattern and one professor from the prestigious Teachers College, Columbia University said that the standardized admission tests should be replaced by a more "balanced" approach that included teacher evaluation and student interviews so as to make enrollments more racially and ethnically representative. Elsewhere in the story this gap was blamed on economic inequality--rich parents can buy expensive books to give their children a leg up in the competition for slots.
It goes without saying that relaxing academic standards via demographic quotas would destroy gifted education. Imagine trying to teach pre-algebra to a class where half the class struggles with arithmetic? A teacher would quickly dumb down the lessons lest the less able students fail the class, a politically unacceptable outcome. Moreover, killing off gifted programs via dilution might well further undermine the city's public schools and therefore weaken the city's tax base. How many parents with intellectually talented offspring denied admission to free public gifted programs will stay put when the private school alternative costs $30,000 a year? Better to escape to the suburbs.
Why, then, do some people, including professors of education still demand filling gifted slots by quota despise the awaiting calamity? Let me suggest two reasons: the radical egalitarian faith and the public's misunderstanding of how education works.
The egalitarian faith is easy to spot. True believers, often in the prestige media (e.g., The New York Time) and the academy are obsessed with leveling differences. It's their passionate religion. They oppose glass ceilings, unequal pay, differences in college graduation rates and anything else that shows group-related gaps in accomplishment. That these unequal outcomes may be intractable hardly deters their boiling anger over supposed unfairness and the need for yet more heavy-handed government intervention.
Must you be so insensitive? Everyone deserves the right to be sociopathically educated.
The programs for intelligent children are “Racist.” So shut “Em” down! It is also an offense against “humanity” to point out that our experience with certain groups have been a disaster against the United States; a Social disaster, Political disaster and Economic disaster!
The most segregated activity in urban high schools is probably athletics. I demand quotas NOW! Basketball teams should reflect the diversity of America. Besides, NBA players earn vastly more than the nerds in the science magnets ever figure to make. We need affirmative action hiring there as well.
Exactly. The only thing that will save education is to get government out of it. Privatize all of it, cut property taxes drastically so people can afford to send their kids to the school of their choice, and give vouchers to the poor.
Trying to save government schools is like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
This country is cooked. Stick a fork in it.
bttt
It’s not “income inequality” that is causing this “gap” of representation by race.
It’s a “give a damn about my kids” gap that’s causing the disproportionate representation.
IE, it’s cultural.
Richard Feynman, Nobel prize winner and one of the most influential scientists of the 20th century, had his IQ tested when he was in high school... he scored 125.
He was sensitive about the subject of IQ for the rest of his life.
Well, we are a small school, but we are identifying our Gifted & Talented kids and putting them in Honors. I guess one of the nice things about having a school that is 99% Latino is that our Honors class looks just like all the others.
Exactly right. Parent/teacher conference night is usually the night I meet the families of my 'A' students. The others don't care enough -- and don't tell me they can't take the time off work, because when they want to go to Vegas, they manage.
I like the image of the Procrustean bed, where those to tall to lie on its comfortable have their legs chopped off and those too short are stretched till their legs are pulled from their sockets.
I blame the culture. Cultures that prize high intelligence produce kids who are highly intelligent, in part because of who they choose to marry. There is a theory that Jews in eastern Europe were highly intelligent because the sons of rabbis married the daughters of rich merchants. I have read, however, that in this country, the number of smart Jews is declining because of so many love matches.
Well, let us flip the coin and see how many kids who are athletically gifted receive huge subsidies from the schools. Black kids who can run fast and jump high get paid far more attention than the smart ones. Not too many great Jewish athletes.
Which is not going to happen.
Kinda like how Kim Jong il wanted to control the development of triplets because he feared that they could oppose him (due to local superstition).
Democrats fear that plebeian children will become too smart. Only “selective” elites are allowed to have a proper education. The rest must be controlled and herded like cattle.
You are correct. Washington D.C. spends some of the most on K-12 education of anywhere in the country. They have some of the lowest test scores.
They hired a consulting firm to find out why.
Very short hand of what they found: The parents did not value learning, and kids that worked hard in school were bullied and accused of “acting white”.
D.C. does not have a culture that values learning, so there children to not do well academically.
“there children to not do well”
should be
their children do not do well
I blame it on the spell checker!
This is nothing new. When my kids were elementary school age, teachers’ kids were automatically slotted into the gifted program even if they were dumb as a bag of hammers. We used to call the program the Teachers Travel Club for all of the nice, expenses-paid trips they went on.
One of the easiest ways to equalize outcomes is to hold back the smarter kids to let the slower ones catch up. All this does is frustrate the smarter kids and kill their desire to excel. And now we wonder why our kids hate math and science and would rather be entertainers or athletes - at least on the ball field you are permitted to excel. It’s the exact same principle by which socialism inevitably destroys work ethic and creativity - why bother?
It was probably a bad day for him. I did badly on one of those tests when there was a Flutophone class in the classroom right below us. The sound of those things was horrendous and got on my nerves. Everyone was walking on air after the test except me—I knew I did badly. I think it was the National Merit exam. I didn’t even get a letter of commendation.
Interesting article. I have a different perspective on gifted programs. My mother chose to homeschool us in large part because she'd been in a G&T program in the 70s. It was designed to turn the "smart" kids into nice brainwashed liberal puppets and it took her years to throw off the programming.
Remember, the point of government schooling is to turn 95% of kids into welfare bums/factory workers/worker bees, and 4.5% into the managers and supervisors for the 95%. Only about .5% need to be truly educated in order to rule society the way our benevolent overlords want. If you haven't read John Gatto's book, Underground History of American Education, you really should, it's available online for free.
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