What should be on the tombstone for gifted education? Part 5: Write the tombstone
In Part 4, the focus was on extracurricular activities and their lack of use in gifted education today. While all students would benefit from the extension of knowledge to social problems, gifted students are the most likely to achieve positions of influence and their ability to solve social problems should be at the center of their educational plans. These experiences could take various forms, from shadowing doctors or engineers, conducting research in any number of areas, reporting that research to the professional community, or assisting in the design of urban planning or alternative planning methods. Any experience that forces gifted children to incorporate learned knowledge and integrate this knowledge into their moral structure solves the problem of whether or not the learned knowledge is actually understood and can be used effectively.
As the facts in Parts 1-4 are examined, it’s not hard to figure out why gifted education programs go unfunded or shut down altogether. The education of gifted students actually requires more time and resources than that of the traditional student. If those resources and money were spent in the traditional school, many more students could improve their grades and their political influence (test scores) would remain intact. Not only are resources an issue in teaching the gifted, but the administrator’s attitude toward them also changes because of these same test scores. The gifted are supposed to do well on their own, so they are left to prepare for state tests.
Gifted student identification also raises questions about housing these students, how districts will pay for their education, and what types of special curricula will be used to train these students. Since most districts house gifted students in a single facility rather than providing each school with an individual program, many students are not identified as gifted. This limits the resources that are spent trying to educate these students. Identification of the gifted also raises issues involving the extent to which a district’s curriculum or instructional resources will go to ensure that the student is educated. Extended experiences are required to ensure that knowledge is processed and incorporated into the student’s base of understanding.
So what should go on the headstone for gifted education? Gifted education is not dead yet, but with the over-reliance on state testing in allocating resources for its preparation, gifted education has one foot in the grave and a tombstone must be carved before the end. In preparation, I suggest that the tombstone read as follows:
Here lies gifted education
Shot in the back by state test
Cried by all, missed by no one
