CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING SITUATION: You are the parent of a vivacious baby who, your pediatrician informs you is an unusually gifted child. As the child grows you find him to be full of energy. extremely independent, and very compassionate. When you enroll him in school you are proud of his advanced abilities and believe that he will continue to be a high achiever. Instead you are informed that he is restless and disruptive and is considered to exhibit "learning disability." Certain drugs may even be prescribed to help the child "cope." Rather than being a success at school, he becomes withdrawn and refuses to learn.

Is this an unusual situation for a gifted child to experience? According to Marie Friedel it is all too common. When she and her husband Jack were told that their adopted son was exceptional, they read up on the subject in order to be better qualified to help him grow both mentally and emotionally. Once Lance started school, they found no special programs or commitments to help their son or others like him. Instead Friedel says that they found a system that applauded mediocrity and that had no understanding of, but rather, prejudice toward the gifted child. Following many meetings with school personnel, she and her husband decided that it was better to withdraw their son from school rather than keep him in an environment that could cause him deep psychological damage.

In order to help their son and the cause of all gifted children, the Friedels formed a chapter of the National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC). Marie Friedel soon became disenchanted with the Association as a whole because of the refusal of the prestigious members to advocate what she felt were necessary changes. Friedel says it was a prominent member of the NAGC who, in a hushed manner, told her to start a group having no political ties. She then formed the National Foundation for Gifted and Creative Children.

"I started the Foundation when Lance was out of school. I started a creativity workshop in my basement. Here Lance could meet children as bright or brighter than himself," she explains. "It is important for these gifted children to be able to communicate with others on their own level."

"I thought I would give up after two years," Friedel says, "but 17 years later I find that I've made just a little dent."

Indeed after trying for 17 years to make the plight of the gifted child known to the public and to the elected officials who, she says, are rigid in there stand, Friedel is still not ready to give up her battle.

Friedel is bright, quick and vigorous. Nothing in her appearance betrays the fact that she is now over 60 years old. She is of medium height, with a slim figure topped by salt- and pepper-colored hair. Her large brown eyes, framed by oversized glasses, reveal not only sincerity, but also a stubbornness born out of love of these children whom she sees as mistreated.

"Many people have come to me who were never told that they have a gifted child. Instead, these children are called learning disabled, hyperkinetic, hyperactive, and behaviorally disordered." Many of these children, she relates, have been put on drugs by their physicians in order to calm them down and get them to sit still in class. Friedel sees this restlessness as due partially to boredom and cannot understand why many professional people cannot see that hyperactivity can be a symptom of a less than stimulating atmosphere.

She is not alone in sharing this concern for gifted children being drugged for the simple reason of keeping them "manageable." "The problem is," says Friedel, "that most of these [professional] people are afraid to speak up, either because they'll lose their job or because they are afraid to rock the boat."

"The problem is ideological," she points out. "It's an attitude. Deviant behavior, which should be applauded in a democratic society, is squelched." In this instance it is with drugs, she said, that deviant behavior is suppressed, and this is the area in which she displays much of her anger and outrage. "I consider the drugging of bright children as severe and as ugly as the drugging or locking away of dissidents in Russia," she asserts.

In her crusade Friedel has been exhibiting what many people probably assume to be her own dissident behavior. She has been urging parents of gifted children to stop giving them drugs if that is what has been prescribed and she also urges these parents to take their children out of the school system.

For the most part there are two types of programs offered to gifted children in Rhode Island: one is acceleration and the other is enrichment. Although Friedel believes that acceleration is the better of the two, she thinks that there are faults with both and that in the long run the child is better of at home. "Why," she says, "should a parent relinquish a child's education to the state?" Friedel has been to court many times fighting just this cause. She believe that when a child is forced to attend school, it becomes a first amendment issue. She has gone to court numerous times helping parents to take their children out of the school system.

The National Foundation for Gifted and Creative Children is run out of the Friedel's modest Warwick home, where it has been located since it's inception. This is where the children are tested, parents counseled, various workshops held, and where Friedel writes her reports and answers her many letters requesting information and help.

The NFGCC has become known to the public not only through articles and letters in newspapers, but also through Friedel's appearances on a variety of television talk shows, including the highly popular "Donahue" show.

At speaking engagements, Friedel explains to audiences that it is the gifted child's right to have a special education and guidance to meet his individual needs, and that without these he is likely to become emotionally disturbed and/or an under-achiever. "Our prisons and mental institutions are full of creative people who, because they were not allowed to reach their potential, turned to crime or attempted suicide because of their frustration at being suppressed," she notes.

Among the alternatives that Friedel and the NFGCC advocate for the gifted are: early school admission, courses that are not graded, special technical equipment that the child can use, community mentors, and a learning environment that is less structured than the present school system and allows the child greater flexibility.

In order to evaluate whether a child is truly gifted or creative, the NFGCC administer IQ tests as well as special creativity tests designed by Dr. E. Paul Torrance, who has done much research and written many publications concerning the gifted. "Dr. Torrance has devised a creativity test where a child is allowed to put his own ideas down which are then evaluated by the Doctor. What the tests do is measure aberration and originality," Friedel says. Tests are also given to determine emotional and social maturity as well as tests that reflect any possibility that the child has a brain or neurological dysfunction.

The set of tests was chosen by the psychological consultant of the NFGCC Dr. Stanley Krippner. Krippner's credentials include a Ph.D. in psychology, past presidency of the American Association for Humanistic Psychology, and the current post of Program Planning Coordinator of the Humanistic Psychology Institute in San Francisco.

Friedel points out that some of the characteristics exceptional children display are: extreme sensitivity, excessive amounts of energy, a short attention span, resistance to authority if not democratically orientated. preferred ways of learning, and a very high level of compassion.

"It is important to develop in these children the ability to cope," adds Friedel.

Her son Lance, who is now 20, seems to have developed this ability quite well. He has just received a degree in music from Boston University (his "first" degree, his mother says) and is interested in becoming a conductor. "When he went out into the world," Friedel asserts, "he was ready for it."

Marie Friedel