PORTSMOUTH - On a brisk spring morning, as the Porter family heads towards a bluff overlooking Narragansett Bay for a family photograph, you have the feeling Norman Rockwell is setting the scene.

With their puppy Molly Brown yipping in the background, Craig Porter, 50, puts his arm around Betsy, 38, Andrew, 8, and Scott, 6, stand in front of their parents, smiling shyly, eight blue eyes peering toward the mainland, their blond and reddish hair flapping with the breeze.

Craig and Betsy Porter insist that they, particularly Betsy, always aspired to the average American family lifestyle suggested by family portrait. They resisted, they say, as the signs became increasingly obvious that their children would dictate otherwise.

* -- Journal Bulletin Photo by KRIS CRAIG

------------------------------------CRAIG AND BETSY PORTER: They tried tutors for their two boys, Andrew and Scott, with little success.

Last month, the Porters received permission from the Portsmouth School committee to educate Andrew and Scott at their Prudence Island home this year. The action was hardly radical, with an estimated 120,000 to 260,000 students educated at home nationwide; 76 children in Rhode Island and about 200 in Massachusetts are in approved home education programs.

But the Porter case highlights an issue that appears to be on its way to the forefront of public education: the ability of the public schools to educate the exceptional student.

The majority of parents who choose home education -- estimates range between 50 and 90 percent -- are devoutly religious and have balked at the lack of religion in the public schools.

A minority, which includes the Porters, believe that their children should be free to explore what intrigues them, that the rigid structure of the classroom would, as Betsy Porter put it, "strangle their minds."

The Porter's choice was hardly an easy one, they say -- "What mother wants to spend from the time you get up to the time you go to bed with your kids?" Betsy Porter says.

They say they doubt Andrew, the more creative of the two boys, ever will be ready for conventional school, or, more precisely, that public education will ever be ready for Andrew.

Portsmouth Director of Instruction Michael W. Mello says the Porters haven't given the classroom the chance.

"They've come to the conclusion we can't provide an educational setting they need without ever trying it," Mello says.

Portsmouth Supt. Henry V. Doirdati says, "There is no question in my mind we could do a better job in school than could be done at home.

The Porters respond that their children, particularly Andrew (Scott is not of legal school age yet), are creatively gifted, and that they require an unstructured learning atmosphere the schools are incapable of providing, and adjustments in routine that teachers are unwilling, or unable to make.

Creatively gifted children, say Marie Friedel, are extremely bright, independent children who must have some control over their learning. They also are exceedingly sensitive children, who often react delinquently when they are forced to conform to normal methods of learning.

Meeting the school board's rules

To win approval from Portsmouth, the Porters met the letter of the law, submitting a curriculum following state requirements, guaranteeing 180 days of instruction, 5 1/2 hours per day. They must keep an attendance register and submit quarterly reports to the superintendent. Each May, Andrew -- and Scott, when he reaches the age of compulsory education next year -- must take standardized math and reading tests. With the understanding, the School Committee approved their plan.

Judy Edsal, gifted and talented coordinator for the sate Department of Education, says that the state has made progress in the 1980s in providing services for the schools' brightest student. Of the state's 39 school systems, 36 provide gifted classes -- usually in grades 4-6, two to five hours per week, with a heavy emphasis on developing problem-solving skills.

But she concedes that some students fall through the cracks, particularly the creatively gifted children, that some are branded behavior problems, others are termed hyperactive and some swell in the ranks of dropouts.

There are an estimated 5,200 students enrolled in gifted programs in Rhode Island, less than half the estimated 13,500 gifted students in the state. Students qualify based on I.Q. and achievement test scores, and there are many more students gifted in areas such as music, art, and the sciences whose test scores fail to reflect their talent, gifted advocates say.

Andrew and Scott, for instance, scored poorly on standardized tests, but scored "odd the charts" on creativity tests administered by Marie Friedel, founder and director of the National Foundation for the Gifted and Talented in Warwick.

The state spends $500,000 on gifted and talented education, with no help from the federal government. By contrast, the federal government last year contributed $5.9 million, and the state provided 27.8 million, for about 20,000 special education students, state special education coordinator Robert Pryhoda said.

"Andrew and Scott are on the other end of the scale from the handicapped," Betsy Porter says. "You can't put the handicapped with an I.Q. of 50 in normal classrooms. No more can you put a kid with a 160-170 I,Q. in a normal classroom and expect him to do well."

Stanley Krippner, professor of psychology at the Saybrook Institute in San Francisco, for years has been involved in research on the gifted and the talented.

"The scorecard is not good in any area of special needs. The learning disabled do get more money than gifted and talented children. There's an assumption among many educators that the gifted and talented can always take care of themselves -- they'll make adjustments on their own and learn outside the classroom.

"I think that's true in a few cases but its not true generally. Often, rather than learn all on their own, they'll simply lose interest in learning in general, and very often their gifts atrophy."

Mixed success with tutors

Last year and the beginning of this year, the Porters had a tutor on Prudence Island for Andrew and Scott. Elizabeth Volkmann is certified in special and elementary education in Massachusetts. When Volkmann decided to stay home and care for her newborn baby full-time, the Porters located another tutor on the island. Teresa Brown described her experience with the two boys last January in a letter to Portsmouth School Department.

She described the boys' "blatant refusal to participate in the learning process. It is my opinion that many of the basic behavioral and social skills experienced in a school setting are obviously absent from Andrew and Scott due to their limited exposure to other children.....

"(Andrew's) feeling is that if he knows it, he knows it. If he does not know it, he doesn't care... It has been brought up before that the basic problem is that Andrew is afraid to fail, therefore he eliminates the possibility by manipulation."

The daily tutorials got off to a bad start --"Hello, stupid. I'm not going to do any reading today" -- and went downhill from there. "Once, he destroyed a bird house in my yard deliberately, and with glee showed me what he had done," Brown wrote.

"Andrew does not listen and always expects his way," she wrote. "he will not follow instructions. In fact, he will do the exact opposite in defiance."

"He has deep-rooted problems that are obviously affecting his learning process. It is my opinion that he is indeed a bright young man and with positive concentrated effort, he will learn to function productively, but the emotional barriers need to come down first."

The Porters cite Brown's letter as proof of what happens when he is educated by force-feeding and not allowed to pursue his own interests at his own pace.

"I just use common sense and instinct and follow him," Betsy Porter says. "It starts out doing what he wants to do, and I sneak in other things."

They cite Volkmann's experience with Andrew and Scott as evidence of the need for a different approach to their education.

"Andrew learns best when allowed to pursue his own deep interests, which are many and intense," Volkmann wrote in a report to the School Committee. "When the subject matter and activities are of Andrew's choice, and when the atmosphere is one of mutual respect, Andrew's behavior become cooperative. He initiates the learning process himself, often amazing me with the depth of his understanding and the complexity of his questions.

"Most children need formal instruction and repetition to learn to read and write. Andrew.... is not one of those children. Exactly the opposite; his learning environment needs to be flexible, accepting and, above all, democratic."

The Porters recognized early that they had a challenge in their first son. Searching for help, they happened upon Friedel, who runs the National Foundation for Gifted and Creative Children from her Warwick home.

Friedel has been a vigorous advocate for the rights of gifted and talented children since the late 1960s. She served on the state Advisory Commission on Gifted and Talented until last year, when she resigned, she says, in frustration over the lack of progress.

"In our nation, there's never been a great deal of interest toward the gifted, and an enormous amount of ignorance and myth, even though we've known that these children need very special attention, " Friedel says.

Her advice to the Porter was succinct: keep Andrew out of school. It wasn't, they say, what they wanted to hear.

"It's hard to realize you're not going to be the average American," Betsy Porter says. "I fought it for four years.

The Porters say they are resigned to educating Andrew, and possibly Scott, at home, for 12 years if necessary. They recognize the implications to their family life, to their sons' social development, and the difficulties that could arise if either should want to go to college.

"It doesn't always sit easy with you, "Betsy Porter says. "You fight your natural instincts. As long as they're happy, I don't have any expectations."