|
A human creature born abnormally, inhumanely sensitive. To him... a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death.
When teachers or parents fail to understand highly creative individuals, refusal to learn or withdrawal may be a consequence. The highly creative person has an unusually strong urge to explore and to create. When he or she thinks up ideas, or tests them and modifies them, he or she has an unusually strong desire to communicate these ideas and to tell others what they have discovered. Yet both peers and teachers named some of the most creative students in our studies as ones who do not speak out their ideas; there is little wonder they are reluctant to communicate their ideas. Frequently, their ideas are so far ahead of those of their classmates and even their teachers that they have given up hopes of communicating.
ARE THERE TOPS IN OUR CAGES? by E. Paul Torrance
American Vocational Journal, Vo1.38, No.3, pp 20-22
***
Boredom will always remain the greatest enemy of school disciplines. If we remember that children are bored, not only when they don't happen to be interested in the subject or when the teacher doesn't make it interesting, but also when certain working conditions are out of focus with their basic needs, then we can realize what a great contributor to discipline problems boredom really is. Research has shown that boredom is closely related to frustration and that the effect of too much frustration is invariably irritability, withdrawal, rebellious opposition or aggressive rejection of the whole show.
WHEN WE DEAL WITH CHILDREN by Fritz Redl
The Free Press, 1966
***
The needs of children during adolescence are particular and acute. They need an opportunity to develop a sense of identity and to maintain the sense of security that emanates from group acceptance. By providing for the development of intellectual competence and qualitative competence in depth, in an area of interest and aptitude the school may at the same time be contributing to the development of the dual educational goals of psychological health and creativity.
CREATIVITY AND PSYCHOLOGICAL HEALTH DURING
ADOLESCENCE by Elliot W. Eisner (U. of Chicago)
The High School Journal, Vol 48, No.8, May 1965
***
Society has not given the same attention to the education of the genius as has been given to other groups. We spend millions every year for the mentally retarded. The unfortunate child of superior intellect spends his time in a usual commonplace school assimilating a diet far below his expected capacity. The gifted child poses one of our greatest present- day problems beginning in the home and ultimately becoming a concern of the school. Teachers bear the responsibility to recognize and plan for the needs of the gifted.
ASSESSING HUMAN POTENTIAL by Sister Josephine
Concannon, O.S.M., D.Ed. (Boston College)
THE GIFTED CHILD QUARTERLY, Vol X, No.l
***
Society is injudicious in the extreme to neglect those children who possess the potentialities of high-quality leadership. Special education of the gifted is not only justified but is demanded by lessons of history. The lack of interest in classrooms manifested by many gifted children has misled the teacher in many cases and caused her to regard them as dull or slow-learning individuals. Attitudes growing out of frustration have caused gifted children to be classified as delinquents and social maladjusted cases. There is need for careful systematic identification in all schools. Daydreaming on the part of a child, although considered a symptom of maladjustment, is really a tension reducing mechanism. Likewise, aggressiveness, lying, and stealing are attempts to reduce tension. Furthermore, in so far as a study of children will help, it is far wiser to prevent problems from becoming acute than to introduce clinical aid and other external correctives into the educational program after the problem child has become a truant or delinquent. Equality of opportunity demands that each child be given the type of education which best meets his needs and capacities. This principle is violated when a gifted child is forced to accept an education which does not take into consideration his superior ability and give him an opportunity to develop it. The administration should be responsible for instructing the principal and teachers that pupils should never be threatened with transfer to a special class. The plans of the administrator must include provisions for parent education so that the program becomes one of teamwork toward common goals. It is the legal responsibility of the state and the local district to furnish this program. If the responsibility of the state and local district is interpreted as merely permissive, there may be neglect and denial of opportunity to many children unless vigorous leadership is supplemented with adequate financial support .
THE EDUCATION OF EXCEPTIONAL CHILDREN 49TH
YEARBOOK, PART II The National Society for the
Study of Education, 1950
There has been much theorizing about the personal and social maladjustment of the mentally gifted child. The material of this chapter, as well as that of earlier ones, indicates quite conclusively that the mentally gifted are not doomed to be personally maladjusted and social misfits. Where such maladjustment's prevail, one finds that it is the fault of the school or home rather than of the child. It is essential that gifted children not be neglected in the school processes; and that habits of idleness, half-heartedness, mediocre standards, and faulty attitudes toward tasks not be allowed to permeate this segment of the school population. It is such neglect that causes some bright pupils to become maladjustment problems.
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF EXCEPTIONAL CHILDREN by Karl C.
Garrison, Ph.D., The Ronald Press Co., NY, 1950
***
Not only is society the loser when a large segment of its most able members does not make the unique contributions of which it is capable but the individual loses as well. Failing to live up to one's potentialities prevents the individual from attaining the self-fulfillment, the self-actualization of which he is capable, and thus prevents his becoming a truly integrated person. Some psychologists have viewed this dis- crepancy between potential ability and level of functioning in our culture as a major symptom of the neurotic personality.
THE NEUROTIC PERSONALITY OF OUR TIME by Karen
Horney, W.W. Norton & Co., NY, 1936
***
Bluntly, and without apology or regret, I challenge leaders in American education to "show me" that I am mistaken in concluding that students--especially the gifted and highly gifted--entirely too often are thwarted and stunted in their growth because of a most frighteningly poor emotional climate for learning. Perennially, the emotional health of students-- gifted or otherwise--has been a prominent feature of state, regional and national educational conference programs. That many of these valuable papers over the years could be presented today with little need for modification is true. Their in- clusion, I fear, served little more than a neat assuaging of educators' consciences. Facts, however, are rather stubborn things and one of the most stubborn is that they have had no appreciable impact on the national educational picture. Never in the nation's history has there been so vital a need for careful nurturance of the nation's gifted student pool. Never has there been so great a threat of annihilation of importance of values and mores. Never has there been such a dire need for better minds in so many increasingly complex problem areas of our national life. Something is apparently very awry. From the viewpoint of a psychiatrist and his traditional and persistent emphasis on prevention of emotional distress, society s failure to insist that the schools actively use available knowledge assumes the proportions of utter national folly. The loss to the nation is incalculable--that to individual students, particularly the gifted and highly gifted, abysmally cruel since emotional disturbance is an almost inevitable concomitant. Thus, it seems that we in psychiatry are expected to "straighten out warped youth," but then return them to the same pernicious emotional environment of mis- understanding which Paul Goodman refers to as "compulsory miseducation."
THE SCHOOL'S RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE MENTAL
HEALTH OF GIFTED STUDENTS by Theodore E.
Tetrault, M.D., Child Psychiatrist, Akron, OH.
THE GIFTED CHILD QUARTERLY, Vol IX, No.2
It is known that the unrecognized gifted child is the one who is often punished rather than being rewarded for his abil- ities. The creative child is often able to do two or three things at once. Typically the teacher doesn't like this because in her estimation this child is not attending to the class lesson. Repeatedly the child is scolded and punished and banished from the group, when actually he isn't giving any real trouble.
THE PLIGHT OF THE GIFTED by Ann Issacs,
Cincinnati Alumnus, December 1965
***
Probably one of the reasons why so many bright students lack interest in going on to higher education is the poverty of stimulation in the school program to which they have been exposed. Elementary and secondary schools all over the country have gone in for "how-to-study" courses, remedial reading, sight-saving classes, opportunity rooms and commendable special provisions for the handicapped and the slow, but very few devote as much effort to special handling of their most brilliant students.
INTELLECTUAL RESOURCES by Dael Wolfe, Scientific
American, Vol 185, No.3, September 1951
***
As a rule, the preschool years of the gifted child are free from problems. However, entrance into elementary school may initiate difficulties. In the public schools where the majority of children may be below 100 I.Q., the gifted child may become overconfident and lazy; boredom with the slow academic pace of the classroom may lead to restlessness and troublesome behavior. Because the school plays such an important role in the total well-being of the child, the pediatrician is often consulted about the problems which interfere with academic performance; these frequently include physical, emotional and social components. A gifted child who develops behavioral disturbance is likely to continue in this pattern even after his class environment is changed unless he is given additional help in the form of psychiatric treatment. The physician who recognizes the intellectually superior child in the early stages of development can alert parents and teachers to the special needs of the child, thereby forestalling serious difficulties and aiding in educational planning.
THE GIFTED CHILD (Theraputic Notes), Vol 73,
November-December 1966, Parke, Davis &Co.
***
Suppose Bobby Jones or Mozart had not been allowed to begin his music or his golf until the other children did, or to practice or progress faster, or had only the instruction of a school class in music or physical education. Suppose they had been kept from playing with older children or adults in the fear that they might become socially maladjusted, kept from associating much with older musicians or golfers because that would be narrowing and undemocratic. Kept from public performance or tournaments because that would be exploiting the child! It surely may be questioned whether they would then have reached the prominence they did. Abuses in the afore-mentioned directions are, of course, possible. But, it is also an abuse to withhold opportunities from precocious youngsters who are eager to advance and excel. The opinion is ventured that the last type of abuse is now in this country, the more common one.
CONCERNING THE NATURE AND NURTURE OF GENIUS by
Sidney L. Pressey, Scientific Monthly, Vol 81,
No.3, September 1955
***
By this refusal to recognize special gifts, we have wasted and dissipated, driven into apathy or schizophrenia, uncounted numbers of gifted children. If they learn easily, they are penalized for being bored when they have nothing to do; if they excel in some outstanding way, they are penalized for being conspicuously better than the peer group, and teachers warn the gifted child, "yes, you can do that; it's much more interesting than what the others are doing. But, remember, the rest of the class will dislike you for it." Meanwhile, the parents are terrorized with behests to bring up their children to be normal happy human beings, and told horror stories about infant prodigies who go mad at twenty. Under these conditions it is not surprising that, as one English critic has acutely remarked, "The United States has more promising young people who fizzle out than any other country." This is admittedly a grim picture--a startling grim picture-- especially when one realizes that parents all over the world dream of making it possible for their children to be born in America, the country where there are the resources and the freedom necessary for good life.
THE GIFTED CHILD IN THE AMERICAN CULTURE OF
TODAY by Margaret Mead, Journal of Teacher
Education, Vol 5, No.3, September 1954
***
Very little recognition has been given to the fact that extremely high intelligence is as far from normal as is mental deficiency and that it creates problems of its own that may be as acute, though not as depressing as the problems of inferior intelligence. In psychological theory, the range of normal intelligence runs from the dull, border-line mentality at 70 I.Q. to the very superior level of 130 I.Q. or thirty points of divergence from 100 I.Q. which represents the average performance of children at given age levels. The eight-year- old child with an I.Q. of 130 may be normal in size appearance, but he has the mentality of ten and one-half years which throws his adjustment to his group also out of balance. He learns his lessons too quickly, is bored with the activities of grade III, and might work off his excess energy in unprofitable mischief. He attracts attention to his clever remarks and develops a desire for the center of the stage. He bosses children his own age but is rejected by older and larger children whose interests fascinate him and challenge his ability to compete with them. Disturbance of personality is deep-rooted . Early environment experiences leave their mark in conditioned reactions which, by repetition, become permanent traits.
HAZARDS OF THE HIGH I.Q. by Douglas A. Thom &
Nancy Newell, Mental Hygiene, Vol 29, No.l,
January 1945
***
Gifted children, especially young ones, often have difficulty in making friends. The average child starts to make friends (psychologists say gets into the peer state) at about the age of seven. At this time there is a marked withdrawal from the family and the child finds someone just like himself, same age, same sex, same clothes, same breakfast food, same TV shows, with whom to identify. Parents often think the child has fallen under the evil influence of the neighbor's child and the neighbor thinks the same thing. Despite parental anguish the child is learning a most important lesson--how to identify with others. It is terribly important to be able to get along with and be liked by other members of your own sex, and this is the time when boys learn to be "regular fellers" and girls learn the same lesson. But if he is a gifted child, one in a hundred, he has to know 100 other boys to find one like himself, and half the time the hundredth child is a girl, and he's sunk. It does no good to tell the child at this stage that the world is made up of all kinds of people, and he must like them all. He starts in by identifying with someone like himself. Many gifted children develop imaginary playmates to fill the void left by not having any true peers. Educators should allow for cluster grouping in the elementary grades, and parents should bus children around after school to find others they can play with. A gifted child with a chronological age of 8 and a mental age of 11 can't be expected to play with average children of either age--he won't get along with his age peers and average children aged 11 won't admit him to their games. He needs to find another child who is 8 but thinks like 11. This may take some parental doing, but it's much better than letting the child develop lonely, antisocial habits because no one else seems to be like him. So when a child becomes so absorbed in his own activities that he doesn't have friends, it's because he hasn't had a chance to make the right kind.
EDUCATING THE ABLEST--A BOOK OF READINGS ON
EDUCATION OF GIFTED CHILDREN, Edited by John
Curtis Gowan and E. Paul Torrance, F.E, Peacock,
Itasca, IL, 1971
***
The U.S. educational system, in one form or another has existed for as long as the nation. Yet, it was not until the last ten years that the system commited itself to improving instruction for millions of previously neglected children. There are gifted children and, like other minorities, they need help. It may be difficult to grasp why children with the potential to achieve eminence should require special attention. The explanation is that for every Einstein or Martin Luther King who emerges a dozen or so more do not. Though it is impossible to offer conclusive proof of this hypothesis-- biographies, after all, do not study average men and women-- available evidence from the lives of great men and women, as well as studies of school-age children, bolster this conclusion from a 1968 study of the gifted. We would even go so far as to say that, to a very considerable extent, those individuals who constitute that "creative minority" in our society (or any society)...have achieved their eminence in spite of rather than because of our school system. Thomas Edison's mother withdrew him from school after three months in the first grade because his teacher said he was "unable." Gregor Mendel, founder of the science of genetics, flunked his teacher's examination four times in a row and gave up trying. Newton, considered a poor student in grammar school, left at fourteen, was sent back at nine because he read so much, and graduated at Cambridge without any distinction whatever. Winston Churchill was last in his class at Harrow. Charles Darwin dropped out of medical school. Shelley was expelled from Oxford, James Whistler and Edgar Allen Poe from West Point. Gibbon considered his education a waste of time. Einstein found grammar school boring; it was his uncle, showing the boy tricks with numbers, who stimulated his interest in mathematics. In short, traditional academic programs are sometimes poorly suited to humans of extraordinary potential. One is left to wonder how many Whistlers did not survive educational disasters. Why should children with unusual abilities experience trouble with ordinary school curricula? Precisely because the curricula are ordinary. Education is a mass enterprise geared by economic necessity as well as politics to the abilities of the majority. Just as a child of less-than-average mental ability frequently has trouble keeping up with his classmates, so a child of above-average ability has trouble staying behind with them. Prevented from moving ahead by the rigidity of normal school procedures, assigned to a class with others of the same age, expected to devote the same attention to the same textbooks, required to be present for the same number of hours in the same seat, the Rifted youngster typically takes one of three tacks: (1) he conceals his ability, anxious not to embarrass others or draw their ridicule by superior performance; (2) he drifts into a state of lethargy and complete apathy; or (3) not understanding his frustration, he becomes a discipline problem.
--Dr. Harold C. Lyon, Jr., Director of Education
for the Gifted and Talented, U.S. Office of
Education, January 1974
***
SU: THE NUMBER OF CHILDREN BEING GIVEN MEDICATION FOR A.D.D. SEEMS TO BE DOUBLING EVERY TWO YEARS. IS IT POSSIBLE THAT SOME OF THESE CHILDREN ARE BEING INCORRECTLY DIAGNOSED.....AND IMPROPERLY MEDICATED? SOME SAY THIS NEW EPIDEMIC IS SIMPLY THE RESULT OF HEIGHTENED AWARENESS AND BETTER DIAGNOSIS. BUT THERE MAY BE ANOTHER EXPLANATION. DR. BREGGIN: It's such a sad situation, I mean the kids intuitively know that it's not good to be taking drugs. And the idea that it's a drug that works in school but not at home, it works during school days but you don't have to give it on vacations, I mean it's so obvious that we're just drugging our kids to push 'em into situations that they can't stand. VO (over Breggin typing): PSYCHIATRIST PETER BREGGIN, THE AUTHOR OF "TOXIC PSYCHIATRY" AND "THE WAR AGAINST CHILDREN," IS AN M.D. WHO CAN PRESCRIBE RITALIN, BUT CHOOSES NOT TO. DR. BREGGIN: There's no doubt that there are kids who are bored, who are frustrated, who are anxious. There's no doubt that some kids don't fit into our schools and some aren't doing well in their families, but there's no evidence whatsoever that it's a disease or a medical disorder, it's a child in conflict, it has to be dealt with in a conflict situation. DR. BREGGIN: If you look at the diagnosis that's been promoted by the American Psychiatric Association, becomes clear why any doctor might feel reasonable about giving medication to a child, a child who one, often fidgets with hands or feet or squirms in seat, I mean I personally get that a lot, I'm a very high-energy person, very hard for me to sit still here, fact you didn't want me to sit in a chair that would wiggle back and forth because you know that nervous adults will wiggle back and forth in their chairs, and that's number one under hyperactivity, number two is often leaves seat in classroom or in other situations in which remaining seated is expected. And then the third one, often runs about or climbs excessively. And if he's an adolescent he may just feel like doing it without doing it. These are the three criteria that are considered the most powerful, and what do they represent? They represent a kid who'd rather be doing something else.
SU: WE ARE GIVING PILLS TO INCREASING NUMBERS OF CHILDREN.
THE QUESTION IS, "WHY?" THE ANSWERS VARY, DEPENDING ON
WHETHER YOU ASK PARENTS, TEACHERS, OR THE KIDS WHO ARE
GIVEN THE PILLS. SOME PARENTS SAY THAT SCHOOLS ACTUALLY
ENCOURAGE MEDICATION BECAUSE IT'S A CHEAP ALTERNATIVE TO
SPECIAL PROGRAMS AND SMALLER CLASSES.
DR. BREGGIN: Parents are put under enormous pressure to drug their kids
now, even in the best private schools, in a place like Bethesda, Maryland,
I'm seeing parents all the time or hearing from parents, where the schools
are saying, "you've gotta drug your kid, we can't control your kid in
school, doctors are constantly pushing Ritalin".
SU: PARENTS BLAME TEACHERS, TEACHER BLAME PARENTS, KIDS
BLAME JUST ABOUT EVERYONE. BUT NONE OF THOSE
EXPLANATIONS FULLY ACCOUNTS FOR THE GROWTH OF A.D.D. AND
THE USE OF MEDICATION. THE REST OF THE STORY BEGINS WITH
CHADD, THE NATION'S LARGEST A.D.D. SUPPORT GROUP.
VO: THOUSANDS OF PARENTS TURN TO CHADD FOR INFORMATION
ABOUT A.D.D. CHADD'S 650 LOCAL CHAPTERS HOLD REGIONAL
CONFERENCES AND MONTHLY MEETINGS, OFTEN IN SCHOOLS,
WHERE FREE MEDICAL ADVICE IS GIVEN. CHADD RECOMMENDS A
TREATMENT PLAN THAT INCLUDES BEHAVIOR MODIFICATION,
COUNSELING, AND MEDICATION.
VO: THE FINANCIAL RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CHADD AND CIBA-
GEIGY, THE COMPANY THAT MAKES RITALIN, BEGAN IN 1988.
VO (GRAPHIC): SINCE THEN, CHADD HAS RECEIVED CLOSE TO ONE
MILLION DOLLARS IN GRANTS AND ITS MEMBERSHIP HAS GROWN
FROM 800 TO OVER 35,000. CHADD HAS USED CIBA-GEIGY'S MONEY
TO BUILD ITS MEMBERSHIP AND TO PROMOTE AWARENESS OF A.D.D.
CALL: 1-800-553-7752
|