Gifted & Talented?
Recently on a trip to “the most haunted room” in “the most haunted hotel”, Melissa and I were enjoying the east Texas scenery and listening to Radiolab podcasts. One episode featured a dialogue with author Malcolm Gladwell on the secrets of success and discussing his book “Outliers”. Our attention was grabbed with Mr. Gladwell’s flippant remarks about his disdain for Gifted & Talented programs. Unfortunately they didn’t delve into his reasoning on this, and instead focused on what sounds like are the primary arguments in the book - that over the top, runaway success stories are due to being in the right place at the right time, coupled with extraordinary love & passion for an activity. Be it programming for Bill Gates, hockey for Wayne Gretsky, or music for The Beatles. Gladwell cites the 10,000 hour rule readily and with a fair amount of facts makes his case pretty well. What was most interesting to us, and what they unfortunately failed to address, is why Gifted and Talented programs are detrimental in this equation?
Melissa and I both consider ourselves lucky to have been in a district that had such a program available - ours was called ALPS, (Alternative Learning Program for gifted Students) and is where we first met. You don’t hear many arguments against this type of program, so we were both a little surprised at this opinion.
I’m not sure what all the entry requirements were, but I do remember taking an IQ test when I entered public school which it was probably based on. In home school I was used to going at my own pace, often teaching myself from the books, finishing early and going to play outside, or just continuing on and getting ahead. If the weather was nice my mom would sometimes have class for my brother and I in the park, and I remember going on many random, interesting field trips with the local home school group. Going from that environment to one in which you have to sit in a desk and wait for the slowest person in the group to catch up was excruciating. The ALPS program was a fantastic return to the exciting elements of learning and a truly invaluable experience to me.
By simply challenging the convention of the classroom, learning was made exciting again. ALPS challenged us to be creative. By offering different projects each student was able to explore areas they were interested in, & actually discover topics we didn’t know we would be interested in. The projects were broad and varied, and ranged from mock trials to developing advertising campaigns. We wrote computer programs in elementary school… (ok it was just BASIC) but we had the opportunity to find something in everything that was interesting to us. (I was the Doug Llewellyn of the mock trial).
Another great thing about it was that you were no longer waiting on the slowest one. As Randy Couture says “iron sharpens iron”, and whether you are looking for sparring partners or peers it rings true. Without the ALPS program I’m sure many of the students would have found it exceedingly easy to coast through school feeling like the smartest kid in every class, without the opportunity to be challenged or find peers. It provided an opportunity to have conversations that you couldn’t necessarily have normally, which I believe was one of the foundational goals of the TED talks as well as Mensa. We were able to delve into topics and have conversations that most students simply would not have been ready for, or cared to have.
Alternatively, those of us who weren’t necessarily the greatest students grade-wise (there were likely more than a handful of learning disorders in the group) had the opportunity to be creative, and understand that grades weren’t the end-all be-all of education. In ALPS the highest of the class could be on the same playing field as C or D students, as grades were not part of the equation. For everyone, complacency was simply not a factor.
One thing Gladwell honed in on regarding his success stories: they were all given opportunities that were crucial to their success. So why not give as many kids as possible that opportunity? I don’t want to imply that I think all students should be separated by their IQ or their preferred method of learning, interaction itself is one of the most important lessons in school. (As well as one of the biggest shortfalls of homeschooling). However, is it possible this would simply mirror our social circles? I remember the CEO of my company noting once when discussing the benefits of hiring referrals: smart people tend to have smart friends.
I do understand the elitism connotation, and I had many friends who would have done great in the program, but weren’t in it for whatever reason. However, I see no reason why supporting one form of alternative education means that you have to discount all others. I think everyone should be given the opportunity to learn in the way that is best suited for them, and I don’t see why this would be at odds with any of Gladwell’s tenets of success.
I wrote a bit more than I expected to, I suppose I am beginning to see the benefit of clearing some brain space and getting it on ‘paper’. Some of this just happened to be fresh in my head after the podcast, as well as a dinner a little while back with our friend Henry and his wife when we reminisced a little about ALPS.
By the way that “most haunted room” in the “most haunted hotel”? As of right now I think it was probably some gifted and talented marketing.
