GIFTED AND TALENTED (THIS IS A MOST READ FRIENDS!) Fumbling away greatness We used to honor greatness in America. Admire it. Lincoln’s and Washington’s birthdays were national holidays. Somehow they got lumped together with every other president in one dumbed-down generic holiday as if anyone in their right mind ever celebrated Franklin Pierce or James Buchanan. But today, Super Bowl Sunday, it’s the best versus the very best. The day we demand excellence. That’s why it’s called the Super Bowl not “The Good Bowl” or the “The OK Bowl.” While 49er fans might grumble — and do they ever not grumble? — most objective analysts believe Super Bowl XLVIII features the two best teams. This season there were no wildcard flukes sneaking through the playoffs. It’s Broncos v. Seahawks and the nation can’t wait. But what if the NFL were run by the same folks who run our public schools? What if after playing the entire season we threw out the Broncos’ and Seahawks’ won/loss records and just drew names out of a helmet? Would you fire up the grill and whip up the guacamole dip to watch Jacksonville play Cleveland? That’s exactly what some LAUSD schools have chosen to do with the coveted Advanced Placement classes once reserved for the best and brightest students. Rather than base enrollment on merit they’ve turned one of the few programs available to gifted students into a crapshoot, assigning slots by lottery not merit. Elite is out. Equality is in. Last October, The L.A. Times reported Jordan High School in Watts opened their AP physics class to anyone who wanted to take it. Twenty out of twenty students failed. Last week P.S. 139 in Brooklyn eliminated their SOAR program (Students of Academic Rigor) because classes were dominated by White and Asian kids. Principal Mary McDonald told parents, “We want our classes to reflect the diversity of our community.” So, rather than build up the underperforming kids the school chose to pull down the talented. This notion that every child has to have access to everything is absurd. Talk about setting kids up for failure. Where in life is this true? Do you think the Laker’s would let me play point guard? OK, bad example. This season the Lakers might let me play point guard, but you get the point. McDonald says, “At P.S. 139 we believe that all children can learn and achieve high standards.” And that is not true. Not all children can achieve high standards. Some kids, no matter how hard they try, will never achieve high standards. I know because I was one of them. In high school I ranked in the 97th percentile in mathematics. To this day I can’t count to twenty unless I take off my shoes. The cold hard truth is I have zero capacity for math. My brain doesn’t work that way. Not everyone is good at everything. That doesn’t mean a child can’t learn and can’t succeed. It doesn’t represent a moral or parental failure. But we are failing our brightest kids by eliminating programs for gifted children out of some bizarre notion that by treating every child the same we’re doing them a favor. Children know intuitively who is the best among them. Put 18 unsupervised kids on a baseball diamond and within five minutes the alpha dogs will emerge and chose sides, instantly identifying the athletes from the clods with two left feet that have to be hidden in right field. I played a lot of right field. Only eight states even track the academic performance of gifted students as a separate group and only three states require training for teachers in “gifted education.” We shortchange the future by not recognizing gifted students have special needs every bit as much as “special needs” students do. In our desire to erase any distinctions between the races, genders and classes, we shouldn’t neglect the talented. Some people are simply better at what they do than others. Today one team will hoist the Lombardi Trophy and celebrate as the champions of football. One team. Enjoy the game. Doug McIntyre’s column appears Sunday and Wednesday. He can be reached at: Doug@KABC.
Posted on: Mon, 03 Feb 2014 17:49:42 +0000
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