ALL THE BEST FOR THE BRIGHTEST

...Yet the test's frozen picture of ability fits with many gifted advocates' view of intelligence as a static, innate trait—as if each person were born with a fixed supply that could be tallied up at any time in order to separate the "haves" from the "have nots...

...It is claimed that the gifted need a more "open-ended" approach to learning, one that gets them deeply involved in pursuing a topic of study, in solving real problems, and in doing creative work...

...Classrooms are geared to memorization and regurgitation...

...David Jackson, former director of the gifted movement's Leadership Training Institute in Reston, Virginia, admits, "The major lacuna of the Federal effort has been the lack of funding for research...

...Republicans, long led by former Senator Jacob Javits of New York, have been the most vocal and active Congressional supporters of the programs, but Democrats have voted for them as well...

...The states, in turn, have been goaded into action by the Federal Government, which since 1971 has been waging a determined campaign of advocacy and seed money, seeking to make special programs for the gifted a standard feature of American public schools...

...You don't have to be bright to be bored' nGifted children are destined to be the leaders of tomor-¦ row...

...School boards have responded by launching special programs—from elementary part-time "enrichment" rooms to full-time "magnet" schools and, at the secondary level, from honors classes to tailor-made programs and broader studies in the community...

...Past experiments provide some of the building blocks for such a system: flexible curricula, smaller classes, and "hands on" learning for all...

...Almost 800,000 students were designated as "gifted" in U.S...

...Terman, a Stanford psychologist, located 1,500 children with IQ scores of 135 or above—"geniuses," he said, who would become leaders in every walk of life...

...Psychological theories about such "high"- and "low"-level thought processes "are almost universally offered as...

...Says one member of Congress, "We need to aid directly the gifted and talented children in the country who will become the leaders of our communities and of our nation in the future...

...They have come to believe that a special group of students must be tracked down and given special training...

...Parents of the gifted, a dedicated lobbying group, argue that their children are bored and unhappy in regular classrooms...

...Barbara Rothbart, a A distinct jargon has sprung up for the gifted mother in Ann Arbor, Michigan, recently told her local school board that a "cap" is put on the academic progress of bright children in school...

...But such programs faded during the 1960s as the United States took the lead in the "space race" and national attention turned to the needs of poor and minority students...

...In 1978, the Gifted and Talented Children's Education Act authorized escalation of funding for the gifted from $2.6 million to $50 million per year by 1983...

...Gifted hunters further charge that public school teachers often fail to recognize talented students, misled by their bored daydreaming, their "divergent" ideas, and their boycott of busywork in areas they have mastered...

...public schools...

...I choke on the word," says an East Coast principal...

...A brief spate of programs for the "gifted" started in the 1920s but petered out in the egalitarian and economically troubled 1930s and reached a low ebb after World War II...

...You don't have to be bright to be bored in school," says Canadian educator Dennis Cassivi...

...psychologist Joseph R-enzulli in Kappan magazine...

...Consider the basic assumptions upon which arguments for special programs for the gifted are built: IThere exists a distinct group of people—"the gifted"—who are ¦ identifiably superior to others in such traits-as intelligence and creativity...

...There was a second flurry of gifted education in the 1950s after the Russians launched Sputnik...

...It makes a difference in their personalities, in their feelings about themselves—just to spend a few hours a week with others like themselves...

...Psychologist Bruno Bettelheim was concerned by the racial and class divisions inherent in the short-lived gifted education spurt of the 1950s...

...There is a serious question, however, whether any such clear-cut group exists...

...WGifted students must be identified, labeled, and ¦ separated from others because they require a different kind of schooling to fulfill their unusual potential...

...The other route is toward a dual school system—one narrow mechanistic design for most children and one enriched and stimulating approach for the small elite, largely the children of professionals, the affluent, the frightened upper-middle-class, whose children will be given a special boost and designated the leaders of tomorrow...

...In New York City, the public schools are adding largely white gifted classrooms in an open attempt to stem white flight...

...And a skeptical father asks, "How the hell do they know every student is not just as bored...

...There has been something almost eerie about the easy passage of proAnne Gardner Remley is an education writer for the Ann Arbor Observer in Michigan...

...Also missed are the unconventional thinkers, poor test takers, slow workers, and "late bloomers...

...Terman's and similar studies are often cited, but they do not compare people who differ in IQ but are similar in other ways, such as social class or family income...

...Others might have called the programs a misplacement of priorities, when so many students lack even minimal reading and writing skills...

...Instead of first doing their homework, public schools across the country are forging ahead, separating schoolchildren into two visible groups: those who are believed to have the brightest futures", who are said to be the most productive, creative, and sharp, and all the rest of the students—95 per cent of U.S...

...Setting such programs off from the rest of the curriculum marks a major change in direction for U.S...

...The Gifted Hunters have presented no evidence that the country's top scientists, artists, business executives, or government officials rise primarily from the ranks of the highly intelligent or from any other pre-selected group...

...A Pennsylvania teacher says nearly a third of all students selected for "gifted" status in her school now reject the designation...

...But protests have been few—and support has been plentiful...

...The kids hate that 'gifted' label," says a state coordinator for gifted programs...

...President Eisenhower won passage of legislation that encouraged schools to provide enrichment, acceleration, and honors classes for able students and to revise science and math curricula...

...Bettelheim's thoughts are repeated today by education professor Vincent Rogers: "The United States is headed toward the provision of two curricu-lums," Rogers says, "a narrow, rigid curriculum for most children and a broader, richer one for gifted kids...

...The progress of Terman's "Termites," as they called themselves, was followed for sixty years...

...Such children have been mislabeled as emotionally impaired, learning disabled, or even mentally retarded...

...Such traits are said to be beyond the scope of regular classrooms...

...Vincent Rogers, University of Connecticut education professor, pleads for more research on the effects of gifted programs on students...

...They draw heavily on current events—volcanic eruptions, global politics, U.S...

...This continues even though research has well established the "Pygmalion" effect: Children who are thought to be less able get the message—and so do their teachers...

...They become bored in school...

...But the rest are left doing workbooks...

...Schools want to keep these youngsters in time with the metronome of traditional education," Harold C. Lyon Jr., U.S...

...In 1971, Nixon's Commissioner of Education, Sidney Marland, sent a report to Congress stating that gifted students required "differentiated educational programs and/or services beyond those normally provided by the regular school program...

...To provide—as gifted programs do—all kinds of apparatus, low pupil-teacher ratio, field trips—it's beautiful for these kids...

...Students may look into nuclear energy, conservation, astronomy, or microcomputers...

...These liberal intellectuals agree that the special educational privileges of the white over the Negro should be eliminated but insist that special educational opportunities— and with them, privileges—should be created for the intellectual elite...

...They take field trips to university labs and visit with scientists, mathematicians, and engineers...

...Advocates for gifted programs complain that equal educational opportunity has been extended to the poor, the bilingual, the learning disabled, and the handicapped, but not to "the most educationally deprived minority of all"—the gifted...

...Advocates make statements about "the gifted" as if they were citing facts, when they are actually advancing opinions—in many cases, opinions of dubious validity...

...Nor can gifted education advocates cite any research showing that children identified as gifted have, as a group, done better in life than anyone else...

...In 1958, he warned, "The argument sets off echoes of the Orwellian pigs who believed that all animals are equal but that some are more equal than others...

...educators...

...They are said to think on a higher, more conceptual, more creative plane than others who, by implication, are largely limited to and contented with "lower level" thought processes—with memorizing facts and acquiring bits and pieces of "skills...

...Labeling is disabling," was a favorite homily of the late child psychologist Haim Ginott...

...Schools are regimented," says Nancy Mincemoyer, Michigan's coordinator of gifted programs...

...But not any more than other groups of children could...

...However, the Reagan budget would lump gifted funds with monies for other school programs in no-strings block grants, pegged 25 per cent lower than current funding...

...Peers may shun a "brain" while overzealous parents and teachers may expect instant brilliance in all areas...

...Yet this claim has been a favorite myth of the movement ever since Lewis Ter-man, "the father of gifted-child education," unsuccessfully searched the schoolrooms of California for future leaders back in the 1920s...

...But jfcfenzulli says school officials are seriously misreading such theories> In truth, he says, they "point out processes that should be developed in all children...

...Then, during the Nixon Administration, a breakthrough occurred...

...They become excited about learning...

...This state of affairs is likely to continue for the forseeable future, casting a baleful balance over the entire effort...

...Both lower their sights and learning suffers...

...The new interest in gifted students comes on the heels of the movement toward more heterogeneous, interracial classrooms in public schools...

...Thus the conflict takes on the ominous features of a battle in which one side fights for special opportunities for its own—the intelligent—and for equal opportunities for the rest of the population...

...The proposal offers states and local school boards an opportunity to take a second look at their own sizable investment in gifted programs...

...Beyond the personal tragedies of wasted talent and schoolroom trauma, U.S...

...schoolchildren...

...No studies have looked to see if the "nongifted" could thrive as much as the gifted do in enriched, open-ended classes...

...Those students now being winnowed out as "gifted" tend to be from well-off, white families...

...Even a long-time supporter of aid to bright students, Jeffrey Zettel of the Office of Special Education, says research shows there are "well-known adverse effects which accompany labeling a child...

...Still, many in the gifted movement assume that there is something fundamentally different about gifted children's minds...

...The Marland Report in 1971 dazzled Congress with more than forty pages of research citations showing the benefits of tailor-made education...

...Ultimately most of them did well financially and personally and some rose high in their professions, but others wound up in routine, undistinguished jobs...

...Few voices have been raised to challenge the basic assumptions on which the movement rests or to look at the possibility that it may have negative consequences for children, for schools, and for the nation...

...their "divergent thinking" (questioning a teacher's assumptions), and their capacity for "synthesis" (the linking of several ideas...

...He says, "Labeled children are often victimized by stigma associated with the label" and by the "unrealistic expectations" that it may arouse...

...Allen G. Schwartz, a senior New York City official in favor of the program, told The New York Times in 1979 that adding numerous classrooms for the gifted "would set up almost a dual system, but it would certainly have appeal to the middle class...

...They need each other...

...mGifted students are more bored and unhappy in ¦ school than others...

...Other assumptions, discussed with far less candor, may also be at play in the Great Gifted Hunt...

...It may be easier for schools to deal with "difficult" students by peeling them off in bunches and categories, but the solution, finally, lies in an education system that can serve today's increasingly heterogeneous students in one setting...

...Local taxpayers might have been expected to flinch before earmarking several hundred dollars apiece for a 2 to 5 per cent minority of students already doing well in school...

...The fact is that movement boosters have done no comparative "boredom" or "misery" research either...

...Director of Education for the Gifted and Talented, wrote in PTA Today...

...grams for the gifted...

...The underlying truth may be that schools today are far less effective with most children than they should be...

...elections...

...The rest are left doing workbooks...

...Many of the liberal intelligentsia are in the vanguard of the fight for both desegregation and special facilities for the gifted...

...And even program advocates admit that defining it is a thorny problem...

...There's nothing inherently wrong with recognizing talent, but if it is done at the expense of other kids, it's wrong and it's elitist...

...Lyon cited famous people from Edgar Allan Poe to Albert Einstein who were "gifted misfits" in school, commenting, "One wonders how many Churchills, how many Whistlers, how many Van Goghs failed to survive the education disasters they encountered...

...Marland set up the Office of Gifted and Talented Education, which began mapping out an energetic game plan...

...Einstein was one of the latter, dubbed "hopeless" by his early teachers...

...Sure the gifted children profit from it...

...A distinct jargon has sprung up to describe the special capabilities of these deprived children: their "higher level cognitive functioning...

...They may learn two or three years of math in one year," she explained...

...School personnel sometimes regard them with hostility or frustration because they do not fit into standard teaching approaches...

...public schools last year...

...Across the nation, hundreds of new public school programs are springing up to seek out and cater to that newly fashionable category of student, the "gifted...

...The local districts are being spurred by state funds for gifted education—$122 million nationwide in 1979 alone...

...Public education may be nearing a crossroads where it will have to decide whether to accept the challenge of an increasingly diverse student body and to meet all children's needs in an integrated setting...

...Uncle Sam became "a catalytic presence," forthrightly lobbying for the cause of gifted education and urging states and school districts to start "differentiated" programs...

...national security and welfare are often said to depend on good schooling for gifted children...

...But then they are told by their teachers not to go on...

...One school district in four now makes special arrangements for these youngsters, from "enriched" activities in their regular classes to full-time separate schooling...

...If you told all the middle-class—I hate to see this in print—if you took all the Jews in Borough Park and said, 'Don't worry about leaving Borough Park because your schools will have rapid-advance classes, and if your kid performs, he or she will be in those Public schools are short-changing most students classes,' well, that would have a certain appeal that might retain those people in the neighborhood...

...Nor have studies asked whether labeling students "gifted" or, by default, "nongifted" may cause them harm...

...Vincent Rogers's words are echoed by critics who agree that the public schools are short-changing most students right along with the gifted...

...Parents of the "gifted" may believe schools are especially ill-suited for their children, just as parents of the handicapped and parents of minority students often conclude that schools are especially ineffective with theirs...

...The most widely used weapon in the Gifted Hunt, the IQ test, is known to measure only a few selected aspects of intelligence while overlooking many others...

...the rationale for separate programs," says University of Connecticut, exluca-tiona...

...The Great Gifted Hunt increasingly occupies U.S...

...He warns that they "may contribute to the development of feelings of powerlessness, alienation, superiority, inferiority, class, race, or ethnic bias," adding, "At present we simply do not know...

...Some theorists still uphold this view, but many now see intelligence as "developmental"—changing and deepening according to a person's lifetime experience...

...Many gifted programs use a "hands on" learning approach with open-ended study projects based on youngsters' own interests...

...We've done a poor job of teaching children to think and solve problems...

...But it, too, produced no crucial studies comparing the gifted with other groups...

...Gifted children feel lonely and isolated," she added with feeling...

...While many promising youngsters are spotted, many others are overlooked, most often those from ethnic and cultural backgrounds that differ from the hunters...