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From: lew@ihuxr.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.kids
Subject: "Talented and Gifted" program
Message-ID: <869@ihuxr.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 29-Jan-84 16:32:36 EST
Article-I.D.: ihuxr.869
Posted: Sun Jan 29 16:32:36 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 1-Feb-84 01:27:48 EST
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Naperville, IL
Lines: 101

Both my children are in a "talented and gifted" program at Lincoln School
in Wheaton, Ill. Lisa is in the 3rd grade and Max is in the 1st grade.
They were selected for this program by virtue of placing in the top 7%
in some sort of IQ testing.

I'm writing this to express my doubts about the value of the program, and
my even graver doubts about the viability of the doctrines which motivate
its existence.

The basic idea is to provide the brighter kids with stimulating exercises
that they wouldn't get in the regular curriculum. The material from which
these are drawn forms quite a grab-bag, including memory exercises, logic
puzzles (for "deductive thinking"), and "A is to B as C is to ..." exercises.
I have problems reconciling almost every specific example I happen to see
with my notion of appropriateness or even correctness. For example the
"A is to B" stuff, which they called "analogies" was really wild.

Each analogy was classified into one of ten (or so) relationships, which
characterized the analogy. I obtained a master list from the teacher. It
was a set of columns labeled at the top with the relationship, e.g.
part:whole, or cause:effect. The analogies were incredibly confused, however.
For example, under cause:effect one finds pig:pork as well as egg:bird.
Therefore pig:pork <=> egg:bird. Some of the examples were even worse -
insofar as I couldn't imagine any motivation at all for the classification.

Oh well, on to the logic puzzles. These are the ones that require filling
in a square array on the basis of clues like, "Jack and Jones met a pieman".
... so Jack is not Jones, nor the pieman, and so on. These puzzles are
supposed to typify "deductive thinking", but I see them as a narrow and
rigid example of this skill. The whole business of filling in the array
was completely beyond Max's comprehension. Lisa understood the simple
ones, and even the intermediate ones, but some were way beyond her.

One clue was of the form "John is older than Smith but younger than Jill".
From this one can infer that John is neither the youngest nor the oldest.
Smith must be either youngest or next youngest (out of four persons) and
so on. Some of the clues used "born before" instead of "older" and one
naturally gets confused by this. I had to use paper to work this one out
and I had to backtrack several times. I thought it was WAY too hard for Lisa.

When one gets older, these puzzles are easy to analyze. In fact, one
can readily consider programming a general solver of them, so that one's
thinking moves to a higher level all together. My point is that I don't
see the value of grinding in the ability to solve this type of puzzle
at an early age. I don't think it forms the foundation for "logical thinking"
at all.

Here's an exercise that really irked me: Max's class was shown a projection
of some arbitrary polygon, then asked to draw an outline "the same size
and shape" on their papers. They all proceeded to do so, making the natural
and unconscious scale transformation from the screen to the paper. The teacher
then interrupted them, pointing out that the actual size of the projection
was much larger than their papers, so the task was impossible.

I find it ironic that as AI people struggle to automate the "do what I
mean" capability which is so natural to humans, this program is evidently
trying to train it out of the supposed best and brightest youth. It occurs
to me that the sort of "clever answer" which the teacher gave is supposed
to typify the answers given by "gifted" children which exasperate teachers
expecting conventional answers. It seems they are trying to train this
trait into the children ... kind of sick, don't you think?

Earlier in the school year, my wife and I attended an orientation program
for parents. The program director showed slides illustrating the theoretical
underpinnings of the program. Part of this involved a theory of intelligence
which has intelligence divided into some 100 or so distinct capabilities. As
I watched this, I came to understand for the first time why some people raise
such strident objections to the importance placed on IQ testing. It looked
to me like pure quackery. Also, the philosophy of encouraging creativity
seemed to involve a lot of self-contradiction. Some exercises were designed
to elicit off beat answers, but others had certain expected answers which were
even more arbitrary than conventional answers to traditional questions.

Some answers which were were held up as examples of creativity were just
plain wrong, in my opinion. The example I remember is this: some kids were
asked to list gifts that they might like to give to people who were important
to them. One child responded by listing people he might give gifts to.
We were then told that there was nothing "wrong" with this response, it was
just that child's interpretation of the question. Yet I looked down at my
handout to see that one of the important skills to be taught was comprehension
of English sentences!

Finally, there seems to be a fundamental flaw in the concept of supplemental
material. This stuff is touted as being basic to intellectual development.
Why then is it withheld from the majority of students? It seems that students
who do well on IQ testing are taken aside and trained in just the sort of
thinking required to do well on these tests. Then their continued high
scoring is held up as proof of the efficacy of the program. It seems
to me that the only way to give legitimate recognition to childrens' varied
abilities is to allow them to proceed through the SAME materials at different
paces. This is done of course, and there are problems with it as well, but
I am utterly unimpressed with the "talented and gifted" program.

Well, I've come down pretty heavily on it, but my kids seem to view
the whole thing as a positive experience, on balance. It's been good for
Lisa to see that SOME schoolwork is difficult. Also, she was very impressed
with the "don't jump to conclusions" lesson which was ancillary to her
logic puzzle instruction. Anyway, they only have the class for one hour a week,
so there's no reason to worry too much about it.

		Lew Mammel, Jr. ihnp4!ihuxr!lew