FAILING THE BEST AND THE BRIGHTEST
I heard an alarming statistic Sunday morning (10/07/07) while watching Tony Browns Journal
Brown quoted from the TIME Magazine article "ARE WE FAILING OUR GENIUSES " that "40 percent of the top 5% of high school students never finish college." A great portion of those geniuses become jaded with the educational system.
This statistic should be of concern to each one of us because there could be geniuses in our families, especially those of us who are black with "baby" geniuses in the family.
I find most black people don't know how to recognize genius in their children and they tend to stifle them. If you are not a genius but gave birth to one how would you know how to nurture a genius, right?
Ok maybe I'm being too hard on black people. People in general don't like it when smart people flaunt their knowledge anyway - but in the black community that is one quirk we can't afford to emulate.
When most people think geniuses, they think Ted Kaczynski -the unabomber or some kid locked in a room somewhere with glasses and pocket pen protectors building nuclear bombs.
NOPE!!!
We are just what some called autodidacts (self-taught)... and that's the first step to recognizing genius -
If you find yourself constantly asking how you or your "baby" learned something such as s/he taught him/herself to read or learned:
Have your "babies" tested if they are showing any signs of genius. If they go to public school you can request for them to be tested.
But trust me, the administrators are not going to make it easy for you - you will have to insist.
Or you can pay for it yourself...Some of the tests my "babies" took were the Stanford -Binet IQ and the Wechsler Intelligence test. Both are a widely respected test that measure IQ as early as kindergarten age.
If your baby's IQ is between 125 -155, then the public school system will be a challenge for him or her because the curriculum is not set up for the academically gifted.
In fact, thanks to "The No Child left behind" act, your "baby" genius will be forced to learn at the pace of the slowest learner.
According to the TIME Magazine article "ARE WE FAILING OUR GENIUS" "No child left behind act", drafted during the Reagan Administration and made into policy by 2002, took away money from gifted and talented programs and put more money into educating the mentally-challenged...
That's unfair because there is so much more we can do with our academically gifted and talented then just give them the bare minimum to succeed.
I believe in taking care of our weakest in society but not at the expense of our intellectually & academically gifted. You have to challenge intellect just like an athlete has to practice in an effort to excel on the field or court.
"Use or lose it!"
I was in NYC's top ten percent of the academic elite and fortunate enough to test out of the normal public school system when I was 13. My oldest tested out of mainstream education in Kindergarten and the oldest twin tested out of mainstream in the sixth grade and into gifted and talented program. But most academically gifted students usually get run over by the educational system and their intellectual and academic abilities are never developed or encouraged in the home or in the school.
But you can do your part to make sure your "baby" genius doesn't get" LEFT OUT."
First, you can read the TIME Magazine article.
Second, let your "babies" know that even if no one likes a "smarty pants" - everyone is glad to have the "smarty pants" around when they need information.
Since well before the Bush Administration began using the impossibly sunny term "no child left behind," those who write education policy in the U.S. have worried most about kids at the bottom, stragglers of impoverished means or IQs.
But surprisingly, gifted students drop out at the same rates as nongifted kids--about 5% of both populations leave school early.
Later in life, according to the scholarly Handbook of Gifted Education, up to one-fifth of dropouts test in the gifted range.
Earlier this year, Patrick Gonzales of the U.S. Department of Education presented a paper showing that the highest-achieving students in six other countries, including Japan, Hungary and Singapore, scored significantly higher in math than their bright U.S. counterparts, who scored about the same as the Estonians.
Which all suggests we may be squandering a national resource: our best young minds.
Find this article at:
Brown quoted from the TIME Magazine article "ARE WE FAILING OUR GENIUSES " that "40 percent of the top 5% of high school students never finish college." A great portion of those geniuses become jaded with the educational system.
This statistic should be of concern to each one of us because there could be geniuses in our families, especially those of us who are black with "baby" geniuses in the family.
I find most black people don't know how to recognize genius in their children and they tend to stifle them. If you are not a genius but gave birth to one how would you know how to nurture a genius, right?
Well first thing is admitting that it's ok to be a "smarty pants" and stop making the child feel like an alien! 
(oops, sorry old wound 
)
(oops, sorry old wound )Ok maybe I'm being too hard on black people. People in general don't like it when smart people flaunt their knowledge anyway - but in the black community that is one quirk we can't afford to emulate.
When most people think geniuses, they think Ted Kaczynski -the unabomber or some kid locked in a room somewhere with glasses and pocket pen protectors building nuclear bombs.
NOPE!!!
We are just what some called autodidacts (self-taught)... and that's the first step to recognizing genius -
If you find yourself constantly asking how you or your "baby" learned something such as s/he taught him/herself to read or learned:
- the subway system
- to tie shoes
- to write
- Geometry/Algebra/Calculus
- to speak Japanese
- to play a musical instrument.
Have your "babies" tested if they are showing any signs of genius. If they go to public school you can request for them to be tested.
But trust me, the administrators are not going to make it easy for you - you will have to insist.
Or you can pay for it yourself...Some of the tests my "babies" took were the Stanford -Binet IQ and the Wechsler Intelligence test. Both are a widely respected test that measure IQ as early as kindergarten age.
If your baby's IQ is between 125 -155, then the public school system will be a challenge for him or her because the curriculum is not set up for the academically gifted.
In fact, thanks to "The No Child left behind" act, your "baby" genius will be forced to learn at the pace of the slowest learner.
According to the TIME Magazine article "ARE WE FAILING OUR GENIUS" "No child left behind act", drafted during the Reagan Administration and made into policy by 2002, took away money from gifted and talented programs and put more money into educating the mentally-challenged...
That's unfair because there is so much more we can do with our academically gifted and talented then just give them the bare minimum to succeed.
I believe in taking care of our weakest in society but not at the expense of our intellectually & academically gifted. You have to challenge intellect just like an athlete has to practice in an effort to excel on the field or court.
"Use or lose it!"
I was in NYC's top ten percent of the academic elite and fortunate enough to test out of the normal public school system when I was 13. My oldest tested out of mainstream education in Kindergarten and the oldest twin tested out of mainstream in the sixth grade and into gifted and talented program. But most academically gifted students usually get run over by the educational system and their intellectual and academic abilities are never developed or encouraged in the home or in the school.
But you can do your part to make sure your "baby" genius doesn't get" LEFT OUT."
First, you can read the TIME Magazine article.
Second, let your "babies" know that even if no one likes a "smarty pants" - everyone is glad to have the "smarty pants" around when they need information.
Thursday, Aug. 16, 2007
Are We Failing Our Geniuses?
....our education system has little idea how to cultivate its most promising students.
Since well before the Bush Administration began using the impossibly sunny term "no child left behind," those who write education policy in the U.S. have worried most about kids at the bottom, stragglers of impoverished means or IQs.
But surprisingly, gifted students drop out at the same rates as nongifted kids--about 5% of both populations leave school early.
Later in life, according to the scholarly Handbook of Gifted Education, up to one-fifth of dropouts test in the gifted range.
Earlier this year, Patrick Gonzales of the U.S. Department of Education presented a paper showing that the highest-achieving students in six other countries, including Japan, Hungary and Singapore, scored significantly higher in math than their bright U.S. counterparts, who scored about the same as the Estonians.
Which all suggests we may be squandering a national resource: our best young minds.
Find this article at:
Comments