Do you want to keep these very bright kids in public school, instead of having them move on to private schools or to homeschooling? How about treating them with the special attention you give to other special-needs children?
I have two children who have special needs for different reasons – one because of autism and one because of what his therapist cleverly termed “stubbornness.” In both cases, an Individual Educational Program (IEP) was composed with a careful structure for where they needed to be and what needed to be done educationally with both of them.
My oldest son also had special needs – but his needs were ignored. Like me, he is exceptionally bright. Like me, he got to school and found out that he was bored. And like me, he underachieved due to this boredom.
Now here’s the problem. Children with learning disabilities are treated specially in the system, and enabled to excel. But our most intelligent children are often ignored. When they underachieve, it’s blamed on laziness. And that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I can attest to this from experience. When I was in elementary school, I came in with four years of reading experience; I’d learned as a toddler, and read the Bible out loud to my grandparents habitually by the time I was five. My math skills were excellent. I was already writing bad poetry at the age of six, putting me on a par with many college students.
The teachers didn’t know what to do with me. My first grade teacher was excellent, continually finding ways to challenge me, though she worried because I didn’t play much with the other children. My second grade teacher, however, was of the shut-up-and-sit-down variety. And my third grade teacher was worse.
It was in the third grade that I discovered you didn’t have to do homework. That boring, tedious, daily repetition of stuff I’d learned years ago was not necessary! It was downhill from there. By the 8th grade, I’d acquired a number of failing grades, despite getting perfect scores on almost every test.
Why did my school allow me to fail in this way? It wasn’t my parents. They had discussed with the school the possibility of sending me to a nearby district where they at least had advanced placement classes that would challenge me. They’d also talked about skipping me forward a grade or two.
But the school talked them out of it. I was smart enough, and they thought I should learn to excel at the level I was in before trying a new level.
In other words, they didn’t understand my issues as well as they understood those of the LD kids, the mentally retarded kids, and the juvenile delinquents.
My problem: I was bored. I went to class, and learned nothing. I said things my teachers had to look up. As a very smart girl in a backwoods school, this got me little but resentment, and I had maybe one or two friends until high school.
I had problems. Real, serious problems that an IEP might have been able to address. But because I tested high, an IEP would never have been considered for me.
My Challenge To American Education
I am not alone, not by a long shot. I’ll have a dozen comments on this article from others who were in the same boat, and who today probably don’t achieve to the level they ought.
This means that America is losing out on a huge opportunity. While it’s important to not leave the learning-disabled and disadvantaged children behind, it’s also important to encourage the best and brightest children to excel. There are hundreds of thousands of kids like me, my husband, and my son. There is no excuse for our educational system to ignore them because “they’ll do all right.”
All right isn’t good enough in this world. America’s competitors are getting stronger, and the challenges we face harder. If we don’t grow our own generation of scientists, engineers, and programmers, India will pull ahead of us in a couple of decades. We will become what no one alive today can imagine: a second-rate power.
The answer is not homeschooling, nor is it school vouchers so kids can go to private schools (though that might help right now). The only answer is a complete overhaul of the educational system, a new focus on the basics, and an IEP for every child who is not performing as well as he or she should.
The harsh truth is, there’s always room at the bottom. The kids who really, truly don’t have the academic ability to excel in school will always be necessary in surprisingly well-paid service jobs: sanitation, plumbing, even running small businesses. There is room in our country for every type of intelligence, and every level.
But there’s only a little bit of room at the top, and if we don’t have our bright kids prepared to take advantage of that competitive world, we WILL lose.
We know the smart kids can do well academically. Instead of academics, we need to worry about motivation, an understanding of success and failure, a competitive drive, and the ability to study. We are graduating thousands of brilliant kids who don’t have any of these things. As a result, our smartest fall through the cracks, and the second tier – who have to compete against these bright kids and DO get these skills – are the ones who are getting top slots.
Is this the way to do it – let the second best come out on top? We’re a nation of champions, geniuses, and excellence. It’s time that showed.
