The bright and the bored

A couple of years ago, my son started complaining about being bored in what he called "PSSA math."

I ignored it at first, as I do with most complaints. But it didn't go away.

So after a couple of weeks I started asking more questions. It turns out - and this is according to him, so I can't vouch for it, but it rings true - that his math class had jumped back about a year in the curriculum and was spending its time drilling for the PSSA tests.

"It's so stupid," he said. "We already learned this stuff."

Now, my son is not exactly "Good Will Hunting" or anything, but he's a good math student, and had been put in accelerated program in third grade. He took it as a challenge, loved the pace and the effort involved, and was always talking about the cool things he was learning.

But there he was, in fifth grade (I think), with his whole little happy geek group yanked away from the joyful explorations of new concepts to spend time making sure they hadn't forgotten things that would be on the PSSA test - and bored to death.

So I had a ready answer when I read the June 19 story on whether schools are neglecting gifted kids under the No Child Left Behind Act.

Uhhhh, yeah. I think they are.

But then, I don't think the schools have ever known what to do with "gifted" kids (a term I roundly dislike for reasons too lengthy to get into here).

I was - as you might guess from my eventual choice of occupation - a good English student from an early age. I grew up in a house full of books, with parents and older siblings who used good grammar, and my reading and language skills were just there; I never really had any bad habits to unlearn.

But I was taught grammar. Then I was taught it again. And again. And again. I was reading at a sixth-grade level in third grade (or something like that), but I was taught reading at a third grade level.

I don't say that to try to make myself out to be something special. I'm not "Good Will Hunting" either. But in a way my school took the subject I was best at and made me hate it the most - there are few things worse than "learning" something you already know.

I also don't think it's changed much in the 30-plus years since then. A couple of years ago my daughter told me she hated English - which is a strength for her, as it was for me.

Why? I asked. Grammar, she answered. And grammar. And grammar. And grammar.

Now, there are "gifted" programs, obviously, which are supposed to enrich things for kids with certain IQ levels. But the one at my kids' school has a strong emphasis on academic games, and kids in the program simply do it on the side while staying in regular classes. I suggested to the teacher at one point that they teach some computer programming and web page design, but nothing ever came of it.

It seems to me that if you're going to have a "gifted" program, you should be accelerating those kids in the core subjects - English, math, science, social studies - rather than giving them some brainy games on the side. Haven't we as a society agreed that those subjects are the most important?

Better yet, ditch the "gifted" label and create accelerated groups in all of the core subject areas. Let the math whizzes be math whizzes and the English whizzes be English whizzes.

I know the arguments against it. It's elitist. It puts implied dunce caps on the heads of other students. It's complicated from a curriculum standpoint, and from a scheduling standpoint. But what is the social cost of boring our most promising young minds?

Don't we need those people?

-- By Brian David