We reject ideas of natural gifts and talents…an important goal of this framework is to replace ideas of innate mathematics ‘talent’ and ‘giftedness’ with the recognition that every student is on a growth pathway…There is no cutoff determining when one child is ‘gifted’ and another is not.
This statement is worded to appear inclusive and innocuous in its intent, but the subtext reads, We believe that all students should be integrated for instruction and that special programs for those who appear to learn mathematics much faster than others should not be provided, because “talent” is a myth. The California Department of Education has decided to ignore the body of research that argues in favor of special programs for the gifted. (For example, see: Colangelo, Nicholas, Susan, Assouline and Miraca U. M. Gross. 2004. A Nation Deceived: How Schools Hold Back America’s Brightest Students. Vol 1. The Templeton National Report on Acceleration. See also: Winner, Ellen. 2000. “The Origins and Ends of Giftedness,” American Psychologist. Vol. 55. No. 1. pp. 159–169, and Subotnik, Rena F., Paula Olszewski-Kubilius and Frank C. Worrell. 2012. “Nurturing the Young Genius.” Scientific American. Nov–Dec. pp. 50–57. )
The photo below shows three-year-old prodigy Misha Osipov using the Nimzo-Indian defence in his game against Grandmaster Anatoly Karpov. The next year, at age 4, he defeated Russia’s Grandmaster Yuri Averbakh. The ages at which people are reaching Grandmaster status continues to decrease, challenging the 10-year’s of deliberate practice hypothesis.
My support for special programs for the gifted is not intended to denigrate regular programs, because there are many people who have graduated from heterogeneous classes and gone on to great things. (My friend Ravi Vakil who attended a regular program at Martingrove Collegiate in Toronto went on complete a Ph.D. in mathematics at Harvard and is now a Full Professor at Stanford.)
It is strange that we seem to understand the idea of special programs for the athletically talented. When we teach skiing, we separate students into groups. The beginners go to the bunny hill, the intermediates receive instruction on hills of greater difficulty and the accomplished skiers receive instruction on the black diamond hills where they learn to negotiate moguls. It’s counter productive to train a black diamond skier on the bunny hill. Similarly, it’s counter productive–and perhaps inhumane–to force a bright child to learn at the speed of Stan Danforth. When a cure for cancer is found, it will come from the “whiz kids” and when we suffer a cyber attack from a hostile nation, it will be the “whiz kids” who diagnose the problem and protect the grid, not the Stan Danforths. Ironically, when we see children who are mentally challenged, we empathize immediately, yet many who see gifted children, either resent their perceived privilege or have no interest in helping them develop their gifts. If we ignore the rich resource of gifted and talented young people, we will be squandering the greatest human resource that we have–and it will be at our own peril.
