During the remainder of 2021 and into 2022, the California Department of Education will be vetting its draft of the Mathematics Framework for California Public Schools: Kindergarten Through Grade Twelve. Throwing down the gauntlet in a challenge to the concept of giftedness the document asserts:
An important goal of the 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.
In rejecting the concept of mathematical giftedness, the Framework proposes the cancellation of special programs for the gifted, contravening the 2008 recommendation of the U.S. Department of Education:
In the case of gifted students who are advanced in their skill and concept attainment and can learn new material at a much more rapid rate than their same-age peers, it is the professional judgment of those in gifted education that they need a curriculum that is differentiated (by level, complexity, breadth, and depth), developmentally appropriate, and conducted at a more rapid rate.
This controversy, that will come to a head within the next year, has dimensions reaching well beyond the domain of mathematics education. The Frameworks, rooted in an egalitarian ideology, is a denial of talent and giftedness, based on some of the work of psychologist Anders Ericsson and popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers. Those on the other side of the debate–psychologists, mathematicians, and mathematics educators–provide research to show that some people are, indeed, gifted with innate talent.
Some countries neglect their gifted people and suffer the consequences. The Quora submission below is from Mateus Roger, a high-IQ person who went to school in Brazil where apparently he was unchallenged in school. (By the way, Brazil ranked 66th out of 78 nations in the PISA world-wide ranking on mathematics, science and reading). PISA 2018 Worldwide Ranking – average score of mathematics, science and reading
https://factsmaps.com/pisa-2018-worldwide-ranking-average-score-of-mathematics-science-reading/
Mateus Roger’s Quora submission is below:
I barely studied, did my homework, and that was about it.The teachers in high school taught by writing something in the board, then explaining it in details. I copied most of it and payed some attention to their explanation depending on how interesting I considered the subject to be. As a result, my test scores were good (top 5%), but not the best, I got into a good, but not elite, university. Tbh [To be honest], my country (Brazil) does not reward studying that much. It makes no difference whether you pass with a 10 or a 6, what determines whether or not you get into uni is either your results on “ENEM” (Portuguese initials for “National Exam of High School”) or on entrance exams, and a large chunk of the high school content is not featured on either ENEM or many (if not most) of the aforementioned entrance exams. There are also no honor classes and essentially no gifted programs.
