> It may seem completely insensitive to argue against helping disabled students, but it seems to be happening at the expense of the gifted students.
As phillmv pointed out, this is a false dichotomy. If somehow these two were mutually exclusive, I would argue that (if anything) spending on gifted students hurts disabled students. Like pragmatic, I also have some experience with programs for the learning disabled and for the gifted. My twin brother Henry is extremely "intellectually disabled" (he has severe Autism and cannot speak English or take care of himself).I tested into my school district's gifted program in 4th grade. The gifted programs at the schools in the district seem very well funded, while the care my brother was bad enough that we moved Henry to a private school.
> If we as a nation are making a decision to cut funding to these gifted students, are we at the same time making a decision that jeopardizes the advancement of our society as a whole.?
Don't be ridiculous. Gifted programs are pretty useless. The truly gifted will find time to work on what they're good at, no matter the circumstances. Speaking from personal experience as a student in my district's gifted programs, most of them are wastes of time and money because they don't allow students to explore what they're interested in.
My elementary school's gifted program was worthless - we gifted students skipped social studies (like pragmatic) and learned... all about Louis and Clark's journeys. If you weren't interested, too bad. The program did not suffer from lack of funding - We had guest speakers and access to the internet - but lack of good design.
In middle school, we got to skip one class a week to work on whatever we wanted (within limits). Every week there were a couple of different projects that we could work on. My favorite were the lego mindstorms, but I also really enjoyed some of our literature units. The program was extremely well done - give students a chance to miss a class they dislike to focus on something they might, while still exposing them to different areas of knowledge.
Unfortunately, the Highschool's program was terrible. Taking the place of a free period, we had a curriculum set without any input from the students. There were no grades, but we were expected to attempt to do well anyway, regardless of whether or not the area of study was interesting (usually not). Again, it didn't suffer from lack of money, but fundamental problems in how that money was used.
About nine out of ten gifted students at my school dropped out of the program after the first year of Highschool because it was such a waste of time. All of these kids are intelligent and hard-working - they quit because they realized they could spend their time more efficiently.
DISCLAIMER - This is all based off of personal experience. I cannot speak for all gifted programs in all schools.
As phillmv pointed out, this is a false dichotomy. If somehow these two were mutually exclusive, I would argue that (if anything) spending on gifted students hurts disabled students. Like pragmatic, I also have some experience with programs for the learning disabled and for the gifted. My twin brother Henry is extremely "intellectually disabled" (he has severe Autism and cannot speak English or take care of himself).I tested into my school district's gifted program in 4th grade. The gifted programs at the schools in the district seem very well funded, while the care my brother was bad enough that we moved Henry to a private school.
> If we as a nation are making a decision to cut funding to these gifted students, are we at the same time making a decision that jeopardizes the advancement of our society as a whole.?
Don't be ridiculous. Gifted programs are pretty useless. The truly gifted will find time to work on what they're good at, no matter the circumstances. Speaking from personal experience as a student in my district's gifted programs, most of them are wastes of time and money because they don't allow students to explore what they're interested in.
My elementary school's gifted program was worthless - we gifted students skipped social studies (like pragmatic) and learned... all about Louis and Clark's journeys. If you weren't interested, too bad. The program did not suffer from lack of funding - We had guest speakers and access to the internet - but lack of good design.
In middle school, we got to skip one class a week to work on whatever we wanted (within limits). Every week there were a couple of different projects that we could work on. My favorite were the lego mindstorms, but I also really enjoyed some of our literature units. The program was extremely well done - give students a chance to miss a class they dislike to focus on something they might, while still exposing them to different areas of knowledge.
Unfortunately, the Highschool's program was terrible. Taking the place of a free period, we had a curriculum set without any input from the students. There were no grades, but we were expected to attempt to do well anyway, regardless of whether or not the area of study was interesting (usually not). Again, it didn't suffer from lack of money, but fundamental problems in how that money was used.
About nine out of ten gifted students at my school dropped out of the program after the first year of Highschool because it was such a waste of time. All of these kids are intelligent and hard-working - they quit because they realized they could spend their time more efficiently.
DISCLAIMER - This is all based off of personal experience. I cannot speak for all gifted programs in all schools.