Throughout this country, gifted children are being smothered by our school systems and those citizens that will say "All children are gifted." My state, RI is particularly bad. The politically correct environment that exists to such an extent as to deny those children who desperately need it, a higher level of education, is clearly wrong.  There are many gifted children out there. They don't all have the luxury of homeschooling. I like to think that I do my part for all of those children who have to be in school. If you suspect you have a highly or profoundly gifted child, but aren't sure, "Helping Your Highly Gifted Child" by Stephanie Tolan is a great place to start. It answered a lot of questions for me.     For some odd reason, a great majority of educators in Rhode Island were never trained to educate children like my son. Even to this day the college that graduates almost every one of our teachers offers no such training. So, these teachers come into the school districts with absolutely no knowledge of how to recognize a gifted child and how to teach one. The end result has been far too many destroyed children throughout the years. It is my mission to help these educators get the training they need to learn how to meet individual differences.

     Why is this so important? I know that if society denies the intellectual, social and emotional needs of the genius, the genius comes back at society. It's happened so many times and when one of these kids grows up and decides to take revenge, society had better watch out. The other end of the spectrum is that if we continue to deny the education of these children, their genius abilities will become buried. Stephanie Tolan's Is it a Cheetah? uses the Cheetah to show how difficult it is for the animal to survive in Lion country. It is the same for the gifted child in the regular classroom.

     Educators have known about the importance of gifted education at least as far back as 1910. Why can't they get the job done? Because our society says it's politically incorrect to admit that one child is smarter than another or that one child has the potential to be a doctor and another does not. In our present atmosphere, we are supposed to believe that ALL children are gifted and that ALL children can learn to high content standards. This is nothing more than baloney and this nation's way of selling out the top 3-5% of our children. It is also as ridiculous as saying that all boys in high school are able to be the quarterback for the football team.

Society had better wake up and change it's thinking. Unless these few kids are taken care of properly, we will witness the end of society as we know it. It's happening already. Just look around. These children are extremely sensitive, compassionate, kind and they have very high morals. They've been buried in the school systems and more often than not they are misdiagnosed as having anything from ADD to some types of Autism and wrongfully put on drug therapy.  Misdiagnosis of the gifted is something that happens far too often and usually it's because some teachers and school officials don't want to get the point that all students deserve and education that fits their needs. Even the annoying ones. In this day when education becomes more and more expensive, the smart kids get pushed aside so they drive everybody nuts because they're bored. Who's bright idea was that?

     What breaks my heart, is how these children continue to be bullied by classmates and yes, even teachers. Our family knows only too well that a teacher's attitude toward a student can bring on bullying by classmates. These kids are hiding their abilities because they don't want to be beat up after school or singled out as being a nerd. Their parents are often afraid to question the teacher for fear of retaliation against their child. Our children who possess true genius are committing suicide, getting into trouble or withdrawing into themselves. I think that it's time America started to stand up for this minority as well.

     When it became apparent that the schools did not know how to educate children like my son, I pulled him out and we began unschooling to undo the damage that was done to him in school. But, there are still many, many children trapped in the system with teachers who haven't got a clue of what they're doing. So, what's the answer? Acceleration?, Enrichment? Well, the truth is, it depends on the child and we don't have much time to figure it all out. I will do whatever I have to do to help the system change, one teacher at a time, one school at time.

     Education is getting a bit fuzzy these days. Some of us want these kids in the regular classroom, some of us don't. Some of us like cooperative education, some of us don't. We have every label known to man all thrown together in what we call the "regular classroom". Everyone has their own spin on what giftedness is and what these kids need to reach their potential. That is, if we can agree on how to measure their potential. In Don't Throw Away the Old Binet, (Silverman and Kearney) it is well explained that the newer IQ tests are producing lower numbers than the older Stanford Binet. So, it is impossible for a child to have an IQ score of over about 160 on the new tests. So we're not as impressed as we used to be when we would hear about IQ's over the 200 mark. A teacher could have a 200+kid in his or her class and not know it because today's testing won't show that. The IQ testing that is used today is inadequate for highly gifted children. It is possible for a profoundly gifted child to score only 135 on an IQ test. I guess that's at least part of what makes it so hard for these kids to get a proper education. A teacher sees 135 and says "Ok, we have a very smart child who should do very well in academics." If the teacher saw 180 or higher, the comment might be more like, "Uh Oh, I don't know how to educate this child."

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