Is there such thing as too competitive?

From the Wall Street Journal:

The New White Flight

In Silicon Valley, two high schools
with outstanding academic reputations
are losing white students
as Asian students move in. Why?

By SUEIN HWANG
November 19, 2005; Page A1

CUPERTINO, Calif. -- By most measures, Monta Vista High here and Lynbrook High, in nearby San Jose, are among the nation's top public high schools. Both boast stellar test scores, an array of advanced-placement classes and a track record of sending graduates from the affluent suburbs of Silicon Valley to prestigious colleges.

But locally, they're also known for something else: white flight. Over the past 10 years, the proportion of white students at Lynbrook has fallen by nearly half, to 25% of the student body. At Monta Vista, white students make up less than one-third of the population, down from 45% -- this in a town that's half white. Some white Cupertino parents are instead sending their children to private schools or moving them to other, whiter public schools. More commonly, young white families in Silicon Valley say they are avoiding Cupertino altogether.

Whites aren't quitting the schools because the schools are failing academically. Quite the contrary: Many white parents say they're leaving because the schools are too academically driven and too narrowly invested in subjects such as math and science at the expense of liberal arts and extracurriculars like sports and other personal interests.

The two schools, put another way that parents rarely articulate so bluntly, are too Asian.

Cathy Gatley, co-president of Monta Vista High School's parent-teacher association, recently dissuaded a family with a young child from moving to Cupertino because there are so few young white kids left in the public schools. "This may not sound good," she confides, "but their child may be the only Caucasian kid in the class." All of Ms. Gatley's four children have attended or are currently attending Monta Vista. One son, Andrew, 17 years old, took the high-school exit exam last summer and left the school to avoid the academic pressure. He is currently working in a pet-supply store. Ms. Gatley, who is white, says she probably wouldn't have moved to Cupertino if she had anticipated how much it would change.

In the 1960s, the term "white flight" emerged to describe the rapid exodus of whites from big cities into the suburbs, a process that often resulted in the economic degradation of the remaining community. Back then, the phenomenon was mostly believed to be sparked by the growth in the population of African-Americans, and to a lesser degree Hispanics, in some major cities.

But this modern incarnation is different. Across the country, Asian-Americans have by and large been successful and accepted into middle- and upper-class communities. Silicon Valley has kept Cupertino's economy stable, and the town is almost indistinguishable from many of the suburbs around it. The shrinking number of white students hasn't hurt the academic standards of Cupertino's schools -- in fact the opposite is true.

This time the effect is more subtle: Some Asians believe that the resulting lack of diversity creates an atmosphere that is too sheltering for their children, leaving then unprepared for life in a country that is only 4% Asian overall. Moreover, many Asians share some of their white counterpart's concerns. Both groups finger newer Asian immigrants for the schools' intense competitiveness.

Some whites fear that by avoiding schools with large Asian populations parents are short-changing their own children, giving them the idea that they can't compete with Asian kids. "My parents never let me think that because I'm Caucasian, I'm not going to succeed," says Jessie Hogin, a white Monta Vista graduate.

The white exodus clearly involves race-based presumptions, not all of which are positive. One example: Asian parents are too competitive. That sounds like racism to many of Cupertino's Asian residents, who resent the fact that their growing numbers and success are causing many white families to boycott the town altogether.

"It's a stereotype of Asian parents," says Pei-Pei Yow, a Hewlett-Packard Co. manager and Chinese-American community leader who sent two kids to Monta Vista. It's like other familiar biases, she says: "You can't say everybody from the South is a redneck."

Jane Doherty, a retirement-community administrator, chose to send her two boys elsewhere. When her family moved to Cupertino from Indiana over a decade ago, Ms. Doherty says her top priority was moving into a good public-school district. She paid no heed to a real-estate agent who told her of the town's burgeoning Asian population.


She says she began to reconsider after her elder son, Matthew, entered Kennedy, the middle school that feeds Monta Vista. As he played soccer, Ms. Doherty watched a line of cars across the street deposit Asian kids for after-school study. She also attended a Monta Vista parents' night and came away worrying about the school's focus on test scores and the big-name colleges its graduates attend.

"My sense is that at Monta Vista you're competing against the child beside you," she says. Ms. Doherty says she believes the issue stems more from recent immigrants than Asians as a whole. "Obviously, the concentration of Asian students is really high, and it does flavor the school," she says.

When Matthew, now a student at Notre Dame, finished middle school eight years ago, Ms. Doherty decided to send him to Bellarmine College Preparatory, a Jesuit school that she says has a culture that "values the whole child." It's also 55% white and 24% Asian. Her younger son, Kevin, followed suit.

Kevin Doherty, 17, says he's happy his mother made the switch. Many of his old friends at Kennedy aren't happy at Monta Vista, he says. "Kids at Bellarmine have a lot of pressure to do well, too, but they want to learn and do something they want to do."

While California has seen the most pronounced cases of suburban segregation, some of the developments in Cupertino are also starting to surface in other parts of the U.S. At Thomas S. Wootton High School in Rockville, Md., known flippantly to some locals as "Won Ton," roughly 35% of students are of Asian descent. People who don't know the school tend to make assumptions about its academics, says Principal Michael Doran. "Certain stereotypes come to mind -- 'those people are good at math,' " he says.

In Tenafly, N.J., a well-to-do bedroom community near New York, the local high school says it expects Asian students to make up about 36% of its total in the next five years, compared with 27% today. The district still attracts families of all backgrounds, but Asians are particularly intent that their kids work hard and excel, says Anat Eisenberg, a local Coldwell Banker real-estate agent. "Everybody is caught into this process of driving their kids." Lawrence Mayer, Tenafly High's vice principal, says he's never heard such concerns.

Perched on the western end of the Santa Clara valley, Cupertino was for many years a primarily rural area known for its many fruit orchards. The beginnings of the tech industry brought suburbanization, and Cupertino then became a very white, quintessentially middle-class town of mostly modest ranch homes, populated by engineers and their families. Apple Computer Inc. planted its headquarters there.

As the high-tech industry prospered, so did Cupertino. Today, the orchards are a memory, replaced by numerous shopping malls and subdivisions that are home to Silicon Valley's prosperous upper-middle class. While the architecture in Cupertino is largely the same as in neighboring communities, the town of about 50,000 people now boasts Indian restaurants, tutoring centers and Asian grocers. Parents say Cupertino's top schools have become more academically intense over the past 10 years.

Asian immigrants have surged into the town, granting it a reputation -- particularly among recent Chinese and South Asian immigrants -- as a Bay Area locale of choice. Cupertino is now 41% Asian, up from 24% in 1998.

Some students struggle in Cupertino's high schools who might not elsewhere. Monta Vista's Academic Performance Index, which compares the academic performance of California's schools, reached an all-time high of 924 out of 1,000 this year, making it one of the highest-scoring high schools in Northern California. Grades are so high that a 'B' average puts a student in the bottom third of a class.

"We have great students, which has a lot of upsides," says April Scott, Monta Vista's principal. "The downside is what the kids with a 3.0 GPA think of themselves."

Ms. Scott and her counterpart at Lynbrook know what's said about their schools being too competitive and dominated by Asians. "It's easy to buy into those kinds of comments because they're loaded and powerful," says Ms. Scott, who adds that they paint an inaccurate picture of Monta Vista. Ms. Scott says many athletic programs are thriving and points to the school's many extracurricular activities. She also points out that white students represented 20% of the school's 29 National Merit Semifinalists this year.

Judy Hogin, Jessie's mother and a Cupertino real-estate agent, believes the school was good for her daughter, who is now a freshman at the University of California at San Diego. "I know it's frustrating to some people who have moved away," says Ms. Hogin, who is white. Jessie, she says, "rose to the challenge."

On a recent autumn day at Lynbrook, crowds of students spilled out of classrooms for midmorning break. Against a sea of Asian faces, the few white students were easy to pick out. One boy sat on a wall, his lighter hair and skin making him stand out from dozens of others around him. In another corner, four white male students lounged at a picnic table.

At Cupertino's top schools, administrators, parents and students say white students end up in the stereotyped role often applied to other minority groups: the underachievers. In one 9th-grade algebra class, Lynbrook's lowest-level math class, the students are an eclectic mix of whites, Asians and other racial and ethnic groups.

"Take a good look," whispered Steve Rowley, superintendent of the Fremont Union High School District, which covers the city of Cupertino as well as portions of other neighboring cities. "This doesn't look like the other classes we're going to."

On the second floor, in advanced-placement chemistry, only a couple of the 32 students are white and the rest are Asian. Some white parents, and even some students, say they suspect teachers don't take white kids as seriously as Asians.

"Many of my Asian friends were convinced that if you were Asian, you had to confirm you were smart. If you were white, you had to prove it," says Arar Han, a Monta Vista graduate who recently co-edited "Asian American X," a book of coming-of-age essays by young Asian-Americans.

Ms. Gatley, the Monta Vista PTA president, is more blunt: "White kids are thought of as the dumb kids," she says.

Cupertino's administrators and faculty, the majority of whom are white, adamantly say there's no discrimination against whites. The administrators say students of all races get along well. In fact, there's little evidence of any overt racial tension between students or between their parents.

Mr. Rowley, the school superintendent, however, concedes that a perception exists that's sometimes called "the white-boy syndrome." He describes it as: "Kids who are white feel themselves a distinct minority against a majority culture."

Mr. Rowley, who is white, enrolled his only son, Eddie, at Lynbrook. When Eddie started freshman geometry, the boy was frustrated to learn that many of the Asian students in his class had already taken the course in summer school, Mr. Rowley recalls. That gave them a big leg up.

To many of Cupertino's Asians, some of the assumptions made by white parents -- that Asians are excessively competitive and single-minded -- play into stereotypes. Top schools in nearby, whiter Palo Alto, which also have very high test scores, also feature heavy course loads, long hours of homework and overly stressed students, says Denise Pope, director of Stressed Out Students, a Stanford University program that has worked with schools in both Palo Alto and Cupertino. But whites don't seem to be avoiding those institutions, or making the same negative generalizations, Asian families note, suggesting that it's not academic competition that makes white parents uncomfortable but academic competition with Asian-Americans.

Some of Cupertino's Asian residents say they don't blame white families for leaving. After all, many of the town's Asians are fretting about the same issues. While acknowledging that the term Asian embraces a wide diversity of countries, cultures and languages, they say there's some truth to the criticisms levied against new immigrant parents, particularly those from countries such as China and India, who often put a lot of academic pressure on their children.


Some parents and students say these various forces are creating an unhealthy cultural isolation in the schools. Monta Vista graduate Mark Seto says he wouldn't send his kids to his alma mater. "It was a sheltered little world that didn't bear a whole lot of resemblance to what the rest of the country is like," says Mr. Seto, a Chinese-American who recently graduated from Yale University. As a result, he says, "college wasn't an academic adjustment. It was a cultural adjustment."

Hung Wei, a Chinese-American living in Cupertino, has become an active campaigner in the community, encouraging Asian parents to be more aware of their children's emotional development. Ms. Wei, who is co-president of Monta Vista's PTA with Ms. Gatley, says her activism stems from the suicide of her daughter, Diana. Ms. Wei says life in Cupertino and at Monta Vista didn't prepare the young woman for life at New York University. Diana moved there in 2004 and jumped to her death from a Manhattan building two months later.

"We emphasize academics so much and protect our kids, I feel there's something lacking in our education," Ms. Wei says.

Cupertino schools are trying to address some of these issues. Monta Vista recently completed a series of seminars focused on such issues as helping parents communicate better with their kids, and Lynbrook last year revised its homework guidelines with the goal of eliminating excessive and unproductive assignments.

The moves haven't stemmed the flow of whites out of the schools. Four years ago, Lynn Rosener, a software consultant, transferred her elder son from Monta Vista to Homestead High, a Cupertino school with slightly lower test scores. At the new school, the white student body is declining at a slower rate than at Monta Vista and currently stands at 52% of the total. Friday-night football is a tradition, with big half-time shows and usually 1,000 people packing the stands. The school offers boys' volleyball, a sport at which Ms. Rosener's son was particularly talented. Monta Vista doesn't.

"It does help to have a lower Asian population," says Homestead PTA President Mary Anne Norling. "I don't think our parents are as uptight as if my kids went to Monta Vista."

Write to Suein Hwang at suein.hwang@wsj.com

Gamers Rejoice! Christmas comes early this year!

Klaus is having school at Wal-Mart today because the Xbox 360 comes out tomorrow. Wal-Mart is going to start selling them at midnight. When Klaus called this morning there were already 7 people in line. So at noon, I drove him over there with a lawn chair, his iPod, his Biology book and notes and a double quarter-pounder with cheese so he could join the line, which starts at the layaway department and now snakes past the little girls' pink plastic shoes toward housewares. He calls me about every hour just to say hi. Poor little thing is so bored, he actually worked on his honors essays for Biology. But to him, it is totally worth sitting in line for twelve hours just to get one of these consoles. I hope it lives up to all the hype because he has been looking forward to its release since last summer.

Mommy's Book Club-the school year so far

Move over Oprah! In my continuing efforts at stealth homeschooling, I've been reading at bedtime again to Chester and Wolfie. I'd stopped a year or so ago when their bedtimes crept up to 9pm because that impinged on "grownup time." Now, we impinge (and I don't miss my shows. Thanks, TiVO! :D ) I'm glad because it lets me introduce some literature they wouldn't ordinarily read (particularly Chester).

We started with Lad, a Dog by Albert Payson Terhune. The floweriness of the turn-of-the-century language took some getting used to, and I ended up skipping the parts where he reintroduced characters over and over in every new chapter (a relic of being originally serialized in a magazine.) It was quite exciting, though and we ended up in tears at the end. I would not recommend this book for very young kids or the tender-hearted. The climax involves Lad's own son viciously turning on him. It was nearly too much for Wolfie, even at the age of 11.5.

Next was Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats by T.S. Eliot. We started with a picture book version which included "Growltiger's Last Stand", "Of the Awefull Battle of the Pekes and the Pollicles..." and "The Song of the Jellicles" that I'd bought when Klaus was little. They were so excited that I downloaded as much of the cast recording of Cats as iTunes had (about half, not including Growltiger, unfortunately) and bought another copy of Old Possum since our copy has since disappeared. Chester especially liked the songs (as did I) and he was able to do his first book report of the year on Old Possum.

When October started, we read Bernard Evslin's Heroes, Gods and Monsters of the Greek Myths. This was a bit of a slog in some parts, but the boys enjoyed the stories, particularly of the demi-gods like Perseus and Theseus. It helped them make sense of a lot of the references they've heard in other stories and even on cartoons. I had taken care to include the constellations related to the story of Perseus and a couple others when we put up the glow-in-the-dark stars on their ceilings, so that was very exciting.

Unfortunately, the October book report had to be a mystery story. We picked out The Hound of the Baskervilles. This took us a long time to get through for many reasons, not the least of which was that I had to go through and change all the three dollar words into two dollar words. Once I got rid of all the Victorian circumlocution, we all enjoyed the story and it sparked some discussions and research into Sherlock Holmes and English Mastiffs.

My next choice was To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, one of my all-time favorite books. I thought it would be a good fit for the boys with a child narrator and more contemporary language, but it put them right to sleep, both nights. Granted this is not such a bad result for me, because I got done reading about a half hour sooner than usual, but it wasn't for them. At least not at this time. Maybe we'll try again when they're a little older.

To Kill a Mockingbird was a bust, so I let them choose the next book, Andrew Clements' A Week in the Woods. Andrew Clements has written a number of kids' books starring brighter than normal kids. The most popular is probably Frindle, about a boy who decides to change the word for pen to...well, to frindle and the conflicts this brings up with the establishment (teacher, principal, etc.) because "you can't just go around changing words."

I really liked Frindle but A Week in the Woods just makes my blood boil! The story is told from the point-of-view of both a gifted fifth grader and his science teacher. The boy is transferred to this new school in the middle of fifth grade and has a bad attitude about it for awhile, not surprisingly. So the teacher decides to write him off completely--won't call on him in class etc, even after the boy sort of apologizes. (He's an 11 year old boy after all. You can't expect him to get down on his knees and beg for forgiveness.) Apparently two months of being a model student cannot negate two weeks of bad attitude according to these teachers. I'll tell you, Mark (the student) has much more patience with his teachers than I would. I'm so upset partly because this is exactly what happened to Klaus when he crashed and burned in sixth grade, but really I think the entire faculty in this book should be slapped. The only way I would recommend this book is as the starting point to a conversation with a gifted child about how he is really treated in school.

NY Parents Up in Arms about Gifted Test

An article in today's New York Times says that the city's public schools will introduce one standardized testing regime to qualify students for gifted and talented programs in the city. This plan will abolish sibling preference for gifted programs. Mariela Calleja, an Upper West Side resident, has one son in the gifted program at P.S. 9 and had hoped that her younger daughter would join him next year.

"I don't know what I'm left with at this point; I'm crossing my fingers," she said. "What if my daughter scores well enough to get into a gifted and talented program, but not her first choice? Do I then send her to a G and T program at another school, or do I choose to deprive her of the enriched education and send her to the general education program in the same building?"

Granted, it would suck to have to send my kids off to three different schools every day. (Actually, my boys do go to three different schools this year. And it does suck.) What bothers me most about this article is not the program it's describing but the assumptions it makes about educating gifted kids.

For example, "Some parents said they feared that the changes could make the lack of socioeconomic diversity at some programs worse, as the top-scoring children, who most likely would have had the benefits of excellent preschool preparation, gravitate toward the two or three choice programs." (Boldface mine)

A gifted child does not need an excellent preschool to be gifted. An excellent preschool can teach numbers, colors, etc. but it can't make you gifted if you're not. The advantage Head Start students have in kindergarten disappears by third grade. Giftedness does not disappear. (Yes, you can hide it, but it does not disappear.)

The issue here is achievement vs. aptitude. Head Start students achieve a lot in their first years, because they are taught the same information through that program that the middle-class white children would be taught in an excellent preschool program or by interested parents. It evens the playing field. That's a good thing. But Head Start does nothing to increase aptitude, how able the learner is to try to understand and apply their knowledge to the world around them. A four-year-old is not going to question how life began on Earth--and insist on getting what they consider to be a reasonable answer--simply because he or she went to preschool. But a gifted child might.

The problem comes in when achievement rather than aptitude is the criteria for admission to the gifted programs. It's much easier to measure achievement than aptitude. When did she talk? How high can he count? What grade level does she read on? Very clear cut. Wolfie's super-challenge math program is based on "achievement and responsibility" according to his teacher, which is why if he gets less than a B+ in the class, he's bumped back down to regular sixth grade math. Which is asinine, but that's a topic for another entry. My point here is that if the tests in NYC are measuring achievement, then the parents' fears will likely come true--the GT programs will become an island of middle-class white kids from excellent preschools. Let's hope the real qualification is aptitude.

A Quick and Dirty IQ Test, just for fun

Your IQ Is 130

Your Logical Intelligence is Below Average Your Verbal Intelligence is Genius Your Mathematical Intelligence is Genius Your General Knowledge is Exceptional

A Quick and Dirty IQ Test

I should mention that this result was DH and I working together. My original result (after one can of beer) was 105. "Amazingly Accurate" my foot!

If you want a pretty close result, use the Tickle IQ test.

No One Cares if Johnny Can Read

The California schools have failed these kids in the most reprehensible way possible, and nobody cares, so long as they get to march at commencement. Apparently 100,000 high school seniors have failed the high school graduation test, but the schools are making provisions to graduate them anyway! These are children who have spent twelve years in school and still not learned enough to pass a basic skills test. But they've "put in their time" so they get to leave now. Does this not prove that high schools are essentially prisons rather than educational facilities?

Gerald Benson, superintendant of the Tulare Joint Union High School District in Central California, said, "It's pretty hard to tell them, 'You can't pass one test, you can't go through the ceremony.' [It] might cause a lot of kids to drop out."

Might cause kids to drop out. Well, we wouldn't want that. If they dropped out, they wouldn't learn anything. Wait, they're not learning anything in school already! Why are these schools not being beseiged by angry parents, demanding that their children be educated? Is it okay if their kids are illiterate, so long as they're kept off the streets until they're 18?

If I were the parent of a high school student (or any student actually) in California, I would be outraged. In fact, I am outraged anyway. Someone should be.

The Animal School

Oh, my. I have nothing to say that is better than this! You can find the original (plus lots of other stories) at The Story Bin

The Animal School

Once upon a time the animals decided they must do something heroic to meet the problems of a "new world," so they organized a school.

They adopted an activity curriculum consisting of running, climbing, swimming, and flying. To make it easier to administer the curriculum, ALL the animals took ALL subjects.

The duck was excellent in swimming -- in fact, better than his instructor; but he made only passing grades in flying and was very poor in running. Since he was slow in running, he had to stay after school and also drop swimming in order to practice running. This was kept up until his web feet were badly worn, so then he was only average in swimming. But average was acceptable in school, so nobody worried about that except the duck.

The rabbit started at the top of the class in running, but he had a nervous breakdown because of so much make-up work in swimming.

The squirrel was excellent in climbing until he developed frustration in the flying class, where his teacher made him start from the ground up instead of the treetop down. He also developed "Charlie horses" from over-exertion and then got a "C" in climbing and a "D" in running.

The eagle was a problem child and was disciplined severely. In the climbing class he beat all others to the top of the tree, but insisted on using his own way to get there.

At the end of the year an abnormal eel that could swim exceedingly well and also could run, climb, and fly a little had the highest average and was named valedictorian.

The prairie dogs stayed out of school and fought the tax levy because the administration would not add digging and burrowing to the curriculum. They apprenticed their child to a badger and later joined the ground hogs and the gophers in order to start a successful private school.

Which counts at school--Nature or Nurture?

Interesting article in The Australian:

Genes have it over means in determining academic performance
07 November 2005

LONDON: Nature, not nurture, is the main determinant of how well children perform at school and university, according to a study to be published this week.

The researchers came to their conclusion by comparing how well adopted children did at school when they were brought up alongside parents' biological children. The relative effects of genes and the home environment were then separated out. Previous studies have suggested that the home environment, and in particular the level of family income, is the most important determinant of educational attainment.

But the new study, to be published in the Royal Economic Society's Economic Journal, will argue that while income and home environment account for about 25 per cent of educational attainment, inherited intelligence is responsible for the rest.

Doubling a family's income would have only a small effect on educational performance, say the researchers, who examined more than 15,000 children, 574 of them adopted.

It found that, on average, the adopted children performed less well. This, of course, need not be a bar to success in life. Many adopted children enjoy spectacular careers.

The research may lead some to question government policies aimed at improving the performance of poor children at school and university.

Such policies, it suggests, will work only if targeted at able children.

The study, Does Family Income Matter for Schooling Outcomes?, by Wim Vijverberg, professor of economics at Texas University, and Erik Plug, an economics researcher at Amsterdam University, concludes that previous studies suggesting a strong link between family income and educational performance were flawed.

"Children of higher-income parents probably do well in school because they inherit superior genes, not because they can afford to buy their children a better education," Professor Vijverberg said.

Adoption experts said the research failed to take into consideration other factors. Jonathan Pearce, director of Adoption UK, said: "A lot of adopted children have faced previous trauma or abuse."

The Sunday Times

My questions:

1) Were these children adopted as infants or as older children who knew they were "different" than the biological children?

2) Is it correct to assume that adopted children necessarily have "worse" genes than their biological siblings? I have a biological sister who dropped out of high school and gave up a baby for adoption, and an adopted sister who has a bachelor's degree in Biology from a Big Ten school. Mine is an anecdotal case, obviously, but it seems to belie the "average" shown in this study.

The study is not yet published, but I'll try to track it down when it is. I'd like to see how these variations have been controlled for.

P.S. I apologize if this is double-posted. My blogging widget doesn't seem to have actually posted any of the entry I've written this month, so I thought I'd try both ways.

Klaus' Number Puzzle Answer

And the next two lines are:


1
11
21
1211
111221
312211
13112221

Why, you ask? Each line describes the one before it. The first line is the number one, the second line describes the first: one (number) one. The third line describes the second: two (number) ones. The fourth line describes the third: one (number) two, one (number) one. And so on. Clever, no?

Scientists Discover Dyslexia Gene

Up to a fifth of dyslexia cases could be caused by a faulty version of a gene called DCDC2, scientists believe.

In the mutant form, DCDC2 leads to a disruption in the formation of brain circuits that make it possible to read, say the Yale team. Their finding could lead to earlier diagnosis of dyslexia, meaning educational programmes for dyslexic children could be started earlier. The work is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

The gene is located on chromosome six and Dr Jeffrey Gruen and his team at Yale School of Medicine believe it causes as many as 20% of dyslexia cases. Dyslexia covers a range of types of learning difficulty where someone of normal intelligence has persistent and significant problems with reading, writing, spelling. Up to six million Britons are believed to have dyslexia - 4% of the population is severely dyslexic and a further 6% have limited problems. Other genes have already been linked to dyslexia.

Dr Gruen and his team studied 153 families with members who had dyslexia. By comparing specific DNA markers they found many of the people with dyslexia were missing a large portion of genetic material in the DCDC2 gene. Dr Gruen said; "The gene itself is expressed in reading centres of the brain where it modulates migration of neurons. This very architecture of brain circuitry is necessary for normal reading. "We now have strong statistical evidence that a large number of dyslexic cases - perhaps as many as 20% - are due to the DCDC2 gene." They said it was likely that many other genes were also involved in dyslexia - some already discovered and some still to be discovered.

Scientists at Karolinska Institute, working alongside a team of researchers from Finland, have identified a new gene on chromosome 3, called ROBO1, that appears to be associated with dyslexia. Their study is due to appear in the scientific journal PLoS Genetics. A spokeswoman from the British Dyslexia Association said: "Even though dyslexia is unlikely to be a single gene disorder this new knowledge could lead to earlier identification of this learning difference. "Our research has shown that the earlier dyslexia friendly teaching practices are implemented, the more likely dyslexic eople are to acquire the skills required to reach their full potential."

Story from BBC NEWS
Published: 2005/10/28 15:39:27 GMT

© BBC MMV

Unschooling Article at Salon

I've been holding onto this article until I had time to say something pithy about it, but it's been more than three weeks now, so I think my pithy moment has passed.

BTW, you can read the entire article without joining Salon by clicking the button marked "FREE" at the bottom of the teaser. You have to look at a car ad first, but then it will take you to the whole article.

New School for the PG in Reno

""For a nation, I'm not sure why we value equity over excellence," Ms. Green said. "All kids are entitled to an appropriate education for their ability, not just those we're teaching to a minimum standard."

Click here for the complete NYT article.

Klaus' Number Puzzle

1
11
21
1211
111221

See if you can figure out the next few lines.

Answers and explanation to be posted on Monday.

Things that Make You Go, "Duh!"

One of the most interesting/rewarding/difficult things about raising really smart kids is that they often make connections (and very young ages) that I wish I could have thought of myself. For example, yesterday Klaus and I were discussing the Intelligent Design movement and I told him the argument I had picked up from my reading about the Dover PA school board court case. I knew this example incorrect but couldn't quite articulate (to my own satisfaction) what the counter-argument would be. Turns out I didn't need to.

Argument 1: You're walking along the sidewalk and come up a wristwatch lying there. You don't wonder how it could have evolved to be how it is; you recognize that it's an incredibly intricate machine which must have been designed by someone of higher intelligence. Similarly, human beings must have been designed by someone of higher intelligence.

Klaus says (immediately), "That's ridiculous. Watches are inanimate objects. Inanimate objects don't evolve."

***
When Klaus was 4, he was very interested in outer space. We lived in Denver at the time--great for stargazing--and had watched comets, etc. on tv, like the comet fragments that crashed into Jupiter. One day Dad was telling him the names of the planets. "And this one we call UR-anus because otherwise it sounds like we're talking about your anus."

Klaus: "Urine-us. (with water spraying sound) Heeheeheehee!"

Also around this same time, Klaus was talking with one of Dad's colleagues from medical school about the comet impact that may have killed the dinosaurs. Dr. X told him that nothing like that would ever happen nowadays.

Klaus: "What about Fragment G?" (The largest of the coment fragments that hit Jupiter.)

Dr. X hadn't made the connection and frankly, neither had anyone else I know.

The Great Comebacks, Part Deux

Mom: "I guess you're not as bright as I thought you were."

Klaus (age 9): "Duh, Mom. I'm not bioluminescent."

***
Chester (age 5) received an orange from Santa in his Christmas stocking. "He gave me a fruit? What a silly idea!"

***
Dad: "Why did you climb into bed with us last night?"

Wolfie (age 6): "Well, I hadn't done it in awhile and I thought I'd try it."

***
The first snow of the year. Chester (age 4) says, "There's snow on the ground. I'm going to go outside and write my name!"

Fearing the worst, Dad asks, "Oh? How are you going to do that?"

Chester: "With my finger!"

***
Finally, I was telling Wolfie (age 11) about this blog over the weekend. He looked at me in mock-horror and said, "Is raising gifted kids a game to you, Mom? This is my life we're talking about!"

The Declaration of Educational Independence

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that a Public Education System long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shown, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by Abolishing the Public Education System to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Government Control, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Public Education System, and to provide new Guards for their future Security.

Read the whole declaration. It's amazing!

Algebra Resources for V/S Kids (and others)

These links were first suggested by members of the TAGMAX listserv:

Hands-On Equations by Dr. Henry Borenson

Thinkwell's multimedia CD-ROM "textbook"

MathUSee highly recommended by parents of gifted and v/s kids!

Real World Algebra is story problem-based, which sounds like it might be to language-based, but might appeal to the "big picture" thinker in a v/s kid.

The author of Algebra Antics has been giving seminars at community colleges in Southern California for years.

Algebra Out Loud combines reading strategies with math. Should be particularly good for the very verbal with poor sequencing skills.

Another Mental Math Resource

For students who are learning arithmatic or need a refresher, The Math Page offers not only problems sets but clear explanations of the way to think a problem through to get the answer in your head.

For example: "Now, once you know that
6 + 6 = 12,
then you could know that
6 + 7 = 13,
and
6 + 5 = 11.

In essence, this is the way mathematicians think--reducing a problem to the simplest way to approach it before trying to find the answer.

Ammunition Against Disapproving Mothers-in-law

Homeschooling's True Colors, an excellent article from Mothering Magazine, treats the common myths about homeschooling and shows the research contradicting them.

Tease Your Brain!

Figure out what the variables stand for in these equations. For example 12 M in a Y equals 12 months in a year. Give it a try!

Just for Fun

UC Riverside Actively Recruits Homeschoolers

HSing is becoming more and more accepted. Are we on the brink of a revolution?

“Among the homeschool community, we find large numbers of students who are smart, mature, creative, independent and well-socialized people,” said Frank Vahid, a professor of computer science who has three children who are homeschooled. “We want such excellent students in our classes. They have a lot to offer the university community.”

Lateral Science

Just had to share this link with you scientist-types out there or parents of scientist-types. Lateral Science describes all kinds of old-fashioned (read Victorian) and unusual science experiments. I can't wait to try writing under the shell of an egg!

Look at me, I'm Winston Churchill!

Yet another quote about gifted kids being ignored in the school system. This is not a new phenomenon, folks...

"Clearly there was something odd here. Winston, Davidson had conceded, was the ablest boy in his [grade]. He was, in fact, remarkable. His grasp of history was outstanding. Yet he was considered a hopeless pupil. It occurred to no one that the fault might lie, not in the boy, but in the school.

Samuel Butler defined genius as "a supreme capacity for getting its possessors into trouble of all kinds," and it is ironic that geniuses are likeliest to be misunderstood in classrooms. Studies at the University of Chicago and the University of Minnesota have found that teachers smile on children with high IQs and frown upon those with creative minds.

Intelligent but uncreative students accept conformity, never rebel, and complete their assignments with dispatch and to perfection. The creative child, on the other hand, is manipulative, imaginative, and intuitive. He is likely to harass the teacher. He is regarded as wild, naughty, silly undependable, lacking in seriousness or even promise. His behavior is distracting; he doesn't seem to be trying; he gives unique answers to banal questions, touching off laughter among other children.

E. Paul Torrance of Minnesota found that 70 percent of pupils rated high in creativity were rejected by teachers picking a special class for the intellectually gifted. The Goertzels concluded that a Stanford study of genius, under which teachers selected bright children, would have excluded Churchill, Edison, Picasso, and Mark Twain.

(From William Manchester, The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill.
Visions of Glory, 1874-1932, pp. 158-159)

How about "boys who don't think they're funny"?

Things_I_Need_List
Originally uploaded by The Princess Mom.

In my effort to get organized, I bought this magnetic "Things I Need" grocery list to hang on the refrigerator. It wasn't long before other people had added their needs to the list as well...

National Chemistry Week

In honor of National Chemistry Week, here are some links (courtesy of the Wi-TAGhomeschooling listserv):

A Flash Version of the periodic table (if you have dial up service... you don't want to go there ;-)
http://www.chemsoc.org/viselements/pages/pertable_fla.htm

Wondernet (by the Am Chem Soc) - kitchen chemistry for youngsters (with really good explanations of "What's going on")
http://tinyurl.com/85lj9

Cavalcade of chemistry - Free fun lesson plans
http://www.chemfiesta.com/

Robert Krampf's Free Experiment of the Week -
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/krampf/

Demos for online chemistry software (you can purchase the software, but it is spendy)... you don't get the answer with the demo, but we figured out most of it ;-)
http://chemistryteaching.com/atoms.htm

Edmunds scientific catalog:
http://tinyurl.com/9bkuo

The Gift of ADHD

Found this article today on MSN.com. The author, Lara Honos-Webb, Ph.D., is waxing poetic about how wonderful it is to have ADHD because it helps you "get the big picture", "take risks" and "be creative". While I agree that recasting the problems of ADHD in positive terms is a good thing, I think she's got the wrong horse here. The children she's describing are visual-spatial (v-s) learners, not ADHD.

This is the kind of confusion you run across when people declaim that there's no such thing as ADD and it really means gifted. Not so, my friends. As I've mentioned before, you can be identified as gifted and have ADD that gets in the way of your giftedness. While I agree that v-s kids don't fit well into the traditional a-s (auditory-sequential) teaching in traditional schools, and that may lead to them being labeled ADD when they're clearly not, the two are completely different animals.

Think of it as convergent evolution. Even though the dolphin and porpoise are not related, they look similar because they've evolved to exist in the same environment, which necessarily rewards the same types of adaptations. Similarly, ADD and v-s may be evolutionary adaptations to our current profoundly visual, information overloaded society. Because they are both adaptations to the same environment, they would share characteristics, but that doesn't mean they are the same thing.

Having a fantastic mental picture of a fascinating project is v-s and can very easily be the behavior of a gifted child. But having ADD that keeps you from completing the project in your head is not a "gift."

Mental Math Resources

This site has several very good/fun mental math activities for the home,
mental math activities for the car, as well as fun math writing and talking
activities
www.mikki.net

Mental Math: Computation Activities for Anytime, Grades 4-8 (a good, useful
workbook by Richard Piccirilli)

Mental Math Challenges (another good book on mental math)

Project Motivational Math
http://www.atlasbooks.com/marktplc/00814.htm

OPPS! (This is a fun Pre-Algebra game, but you already know of it; I'd
thought I'd add it to the list anyway, in case anyone else was curious)

More books on mental math:

* Mental Math in the Primary Grades

* Mental Math in the Middle Grades

* The Great Book of Math Teasers: Mental Gymnastics

* Mental Math and Estimation

* Doing Simple Math in Your Head

Three Interested Boys

Happened upon 12 Angry Men on Turner Classic Movies last night. I'd heard great things about it and listened to some of an audio performance in college but never actually seen the movie. I expected to be the only one in the livingroom after about 30 minutes, but instead by the end of the movie, the whole family was watching! We got to discuss prejudice and "being a man" in the context of the 1950s as well as a bit of courtroom procedure. I ended up being glad both Wolfie and Chester had been sick and slept most of the day, otherwise I would have had to put them to bed before the movie was half over. Instead we watched, we discussed, then we finished reading Heroes, Gods and Monsters of the Greek Myths (our current bedtime book. Next is The Hound of the Baskervilles). They can stay up 'til 11 on a school night once in awhile, right?

I was very proud of them, not least because the movie was black and white, there were no fight scenes, and we've had trouble getting them to watch even The Wizard of Oz because the movie was "too old." Even DH admitted 12 Angry Men was an interesting movie and he rarely will watch classic films with me. I guess there's hope for them yet.

Although a good MGM musical would still be a tough sell. ;)

What Should Gifted Programs Look Like?

In last month's District Administration Magazine, Contributing Editor Rebecca Sausner writes that gifted researchers "seem to divide rather neatly into sides that believe either that grade acceleration of gifted students is the best approach, or that enrichment opportunities for all, with advanced enrichment for the gifted, are the way to go. National organizations seem to straddle the continuum between the two." Her article, Gifted Education: Deceived, Denied and in Crisis is subtitled, "Why gifted ed still matters and what you can do to improve your district's offerings" although she does a better job surveying the current status of gifted education in the schools than in suggesting what to do about it.

The article does give an excellent overview of the situation facing gifted students in the public schools. I was disturbed to find out that "The National Research Center for Gifted and Talented, run by Renzulli out of the University of Connecticut, received $11.2 million last year, which comprises the bulk of the Jacob J. Javits Gifted and Talented Students budget." I checked out the Renzulli project. It looks like a fabulous site, built for individual differentiation, that provides a gateway to huge numbers of enrichment sites. Considering it's entirely web-based, one would think it would be an ideal product for homeschoolers.

Unfortunately, their program is only available to school districts. According to their FAQ, "The license cost for the Renzulli Learning System is $35 per student per year, with a minimum enrollment of 20 students per school." When I emailed to ask whether individual homeschoolers could benefit, I was told, "Perhaps if a large homeschooling group was to get together and buy a site license..." (sigh)

Utopia Elementary School

I've been pondering the last couple days what an ideal public school situation would look like. I think that birthdate, while an unequivocal standard, is a stupid measure to determine where a child should be in school. I'm sure I've mentioned before how strong a proponent I am of ability grouping. Even though ability has become a dirty word in education since the "Self-esteem Movement" of the 1980s-90s (which current research is showing to be a crock), called "elitest" and all that, I honestly believe that grouping children of like ability is the best way to teach everyone.

Ideally, elementary school should be more like high school, with a greater variety of subjects and students grouped by like ability and interests rather than age. This should benefit kids at all points on the educational spectrum. Those having more trouble grasping the material would have the time to really work on the fundamentals. Those sailing through could be pushed even further. those is the middle would have a chance to differentiate themselves to a greater degree than they can now.

But would elementary teachers go for it? Turns out some already have. I received the following info from Sara Stone in the Elkhorn, WI school district:

"We did some flexible grouping in our elementary math classes. Students were pretested and then "shuffled" The top 1/3 were placed together and their needs were met through depth of material. Pacing had to stay the same as the other two classes so the unit of study ended at the same time in all three classes.

The other 2/3 were heterogeneously grouped. What the teachers found was that the top 1/3 were NOT the same group of kids every time. There were a core group of about 5-7 who pretested into that group but the rest flexibly moved in and out based on the pretest. Parents were thrilled and faculty felt that they were meeting educational needs better than before.

They also found, that since the top kids were not in the other two classes then students had to come up with ideas, answers etc. that the students previously relied on from the top kids. Also, it allowed students the opportunity to move at a pace that was more appropriate and then could discover the concepts rather than always having the top kids answering. So, really moving the top kids out allows for more educational growth for the other students. I do think a key here was that kids knew that they could move in and out of the group based on the pretest.

So, contrary to popular misconception taking the top kids out does not mean the rest of the kids will fall apart. ...It is NOT the task of the top kids to make the other kids learn. Last time I checked that is the teacher's responsibility. AND if she/he is using the gifted kids to enable the kids learning how is she meeting the needs of those gifted. "

Ah, a school after my own heart. :D

I also heard this morning from a mother on the Mensa Bright Kids list that the private school her son attends uses a similar method, but for all subjects, not just math. Glory be!

Now the question is, how do we get the rest of the public schools to follow suit?

When are they ready for college?

The question that parents of gifted kids run up against too soon (in my opinion) is when are they ready for college? For homeschoolers particularly, a community college seems a good fit for teens (and pre-teens) who need higher level learning than their parents may be able to provide. Community college (CC) also provides a college experience for kids who may not be sufficiently mature to live outside their parents' home. But without a diploma, how do we hook them up?

In our state, the Youth Options program through the Department of Public Instruction is set up specifically to allow high school juniors and seniors to take community or UW college classes that count toward their high school diploma. Tuition is paid through the public schools and although it's trickier to get access that way, if you have a relationship with someone at your local school, that's a possibility. Prior to that, it would have to be on a case-by-base basis, negotiated between you and the particular school or professor and tuition would most likely be entirely your responsibility.

Our local community college has an entrance exam called COMPASS that all incoming students take to make sure they are placed in the appropriate classes. The COMPASS test is not age-restricted, so if your child took the test and passed it, you could easily approach the registrar and say, "Look, he's working at a college-level. How about you let him take this one class and see how he does?"

There is some question about whether racking up a large number of community college credits is a good thing for homeschoolers to do. It very much depends on what your post-high-school plan is, because there are as many ways to view these credits as there are four-year universities. As I understand it, there are more advantages to entering college as a freshman (priority in housing, more openings available, more financial aid available) than as a transfer student. Each college is different as to which credits they will allow to transfer and who qualifies as a freshman, so it's worth checking with the schools (and potential schools) on your list to see what their policies are.

I was looking into this primarily for upper level science and math classes. Although I've been doing okay supervising Klaus's correspondence-school biology lab and DH said he'd oversee a similar chemistry program, physics and AP level wet lab work would be more difficult in the dining room, as would any math higher than algebra II (at least for me. Less so for dh).

Klaus and Wolfie are taking the ACT in February, so I think we'll wait until we get those results back before making any CC decisions. That should also give us some time to narrow our list of possible schools so we can get some guidance that way.

Darn those gifted students!

Interesting article in the NYT yesterday about chess instruction programs in elementary schools. It sounds like a great program. I know Wolfie and Chester were very excited about the city-wide chess tournament the district held last year.

This is the quote that got my attention:

"It teaches problem solving, perseverance, being able to learn something new," Mrs. Hicks said. It also teaches concepts of rank and file, horizontal, vertical and diagonal.

The biggest problem, she said, was that some students already knew how to play or learned it more quickly than their classmates. "It is not as productive for them as for the others," she said." (Boldface is mine, of course.)

Isn't that always the way? Gifted kids actually learning something and wanting to continue, thereby ruining everything for the rest of us!

I have seen the future and it is...Dutch?

And I was so proud of myself for being a good advocate for my kids this year...

Netherlands Court Bans Complaining Mom
Fri Oct 7,10:05 AM ET

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - A woman in the Netherlands has been banned from any contact with her daughter's school or teachers after complaining too much, a court ruled Friday.

The woman, whose name was not released, "overloaded" the Borgh Elementary School in the northern city of Zuidhorn "with an incessant stream of questions, comments and complaints," a panel of judges at the Groningen District Court wrote in their judgment. "For causing an illegal hindrance ... she will be barred from approaching the school or the school area for a year, and forbidden from addressing the school, educators or the board in any way other than as specified in the verdict," the judges said. The woman's complaints ranged from treatment of her daughter — described as "highly gifted" — to disagreements about curriculum, method of teaching and the safety of the school. In the 2004-2005 school year, the woman sent 50 e-mails and 20 letters to the school, and came nine times to visit.

She also wrote 29 letters to the school board and others "to the National Complaint Commission, the Labor Inspection Service, the Educational Inspection Service, the Queen's representative and the media," the judgment said. In the future, the woman will be allowed to submit complaints to the school on a single page of paper once a month, the court ruled.

Hm, in the 2005-2006 school year, I have visited the school once, emailed two teachers once and the GT coordinator twice. And it's only the first week of October. I think I'm in trouble...
LOL

A Blow for Math Literacy

Found an Associate Press article by Economics Writer Jeanne Aversa about an increase in credit card payment defaults in the past quarter. The article blames gas price increases for stretching budgets, causing credit card account to go past due.

My quarrel is not with the thesis of the article. I'm sure rising gas prices are squeezing families that may already have trouble paying their bills. My quarrel is with the inflammatory language the writer used.

And I quote: First sentence, "The percentage of credit card payments that were past due shot up to a record high..." (italics mine)

In the next paragraph we find that the delinquency rate is 4.81%, up from 4.76% in the previous quarter. Granted that's a new high, but is 0.05% really a "spike" in credit card delinquencies" (paragraph 5)??? Or is it just a lack of understanding of the mathematics involved?

Then we come to the last paragraph: "The [American Bankers] Association's survey also showed that the delinquency rate on a composite of other types of consumers loans, including auto loans and home equity loans, climbed to 2.22 percent in the second quarter, up from 2.03 percent in the first quarter."

That's a change of nearly two-tenths of a percent (compared with a "spike" of five-hundredths) but it hardly rates a mention. To my mind, the delinquency rate on all consumer loans is a bigger story, but apparently the credit card subset of the data is sexier or at least more newsworthy.

Wolfie Sees the Future

Wolfie's homework yesterday consisted of the following: "Write four declarative sentences, marking subject and predicate. Then write one each exclamatory, interrogative and imperative sentences."

I suggested he write the sentences in the form of a story because he couldn't think what to write about. It ended up like this:

Mom is a much harder teacher than Mrs. Fulkerson.
She wants me to write this assignment in the form of a story.
I don't want to.
I told her, "No."

"Wha--?" she said.
"Are you sassing me?
Do it right now!"

I thought it was brilliant, but he turned in something more boring. I would never stand for such a thing. ;)

I Love My Kids

They're all science geeks like their dad and sometimes I get discouraged that my interests in literature and history and the performing arts don't matter to anyone but me. Then Wolfie gets all excited because Oliver Twist was made into a movie.

And both he and Chester insist I read them the picture book we have of three of the poems from T.S. Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats and fight over who gets to read the picture book of Spenser's The Faerie Queen first at bedtime. Granted these are picture books, but the language is pretty advanced and I hadn't been able to get Chester, in particular, to listen to these stories before.

I was unable to find our old copy of Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats last night so I went to the bookstore this morning to get another copy. While I was there, I remember I wanted Klaus to read all the The Odyssey, not just the half-dozen excerpts in his textbook, so I got that (plus The Iliad and The Once and Future King) while I was there. I expected Klaus to complain that I was making him work harder than he had to, but when I showed him the books, he said, "Oh, hey, I'd been thinking about skipping ahead to that book!" He took all three books upstairs then came back down and asked me to read the first chapter of The Odyssey to him. Sure he was probably stalling a little (still hasn't taken his midterms) but I can spare a half an hour to encourage his interest. :D

They like words. Even better, they like words I like. I guess they are my kids after all!

Now if I can only figure out how to get the other two to homeschool, I'd have lots of fun! LOL

Smarter than the Average Bear

Chester's been having some trouble with school this year. We're not entirely sure whether he's missing his friend (in a different class for the first time in three years) or having trouble with the way the teacher is teaching (Klaus had her for 5th grade, too, so we know it's not the teacher) or some other reason (or some combination). He's been feeling frustrated and saying he doesn't want to go to school, which is completely out of character for him. :(

So I was asking him a little about what he thought the problem was--lessons too fast (teacher not explaining enough or not visual enough) or too slow (busywork). "I found out recently that doctors and other earners-of-graduate-degrees have an average IQ of 125, which is the same as you, so I know the problem isn't that you're stupid." I told him, and we talked about the difference between how much you're capable of learning (IQ) versus how much you know (5th grade). He perked up considerably after that, so apparently he was thinking he was stupid. He's very very hard on himself.

The next day we were at the school dessert social, on the swings, when I made some general comment about brains and school. Chester says, "Yeah, I'm smart enough to be an average doctor!"

The Mermaid Chair

I just finished reading The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd. I bought it because I so loved The Secret Life of Bees, but approached it with a bit of trepidation after all the terrible reviews I read. No, it's not a romance novel, although the tagline "In this luminous novel from the author of The Secret Life of Bees, a wife and mother falls in love with a Benedictine monk" may imply otherwise. Many readers called Jessie selfish, but I have to think after thirty-three years of hiding her true self from everyone, she's allowed a couple months of selfishness. Sue Monk Kidd's lyrical prose is an absolute joy to read and while The Mermaid Chair is a strong novel, it just never will have the power that Bees has. Very few novels do.

And Isn't it Ironic, Don't You Think?

I was watching a show on the Science Channel this evening about Nero's Golden House. For those of you who didn't watch the fabulous "When in Rome Week" on the History Channel, Nero was the fifth emperor of Rome. You may have heard he fiddled while Rome burned. Apparently that's not true, but he did take over 200 acres of downtown Rome on which to build his Golden House and extravagant grounds, complete with artificial lake, after the fire, presumably because the ruined land was cheap. ;)

His profiting greatly from a natural disaster didn't sit well with Rome ruling class or with the Senate. The ultimate insult to them was the 120 ft. bronze statue of himself called the Colossus Neroni. After that flight of egotism, the aristocrats began to plot, as they do, and eventually Nero was deposed, fled Rome and stabbed himself in the throat, thus ending his family's rule.

Nero was succeeded, eventually, by Vespasian, who founded the Flavian Dynasty. The Flavians did all they could to erase Nero from both the Roman consciousness and the history books. They built over the Golden House and even paved over the lake and built a huge amphitheatre over it. It was called The Flavian Amphitheatre and still stands today. Now, though, we call it the Colosseum, because Nero's Colossus stood nearby.

Oh, My Aching Wallet!

Reason to homeschool #487--No Fundraisers

Tomorrow, all the schools in our area are wrapping up Operation Classmate--a drive to collect clothing, hygiene items and school supplies for the Katrina evacuees now living in Rapides Parish, Louisiana. Desperate times, worthy cause, growing kids with social consciences--it's all good. Yesterday, I received catalogues and order forms for frozen food from Wolfie's middle school and for popcorn from Chester's Cub Scout pack.

God, how I hate these things! The products are garbage, it's not safe to go door-to-door, our relatives all live out of state, I don't have office mates to push this stuff on and DH can't do it at his office because he's the boss and it would put undue pressure on his co-workers (not that he thinks it's kosher to sell stuff at work anyway).

On top of the donations I've already given to the schools for the "Sixth Grade Field Trip Fund", and two PTOs, I'm tapped out. And we have at least three more of these to look forward to--Chester's school drive and his drama club costume drive and Wolfie's orchestra drive. I'm saving milk caps, cash-back points and Campbell soup labels. Not to mention that I had to pay $30 each in materials fees, plus classroom magazine subscriptions, PE t-shirts and lunch money. These schools should be rolling in dough!

Constitution Day

Apparently, tomorrow is Constitution Day, the day mandated by federal law when every school receiving federal money must teach about the Constitution, according to (a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/16/politics/16constitution.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5089&en=b190069f2bbedfb1&ex=1284523200&partner=rssyahoo&emc=rss">The New York Times. Apparently, many historians (at least the historians quoted in the article) fear that No Child Left Behind is eliminating the study of history by forcing focus on reading and math skills. At least so says David McCullough, author of the fascinating if occasionally impenetrable 1776. He supports Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN)'s bill to develop a nation-wide history test--as if public school kids don't have enough tests to study for.

While I agree that teachers are much more likely to cover material that their students will be tested on (called "teaching to the test"), I don't agree that more mandated testing is the way to encourage a study of history. Or writing, for that matter, although the newly rewritten SAT shows the College Board disagrees. Children learn from teachers who are excited by what they do and I doubt more federally mandated curriculum is going to excite anyone. ;)

It's a Miracle!

I'm the first to admit I don't know much about raising fiddler crabs. They make very interesting pets, though, so I'm trying. Xavier, our first crab (actually Chester's) lasted about six weeks until we went on vacation and came home to dead crab. Zoidberg, whose picture is posted elsewhere in this blog, lasted about a month, but he was never very happy, despite me trying to get the salinity of his water right and giving him dry land and sand to dig in instead of just aquarium gravel. RIP Zoidberg :(

Before I had a chance to tell DH I didn't want to have another, he brought home Stormin' Norman. Norman seemed to be doing well--regularly "taking the beach"--until last week when he stopped eating and spent all his time hiding in the half-buried shipwreck in his tank. Sunday, DH found him looking quite dead at the bottom of the tank. RIP Norman :(

But wait, there's more! I scooped the carcass out of the tank and flushed it (after saying a few appropriate words, of course) and began to dip the water out of the tank. When it was nearly empty, suddenly this large brown crab charged out of the ship, wondering where his water had gone! I nearly dropped my dip cup!

Turns out Norman had simply molted and we'd mistaken the empty shell for dead crab. Molting is a good thing. It's the definitive sign of a happy crab. He'd been hiding in the bowels of the shipwreck until his new carapace hardened. So now he has fresh brackish water, a new filter cartridge, he's eating again and all is right with his little brackish world. :D

I guess I'm not such a bad crab Mommy after all. LOL

Project Motivational Math

I've never been particularly good at mental math. I think I'm too visual. But for those of you who are looking for a good resource, check this out:

One problem given to a fourth grade boy at the 2002 Mental Math Competition in Miami, Florida, went something like this, "Nine times nine, plus 19, times four, divided by 25, square root, add six, multiply by ounces in a pound, minus 60, plus 44, square root." "Twelve!" shouted the youngster, of Ben Sheppard Elementary school, which won the 2002 championship in the competition, enjoying a sound victory over even North Miami Senior High.

Find Project Motivational Math products at http://www.atlasbooks.com/marktplc/00814.htm

Chiquita Miranda?

So I'm singing the Chiquita Banana jingle to my boys yesterday, because I like to enrich their cultural boundaries (i.e. annoy them) like that, and I was explaining the context about how Mis Chiquita was a parody of Carmen Miranda and her fruit-covered turban, etc. Then Wolfie says to me, "Back then, Chiquita Banana might have been a parody. Now it's identity theft!"

He got a big laugh and continued, "The phrase 'You can't swing a dead cat without hitting a person named John'"(which we taught him last week) "used to be a figure of speech. Now it's animal cruelty and aggravated assault!" LOL

Good thing he wants to be an architect and not a lawyer. LOL

Ground Zero, USA

Heard on the news this morning that New Orleans officials were baffled when their "driving buses around the city to evacuate people without transporation" plan didn't work during Katrina. According to Fox News, the plan "would have worked" but the bus drivers refused to stay in the city in the face of a Category 5 hurricane. Go figure. But how many people would have been standing out on the street corners, anyway?

Back in the early 80s (height of the Cold War and all that), I lived in Omaha, Nebraska, aka Ground Zero USA, because of nearby Offutt Air Force Base and SAC (Strategic Air Command) Headquarters. As you may remember, after 9/11, the President was whisked off to SAC to protect him from possible terrorist attack. That plan had been in place and widely known, at least in Omaha, for decades, although the news media seem to have either been ignorant or conveniently forgotten this fact during the "Where is the President?!" phase of the 9/11 coverage.

Anyway, I bring this up because Omaha was one of the first places the Soviets would have nuked. Our city's disaster plan was just like New Orleans's--if you have no transportation out of the city, stand on a nearby street corner and a bus will come to pick you up and take you to safety. Riiiiiggghht. The nukes are coming and I'm going to go stand outside on a street corner. NOT!

Classical Homeschooling

I believe I've already mentioned how disappointed I am with the freshman English class that Klaus is taking through Keystone. They do a great deal of writing but the class is heavily focused on the textbook. The only whole works they read are Romeo and Juliet and Animal Farm. Grrr.

I'll admit, I'm spoiled because the English department at my alma mater was truly amazing and I want that kind of curriculum to challenge my kids. Particularly Klaus, who is the most verbal/literary of the bunch at the moment.

So I was given a link to The Great Books Programwhich offers a classical education through study and (online) Socratic dialogue. (Classical education in terms of homeschooling is best exemplified in The Well-Trained Mind by Bauer and Wise.) The first year students study the Ancient Greeks, the second year The Ancient Romans, The Middle Ages the third year and the Moderns (19th/20th centuries) as a senior.

The reading list is rigorous and I'll admit it appeals to me. The classes themselves are pretty rigid though. We've already missed the first lesson. And they only require two written essays a year. (We wrote twelve per year at Central.) I've got Susan Wise Bauer's The Well-Educated Mind on backorder at Zooba, so we may just use that as his textbook. He's going to rue the day he picked me as his teacher!

The PC Police Have Done It Again

So I'm reading the paper yesterday, after having prepared my box of school supplies for the Katrina refugees now living in Belton, MO, and I find out these supplies aren't for refugees at all! Imagine my surprise! Apparently, a refugee is not "a person who has been forced to leave their country in order to escape war, persecution, or natural disaster" (italics mine) as my handiest dictionary says. That word apparently only refers to foreigners forced to leave their home to escape natural disasters. "These are not refugees. These are Americans," President Bush says. Wha---?

Our dear president is not known for his universal command of the English language. Neither is The Reverend Al Sharpton. And I wish I could find the reference I read yesterday when some linguistic luminaries suggested they should be called "Katrina escapees." But now the media have jumped on the bandwagon.

Oy Vey, Maria! Do these people have nothing better to do than cry racism?

According to the LA Times, the "displaced persons" themselves would prefer to be called "evacuees." That's fine. I'll call them the "Kings of Mardi Gras" if they want me to, out of respect for their suffering. But, the word does not mean, or even connote as far as I know, a group of people coming to this country from a Third World nation seeking asylum. They're Americans seeking refuge from a natural disaster. And that, folks, makes them refugees.

Ability Grouping, Day 4

Wolfie is taking "Super Challenge" math this year (6th, 7th and 8th grade general math, collapsed into one year) and is also taking 7th grade science instead of 6th. So far, none of the 7th graders suspect he's really a 6th grader. It certainly helps that he's taller than most of them. ;)

Disciplinary Literacy in St. Paul

Interesting story about a new teaching concept in the St. Paul, MN middle schools. Apparently, they're going to let students form and voice their own opinions. As the Guinness brewers say, "Brilliant!"

Well-Meaning Amateurs, My Foot!

Apparently I am late to this bandwagon (just found this article this morning) but it's got me all het up, as my supervising teacher used to say. The gist of this essay is that homeschoolers are "well meaning" but not smart enough or professional enough to teach their own children and are being misled by the curriculum publishers who only want their money.

You can read the whole article in the link above, but I need to refute some of these assertions line by line:

"[W]hy would some parents assume they know enough about every academic subject to home-school their children?" He says in the last paragraph that he's referring to "teaching math, science, art, writing, history, geography and other subjects."

A. As a former elementary teacher, I can tell you unequivocally that not every teacher knows any more about those subjects than I do. I've seen classroom teachers misspell words on the blackboard during a lesson. So let's not hold up "professional" teachers as more knowledgeable than your average parent. Any subject they don't know thoroughly (and some they do) they just follow along in the textbook and teach the lessons the curriculum publishers provide for them. "But wait!" I hear you say, "Aren't those same curriculum providers misleading parents into thinking they are qualified to teach their own children?" The short answer? YES!

The bottom line is that I know more about "math, science, art, writing, history, geography and other subjects" than my children do and that's all that's required to teach someone something--knowing more than the learner knows. If only "professional teachers" are qualified, then why is "peer-to-peer teaching" all the rage in the public schools? Surely, if a parent is not qualified to teach a child, a slightly older child is not qualified, right? Not to mention the fact that he will have time to work with a mentor, who knows more about his areas of interest than even a "professional teacher" would!

"That is, [leave teaching] to those who have worked steadily at their profession for 10, 20, 30 years! Teachers!"

I know I'm deliberately misunderstanding his point here, but surely he must realize he's suggesting that classroom teachers with less than ten years experience are also not qualified to teach. Such lack of precision in logic doesn't say much for his own [presumably] public school education. I suppose the students in his school should be grateful Mr. Arnold is a professional janitor not a professional teacher.

"Of course there are circumstances that might make it necessary for parents to teach their children at home. For example, if the child is severely handicapped and cannot be transported safely to a school, or is bedridden with a serious disease, or lives in such a remote area that attending a public school is near impossible."

A couple paragraphs beyond this quote, Mr. Arnold rants about the old "socialization" chestnut. So I guess he believes that homeschooling is only acceptable when socialization is near impossible.

Despite what he believes, homeschooling does not take place in a vacuum. There are local homeschool groups which schedule field trips, classes and other group activities. Homeschoolers play community sports, do volunteer work and participate in Scouts and church groups. My son and I have not holed ourselves up in our compound with a case of bottled water and a rifle.

"It’s obvious to me that these organizations [curriculum publishers] are in it for the money. They are involved in the education of children mostly in the hope of profiting at the hands of well-meaning but gullible parents."

What about the well-meaning but gullible school districts who use their products? Please. You are not going to learn more about The Odyssey from excerpts in an anthology/textbook than you would reading the actual book. And where does all that taxpayer money for textbooks go? For profit curriculum publishers, that's where.

"Don’t most parents have a tough enough job teaching their children social, disciplinary and behavioral skills?"

Perhaps, but the job is a lot easier when you have the children with you for more than an hour a day and you don't have to spend that hour undoing the bad behavior they learned at school.

"They would be wise to help their children and themselves by leaving the responsibility of teaching math, science, art, writing, history, geography and other subjects to those who are knowledgeable, trained and motivated to do the best job possible."

Who could be more motivated to "do the best job possible" than a child's own parent? How wise is it to leave the responsibility for raising our children to a stranger, let alone a new stranger every year?

(Dave Arnold, a member of the Illinois Education Association, is head custodian at Brownstown Elementary School in Southern Illinois.) (italics mine)

The irony is, of course, that while I am happy to take over the role of teacher for my children, I would never presume to know how to run one of those giant floor polishers!

Get a Life!!

Found this article from CNN on Saturday. Can you hear my eyes rolling? Can these poor children not get away from their screaming soccer parents even at college? What on earth does this mean for the next generation?

I'm going to try not to rant about self-important Baby Boomers here. I absolutely understand wanting to supervise and smooth the way for your children. It took a great deal of self-control for me not to pop upstairs and see what Klaus was doing on his first online high school day. But I didn't do it. This is his show. If he asks for help, I'm here to give it, but I'm not going to tell him where he needs help. (Besides, I've done that when he was younger and it doesn't work. ;)

Dear Helicopter Parents,

Your son or daughter is off to college. Congratulations! Yes, he or she is going to have to struggle a bit at first, particularly if you got into the habit of doing everything for them because it was "easier." Struggle is a good thing. Struggle builds character. Let them struggle.

When your child calls to complain, let them. Then practice one of these responses.
"I'm so sorry to hear that."
"How is that working out for you?"
"What's your next move?"

Consider it tough love. Unless you really want your child living with you until he or she is 40.

Day 3 of Homeschooling: So far, so good.

After getting off to a somewhat confusing start, Klaus and I have finally decided on a weekly schedule, tried some classwork and made some plans. He decided to study one subject per day, plus an hour of Japanese (We're using Rosetta Stone for language learning.)

Friday, he finished two weeks' worth of Keystone's Biology course and 45 minutes of Japanese before biking 3 miles over to the high school to meet his friends after the last bell. The Keystone courses have a printable "Suggested 36 week timetable" which is based on doing one hour of the class every day. We printed out these timetables for him to refer to and help keep track of what he's done and hasn't done. I don't think Biology is going to take him all year, although English might. (The timetable for English is twice as many pages as the one for Biology.)

This morning as he was heading upstairs to study, he said, "I think I'll do Japanese first today. I just love having the freedom to decide my schedule. And to take fifteen minutes to read a book if I'm getting bored." And I love the time management skills he's learning along with everything else.

As for the dreaded "socialization" issue, if anything he's spending more time with his friends, not less. I hardly saw him this weekend--two friends stayed over Friday night, then he stayed over with one of them on Saturday. When he was in school last year, there would occasionally be sleepovers but most of the time, he was so exhausted from school he didn't want to do anything else. I know we'll settle into a routine (and when the weather gets colder, he won't want to bike over to Memorial every day) so he'll see his friends less often, but he'll be starting karate classes at the local dojo soon and we go to an orientation for volunteers at the Humane Association tomorrow night. And next month he'll be 15 and old enough to get that part time job he's been wanting. He won't be a hermit.

How Language Affects Personality

Forgive my sudden intellectual turn, but I just read an article by N. Ramirez-Esparza, et al. regarding bicultural individuals and how their personalities change depending on which language they are speaking. In this particular study, English-Spanish bilinguals responses to a personality test conformed significantly to expected cultural personality norms. For example, when they spoke English, participants tested as more extraverted, more open and more conscientious than when they took the same test in Spanish. [Please see the article for an indepth discussion of study design and results.]

This reminded me of a class on Japanese history I took in college and the concept of linguistic hegemony. As I understand it, the Japanese Emperor's control of his countrymen extended even to the words his subjects used. I believe the idea was that if there was no word for "treason," for example, then no one would think of it. It's a very difficult concept for Americans to grasp, since we're always coming up with new words to describe our new ideas.

But if you think of it in terms of this change in personality effect, it starts to make some sense. The way a language is constructed, the way it flows, the idioms that it uses, all are heavily laden with the expectations of the society that uses that language. For example, The author cites a study by Diaz-Guerrero which "found that Mexicans show an avoidant personality under stressful situations, whereas individuals from the US seek to confront them. (Ramirez-Esparza, p. 6). Similarly, while Americans lose their keys, in Spanish the phrase is "Mis claves se perdieron," i.e. "My keys lost themselves." Cool, huh?

This just happened to come up (on an email list) the day we dropped off the Korean University student we are hosting this semester. He spent the weekend between semesters with us--three very interesting days. Although Don swears he has very low English skills, he actually speaks English very well and we learned a great deal about South Korea from him (while teaching him to eat barbecue and make S'mores!) The study makes me wonder if his personality is more American now than it was before his intensive English seminar here over the summer. I'll certainly be aware of any changes between now and the next time we see him.

Planning for college

I was looking at an Ivy League (Duke, Harvard, Penn etc.) college fair to be held about five hours away from us next month. I mentioned it to Klaus (in front of his brothers), suggesting that it might be worth missing since he's not applying to college for a couple years and it's such a long drive away. He said he thought we should go anyway.

Wolfie said, "I want to go too!"

"Why? You're not going to college in four years," Klaus said.

"How do you know?" Wolfie answered.

They say gifted kids have a weird sense of humor

They say gifted kids have a weird sense of humor
Originally uploaded by The Princess Mom.

This is Wolfie's doing. It used to be a refrigerator magnet that showed whether or not the dog had been fed.

Homeschooling on Long Island-NYT

Another somewhat snooty NYT article, this one called "More School Bells Ring at Home" by Natalie Cavenor.

I was irritated at what appeared to be anti-homeschooling bias on the first page, i.e. "It is a legal option in New York..." (Duh!);

"Jennifer Dentry is the complete faculty for her children..." (A, if they're homeschooled, that's not true, and B, so what?);

[Dentry quote] "'He did fine, was learning, loved his friends and teachers," Mrs. Dentry said. "But I had that nagging feeling that I wanted to home-school." [italics mine]

"...homeschoolers say they don't think a lack of credentials mattered."

A definite "They're hurting their children for their own selfish reasons" kind of slant, supported by the head of the state teachers' union calling homeschooling parents "Well-intentioned but misguided."

But as I continued reading, I realized that the "officials", Iannuzzi from the teachers' union and William Brosnan, superintendent of the Northport-East Northport schools and president of the New York State Council of School Superintendent, were doing nothing but spouting party line. They want homeschooling parents credentialled. Of course they do, they they'll want them to join the union! For those who don't know, I used to be a teacher and I can tell you the pressure to join the union is immense, even before graduation. We can't expect them to accept non-union teachers at home or at school anymore than we'd expect Northwest Airlines Mechanics Union to accept non-union mechanics.

Mr. Iannuzzi's last quote is the one I find most ridiculous, since it goes exactly against my experience: "The stories [about homeschoolers beating public school students in spelling, science and math competitions] don't demonstrate that home schooling works, just that there are some really good students being home-schooled," he said. "They would probably perform even better in the public schools."

HA! I say to you, HA! Even if a student is lucky enough in their twelve years of public schooling to find a teacher who is really on their same wavelength and has their best interests at heart, that teacher is gone within a year. A homeschooling parent always has the child's best interests at heart and is there throughout school. A homeschooled student who finds a mentor in the community has a friend and ally for life, not just the duration of high school.

Yes, some students are brilliant and self-motivated and perform very well in high school but I believe this is despite the school, not because of it. Some students are brilliant and less self-motivated because they spend all their energy fighting the system at school and have nothing left with which to learn. And more and more teens turn their anger at the system against themselves because beating their heads against a brick wall doesn't hurt the wall. This is why I homeschool.

I'm not entirely sure how I got from the New York Times to Pink Floyd and teen suicide, but there you have it. Once you see the "official" quotes for nothing more than the same old union talking points, it's really not a bad article.

Where does all the money go??

Alina Tugend's recent article in the New York Times discussed the huge school supplies lists the public schools are handing out to parents. Wolfie and Chester's lists were easily twenty items each. Plus we're expected to pony up a $30 District Material fee to "cover expenses." Wolfie also needs $7 school t shirt for PE and a $4 magazine subscription and both boys need $4 for the "District approved" student planner. If they were playing sports, the fees would be $25 per child per sport "up to a family cap of $100." Well thank you very much! >:(

I'd complain to the teachers, but I know they are also paying out of pocket for my kids' education, as is mentioned on page 2 of the NYT article.

I happen to know that our state gives the school district $6,000 of my tax money per student. Could someone please explain to me how they can not educate my child for less than $6,000?

This is why I started this blog

Wolfie was playing with one of the dog's squeaky toys a few minutes ago, getting louder and louder as he moved from the relatively large kitchen into the front hallway. Squeak, squeak, Squeak, SQUEAK!

"That's enough, Wolfie," I say.

"But I'm using echolocation," he protests. "And it's working!"

Wasting Time in School

Inge Canon on Carnegie Units at the transcripts seminar :

"36 weeks x 5 sessions x 45-50 min each =135 -150 hours. School administrators then assume that this will generate another 65-150 hours of "outside" preparation. So a Carnegie Unit is assuming 200 hours of work."

Mrs. Canon went on to say that homeschools should, rightly, adjust this time requirement since the tutorial setting is so different from classroom instruction. She then read this study done on "Time-on-task" in public high schools. The author of the study was invited to do it, and surveyed close to 2000 high schools. Here are the results:

Gross School Year = 1080 hours

subtract 15% absenteeism=918 hours

subtract 40% of the day allocated to non-instructional activities (lunch, homeroom, class switching) = 551 hours

subtract 12% of class time for administration = 485 hours

subtract 25% for students being "off-task" (various reason, most teachers said they were being conservative with this figure) = 364
hours

After 1080 hours in a typical high school year, the average high schooler is getting just 365 hours of actual instruction time! Amazing, isn't it?

And they wonder why students feel high school is a waste of time...

A Way with Words

We're working on redecorating Chester's room. He was three when we moved in, so he got the room with the pink wallpaper and pink carpet. Now he's ten and needs something more suitable.

We've been visiting every furniture store in the area. He desperately needs a new chest of drawers to replace Aunt Linda's old dresser, and perhaps a new bed, since his bed used to be a guest bed in my grandparents' house when I was young. While looking, a black tubular steel bunk bed with a futon couch on the bottom instead of another bed caught his eye.

Chester said the word "futon" sounded like an atomic particle to him, like electron or proton.

Wolfie said, "If it's part bunk bed and part futon, wouldn't that make it a funkton?"

I think it absolutely would. LOL

Now we're cooking!

An update on our summer cooking class:

Klaus has started making recipes even I haven't wanted to try--fried chicken, for example. I always thought it was too hard and too messy, but he did a fantastic job. He's volunteered to cook dinner three out of the last seven days.

Wolfie much prefers to create his own recipes. We elaborated on a basic lasagna recipe that turned out better than mine do. One experiment--chicken drumsticks rolled in cooked rice like sushi and then deep-fried in tempura batter--didn't turn out so well (we couldn't get the rice to stick) but at least he's trying--and raising the bar himself.

Chester is less ambitious--he's always been a picky eater. But I bought the Better Homes and Gardens Kids Cookbook and he quickly found three recipes that sounded both easy and fun. In fact, the day the cookbook came, we also happened to have company from out of state. Sam insisted on making the "Pick Pockets" (calzones) for the company, even though it wasn't his usual day to cook. They turned out terrific, by the way. ;)

As an aside, the link above for the cookbook is through Zooba.com. It's an online branch of Book-of-the-Month club that I've been a member of for almost a year. Every single book is $9.95, no charge for shipping, even Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell, which retailed for $35. Their selection is limited to recent books, particularly bestsellers, but I highly recommend them for bibliophiles. :D

And yet it is possible to be both

From The New York Times:

_New York Times_, "Education Life", p. 10

July 31, 2005

How to ... Identify a Gifted Child

By ABIGAIL SULLIVAN MOORE

DISCERNING gifted children, long an imperfect science, is even tougher in today's label-prone culture. James T. Webb, a clinical psychologist and author of "Misdiagnosis and Dual Diagnosis of Gifted Children and Adults," explains what can go wrong.

Q. Parents throw the word "gifted" around. What does it mean, really?

A. Gifted comes in different forms and degrees. Gifted children excel in such areas as general intellectual ability, specific aptitudes like math, creative thinking, visual or performing arts. Most have I.Q. scores between 130 and 155. Above that range are the profoundly gifted - a tiny fraction of the group. Over all, the gifted represent about 3 percent of our population.

Q. Why would gifted children be tagged as having psychological disorders?

A. Behaviors of many gifted children can resemble those of, say, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Most teachers, pediatricians and psychologists aren't trained to distinguish between the two. Most gifted kids are very intense, pursuing interests excessively. This often leads to power struggles, perfectionism, impatience, fierce emotions and trouble with peers. Many gifted kids have varied interests, skipping from one to the other - a trait often misinterpreted as A.D.H.D.

Q. You write that these misdiagnoses are common.

A. About a quarter of gifted children have their giftedness misinterpreted as a disorder and aren't recognized as gifted. Even when flagged as gifted, another 20 percent are misdiagnosed. Among children referred to me with a bipolar diagnosis, almost 100 percent have been misdiagnosed, as are 70 percent of those with obsessive-compulsive diagnoses and 55 percent of those with A.D.H.D.

Q. What's a parent to do?

A. Parents should educate themselves about the characteristics of gifted children: intense curiosity, unusually good memory, a remarkable sense of humor, exquisite sensitivity to others and extensive vocabularies. And identify them early. Children's attitudes toward learning get set before age 10. Preschool and the early grades generally turn off gifted kids: they are told to stop asking so many questions and wait their turn. They need an appropriate learning environment. If not, seeds for underachievement are sown.

*****
While I agree that gifted kids share characteristics with ADHD kids, it is possible to be both gifted and have ADD. The giftedness will mask the attention problems to such an extent that some people insist there's no such thing as ADD--All kids with attention problems are "only" gifted. I'm here to tell you, it just ain't true. I've seen how much easier life is for Klaus since he's been medicated. He's not a "zombie" and hasn't been "drugged into compliance." If anything he's been drugged out of compliance. He used to do whatever it took to get along and stay under the teacher's radar. Since he's been able to concentrate, he's become much more independent and ambitious. I think that's because he trusts himself now. He knows he can make a decision, set a goal and follow through.

I read somewhere that low self-esteem is a result of not keeping your promises..to yourself. You set a goal (promise), can't follow through, and start telling yourself that you're worthless. If the goal affected someone else, their reaction doesn't make you feel any better. It's not until you can make promises to yourself, follow through, and learn to trust yourself that your self esteem begins to rise. It's an interesting way to look at the phenomenon.

NYT: Students Say High School Lets Them Down

July 16, 2005
Students Say High Schools Let Them Down

By MICHAEL JANOFSKY

DES MOINES, July 15 - A large majority of high school students say their class work is not very difficult, and almost two-thirds say they would work harder if courses were more demanding or interesting, according to an online nationwide survey of teenagers conducted by the National Governors Association.

The survey, being released on Saturday by the association, also found that fewer than two-thirds believe that their school had done a good job challenging them academically or preparing them for college. About the same number of students said their senior year would be more meaningful if they could take courses related to the jobs they wanted or if some of their courses could be counted toward college credit.

Taken together, the electronic responses of 10,378 teenagers painted a somber picture of how students rate the effectiveness of their schools in preparing them for the future.

The survey also appears to reinforce findings of federal test results released on Thursday that showed that high school seniors made almost no progress in reading and math in the first years of the decade. During that time, elementary school students made significant gains.

"I might have expected kids to say, 'Don't give us more work; high school is tough enough,' " said Gov. Mark Warner of Virginia, a Democrat and chairman of the governors association, which opens a three-day summer meeting here on Saturday.

"Instead," Mr. Warner said, "what we got are high school students actually willing to be stretched more. I didn't think we'd get much of that."

The governors' survey was conducted as part of the association's effort to examine public high schools and devise strategies for improving them. Mr. Warner has made high school reform his priority as chairman of the association. His term ends on Monday, when Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, a Republican, is scheduled to succeed him.

While a vast majority of respondents in the survey, 89 percent, said they intended to graduate, fewer than two-thirds of those said they felt their schools did an "excellent" or "good" job teaching them how to think critically and analyze problems.

Even among the remaining 11 percent, a group of 1,122 that includes teenagers who say they dropped out of high school or are considering dropping out, only about one in nine cited "school work too hard" as a reason for not remaining through graduation. The greatest percentage of those who are leaving, 36 percent, said they were "not learning anything," while 24 percent said, "I hate my school."

Experts in education policy said the survey results were consistent with other studies that have shown gaps between what students learn in high school and what they need for the years beyond.

"A lot of business people and politicians have been saying that the high schools are not meeting the needs of kids," said Barbara Kapinus, a senior policy analyst for the National Education Association. "It's interesting that kids are saying it, too."

Marc Tucker, president of the National Council on Economic Education, an organization that helps states and school districts create programs that are more tailored to contemporary student needs, said he did not believe that American high schools could adequately prepare students without a fundamental change in how they operated.

Mr. Tucker said American schools had been too slow to adapt high school curriculums to the real-life demands of college and the workplace. Except for that small fraction of highly motivated students with an eye toward prestigious private colleges and state universities, many more students, he said, are under the impression that just having a diploma qualifies them for the rigors of college and the workplace.


Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Off to Mori No Ike

Taiko Class at Mori No Ike
Originally uploaded by The Princess Mom.

Klaus is leaving Sunday for two weeks at Mori No Ike, Concordia Language Villages Japanese camp. At the camp they learn martial arts, taiko drumming (see photo), origami, ikebana (flower-arranging), calligraphy, plus regular camp stuff--skits, campfires, swimming. Oh, and lots of dancing--exercise and exposure to Japanese pop music at the same time.

He's very excited and we are, too, since it will give him a jumpstart on learning Japanese at home this year. Next year we're thinking about the month-long high school credit camp, but we thought we'd start with two weeks. He hasn't been away from home that long before. He went to Mori No Ike for five days last summer, but his brothers were there. Space Camp was a week, but that was a long time ago. Once he gets past the first night, I'm sure he'll do fine.