You don’t have the moral right to hold one child back to make another child feel better. – Stephanie Tolan
It’s not important what people say about us. It’s only important what we know inside about ourselves. – Horatio Caine, CSI Miami
Every gift contains a danger. Whatever gift we have we are compelled to express. And if the expression of that gift is blocked, distorted, or merely allowed to languish, then the gift turns against us, and we suffer. – L. Johnson
With regard to excellence, it is not enough to know, but we must try to have and use it. – Aristotle
Radical accelerants adjust well academically and socially. – Miraca Gross
None of the [acceleration] options has been shown to do psychosocial damage to gifted students as a group; when effects are noted, they are usually (but not invariably) in a positive direction. – Nancy M. Robinson, University of Washington
Acceleration levels the playing field of opportunity because any cost to the family or school is minimal. – A Nation Deceived: How Schools Hold Back America’s Brightest Students
The surest path to positive self esteem is to succeed at something which one perceived would be difficult. Each time we steal a student’s struggle, we steal the opportunity for them to build self-confidence. They must learn to do hard things to feel good about themselves. – Sylvia Rimm
It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult. – Seneca
Satisfaction of one’s curiosity is one of the greatest sources of happiness in life. – Linus Pauling
No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Keeping a child who can do sixth-grade work in a second-grade classroom is not saving that student’s childhood but is instead robbing that child of the desire to learn. – Ellen Winner, Gifted Children: Myths and Realities
It is surprising that very highly gifted children do not rebel more frequently against the inappropriate educational provision which is generally made for them. Studies have repeatedly found that the great majority of highly gifted students are required to work, in class, at levels several years below their tested achievement. Underachievement may be imposed on the exceptionally gifted child through the constraints of an inappropriate and undemanding educational program or, as often happens, the child may deliberately underachieve in an attempt to seek peer-group acceptance. – Miraca U.M. Gross, Exceptionally Gifted Children
The wisest mind has something yet to learn. – George Santayana
“I initially thought Terry would be just like one of them, to graduate as early as possible,” he said. But after talking to experts on education for gifted children, he changed his mind. “To get a degree at a young age, to be a record-breaker, means nothing,” he said. “I had a pyramid model of knowledge, that is, a very broad base and then the pyramid can go higher. If you just very quickly move up like a column, then you’re more likely to wobble at the top and then collapse.” – Billy Tao, Terrance Tao’s father
There are risks and costs to action. But they are far less than the long range risks of comfortable inaction. – John F. Kennedy
Being different isn’t always a bad thing. – Alicia, The Fantastic Four
The emerging era is characterized by the collaboration innovation of many people working in gifted communities, just as innovation in the industrial era was characterized by individual genius. – Irving W. Berger, chairman, IBM
Closing the achievement gap by pushing down the top is like fostering fitness by outlawing marathons. – Helen Schinske
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. – George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman (1903)
Not being known doesn’t stop the truth from being true. – Richard Bach, in Messiah’s Handbook
There is little doubt that educators have been largely negative about the practice of acceleration despite abundant research evidence attesting to its validity. It is difficult to understand the hostility of many educators to this acceleration strategy. – James T. Gallagher, University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill (2004)
No paradox is more striking than the inconsistency between research findings on acceleration and the failure of our society to reduce the time spent by superior students in formal education. – M. J. Gold, Education of the Intellectually Gifted (1965)
Clearly, the research on groups of early entrants … strongly suggests that many of [the students] were highly successful academically without experiencing concomitant social or emotional difficulties. – Linda E. Brody, Michelle C. Muratori & Julian Stanley, Johns Hopkins University
Acceleration levels the playing field of opportunity because any cost to the family or school is minimal. – A Nation Deceived
Not only was academic achievement more positive for the grade skipped learners, but also their social adjustment and academic self-esteem were more positive. – Karen B. Rogers, University of St. Thomas (Minnesota)
Adult surveys of gifted individuals reveal that they do not regret their acceleration. Rather, they regret not having accelerated more. – Lubinski, Webb, et al. (2001)
No other arrangements for gifted children works as well as acceleration – James A. Kulik, The University of Michigan
Meta-analytic reviews have consistently concluded that education acceleration helps students academically without shortchanging them socially and emotionally. – James A. Kulik, The University of Michigan
Creativity is like life insurance. If you are creative, you are never afraid, because you can design yourself out of any situation. – Li Edelkoort
He never pays attention, he always knows the answer, and he can never tell you how he knows. We can’t keep thrashing him. He is a bad example to the other pupils. There’s no educating a smart boy. – Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time
Our kids are normal. They just aren’t typical… – Jim Delisle
Anything that’s worth doing, is worth doing poorly! – Joachim DePosada
Webmaster’s note: think about it. Everyone does everything poorly, at first…
Still rarer is the man who thinks habitually, who applies reason, rather than habit pattern, to all his activity. Unless he masques himself, his is a dangerous life; he is regarded as queer, untrustworthy, subversive of public morals; he is a pink monkey among brown monkeys – a fatal mistake. Unless the pink monkey can dye himself brown before he is caught.
The brown monkey’s instinct to kill is correct; such men are dangerous to all monkey customs.
Rarest of all is the man who can and does reason at all times, quickly, accurately, inclusively, despite hope or fear or bodily distress, without egocentric bias or thalmic disturbance, with correct memory, with clear distinction between fact, assumption, and non-fact. – Robert Heinlein in Gulf, a short story in Assignment in Eternity
There is physical and psychological pain in being thwarted, discouraged, and diminished as a person. To have ability, to feel power you are never allowed to use, can become traumatic. – Genius Denied: How to Stop Wasting Our Brightest Young Minds, by Jan and Bob Davidson
Mom / Elasta-girl: “It’s perfectly normal…”
Violet / daughter: “Normal? What do you know about normal? What does anybody in this family know about normal?”
Mom: “Now wait a minute young lady…”
Violet: “We act normal, mom. I want to be normal. The only normal one is Jack-Jack and he’s not even toilet-trained!”
(three months later)
Violet: “I feel different … is different OK?”
Tony / new friend: “Different is great!” – The Incredibles
Dad / Mr. Incredible: “It’s psychotic. They keep creating new ways to celebrate mediocrity, but if someone is genuinely exceptional…”
Mom: “This is not about you, Bob. This is about Dash.”
Dad: “You want to do something for Dash? Then let him actually compete. … Because he’d be great!” – The Incredibles
It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities. – Dumbledore, in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
My mind rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram, or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. I can dispense then with artificial stimulants. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation. – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence and fulfills the duty to express the results of his thought in clear form.. – Albert Einstein
In the ordinary elementary school situation children of 140 IQ waste half of their time. Those above 170 IQ waste nearly all of their time. With little to do, how can these children develop power of sustained effort, respect for the task, or habits of steady work? – Children Above 180 IQ Stanford-Binet: Origin and Development, Leta S. Hollingworth, p. 299.
If we were TV sets, some of us would only get five channels. Others are wired for cable (the general population) and some of us (the gifted) are hooked up to a satellite dish. That makes these gifted children capable of making connections that others don’t even know exist! Teaching those types of voracious minds in a regular classroom without enhancement is like feeding an elephant one blade of grass at time. You’ll starve them. – Elizabeth Meckstroth
The natural trajectory of giftedness in childhood is not a six-figure salary, perfect happiness, and a guaranteed place in Who’s Who. It is the deepening of the personality, the strengthening of one’s value system, the creation of greater and greater challenges for oneself, and the development of broader avenues for expressing compassion. – Counseling the Gifted and Talented, Dr. Linda K. Silverman, p. 22.
“The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive.
To him…
a touch is a blow,
a sound is a noise,
a misfortune is a tragedy,
a joy is an ecstasy,
a friend is a lover,
a lover is a god,
and failure is death.
Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create – - – so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him. He must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating.” – Pearl Buck
Unfortunately some people deny the fundamental role of acceleration in a program for the gifted. In so doing, they are in effect denying who and what defines the gifted at any stage of development – children who exhibit advanced intellectual development in one or more areas. – Joyce VanTassel-Baska, 1992
If they learn easily, they are penalized for being bored when they have nothing to do; if they excel in some outstanding way, they are penalized as being conspicuously better than the peer group. The culture tries to make the child with a gift into a one-sided person, to penalize him at every turn, to cause him trouble in making friends and to create conditions conducive to the development of a neurosis. Neither teachers, the parents of other children, nor the child peers will tolerate a Wunderkind. – Margaret Mead, 1954
Mildly, moderately, highly and extraordinarily gifted children are as different from each other as mildly, moderately, severely and profoundly retarded children are from each other, but the differences among levels of giftedness are rarely recognized. – Dr. Linda K. Silverman
To understand highly gifted children it is essential to realize that, although they are children with the same basic needs as other children, they are very different. Adults cannot ignore or gloss over their differences without doing serious damage to these children, for the differences will not go away or be outgrown. They affect almost every aspect of these children’s intellectual and emotional lives. A microscope analogy is one useful way of understanding extreme intelligence. If we say that all people look at the world through a lens, with some lenses cloudy or distorted, some clear, and some magnified, we might say that gifted individuals view the world through a microscope lens and the highly gifted view it through an electron microscope. They see ordinary things in very different ways and often see what others simply cannot see. Although there are advantages to this heightened perception, there are disadvantages as well. – Stephanie S. Tolan, Helping Your Highly Gifted Child
Boredom will always remain the greatest enemy of school disciplines. If we remember that children are bored, not only when they don’t happen to be interested in the subject or when the teacher doesn’t make it interesting, but also when certain working conditions are out of focus with their basic needs, then we can realize what a great contributor to discipline problems boredom really is. Research has shown that boredom is closely related to frustration and that the effect of too much frustration is invariably irritability, withdrawal, rebellious opposition or aggressive rejection of the whole show. – Fritz Redl, When We Deal With Children
Most teachers waste their time by asking questions which are intended to discover what a pupil does not know whereas the true art of questioning has for its purpose to discover what the pupil knows or is capable of knowing. – Albert Einstein
All of us do not have equal talent, but all of us should have an equal opportunity to develop our talent. – John F. Kennedy Civil Rights Address
Ain’t no man can avoid being born average, but there ain’t no man got to be common. – Satchel Paige
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, “Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous?” Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us. It is in everyone. And as we let our light shine, we give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others. – Marianne Williamson
SHOULD all kids do it? COULD all kids do it? WOULD all kids want to? If the answer to any of these questions is “yes” then it isn’t differentiated.. – Harry Passow’s test for a differentiated curriculum
Within the top 1% of the IQ distribution, then, there is at least as much spread of talent as there is in the entire range from the 1st to the 99th percentile. – Hal Robinson, The uncommonly bright child
Until every gifted child can attend a school where the brightest are appropriately challenged in an environment with their intellectual peers, America can’t claim that it’s leaving no child behind. – Jan and Bob Davidson with Laura Vanderkam, in Genius Denied
What is necessary and sufficient for the nongifted is necessary but insufficient for the gifted, who need more and different learning experiences to match their potentials. – A.J. Tannenbaum (Gifted Children: Psychological and Educational Perspectives, 1983)
Genius without education is like silver in the mine. – Benjamin Franklin
What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child. – George Bernard Shaw
Do not worry about your difficulties in mathematics. I can assure you that mine are still greater. – Albert Einstein
The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal. – Aristotle
I asked Mom if I was a gifted child. She said they certainly wouldn’t have PAID for me. – Calvin (Calvin & Hobbes)
The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity. – Albert Einstein
The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift. – Albert Einstein
