GIFTED CHILDREN'S PROGRAMS: A MATTER OF CLASS
Published: May 6, 1990
(Page 5 of 5)
Even though some of the financing is designed to reduce ''minority group isolation,'' minority children do not have to be represented in these classes in proportion to their presence in the school community. On the national level, black children account for 16.2 percent of all school children, but only 8 percent of those are identified as gifted.
IF THE I.Q. TEST GOES the way of phrenology, how are we to find, nourish and cultivate the gifts and talents in our children? Once, when I was pressing Dean Rich of the Hunter Campus Schools about the elementary school's continued use of the I.Q. test, the dean got exasperated. ''Look,'' she said, ''do you know the work of Howard Gardner? Do you know his book 'Frames of Mind'? We're interested in his work. And do you know the work of Robert Sternberg, the Yale psychologist? Him, too.'' She held the names up as if she were brandishing a cross to ward off demons.
Today, these are indeed the names to brandish, along with Renzulli's. ''I was considered to be the screaming liberal of the business,'' Renzulli says. ''And then when people like Gardner and Sternberg started to say the same things I was saying, the fabled I.Q. guard in the field softened up, and I started to get more respect.'' Whether the regard for this triad of academics is sincere or cynical, they have been pushed to the head of the parade for offering a broader, more inclusive definition of intelligence - and hence giftedness.
Howard Gardner, a developmental psychologist and professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, has become well known for his view, which first grew out of his research with children and stroke victims, that there are distinct and autonomous intelligences. Gardner calls these ''multiple intelligences'' and identifies them as logical-mathematical, linguistic, musical, spatial, bodily kinesthetic, interpersonal and intrapersonal.
These days, Gardner is assured a place on every scholarly bibliography, a seat on any educational dias he chooses and a citation on every grant application. ''If we're talking about gifted,'' says a source close to the Javits bill, ''Gardner and Sternberg are the coins of the realm in the cutting-edge conversations.''
''I don't have a specific interest in giftedness,'' says Gardner. ''My theory has sort of become a buzz-thing, like 'right brain-left brain.' '' Does he believe that those who buzz it understand it? ''I think it's unrealistic to think that one administrator in one school system reading one book will fully understand the theory. But,'' he adds, ''it's not something I worry about very much. I can't afford to lose too much sleep over the uses people might make of my ideas.''
Robert Sternberg says, ''I just go where my interests lead me.'' In recent years, they've led him to his ''triarchic'' theory of intelligence. Essentially, Sternberg wants to look, first, at the ''components'' of intelligence and how they function; second, at intelligence in relation to experience, as in how quickly a novel task can become automatic, and third, at intelligence in relation to everyday life - not just how smart people are in a vacuum but how well they succeed in finding a match between their strengths and the slice of the world they inhabit.
Both men are already affecting how children are identified as gifted. One successful Javits grant applicant cited Gardner (and, for good measure, Renzulli) for a project devoted to selecting children with talent in dance and music. They have asked for $930,000 over a three-year period.
Meanwhile, a few tendrils that grow out of Sternberg's theory have already found their way into Hunter Elementary's testing. One is Sternberg's interest in context. ''Vocabulary,'' he has written, ''is such a good measure of intelligence because it measures, albeit indirectly, children's ability to acquire information in context.'' Now Hunter's test, designed by Nancy Goldman, an educational consultant, may include telling children a story with selected ''nonsense'' words in place of real words and asking them to suggest what sensible words might be substituted.
One year, Goldman treated the children to a concrete variation of a problem devised by Sternberg, an ''insight'' problem involving mathematical thinking, but not computational skill. In Sternberg's words, the question is: ''If you have black socks and brown socks in your drawer, mixed in the ratio of 4 to 5, how many socks will you have to take out to make sure of having a pair of the same color?''
In adapting this problem, Nancy Goldman got three pairs of socks - each pair respectively adorned with the face of Goofy, Donald and Mickey - and put them in a paper bag. After making sure that the children being tested understood ''pairs,'' she asked them how many dips into the bag (without looking) it would take before they could be sure of having two socks that made a matched pair.
''I can solve that easy,'' one child told Goldman. Then he took the bag and dumped all the socks out. ''Here's a matching pair'' he said. Goldman thought the child had aced the question and so, too, when he was told, did Sternberg. Some people might feel that the child had simply disregarded the rules of the question, but for Sternberg real-life creativity involves innovation, even changing the nature of the question.
Would that one could as easily ace questions about bright children. For what is the point of broadening the definition of ''giftedness'' if in the end finances are not available to nurture all these gifts? All that will happen is that there will be an increased number of children competing for a fixed amount of money. All children have strengths in need of nurture, but - with all due respect to the Congress and the ''Education President,'' George Bush - a Federal budget that allocates to primary and secondary education less than 1 percent of its resources isn't putting its money where its mouth is.
Still, Robert Sternberg is a practical man, all for reaching into the drawer while it's open. ''Interest in gifted children comes in cycles,'' he says, ''and I'll take my opportunities as they come. We're living in a time of chaotic problems. We're starting to lose the ozone layer. Where is the future of business, new products, science, technology, new computers? I really do think it's with the children we might call gifted.''
And if their parents don't sort their socks before they put them in the drawer, by the way, the children will have to pull out no more than three socks to get a matched pair. Two, if they keep their eyes open.
Photos: Students in classes for the gifted at P.S. 163, left, and the Hunter College elementary School in Manhattan, above. (Sara Krulwich/The New York Times) (pg. 48-49); Children in a class for the gifted in P.S. 163 work on computers. Their teacher, Sheri Lynn Behr, says her class has more creative math programs than other first-graders in the school. (Sara Krulwich/The New York Times) (pg. 74)