To head off the inevitable ... why not public schools? Jenine and I were both "gifted" students (that is, we could find our country on a map and count beyond our digits) and we figure our kids stand a good chance of being smart too. Our local public schools don't go into as much detail about their gifted programs as their "learning disability" kid programs on their web sites, which makes us nervous.
That said, we've got a great public school about 5 minutes from us. We're enrolling the kids there, too. We figure we'll start the enrollment now (some of these places have horrendous wait lists) and keep doing research and talking to parents and kids about their experiences at the various schools.
The one thing we don't want is the school our real estate agent had her kids in. The school tried to teach evolution as a "theory, side by side with the theory of Intelligent Design". BullSHIT! No school is wasting my kids' time with that crap.
--Nat
Skorts
pne on 2002-02-17T05:54:17
What's a skort? At first I thought they didn't know how to spell "skirt", but then I saw mention of "skirts" as well.
Re:Skorts
hfb on 2002-02-17T17:39:06
It's 'skirt + short = skort'. I have a few pair of these and they are really nice for bicycling in and avoiding the completely dorky look of tights.
Evolution
pudge on 2002-02-18T13:34:45
My problem is that, usually, evolution is taught as absolute fact and creation as myth. That's worse than teaching creationism and evolution on the same level, because you're teaching falsehoods (evolution as absolute fact) and closed-mindedness (creation as myth).
What they really should do is teach evolution as the standard way of envisioning how this all happened, then add "but we aren't entirely sure" and "we don't know what caused it all to happen in the first place." You don't even have to mention intelligent design, just don't teach that it's unreasonable.
Re:Evolution
jdavidb on 2002-02-18T18:32:34
That's about the most reasonable way I've ever heard of looking at it. Respect for alternative viewpoints. Cool.
gifted and disabled not excusive
jmm on 2002-02-18T15:30:33
Don't discount good support for disabled learning just because you have reasonable expectations of high achievement.
My son is doubly identified, both as gifted and as learning disabled. There was testing to confirm the disabled classification a couple of years after he had been classified into the gifted program. The test, while he was in grade 5, rated his reading and understanding capability at a university level, while his writing was at a grade 2 level. (The double identification is somewhat rare, but the magnitude of the discrepancy between his reading and writing was the conclusive element.) The additional support he receives because of the disabled classification has helped him immensely in working within and around his limitations, while he continues to thrive in the gifted program.
