Homeschooling the Gifted

No other educational option accommodates the wide range of abilities of gifted children as well as homeschooling. Gifted homeschoolers can move ahead without skipping a grade. They can learn math at high school level while enjoying sixth-grade books. Or they can take their time through high school and study topics of interest in depth rather than going to college early. A few profoundly gifted children homeschool because they are ready for college-level work before they reach middle school. In all cases, these children fit perfectly in no single grade, and homeschooling doesn't force them to try.
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Many people assume that gifted children are advanced evenly in all areas, so there should be no problem with simply letting them skip a grade, but this is not the case. They might be years ahead of other children in one or two subjects, but at grade level or even below grade level in others. Some are advanced in almost every subject academically yet their sensitivities prevent them from socializing with older children. They have a hard time fitting into any one group comfortably.

-Lisa Rivero, "The Homeschooling Option"

Rivero makes some very good points about homeschooling the gifted as well as homeschooling in general. I would add, however, that this is even more critical for the gifted/LD child.

In my experience, there are things done in homeschooling that simply cannot be done in a more structured setting. The primary example is changing curriculum. Most public schools cater to the auditory-sequential learner both in lecture and even in the format of the textbooks. Some teachers, probably those who themselves are visual-spatial, may be able to fill in the gaps for those learners who are at a disadvantage in this environment. Most likely, these types of teachers are going to be a minority.

My son is visual-spatial and has either a very strong preference to learn this way or an actual learning disability that prevents him from learning using auditory-sequential methods. The gist of this is that he learns at slightly above grade-level in a classroom. There used to be a significant difference between his IQ scores and aptitude testing. However, when the material is presented in a different manner, he suddenly started getting ahead. In fact, the gap between what he's learning and what the average child in our school district has learned increases every year. In one area this past year, his rate of growth was five times that of the average child in our district.

The change happened, however, when we were homeschooling and switched to a different curriculum. Suddenly things clicked. Unfortunately, that is not a modification that can be made in normal classroom. When a child doesn't understand something, the assumption is that he or she isn't trying or has difficulty learning. Both can be true, but the teacher doesn't have the option of trying different curriculum. Unless the teacher understands the way the child learns and has a good grasp on how to present it, any attempt to modify the presentation may not benefit the child, either.

The standing assumption seems to be that if they aren't learning in the current environment, they aren't capable of learning any better in a different environment. I imagine this stifles the intellectual growth of hordes of students, not just the gifted.

This is not the fault of the teachers. I've seen teachers very frustrated because they know what a child needs but cannot provide it based on the requirements that are dictated by school boards or other entities. The ever present standards and requirements are like the little devil on the shoulder saying, "You can't go out of your way for this child. You'll get in trouble." I feel very sorry for most teachers in this position.

On the other hand, John Taylor Gatto was in the same position. His philosophy, however, seemed to be that the child's individual needs were more important than the mandates of the school boards. Because of his approach to teaching, he won some very notable awards. It's unfortunate there aren't more teachers like him. However, schools are not likely to attract risk-takers. The risk-takers are the ones more likely to pull their children out of school.

The Manual on Child-Rearing

Few parents realize that nurturing their children's gifts- including advocating in their children's schools - is an ongoing, time-consuming process. It's also crucial. Research shows that parents play a more important role in the development of a child's gifts than schools. A supportive, advocating parent can make the difference between a meaningful education and wasted years.

- Jan and Bob Davidson with Laura Vanderkam, "Genius Denied: How to Stop Wasting Our Brightest Young Minds"

If there was a manual written for child-rearing, the first thing is should say is that raising children is time-consuming. I really had no idea how time-consuming it would end up being when I had my first child. Advocating for my son eventually became so time-consuming, emotionally draining, overwhelming, and, most unfortunately, utterly fruitless that I relented and began homeschooling.

I realized that I would spend less time in a week teaching my child than I would dealing with teachers and the emotional repercussions of the well-intentioned but harmful diagnosis being thrown at him. I was getting calls nearly daily about one problem or another. I got the usual lines about how giftedness had nothing to do with this, "all our children are gifted", etc.

My initial experience homeschooling was not as productive as it could have been. Like most new homeschoolers, it took me a couple years to realize that boxed curriculum and "one-size fits all" learning did not work for me or my son. The books in the boxed curriculum were read and absorbed at an amazingly high rate. A month later, the books were done and the rest of the materials were left untouched. At that point, I realized that if I wanted my son to learn something, I should hand him a book and ask questions later.

The biggest lesson I've taken from homeschooling is that, for every topic, there is a faster, more enjoyable way of learning than is generally done in the schools. The problem, however, is that method may be different for each child. Unfortunately, most teachers do not have the time to find the way that works for each individual child. They are also required to have the child produce some sort of work that "proves" they learned something.

I'm beginning to think that schools go about this whole process incorrectly. I wonder what would happen if the classroom became an environment where children were provided materials they needed to learn and then were able to demonstrate their learned knowledge in ways where they were more comfortable. I think much of our current system is about checking off a list of things a child should do while not actually caring if this helps develop the skills or the desire necessary for life-long learning.

It may not be perfect...

Our educational system has often generated mediocrity except for gifted athletes. From kindergarten, children are bombarded with pressures that urge them to modify their behavior and intellectual development toward the average of the group. Gifted children throughout our society may be trapped in an intellectual wasteland - a world that can be cruel to the gifted (Garfield, 1980).

-Webb, Meckstroth, and Tolan. "Guiding the Gifted Child: A Practical Source for Parents and Teachers."

I get very tired reading screeds against homeschooling because almost always, the person who is opposed to homeschooling ignores two very important things about public schools: (1) all except the most progressive public schools cannot or will not meet the educational needs of advanced children, and (2) the "socialization" that is present in public schools can be very harmful to the emotional well-being of gifted children.

If you bring up these points, the response to (1) is that gifted children will get along fine. They ignore the fact that gifted children will very often spend 50% of their time in school waiting for the other kids to catch up. They learn not to be challenged. The notion that children should always be with their same-age peers overrides the notion that these children have advanced intellectual needs and can feel like they're starving while waiting for something challenging.

The response to (2) is usually something that it is the gifted child who is "screwed up" and needs to learn to get along with other kids. It is completely ignored that school is the only place in the world where someone is forced to sit in a classroom with people of their same age but who may otherwise have nothing in common. It is also ignored that such a system is very intolerant of differences.

The emotional repercussions of such a system are horrible. Gifted children, at the very least, never learn how to put forth effort. When they finally do encounter a challenge (usually in college), they may have to deal with a lot of frustration. Some of this frustration can actually cause them to quit college. Never having been challenged can make them feel like they are stupid and can't cut it.

At the other end, you could have anger. In the book, "Misdiagnosis and Dual Diagnosis of Gifted Children," they discuss the prevalence of gifted students among students who have been the perpetrators of school shootings. These children are teased and harassed to the point of wanting to take other people's lives. Fortunately those that get this angry are relatively rare, but the consequences are, quite literally, deadly if the anger becomes too much.

What is most frustrating is that the people opposed to homeschooling do not provide alternatives for children with these needs. (They also ignore that some of these issues affect even non-gifted children.) They just say that the public school isn't perfect but it is certainly better than homeschooling. I wonder if they would feel any differently if it were their children going through these kinds of problems.

Carnival of Homeschooling