Special School for Gifted Students : AGAINST

Should the Los Angeles schools establish a special high school for highly gifted students?

A group of San Fernando Valley educators and parents recently proposed such a school to members of the Board of Education. Two have said they like the idea.

The district has classes for exceptionally bright students in elementary and junior high schools. It has advanced placement courses for high school students but no special high school like, for example, the Bronx High School of Science in New York.

A proposal several years ago to create an L.A. County high school for the highly gifted was dropped for lack of countywide interest.

Q. Why shouldn’t there be a special high school to serve the super-bright?

A. I want to tell you a story. If an adult and a 4-year-old are walking down the street, the adult is going to get from point A to point B first. The child is going to weave in and out. He’s going to touch the cement. He’s going to put his hand in the mud. He’s going to watch the bugs on the street. He’s going to get to point B later.

To me, that is the student. Not the one who gets there first and picks up the award, but the one who explores the path. Some of the people involved in planning a school for the very high achieving student are looking for that student to get from point A to point B as rapidly as possible maybe to take an AP exam and pass it. You can learn to take tests. That does not make you an educated person.

Q. Proponents say that these students have special needs for academic challenges. Do you agree?

A. They certainly do have special needs. We have in our math-science magnet a very largepercentage of students who are gifted, highly gifted, super highly gifted, wonderfully gifted. What do we do with them?

We had a student here a couple years ago who was invited to go to Harvard in the 10th grade and his parents said, “No.” His IQ was over 220. We put him in an AP English class. And he was superb.

We thought: “What should we do for him next year? And what should we do for others like him?” We created a course called “Morality and Ethics Through Literature for the Scientific Student.” That course is a real wonder for the kids. They get upset because there are no right and wrong answers. They are put in the position of making moral and ethical judgments, and they are tormented by a teacher who is a master of the art. When they are through, they are thinkers. I don’t know what else you could ask.

So, the academic challenge is here. The students are pushed to their limits. We have high-powered math classes. We have university teachers who come on campus and teach and on and on and on. But what is here also is the real world. We are not in a cocoon. We’re not in a room with the shade down.

Q. What does that mean?

A. A good example. We have a group on this campus called the Evil Geniuses. The Evil Geniuses got themselves together and decided they were going to provide a tutoring service for the other students on the campus.

What I saw in the beginning was a group of arrogant students, a group of students who really didn’t have a lot of concern for those they were tutoring. They were really doing this so it would look good on their resumes. Well, they started tutoring. And, over a period of time, I could see that the arrogance changed to compassion. They became concerned that they may be dealing with a student who wants to learn, but really doesn’t have the capacity to pick up all of the nuances.

They came out of that realizing that there are other types of people around, that they must have some feeling of being humble in the sight of other human beings. They learned more from the experience than the students they are tutoring.

Many of our students come from programs for the highly gifted. They come here with an aura about them, a halo. And as they get older, they’ve got to respect the man who makes the bread and the one who takes out their garbage and everybody else that they encounter.

Q. What hard evidence that the needs of the brightest students are being met would you cite?

A. Our brightest students are very diversified in their needs. Many of our students in the math/science magnet take advantage of the performing arts magnet and become some of our best actors, some of our best writers, some of our best musicians. They are well-rounded. They are happy, and they are inquisitive. They do not put their noses up in the face of students who are not as able as they are.

They succeed when they go on to universities. And they succeed academically and emotionally as well. We have had a few kids here from the highly gifted programs who are emotional wrecks. One student even said to me: “We learned how to take tests, but we never learned how to think.”

Q. Let’s say I’m a parent. And I say to you: “My kid is special. He needs a special school.” What would you say?

A. I would say take a look at what’s available. There is the humanities magnet at Cleveland, the Zoo magnet, the business magnet, the college incentive program, our magnet. They all offer something very, very special.

The people running those magnets are concerned about every single student. And each student is served to the very best of our ability and, I think, well beyond what you could get in any cloistered situation.

I’m afraid some of the parents of highly gifted students become impressed with the label and take on the mantle of being the “parent of a highly gifted child.” They’ve got to realize what our philosophy is. We’re not in shock or astonished by a kid who can pass an advanced placement test. If they want their kids to be part of the Maalox crowd at the age of 40, OK.