Programs May Be a Stroke of Genius : Education: As courses for the gifted dwindle in public schools, colleges begin to pick up the slack.
Lim Haut Chye, 10 years old and 4 1/2-feet tall, came from Brazil to plow through a year of college science in three weeks.
Jahmal McNair, a District of Columbia 12-year-old, is also enrolled at Johns Hopkins University and the world’s largest program for gifted children. He is studying the Pythagorean theorem and figuring the proofs of rational numbers. “Nobody here calls me a geek or nerd; they just called me by my name,” he said.
While many children their age are whiling away the idle days of July and August playing baseball or cruising a mall, more than 4,500 young “geniuses” are going to college. They earned a place by taking the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), designed for 18-year-olds entering college, and scoring five grades ahead of their age.
This fast-paced program for exceptionally bright youngsters is bucking a national trend. Across the country, many “gifted” programs are being cut back or dropped for financial or ideological reasons.
Even in well-off areas, gifted programs have had their budgets slashed in half in the last couple of years. Some of the cuts reflect poor economic times, others are based on fears that average and poor students are shortchanged when the gifted are singled out for special attention. If there is any special emphasis, it should be on the worst students, others contend. Some worry that minorities have too often been excluded from fast-track programs.
Parents of bright students, however, have different concerns. If their child’s school will not provide advanced work, parents are willing to pay hundreds, even thousands, of dollars for the increasing number of college programs designed for smart youngsters.
More than 60,000 fifth-, sixth- and seventh-graders this year took the SAT for the program, which Johns Hopkins runs on seven college campuses across the country. About 20% did well enough to qualify for the program, which costs $700 for commuters and $1,600 for those who need room and board.
“It feels strange at first, but you get used to it,” said Lim, chatting matter of factly about being in college while others his age are in fifth grade.
Then he adjusted the laboratory goggles on his tiny face and continued mixing compounds, discussing nanometers and graphing the travel of light. When lunchtime came, he flung his blue backpack across his slim shoulder and walked among the huge red brick campus dormitories. At 50 pounds, he makes Doogie Howser look middle-aged.
“Every kid needs an appropriate challenge,” said Ben Reynolds, academic coordinator for the Center for Talented Youth at Johns Hopkins. “Really, what we are doing is what the one-room schoolhouse did: gear the instruction up or down according to their abilities.”
In the race to best the Russians in the post-Sputnik era, America spent a sizable portion of its money and energy on its brightest. But according to the U.S. Education Department, less than 1% of the education money spent nationally in 1990 went specifically to high-achieving youngsters.
Even that sum appears to be declining, said Pat O’Connell Ross, director of the Education Department’s gifted and talented program. “It’s a trend, and it’s sort of scary,” said Joseph S. Renzulli, director of the National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented based at the University of Connecticut.
Whether times are good or bad, many educators believe that it is just not smart to turn your back on that much brainpower. They talk about Mozart composing at 12 and Picasso painting at 14.
“Imagine if this country could field in the decade of the 1990s, 10 Jonas Salks, 10 Thomas Edisons, or 10 Rodgers and Hammersteins,” Renzulli said. “Think of what it would do for productivity.”
