Columbus Cheetah, Myth Buster – Myth 2

In line with his New Year resolution, that in 2014 he will increase his efforts to bust the myths surrounding giftedness and advocate for acceleration and ability grouping opportunities for gifted students, and in preparation for a webinar and Global GT chat on Twitter for the next two weeks, Columbus Cheetah is updating his myth busting presentations.

Columbus Cheetah’s discussion of the myths surrounding giftedness are based in his own brand of cheetah logic and the wonderful analogy of the cheetah to the gifted person given in Stephanie Tolan’s wonderful article ‘Is it a Cheetah?’
http://www.stephanietolan.com/is_it_a_cheetah.htm

This myth seems very easy to dispel using Cheetah Logic.

Clearly not all students are gifted.  Gifted is a subset of the Students group in the same way as Cheetahs is a subset of the Animals group.

Sometimes ‘They are ALL gifted’ is intended to mean that all have special abilities.
It is an egalitarian and encouraging statement about the value of all the students.

Columbus does not deny the equal worth of each person and he does not deny that every person has areas of special ability.

However to say that all have equal abilities can be demonstrated to be false.

Sometimes ‘They are ALL gifted’ is worded as ‘We treat all the students as gifted’ either to indicate that the same excellent education is being given to all the students or to excuse the fact that no special provisions are being made for any students.

However ‘excellent education’ is not necessarily synonymous with ‘special provisions made for gifted students’. Suitable provisions made for gifted students could be quite unsuitable for the rest of the students in the class.

All students need, deserve and should have an excellent education.
Gifted students need education at the appropriate level and depth and pace.

 

This post has been nominated as one of the Gifted Homeschoolers Forum Rapid Responses to the topic “All children are gifted” To read more responses to this topic see
http://giftedhomeschoolers.org/resources/parent-and-professional-resources/articles/are-all-children-gifted/