Is Gifted Education Worth It? Who Should We Ask?

Questions about the value of gifted education have seen a lot of recent attention in the news recently. This recent contribution to the conversation stands out for me because of the gaps in logic:

Four gifted writers share doubts about gifted education - http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/four-gifted-writers-share-doubts-about-gifted-education/2014/06/14/ec8f2228-f31a-11e3-9ebc-2ee6f81ed217_story.html

A few thoughts in response:

1. Gifted doesn't just mean good at what they do or creative. The proliferation of definitions makes this difficult to discern, I understand.

2. Not only is your sample one of convenience, you've asked people who were never formally identified as gifted what they think of the formal program that they didn't participate in (save one).

3. Gifted education advocates that I know would not disagree with the assertion that gifted children would benefit from the opportunity to explore their interests rather than a highly-structured curriculum.

A better piece might first take a critical look at the definition of giftedness. There are certainly lots of opportunities to poke holes in gifted education just because of the proliferation of definitions and the curricula developed (and sold) to support them.

Next, a better piece might ask gifted persons who were part of a GT curriculum what worked and what didn't. It might ask those that weren't identified for their perspective from the outside looking in.

Lastly, a better piece might take a closer look at what is actually advocated by scholars in gifted education, rather than punching a straw man argument.

Maybe someday I'll have the time and opportunity to write that better piece. For now, this critical response will have to do.

Distractions

I took holiday most of this week to prepare for and attend Holy Week services. Thursday morning, the first day that our church had a daytime service, I got distracted and missed it. Here's what happened: I got up, took the boys to school, went to meet the farmer from whom I buy eggs, then I went to work. I knew that I was on holiday, but I had a project that had been nagging me, and I wanted to put it to bed. I thought: "since I'm on vacation, I have the liberty to focus on just this one thing." About 9:00 AM I realized that I was late for a Vesperal Liturgy that had begun at 8:00 AM. I dropped what I was doing and made it to church in time to hear father give the dismissal.

St. Isaac the Syrian, the namesake of my youngest son said, "This life has been given to you for repentance. Why waste it in vain pursuits?" Certainly my livelihood isn't a vain pursuit, but when I allow it to exceed the bounds of the time I've set aside for prayer and reflection, work can become a hindrance to my spiritual growth. While I'm confessing, I ought to add that it is probably pride that motivated the desire to work on the project. If I left well-enough alone, I might realize that I am not indispensable.

Even in writing this post I've been distracted half a dozen times since I first thought to put pen to paper (so to speak) Thursday morning. I recently read (on someone's blog? on Facebook?) a very helpful practice that I've adopted and which is the reason this post exists. When an idea worth holding onto pops into my head but would distract me from something more important (usually from my prayers), I ask the Theotokos to help me remember it.

In his excellent book, Great Lent, Fr. Alexander Schmemann gives a detailed explanation of the Lenten prayer of St. Ephraim the Syrian.

O Lord and master of my life!
Take from me the spirit of sloth, faint-heartedness, lust for power and idle talk.
But give rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience and love to Thy servant.
Yea, O Lord and King!
Grant me to see my own faults and not to judge my brother;
For thou art blessed unto ages of ages. Amen

Fr. Alexander identifies in an expansive understanding of chastity an antidote to distraction:

The exact and full translation of the Greek sofrosini and the Russian tselodmudryie ought to be whole-mindedness. Sloth is, first of all, dissipation, the brokenness of our vision and energy, the inability to see the whole. Its opposite then is precisely wholeness. If we usually mean by chastity the virtue opposed to sexual depravity, it is because the broken character of our existence is nowhere better manifested than in sexual lust--the alienation of the body from the life and control of the spirit. Christ restores wholeness in us and He does so by restoring in us the true scale of values by leading us back to God.

For several years now I have been pursuing what I think of as my own "theory of everything," a satisfactory and robust explanatory framework for my subjective experience. I think part of that impulse derives from an innate desire for this "whole-mindedness" that Fr. Alexander speaks of. I am still working toward understanding what Christ said to Martha, "One thing is needful."

It is difficult in modern American society to find that kind of focus. We have built an economy in which "the dollar is sacred and power is god." Even when I try to focus on that one needful thing, I find myself wanting for my boys to have an excellent education, to make brilliant contributions to the academy, to be financially secure so that I can finally devote my attention to preparation for an encounter with the Living God in the Eucharist. Instead of the other way around.

The ever-expanding influence of technology in our lives has made these distractions even harder to ignore. I purposefully do not use headphones, and I don't listen to the radio in my car, but I walk around with an electronic leash and an entire world of (mis)information in my pocket. We have the opportunity to be completely absorbed from the time we wake till the time we sleep by flashy, interesting, titillating, and mind-numbing audio and video. It is little wonder that our lack of concentration has become pathological and we now need medication to focus, to sleep, to not be overwhelmed in despair. As I've noted before, I think Marx only called religion the opiate of the masses because he had not seen television. In Spanish, the word fun translates as divertida. That same root for diversion begs the question: from what is our attention being diverted?

I read an article from NPR this week in which Jonah Lehrer describes how technological innovation has created an instance of cascading interventions. We are certainly served very well by our technologies, but it is when we become the servants of our technology that we have a problem. It has been in thinking about this relationship this week that I've come to understand what the Fathers mean by not being ruled by the passions. In our fallen state, with the image of God disfigured in us, we have to give extra effort to have a focused vision of God. Our lack of focus gives entree to the Deceiver to suggest distractions, but we do not have to be ruled by those suggestions.

The Church, our spiritual hospital, offers remedies for us when plagued by spiritual maladies. The instruction to pray, fast, give to the poor, read the scriptures, attend worship services and otherwise prepare ourselves for communion that might, from the outside, seem like an onerous burden turns out to be the disciplines needed to have a single vision of the life that Christ wants for us. The passage in John's gospel where Christ tells us that He has come that we might have a more abundant life does not (I believe) refer to material wealth. A life that is free of distraction helps us realize our life's purpose: communion with God.

May you be richly blessed as you complete your journey to the empty tomb!


The light of the body is the eye: therefore when thine eye is single, thy whole body also is full of light; but when thine eye is evil, thy body also is full of darkness. - Luke 11:34

Creativity as a Transcendent Act

Over the last year I had the opportunity to "teach" two groups of University Scholars in a Faculty Mentor Group for the first time along with my good friend J. Vincent Scarpace. This seminar program is not new, it has been a cornerstone of the Texas A&M University Honors Program developmental scholarship program for some time, and is often cited by students as one of the most rewarding experiences of their undergraduate careers.

The idea for this seminar had its genesis in a conversation that J. Vincent and I started on Facebook. The topic of this conversation was a quote from Madeline L'Engle's book Walking on Water: Reflections of Faith and Art in which she quotes Bishop KALLISTOS Ware from an undated issues of Sobornost magazine:

"...an abstract composition by Kandinsky or Van Gogh’s landscape of the cornfield with birds… is a real instance of divine transfiguration, in which we see matter rendered spiritual and entering into the 'glorious liberty of the children of God.' This remains true, even when the artist does not personally believe in God. Provided he is an artist of integrity, he is a genuine servant of the glory which he does not recognize, and unknown to himself there is “something divine” about his work. We may rest confident that at the last judgment the angels will produce his works of art as testimony on his behalf." - p. 30

L'Engle further develops this concept of being a servant to a greater truth:

If the work comes to the artist and says, "Here I am, serve me," then the job of the artist, great or small, is to serve. The amount of the artist's talent is not what it is about. Jean Rhys said to an interviewer in the Paris Review, "Listen to me. All of writing is a huge lake. There are great rivers that feed the lake, like Tolsoy and Dostoyevsky. And there are mere trickles, like Jean Rhys. All that matters is feeding the lake. I don't matter. The lake matters. You must keep feeding the lake."

To feed the lake is to serve, to be a servant. Servant is another unpopular word, a word we have derided by denigrating servants and service. To serve should be a privilege, and it is to our shame that we tend to think of it as a burden, something to do if you're not fit for anything better or higher.

I have never served a work as it ought to be served; my little trickle adds hardly a drop of water to the lake, and yet it doesn't matter; there is no trickle too small. Over the years I have come to recognize that the work often know more than I do. And with each book I start, I have hopes that I may be helped to serve it a little more fully. The great artists, the rivers and tributaries, collaborate with the work, but for most of us, it is our privilege to be its servant. ---
When the artist is truly the servant of the work, the work is better than the artist; Shakespeare knew how to listen to his work, and so he often wrote better than he could write; Bach composed more deeply, more truly than he knew; Rembrandt's brush put more of the human spirit on canvas than Rembrandt could comprehend.
When the work takes over, then the artist is enabled to get out of the way, not to interfere. When the work takes over, then the artist listens. p. 23-24

J. Vincent, in our original conversation, had taken exception to the audacious notion that the talent of an artist, regardless of belief, was supposed to be co-opted for a purpose he might not support. For my part, I read Bp. KALLISTOS' commentary as incredibly generous in its orthodoxy. Since we all know that a contentious argument is perfect to draw interest, we figured this would be the place to start

We asked the students in our seminar to consider the following questions: can good art provide a transcendent experience? What agency (if any) does the artist have in expressing something transcendent?

We spent time in our early discussions laying the groundwork for exploring these concepts by asking the students to come up with a working definition of transcendence to inform future discussions. We engaged the idea of transcendence from the perspective of several different faith backgrounds, as well as a perspective of non-belief, and the students came up with the following:

Transcendence - The subjective experience of moving beyond one’s current state. - Fall 2010

Transcendence - the convergence between universal truth and human experiences. - Spring 2011

J. Vincent provided the students with instruction in the seven basic elements of art (line, shape, color, value, texture, perspective and composition), and then we turned them loose in his studio. Their mission: to produce an a work of art at the end of the semester that expressed their concept of Transcendence.

We had the good fortune to have a show for the students' artwork this past May at the Village Cafe in Downtown Bryan. It was truly rewarding to see the students take pride in their work and share it with their peers.

They had this to say about their experience:

This course was designed to allow us, through discussion and actual painting, to discover our interpretation of Transcendence and really understand the different motivations behind art. We also studied different types of art and postulated about some of the different motivations and goals of the artist. Overall, this was a very enriching experience of how the other side lives. - Fall 2010

As social animals, humans seek to share experiences. However, humans are to some extent handicapped by languages like English or Mandarin that lack universality. The elements of art, as they are not situated in any one culture, may instead serve as the grammar of a universal language. This semester, we have sought to understand how artists have employed this universal truth system to express diverse human experiences (transcending communicative limitations) and ultimately, how we too may employ this universal language to share our own experiences. - Spring 2011

One student went even further and wrote his own essay summarizing the experience. He has continued to process the ideas from our seminar and turned his essay into a blog post about the experience here.

This is my summary of the experience:

One of the most satisfying aspects of participating in a University Scholars Faculty Mentor Group is the concrete realization of what it means to be in a “community of learners.” The topics and discussions we visited in our meetings were subjects that I revisited throughout the last year: at work, with my children, and in my own scholarly and creative production.

I’ve realized that education is providing access to new technologies, machines—yes—but also processes, theories, literatures, all of which have idiosyncratic languages. At our best, educators demonstrate that these technologies exist, introduce their use, and perhaps even engage discussion about whether they should be used.

When we are really successful, our students are aware that technologies might exist to solve questions they have not yet asked, how to find those technologies, and begin critically evaluating the ethics of those technologies. None of this would be possible without pushing the students to explore an uncomfortable subject or situation in the relatively safe setting of a classroom to give confidence so that they can do more of that exploration on their own.