EDUCATION
Higher aims for gifted underachievers
Conference to focus on specialized field that centers
on students who are not living up to their potential
Caroline Cohen is an underachiever and proud of it. As
a youth in New Rochelle, Cohen remembers the refrain on her elementary
school report cards. “It always had the same phrase. ‘Caroline is not
working up to her potential’ My mother said, ‘Why don't they get a
rubber stamp?’” recalled Cohen, 51. As it turned out, Cohen registered
an IQ of more than 130. And while she had trouble memorizing, say, state
capitals or verb tenses, she had an expansive vocabulary. Cohen, who now
lives in Connecticut, went on to earn a doctorate in gifted education
and is a consultant in the nascent field of helping underachieving
gifted students reach their potential. She, along with Capital Region
consultant Pat Schuler and others, is hosting a conference Friday and
Saturday on teaching gifted underachieving students.
In addition to regional and national experts in this
growing field, the conference at the University at Albany's East Campus
in Rensselaer will host Temple Grandin, a well-known author and
successful designer of livestock equipment. Grandin describes how she
overcame autism in her popular book, “Thinking in Pictures: and Other
Reports from My Life in Autism.”
Studying underachievers is not something taken from an
episode of “The Simpsons,” the TV cartoon series in which Bart Simpson
declares that he's an underachiever and proud of it. While there are no
hard and fast numbers, educators such as Schuler say they are seeing
more and more kids who could be considered gifted but who aren't
performing. “We specialize in working with a lot of bright kids and a
lot of them are underachievers for a lot of reasons,” said Schuler, a
former public school teacher who operates a consulting practice in
Rensselaer.
“The parents are concerned. They see that their kids
are unhappy. They are sad, they are depressed and they don't know what
to do,” Schuler said.
There is even an organization, Association for the
Education of Gifted Underachieving Students, that follows this issue and
is sponsoring the conference. The term underachiever predates “The
Simpsons” by several decades. Kids who weren't hitting their stride used
to be deemed lazy. Or, Cohen said, they would be classified under what
she joked was the highly technical term “dumb as a post.”
While Cohen said there may be kids who are simply
dull-minded or slothful, a better appreciation for varied learning
styles, as well as how the brain works, has given parents and teachers a
new understanding of why a child may be underachieving. “Some can't
achieve because of the way school is done,” said Cohen, explaining that
schools have yet to adjust their programs to the different ways in which
youngsters learn. There are any number of problems that could be holding
kids back, added Schuler. Some may suffer from depression and anxiety,
while others may have dyslexia, poor vision or hearing.
Some kids are such perfectionists that they become
paralyzed, while others stumble in their reading skills, even though
they may be talented in math or other fields. A typical scenario for
Schuler might work like this: a youngster has trouble reading and
writing but has a knack for designing mechanical devices or structures.
Schuler might give the child a set of Lego blocks and have the child
start building a small house or machine, while narrating what he is
thinking and doing. “While they are building they are talking, because
these kids learn by touching,” Schuler said.
Such a youth may be dyslexic or he may simply tend to
organize his thoughts in terms of pictures in his mind. Grandin, the
designer of stockyards and livestock pens, is an extreme example of
someone who sees concepts in terms of drawings or schematics in her
head.
Other students may have emotional problems that cause
them to act defiantly. Or perhaps they coast or ignore their school work
as a way of registering their unhappiness, added Schuler.
While underachieving students have always been with
us, helping such kids is particularly challenging these days due to the
recent emphasis on standardized tests, such as the fourth- and
eighth-grade English and math assessments and the high school Regents
exams given in New York. Preparing for such tests makes it doubly
difficult for teachers and schools to adapt their instruction to meet
the varied learning styles of students, said Schuler. However, others
say that adapting programs to individual learning styles shouldn't come
at the expense of academic standards.
Without some external measurement such as standardized
tests, the very concept of academic achievement could become so fuzzy
that it would be meaningless, suggested Justin Torres, research director
for the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, a Washington, D.C., educational
think tank that supports many back-to-basics ideas. Torres believes that
too many students in the United States aren't reaching basic academic
standards, as evidenced by test scores that show the nation lagging
behind foreign competitors such as South Korea and Singapore. “There is
a tendency to view underachievement in terms of what each person is
capable of doing,” said Torres, who believes that can serve as an excuse
for low scores.
Educators like Schuler and Cohen, though, say
acknowledging the existence of underachievers can help teachers better
tailor their methods to help such kids.
By Rick Karlin
23 April 2004
http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=241121
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