Beware of Schools Bearing "Gifted" Programs

A debate has been raging in New York City, and elsewhere, about the future of gifted and talented (G&T) programs.  Outgoing Mayor Bill de Blasio believes they should be scrapped.  His likely successor, Eric Adams, intends to keep them, albeit with vague intentions to make them more diverse.

Both men are responding to many years of criticism that Black and Latinx students are woefully underrepresented, just as they are in New York’s most prestigious specialized public high schools like Stuyvesant and Bronx Science.   Both G&T and the specialized schools admit students on the basis of test scores.  In the G&T instance, the tests are given to 4 year-olds, spawning a small industry of kiddie test prep.  

The G&T and specialized schools tests are a very poor measure of qualities that matter in child development.  Our society persists in the myth that standardized language and math tests are the gold standard in assessing ability and, sadly to some extent, human worth.  

The arguments are entirely political with understandable objections to segregation, inequity, racial bias in the testing instruments and disproportionate distribution of scant resources.  True, true, true and true.  But the argument they should be having is whether these programs are good education.  

And the answer is a resounding “NO!”

Some years ago I wrote to the distinguished scholar Jerome Bruner, asking a question I have long since forgotten.  Bruner, inarguably one of the most important cognitive psychologists in history, surprised me with a nearly instant response - totally unrelated to my query.

Prompted by my self-identification as the head of a school, Bruner wrote several hundred words passionately declaring what he believed, after decades of research and observation, to be the most damaging aspect of American education:  the incessant drive to make kids do too much, too soon.

New York-born Bruner (1915-2016) is widely considered one of the founders of cognitive psychology.  He was acutely aware of learning as a social experience, describing the importance of relationships and interaction to the construction of knowledge and, particularly, increasingly sophisticated language acquisition.

Bruner was advisor to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, quite likely as a result of his book, The Process of Education. Therein he wrote, “Knowing how something is put together is worth a thousand facts about it.” Perhaps no single sentence better captures the essential contrast between a progressive education and a traditional approach.

First, Bruner declared in his lovely rant, the pressure of academic work on young children will inevitably lead to great frustration. This frustration can have devastating cognitive and psychological consequences. Among them is to make learning and school unpleasant for children. Short-term unpleasantness is bad enough, because it can quickly lead to a lifetime aversion to any school environment. Of even greater significance is that frustration is accompanied by elevation of cortisol levels in the brain. Both fear and frustration – companion emotions when children are in the presence of stern teachers with “high expectations” – drive cortisol levels higher. And high levels of cortisol inhibit learning. Another key hormone, dopamine, is critical because it facilitates motivation and learning, yet stress depletes dopamine.  

But Bruner’s second point is more important and less obvious. He wrote that a collateral effect of pressing children to do early academic work is to reward conformity – a particularly damaging kind of conformity. When confronted with the demands of accelerated academic work, young children rapidly determine that learning consists of pleasing the authoritative adult in the learning environment. This is true at home as well as school. Young children, having no significant capacity for critical or abstract thought, will want to find the “right” answer whenever questioned by a teacher, parent or caregiver. Providing the desired response, even if only by trial and error, will draw positive reinforcement. 

Receiving praise or affirmation from a powerful adult is a near-aphrodisiac to a child. While Bruner is not specifically a behaviorist, this conditioning over time has a major effect on children. School becomes a place where getting answers “right,” in the estimable opinion of the teacher, is the only thing that really matters. Other cognitive and psychological behaviors are weakened or extinguished in the service of praise-seeking.

There is little evidence that any good comes from these programs to counter the concerns Bruner cites.  Yes, many of these kids do well subsequently, but that is an associational, not cause and effect, relationship.  Kids who test well will often, not always, continue to test well.  There is no evidence that they would have grown dumber if not for the G&T programs.   

I’ve known many students whose IQ-type intelligence - as Howard Gardner calls it - is off the charts.  What benefitted them most was not accelerated math or other things that were inherent strengths.  They gained most from stretching their expressive capacities, learning from other students who were eccentric and imaginative, trying things they hadn’t before and learning their place in a diverse world.  Some of them had “escaped” from gifted programs and were quite grateful to find what they were missing.  They didn’t “lose” their individual abilities; they took advanced classes, scored well on the SAT and ACT and went to the most selective colleges - if they wanted to. 

Many parents of these children complain that their kids are “bored” in regular school.  While I could aptly quip, “What kid doesn’t say she is bored in school?”, I more germanely suggest that “kids bored in school” is reason to examine the school, not pluck some kids out of it.

These programs do one thing well: they make parents feel good about their kids.  Smug, even!  

I’ll end with an anecdote.  Years ago the parents of a third grade boy bugged teachers and me constantly, complaining that their son was insufficiently challenged.  In truth, he was quite bright in conventional ways, but delightfully clueless and most in need of social development.  He had internalized their neurotic quest and one day, while I was observing his class, blurted out, “My mother thinks my homework is too easy!”  The teacher, to her undying credit, responded, sotto voce, “Tell your mother I’ll send her some harder homework to do.”

Perhaps we can enroll the most ambitious parents in a gifted and talented program and leave their children to have a normal childhood.