Dick Kantenberger

From: Catherine K. Flynn
Founder, Principal, Teacher
Glacier Waldorf School
Kalispell, Montana
ckflynn@montanasky.net
www.glacierwaldorf.org

Date: Friday, May 1,20096:42:35 AM

Subject: Why Waldorf does not follow the current trend of pushing early reading

Hello everyone,
As a Waldorf teacher immersed in my own little magical world of the fun adventure of education with my class, I was rather shocked to hear of a program in the public schools called "Reading Without Tears." How sad! I thought. Childhood is challenging enough in this day and age. Providing our children with the best possible educational experience, one that is well rounded in helping them
develop on all levels, not just as automaton readers or test takers, is essential, and really a gift: a gift of a happy childhood. Here is some more good info about the pitfalls of pushing early reading. Dr.Johnson's website has a lot more great articles too. She went through Waldorf teacher training as a
result of what she was seeing in her pediatric practice, and saw how Waldorf offered the best in education for children. Developmentally appropriate, soul-enriching, joy-filled, nature-based, artistically expressive, and downright fun! Truly a wonder-full education.
Warm regards,
Catherine
Glacier Waldorf School - Dedicated to Preserving the Wonder of Childhood

Part II: Teaching Children to Write, Read, and Spell
2/28/09
by Susan R. Johnson MD, FAAP
www.AHealingPlaceForChildren.com

#1 Question: If I am understanding what you wrote in Part I, children that are preschool age or in kindergarten should not be pushed to write, read or spell because it might create learning disabilities in the future?

Answer: Yes, this is true. Most young children, less than 7 years of age, have not finished developing their neurological pathways for writing, reading and spelling. First, children need to have fully developed their proprioceptive system so they can visualize and imprint in their memory the exact shapes of the letters and numbers they see. Next, in order to read with comprehension and spell, children need to have developed their right brain for visual recognition of small words (e.g., if, the, is, are, were, at, etc.) and their left brain for phonetics,the ability to match a letter or letters to particular sounds. In addition, these children also need
to have developed their bridge pathway or corpus callosum for simultaneous communication between the right and left sides or hemispheres of their brain. When all of these pathways for reading are developed, a child will be able to instantaneously recognize small words by sight using their right brain, sound out larger words phonetically using their left brain and create imaginative pictures for the words they are sounding out, another activity of the right brain. When these reading pathways are fully developed, these children will be able to read
fluently, make internal pictures of the words and sentences they are reading, comprehend what they are reading, and have a visual memory that enables them to spell more easily.

Now if young children especially 4, 5 and 6 years of age are pushed to read or spell,
they can only do this activity by using their right brain since the left brain and bilateral integration of their cerebral hemispheres has not fully developed. These children will try and read all words by sight memory. They will look at the first and last letters of a word and make a guess. A word like stop could be read as stamp, stump, or step. The right brain is working so hard trying to visually figure out the shape of each word, both large and small, that it is no longer available for creating internal pictures of the words. These children still may read
fluently, but they won't be able to sound out words, spell or have lasting comprehension. The right brain reading pathway becomes overworked and the children will end up being just sight readers with poor spelling and poor comprehension. Later on, these children often get labeled as having nonverbal learning disabilities since they have bright minds but aren't performing in reading, spelling, and also math (especially word problems that rely on children's internal picture making capacities to solve the problem).

Another area of difficulty is writing. Often children's hands do not separate from each other until after ages 6 or 7. Prior to this age, the movements made by fingers in one hand are mirrored by movements of the same fingers on the opposite hand. This makes writing very difficult for young children. In addition, printing is an activity involving the left brain while cursive writing, that is flowing and not mechanical, requires both the development of the right and left brain as well as bilateral integration, the connection between the two hemispheres.

#2 Question: What about older children in 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th grades who still seem to be reading mostly by sight memory, can't sound out words easily, have difficulty spelling,and have trouble imagining in their mind the story they are reading? What is going on with these children?

Answer: First I would check t-Osee if bilateral integration of the right and left sides of the brain has developed. If children can do the cross-lateral skip with opposite arm and leg extending at the same time and their skipping motion is flowing and not mechanical then bilateral integration has developed. If this pathway has not developed then Biodynamic Cranial Osteopathy treatments followed by THERAPEUTIC EURYTHMY movement therapy, parelli horseback riding lessons, EXTRA lesson work, or sensory integration movement therapies (e.g .. HANDLE, BRAIN GYM, BAL-A-VIS-X) will be needed to help this pathway fully form. Often the development of the proprioceptive system (sense of the body in space), vestibular system (muscle tone, balance, speech articulation, eye tracking, and convergence) as well as bilateral integration of the right and left cerebral hemispheres are compromised or
blocked when children experience a c-section birth, suction forceps delivery, pitocin to stimulate labor, prolonged labor, or a very fast delivery.
Once these neurological pathways are "opened" and developed, children in 1st, 2nd
and 3rd grades may spontaneously start to read phonetically, notice how words are spelled, and create imaginative pictures in their minds from the words they are reading in a story or book. Once children can do the cross lateral skip with opposite arm and leg, cursive writing will become much easier and more flowing. Incidentally, form drawing and practicing cursive writing help develop bilateral integration of the cerebral hemispheres, and therefore serve to strengthen the reading pathways.

#3 Question: What about children in 4th, 5th, 6th and even children in the older grades who are still reading mostly by sight? They usually figure out a word by guessing and can only slowly sound out some words phonetically? They still may have difficulty with spelling and do not have much comprehension or internal picture making capacities when reading stories? What is going on in this situation?

Answer: Sometimes when children are asked to read and spell at an early age or their
pathways for reading are blocked, the right brain was the only hemisphere available for reading. Therefore, these children learn to read every word by sight memory. Later on (several years later) their left brain finally may have developed for reading, but they still do not use the left brain as their primary method for reading. Instead, these children still look at words using their right brain and try to recognize the words by the overall shape of the word and the first and last letters of each word. If they can't figure out what the word is by sight,
they switch over to using their left brain and try to sound out the word phonetically, matching sounds to letters. As long as children mostly are using their right brain to recognize words by sight memory, their right brain is not free for internal picture making. In addition, these children will have tremendous problems with spelling since their right brain doesn't pay attention to the arrangement of letters within a word. Remember in "true reading", the right
brain is used to recognize only about 500 small words by sight, while all the other thousands of words are decoded by the left brain using phonetics (sounding out words by matching sounds to letters) therefore freeing the right brain to simultaneously provide an imaginative picture of the word that the left brain has sounded out.
In these older children whose proprioceptive and bilateral integration pathways have
finally developed but are not being used, I will recommend tutoring that emphasizes phonetics, matching sounds to letters and sounding out words. It is most beneficial if this tutoring is accompanied by movement games such as playing catch or spelling words forwards and backwards while walking on a balance beam. Teaching children the long and short sounds of all the vowels and the rules of spelling now makes sense and stimulates the reading area in the left hemisphere of the brain. For example, one rule of spelling that stimulates the left brain would be to have children look at words containing two vowels in a sequence and teach them that the first vowel is the one that says its name while the other vowel is silent (ex. oa in boat,
ea in meat, or the ea in bead). Another spelling rule that exercises the left brain would be to have children note the single vowel in the middle of a word and teach them that vowels use their long sound in words that end with "e" such as in the words plane, time, or stone. If children are pushed to learn phonetics before bilateral integration and the left brain has fully developed, they will still struggle with reading and spelling. In this case parents will spend thousands and thousands of dollars for intensive hours of tutoring every day for years that
won't be very effective. Children will become very frustrated and learn to hate reading. When bilateral integration has developed, then tutoring is fun and easy and only requires 1 to 2 hours/ week for the next 1 to 2 years as children learn the sounds of all the letters, the rules of spelling, and start picturing words.

#4 Question: How does one know what movement therapy or tutor would be the best for a
particular child?

Answer: The most important thing to look for is a movement therapist and/or tutor who is fully present when working with your child. The child needs to love the therapist or tutor and the therapist or tutor needs to love their job and love your child. This is not a sentimental love but an unconditional love.

Lack of Mandatory Secondary GT Certification is Killing College Programs

2009-04-10T12:47:00.002-05:00

Dear Dick,

I appreciate your posing these questions. University of Houston sustains a marginal, reduced program in gifted and talented education (G/T) at the graduate level. Much of what we used to offer has been downsized because of the State of Texas' de-emphasis on accountability in G/T within the school districts. Moreover, as you are aware, teachers in Texas are required only to complete 30 clock hours of G/T training, which incidentally is less than 3/4 of ONE graduate course; seemingly, the State feels this is adequate preparation to teach our future leadership in business, medicine, government, education, and so forth. When one examines neighboring states, one finds much more rigorous requirements. For example, Alabama requires a master's degree in G/T to teach high ability students, as do Georgia, Mississippi, and Louisiana. I might add that Alabama has successfully attracted a spate of international businesses (to wit, the USA's only Mercedes Benz
assembly and research facility). You simply cannot tell international parents that teachers who have sat in a 30 clock-hour course of study are equivalent to those with master's degrees when it comes to teaching the typically high-ability children who end up migrating from overseas to the USA. Do you think this has economic implications for Texas? Then, one should consider how Texas places in contrast to other states in terms of testing that has more rigor than does our very minimalistic TAKS system. While accountability makes sense, I fail to understand a system that bases educational "excellence" on relatively low-level instruments that cost taxpayers huge sums when there exist many nationally standardized tests that offer much more rigorous assessment options. Let's face it: Texas has dumbed everything down by making G/T education all but optional, by basing accountability on a minimalistic testing system, and by failing to require educators to be
well-versed in developing students' highest abilities. I predict that Texas will eventually experience the same sort of economic downturn that has beset California and for similar reasons; attaining excellence has apparently become passé and politically incorrect here.

Thank you for your efforts in helping to keep our busy leadership informed. The way in which these issues are addressed will surely serve either to pave our future smoothly or cause us to drive a rutted roadway in the years ahead.

Best regards,
F. Richard Olenchak, Ph.D., P.C.
Professor, Psychologist, and Co-Director
Urban Talent Research Institute
Associate Chair for Special Programs
Department of Curriculum and Instruction
University of Houston
Houston, TX 77204-5023

Open Letter to President Bush

2009-03-18T12:35:00.001-05:00

Final Draft of the letter sent to The White House and then published as an Open Letter in Education News, August, 2008 and in TEMPO Magazine, February, 2009.

August 4, 2008

President George W. Bush
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C. 20500

Subject: Education’s “Wag the Dog”

Dear Mr. President:

“No Child Left Behind” is commendable, noble, and truly needed. Giving a minimum education to everyone in the country affords great benefits to all. Finding the Gifted and teaching them to be talented is even more important because these are the people who will become the next generation of leaders in business, politics and education. The problem is that so much of our energy and resources are dedicated to the first, that there is little left for the second.

It is true that many public school districts have a department and Director of what is usually called Advanced Academic Studies which is over Gifted and Talented as well as Advanced Placement. All of these people I have met are very skillful and dedicated educators. But the resources dedicated to them are minuscule compared to the effort of just getting the masses to pass. Unlike some in education, I do believe there should be a minimum bar that all students must clear in order to graduate and that it must be measured by a quantified assessment. But let’s face it; the bar is currently set so low average students can pass it by the time they are in the 9th or10th grade. Far too much time is spent on teachers teaching to this test.

If one of the top priorities of the secondary education system is to train students so that our colleges and universities will be able to build them into talented leaders; then we are only partially successful. Look at our top graduate schools. Most are filled with non-American students; this especially true in the sciences. Much of this is because we are not finding many of our gifted students early enough so their giftedness can be trained into useful talents. If we do not find these gifted kids between the 1st and 8th grades, there is a good chance many will dropout of school in the 9th grade, just like the academically challenged student. The gifted get bored with the repetition-learning used in the classroom and pace of the average class and many end up dropping out and becoming gang leaders, scam artists and internet pirates, where if found and trained they likely will be our future leaders. While they may number only 5% or so of the students, virtually all of them will become leaders.

Research has clearly shown that giftedness knows no cultural or racial boundaries. But look at typical G/T classes, most are populated with Asians and white boys with a smattering of Blacks, Hispanics and girls. The gifted are out there in equally numbers, but we have to find them. The good students are easy to find; that is the model student making all As. Their parents are beating down the Principal’s door to get them into G/T, but this is only a small percentage of the gifted students. The rest are much harder to find.

True we have had a Federal Plan since 1972 and a Texas State Plan since 1990 with a mandate to identify and serve G/T students, but there is limited resources and no political urgency compared to the all-out effort that is being made in expenditure of teacher/administrator time and resources to make sure every student pass a minimum exam..

Only 27 states require that Gifted and Talented students be taught by G/T certified teachers. That includes three states, of which Texas is one, where this is only an OPTION. Any university with a G/T curriculum will tell you that G/T kids learn differently from the rest of us and unless we train even the best teachers in G/T techniques, the results will be lacking. So why don’t we require that only G/T certified teachers find and teach G/T students?

So what I am requesting is 1] Take some of the political and economic pressure off the public schools by emphasizing less the passing of every last student and more on finding the gifted and training them, 2] Place an emphasis on finding these gifted kids early, ideally in the first grade, 3] Encourage the States to require that they use certified G/T teachers to find and teach the G/T students. We are doing exactly that for our special education students. We should do the same for our most brilliant kids, many of whom we are losing.

Sincerely,

Richard F. Kantenberger
Texas Certified Math, Science, Special Education, and Gifted and Talented Teacher.
Member, Texas Association for the Gifted and Talented
President, Kantenberger International, Inc. (retired)

cc: Secretary Margaret Spelling, U. S. Secretary of Education
Governor Rick Perry, Governor of Texas
Commissioner Robert Scott, Texas Commissioner of Education

Preaching to the GT( Gifted and Talented) Choir

2009-03-17T13:02:00.002-05:00

Published in TEMPO Magazine, Feb. 2009

Preaching to the GT Choir

By Dick Kantenberger

Texas Teacher Certified in Secondary and Elementary Mathematics and Science, Physics, Special Education and Gifted and Talented

Member, Texas Association for the Gifted and Talented

We love to talk about GT and giftedness. We love talk to each other about it by the hour. We go to seminars and talk and listen all day about GT and sometimes several days at a time. We read and write books and articles about giftedness primarily aimed at other people in GT and to the students and parents of gifted or potentially gifted children. There is nothing wrong with these things at all. First, we enjoy talking about GT because we are very interested it, and second, there are many students and parents that need the help that gifted and talented education can give them. But if we are going to broaden the support for gifted and talented education in this country, we are going to have to broaden our message.

Look what Special Education has been able to accomplish. But how long did it take them? Both GT and Special Ed have been studied in academia for about 40 years prior to World War II, but after the war special education grassroots advocacy organizations began to spring up, like the American Association on Mental Deficiency, United Cerebral Palsy Association and the Muscular Dystrophy Association. Then in the sixties an increasing level of school access was established for children with disabilities at the state and local levels.

The grassroots advocacy for Special Education began to swell as Congress approved Public Law 94-142 “Education for All Handicapped Children Act” in 1975, but it did not prove effective until legislation for federal funding was approved two years later. It mandated that school districts provide such schooling in the “least restrictive environment” possible. But Special Education did not take off until 1990 with the passage of “Individuals with Disabilities Education Act” (IDEA). Before IDEA, the condition of Special Education in this country was pretty bleak. In 1970, American schools educated only one in five children with disabilities, and many states had laws that excluded children with major disabilities like deafness, blindness and mental retardation. There is no doubt that Special Education programs have helped a great number of students assimilate into the public education system. However, 80% of students in Special Education are there because of weak underlying cognitive skills according to LearningRx. Therefore, identifying and retraining these cognitive skills is essential for over coming learning struggles on a permanent basis.

The goals of Gifted and Talented education are to identify and train the cognitive skills of gifted students whose vulnerability is such that it is estimated we are losing about a million kids a year because the public and the state and federal politicians still mostly have the misconception that if a child is gifted then “don’t worry about it, s/he is bound to turn out OK”

Unless we want to wait another forty years, it seems to me our goal is clear. As much as we love talking about GT among ourselves, we must accelerate the GT grassroots ground-swell by directing our message to the general public and especially to our state and federal legislators.

Currently we in Texas have almost as many identified gifted students as we have special education students (actually it is 1 to 1.4), but in public education we spend 11 times more on Special Education than GT. Sadly that number is pretty good compared to the national average where Special Ed out-spends GT by over 100 to 1. That’s because many states spend virtually nothing on GT. But even our 11 to 1 ratio is not all that noteworthy because a handful of school districts are spending most of the money while most school districts are spending little or nothing. My own affluent school district is spending 43 times as much on Special Ed as GT. Go into any public school in the country and you will find twenty or so Special Ed teachers for every one (or none) GT teacher.

We in GT education are the “tree-trucks” of our movement. However, we need many “leaves” on our “trees”. The “leaves” we need, if we are to accomplish our goals, are the support of the general public and the state and federal legislators. Tree-trucks can not grow many leaves on their own, so we all need to make a concerted effort over a period of time to grow many “limbs” which can in turn grow many “leaves”. This means that since we are small in numbers we all have to take a pro-active role in educating all of our non-GT teachers, councilors, principals, and the parents of our GT children. So, all of us need to contact the general public and the state and federal governments, especially the state legislators. With a new Congress in Washington DC and a new

Legislation in Austin, there is no better time to get our message to these very important people. What can we do?

a] Most important is to contact your own state senators and representatives via personal contact, telephone, letter, fax, or e-mail and ask them to specifically support Gifted and Talented education by passing and funding legislation to 1] require state certification exams of Gifted and Talented teachers, and 2] that all identified Gifted and Talented students be taught by state certified Gifted and Talented teachers. 3] Place an emphasis on finding these gifted kids at the beginning of elementary school. BE SURE TO ALWAYS ASK FOR THESE SPECIFIC ACTIONS. To find all of your legislators click on: http://www.ncsl.org/?tabid=17173, then [1st] select your “State” and [2nd] select “Legislator”, then click on “Legislature Links”. There you will find all the senators and representatives and their addresses, telephone numbers, and e-mail links.

b] Contact your local school district superintendent and request these same actions.

c] Write to your local newspaper education reporters, and letters-to-the-editor expressing your concerns about gifted education. Many specific GT concerns can be found on http://ednews.org/articles/25922/1/

d] Call local radio talk-shows to express your concerns.

e] For more detailed help contact the National Association for Gifted Children at http://www.nagc.org and click on “Advocacy & Legislation”, then “Toolkit”. Also contact your state Gifted and Talent organization at this same web-site by clicking on “State by State”.

Be aware that a few individual names may be out of date, but you can Google your state association shown and find the latest contacts in your state. We need to do this now while all of these politicians are getting their agendas prioritized.

In order to get a gauge of what it was the lawmakers in Texas and in Washington thought about GT, the idea for this article started in April 2008 when I first sent a type written letter on my personal stationery to President Bush. I followed that up with same typed written letter only personally address to every federal lawmaker from Texas that represents my district in any way. I wrote the same thing to all of the top state lawmakers and many from other districts who are on various education committees in Austin. I got written responses from all the federal politicians except from the White House. Lt. Governor Dewhurst’s office called to ask me some questions. All the responses were very polite but each reflected only their own policies on education. None indicated any understanding of Gifted and Talented issues and only mentioned it as a throw-in phrase when talking about “No Child Left Behind”. However, the State Senator and the District State Representative in my own district, both wrote letters to Texas Education Agency asking them to respond to my letter. Both duly wrote me again afterward. But at least now they knew of the GT situation and they were now also aware of TEA’s current policy on it. Of course I was advised of the current state policy on education which I already knew. The salient result of this exercise was clear; that we will get more attention and involvement from the lawmakers in our own districts because… you guessed it… they need your vote. A few GT advocates, and that includes all GT teachers, administrator, parents and advocates, will only make but a very small impact. We need a broad “grass roots” advocacy. That is from where my ”tree” analogy was derived.

It will not be easy and we have a long way to go. From an early draft of this article, Roxanna Cramer wrote, “From another choir member: A good article, but unfortunately the timing is bad. G/T kids have never been sympathetic “poster children”, especially in comparison with handicapped kids. And in this time of economic downturn, chances of getting more attention focused on G/T kids is practically nil. Science and Math stand a chance, but no body can see the symphony uncomposed or the novel unwritten…” I found a 14 year old boy in ISS (In School Suspension) for refusing to do his class work. In talking with the boy and his father I found the kid read War and Peace when he was 10. He wants to be a writer and has taught himself Greek and Latin. I love Roxanna’s comment and I’m sure most Music and Language Arts teachers do too. We have a long way to go. From an Assistant Principal in my own district I received the following message “Why did you send me this obnoxious article?” From another “unsigned”, “ I didn’t realize that “gifted” meant being educational snobs” So you see, it will not be easy, however, that is no reason not to try, especially considering the value of the commodity we are dealing with.

In June 2008 I released my unacknowledged letter to President Bush as an open letter. I am the first to admit he had other very serious problems to deal with. It was published by Education News and is shown below.

The misunderstanding about Gifted and Talented issues is widespread. A public school administrator in Maryland said “three-fourths of all of our students are gifted”. Another, who I will identify as she posted this response on the internet is Jamie Ruppmann who wrote “I believe that all our children should be provided the support and education that they need. That is why I have spent many years as an educational advocate. I am always discouraged, then, when I read editorial offerings and letters suggesting that by addressing the needs of one group of youngsters, we are necessarily and inevitably short changing or harming another group. Child advocacy has never been and should not be some sort of competition for “our energy and resources”. In fact, our nation has the resources and energy it needs to put all children “first”. Unfortunately, Dick Kantenberger continues to insist that gifted children (and in my school district that is just about everyone) are worthy of the resources they need……” A bit more far out is an un-signed person in New Hampshire who said “Get the government out of education, they have no business”. I wonder who funds public education in New Hampshire!

There are many who do “get it”. From Kate Gladstone, “The educational system also tend to ignore and under-represent gifted/talents among those with disabilities of any sort (especially among the neurological disabilities) – see the work of Meredith Warshaw at www.hoagiesgifted.org/twice-exceptional.htm . Amen to this and Amen again. I taught all math courses from sixth-grade math through calculus at a well known psychiatric hospital for a year. Obviously all the students were special education, but I was surprised to find that 15%-20% of these kids were gifted too. This is three to four times what I had expected. This truly is an area that needs to be given much more study and research.

Bert Franks, MD in Dallas said “As a pediatrician I have advocated for years that we have terribly neglected the gifted students who come to me for poor performance because of boredom and not being challenged by the system or parents. The attitude of the cream rising to the top does not always hold true. These very bright kids are a major part of the future of our national growth”. Richard Olenchak, PhD at the University of Houston wrote “Keep up the good fight! This is the most dreadful catastrophe of American society; sacrificing our children’s talents”.

Ann Sheldon, Executive Director of the Ohio Association of Gifted Children about an article that I wrote in May 2008, Education’s Wag the Dog: Lost Geniuses,

www.ednews.org/articles/25922/1/.html . She wrote to me: “This article is a must read for every state lawmaker. We can not continue to be a world class country if we continue to ignore our most gifted future leaders”. She then sent a copy of the article to every GT teacher and lawmaker in the State of Ohio. The article has been reprinted with permission by Gifted and Talented organizations in California, Arizona, New Mexico, Mississippi, North Dakota and , I am told, by several other states.

It is clear that we in GT try to absorb everything we can GT. We spend a lot of time studying and talking to each other, but unless we intensify the spreading of our message, it may be another 40 years before our goals of GT are recognized and met. Do not assume that your principals, councilors, and other non-GT teachers really understand giftedness. Most do not. Some will tell you they do, but that usually does not go beyond understanding a few words, like the meaning of acceleration or asynchronous development, but they do not know the symptoms of identifying the hard to find kids in minority groups, the poor and even girls, and they do not know how to go about implementing the necessary curriculums for the students they do find. Thirty clock-hours on Saturday mornings alone with not do it. The principals and administrators don’t have or want to spend the money. That’s were Special Education was fifty years ago. We’d better get started now!

GT Bio 12-08:

Mr. Kantenberger is a 17 year teacher, baseball and tennis coach in Texas public schools. He was honored on Fox Sports (TV) Network as “Coach Who Makes a Difference”. Before education he owned his own businesses and had offices in Cairo, Johannesburg and Houston and was a Marketing Consultant to The Boeing Co. on projects in Saudi Arabia. He was a member of a U. S. Dept. of Commerce Trade Mission to West Africa. He was on the campaign committee that successfully made Dolph Briscoe (Dem) Governor of Texas and served on several campaigns for George H. W. Bush (Rep). He served on the Houston Grand Opera General Director’s Marketing Committee; was Chairman of the Speakers Bureau, Chairman of Arts Advocacy and Pre-curtain Lecturer as well as on the Board of HGO’s Opera Guild. He also served on the Boards of First Methodist Church in Houston, the Houston Tennis Association and the Spring Branch-Memorial Sports Association. A native Texan, he holds degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Houston and business administration from Southern Methodist University.

Dedication:

I would like to dedicate this article to Dr. Rick Olenchak, Professor, Psychologist and Director of the Urban Talent Research Institute at the University of Houston who first lit my GT fire and to Dr. Lynette Breedlove, Director, Advanced Academic Studies, Spring Branch ISD in Houston, who as my mentor cultivated it.

Education's Wag the Dog"; Geniuses Lost

2009-03-17T13:00:00.000-05:00

Educations “Wag the Dog”: Geniuses Lost

Published in Education News, May, 2008

By Dick Kantenberger, Houston, Texas, rfkantenberger@sbcglobal.net

Texas teacher certified in Secondary and Elementary Mathematics and Science, Physics, Special Education, and Gifted and Talented.

Member, Texas Association for the Gifted and Talented

It is like someone shouted “FIRE” in a theater, but nobody moved. Is the theater empty? No, it’s full of people, but still nobody moved or even cared. We are losing hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of potential geniuses every year in the United States because we are just not finding them before it’s too late, which in most cases is about the time they are suppose to start 9^th grade.

It’s not like this is some unknown phenomenon. Thomas Jefferson put it succinctly in 1782 while Governor of Virginia when he wrote “By…(selecting) the youth of genius from among the classes of the poor, we hope to avail the State of those talents which nature has sown as liberally among the poor as the rich, but which perish without use if not sought for and cultivated”. It’s not that academia in America is not aware of the situation. Since Leta Hollingworth began studying gifted children over a hundred years ago, many hundreds, perhaps thousands, in academia have devoted their lives to the study of gifted and talented students since then. Some of the giants in gifted and talented (GT) today include Dr. Joseph Renzulli, Director of the National Research Center for the Gifted and Talented at the University of Connecticut, Dr. Howard Gardner at Harvard, Dr. Robert Sternburg at Tufts, Dr. Francoys Gagné at University of Quebec, Dr. Sandra Kaplan at USC, Dr. Richard Olenchak at the University of Houston, Dr. James Delisle at Kent State, Dr. Joyce Juntune at Texas A&M, most of whom I have communicated with and have received encouragement for my advocacy of GT.

Outside of education few understand that the gifted student learns differently from the above average or the Advanced Placement student. They learn much more quickly, they can retain it far longer, and they can synthesize and analyze the newly learned material and begin hypothesizing almost immediately. Most of us regular learners can do the same thing, except it takes us much longer. In other words, it takes hard work for us to learn and to be successful. No wonder the gifted kid gets bored very quickly when asked to do repetitive drills in school and homework The GT teacher has to recognize just how gifted a student is and to constantly keep finding a level that will be challenging and interesting to the student. It takes extra teacher training to do that. The more severely academically-challenged students are, the more they are at risk, and the more special attention they require. The gifted are no different. The more gifted they are, the more they are at risk, and the more special attention they require. One important point on giftedness, just because kids are gifted does not mean they are or will automatically become talented. They have to be trained before they are talented. This is true whether they are to become a scientist, a baseball player, an auto mechanic, an actor, or a CEO. If not trained, all of these people are lost to society. If we don’t find these at risk gifted kids, usually by the time they are in 8^th grade, they may be lost to us. It has been reported that some will turn up as drug dealers, internet pirates and scam artists. They are too smart to do nothing.

So why are we still losing these potential leaders? Part of it is because most Americans think that because these kids are very intelligent that they don’t need any help; “If there’re that smart they will work it out and be OK”. But these kids are just as vulnerable as the academically-challenged students and the Special Education students. Let me say it again, these gifted kids are just as vulnerable as the academically-challenged and the Special Education student. Few in this country are not aware of, and approve of, the Special Education programs, and rightly so. Also few in this country are not aware of the government program No Child Left Behind, which is aimed at the academically-challenged and to provide them with a high school education. It is an admirable goal, but even the school superintendents and principals around the country are complaining to the government (both States and National) that they are forced to use so much energy and financial resources on No Child Left Behind, it has diluted their efforts in one of their primary goals of preparing students so our universities can train them. And at the same time many of the gifted, our future leaders in industry, education and government, are falling through the cracks.

Dr. Donna Y. Ford at Vanderbilt University told me recently via e-mail that from the data she pulled from the Office of Civil Rights that we are losing over 250,000 African-American GT students every year, and if the national count is indicative of the figures compiled by the Texas Education Agency, the loss of GT students among Hispanics is over twice that of African-Americans, and if you count the poor of all races the loss is four times that of African-Americans. I am amazed that parents and leaders in the Hispanic, African-American, Women Movements, and advocates of the poor are not up in arms over this situation. Clearly, Thomas Jefferson was right in 1782, but nobody listened. Will we listen now?

We are currently only finding the easily identifiable GT students, and the word “find” my not be the right word. Many parents of Asians and middle class white boys are beating down the principal’s doors all over the country to get their children into GT classes and programs. Research has shown for many years what Jefferson said in 1782 that giftedness occurs equally among all races, cultures and both sexes. But what does a typical GT class look like? It is often Asians and middle class white boys with a smattering of girls, Hispanics and African-Americans. Since in public education in Texas, Whites and Asian student populations combined don’t even make a majority, it is easy to see the disparity. The others are much harder to find, primarily due to cultural and economic differences. Many don’t want to be found. In certain segments of our society being gifted is being labeled a nerd. Kids want to fit in with their friends and don’t want them to think they are different. They try to hide it from their friends and even their parents, so they intentionally goof-off and make low to average grades. Many of the highly gifted learn so quickly they get very bored at school and become troublemakers. There are many characteristics that teachers must be trained to look for. Notice I said teachers, not councilors, principals and administrators, because they rarely see the kids in the classroom. It is the teachers that have to know what to look for and have the opportunity to see all the telltale signs. That’s one of the reasons that Dr. James Delisle at Kent State spends one afternoon a week teaching classes at a local Middle School in Kent Ohio along with his lecturing all over the country on weekends.. Jim even puts it on his business card; Distinguish Professor of Education and Part Time Middle School Teacher.

There are so many little characteristics a teacher must look for, and that is why they have to be properly trained. It is the total collection of characteristics that is needed in order to make a judgment. For instance, exquisite handwriting and very bad handwriting can be both a characteristic of a potential gifted student. By themselves they don’t mean much, but coupled with several other clues they could identify a potential GT student. But, either sign should send a message to the teacher to start looking for other signs. A rude and disruptive kid may be a sign of an academically-challenged student, or one who has goofed off so long that he or she is way behind and doesn’t care any more, or they also may be a gifted student who is bored to death because they learned the material in the first ten minutes of class and are repulsed to doing repetitive drills and homework. Some highly gifted kids will in time refuse to do any work at all in school What is critical with all of these students I just mentioned are that they are at risk of dropping out of school before they begin high school. That is why we need to find them and get them into special educational programs, whether Special Ed or GT, before they drop out. That’s why the period between the 3^rd and 8^th grade is so important.

Recent research on identifying and serving diverse gifted students published in the Journal for the Education of the Gifted by K. L Speirs Neumeister, C. M. Adams, R. L. Pierce, J. C. Cassady, and F. A. Dixon wrote “Few, if any, teachers mentioned gifted characteristics that are prevalent in minority populations such as oral tradition, movement and verve, communalism and affective characteristics… Only 15% of the teachers recognized that boredom or non-interest may be common in gifted students. Teachers were less likely to notice gifted characteristics in students having a skill deficit in one area, poor work habits, or behavioral or family problems.” The authors concluded that the results of the survey indicated a need for more professional development on how giftedness manifests itself in minority and economically disadvantaged populations and on multicultural education.

The state and national governments press the school districts to accommodate the academically-challenged students and the Special Education students. These programs are heavily funded. Of course there are some issues with No Child Left Behind that need to be modified and very likely will be in the near future, but Gifted and Talented education is not only under-funded, it is also hamstrung by the state legislatures. Only 27 states have laws requiring Gifted and Talented programs in their public schools, but only seven states require that certified GT teachers teach the GT students that have been found, but three of these, and sadly Texas is one of them, only make it OPTIONAL that GT students be taught by certified GT teachers. But that’s not the end of the story. In Texas, it is no longer necessary to have certified GT teachers. Regular certified teachers need only spent 30 clock-hours attending GT lectures and seminars to be eligible to teach GT students. No certification exam is required. I have seen a few teachers at these seminars reading, knitting and grading papers during the lectures. There are no exams. It takes a certain degree of training to be able to find these kids in the first place and even more to know how to modify their curriculums. Without certification exams, it is not happening. Why? In Texas it use to be required that teachers could only become certified through university credits. But the need for GT teachers became severely outstripped by the number of newly discovered GT students. Not wanting to spend the money needed to train and certify GT teachers, the Texas Legislature, the Texas Education Agency, and the Texas District Superintendents all came up with a compromise that resulted in the 30 clock-hours, non-certification exam program. This is not enough. It takes more training for a teacher to be able to first, recognize the hard to identify GT student, and then to develop the necessary modified curriculum for each student. Let me make this perfectly clear, there are many very good and qualified GT teachers in Texas and the U.S. who are totally devoted to their profession and goals, but there are not enough of them. Also the teachers do not have to be gifted themselves to find and teach GT kids, just trained to recognize the signs and know how to modify their curricula. Any good teacher can easily be trained.

To give the GT students a level playing field, our state legislators are going to have to shift more money to train and certify new GT teachers. In Texas, where our special education students outnumber the GT students by factor of 1.4 to 1, special education expenditures outpace GT expenditures by almost 11 to 1. In my own school district special education outspends GT by 43 to 1 and all these figures are the actual expenditure numbers from the Texas Education Agency for 2006-2007. As bad as this is, Texas is the second highest state in the U.S. in GT spending. Dr. Robert Sternburg at Tufts University told me he estimated that in America we spend about $99 on special education for every $1 spent on gifted and talented education. Dr. Joyce Van Tassel-Baska at William and Mary College is quoted in Genius Denied that America spends 143 times as much on special education as on gifted and talented.

So it is clear, we must train and certify many more teachers in GT to 1] Find the poor, the girls, and the minorities that are being lost, and 2] To train these students to be the leaders that they should be and have the potential to be.

The big question is what can you as an individual do about it. While the national government sets the tone, it is basically the state legislators (representatives and state senators) and the state education agencies that have the power because they control the money and the priorities. Most legislators are not aware of the problem, while most state agencies and district superintendents are so pressured with federal initiatives like No Child Left Behind, they can only give lip service to the GT problem, which they mostly are aware of and understand.

The real power lies with you. If you would call, or write, or fax, or e-mail your state representative and state senator and the head of your state education agency and ask them 1] to require state certification exams of Gifted and Talented teachers, and 2] that all identified Gifted and Talented students be taught by state certified Gifted and Talented teachers. 3] Place an emphasis on finding these gifted kids at the beginning of elementary school. We are doing exactly that for our special education students. We should do the same for our most brilliant kids, many of whom we are losing.

Dick Kantenberger

12715 Taylorcrest Rd.

Houston, Texas 77024

713-465-6077