Gifted Children †Blessing or Curse? Essay -- Exploratory Essays Resea

Largely ignored by the social sciences, the study of gifted students is of utmost importance. Though there are varying degrees of giftedness, it is widely recognized that those with intelligence quotients of over 130 are "gifted", as these IQ’s place them in the top five percent of the population. Gifted children have an insatiable desire to learn, to explore. They learn with very little help from adults. They are also marked by their persistence, energy, and obsessive interests. Most of them can read by age four, some even earlier, for gifted children are endowed with prodigious memories for verbal and mathematical information. They not only excel at logical and abstract reasoning; they are also interested in philosophical issues. Blessed with some many positive qualities, gifted children are often overlooked even when they’re plagued by problems. As gifted children represent only a small percentage of the student population, the public neglects many of their needs. Faced with pressures from their families, schools, peers, and themselves, gifted students become socially challenged. Thus, it is necessary for society to learn more about the stresses endured by gifted students, so that someday many of these problems can be eliminated. The independent variables include pressures from family, school, and peers. The dependent variables are the socially challenged gifted children. The intervening variables include family support, the economic status of the family, the skills of the teachers, the student’s learning style, the age of the gifted children and their peers, and the motivational level of the gifted student. Primary research was conducted through two interviews and 50 surveys. A teacher of gifted student was interviewe... ...y Relationships and the Gifted.Washington, DC. Available http://www.nagc.org/CounGuide/family.html 1998 Orange, Carolyn. "Gifted students and perfectionism." Roeper Review 20, 1 (Sept-Oct 1997) Silverman, Linda Krega."How Parents Can Support Gifted Children." ERIC Digests 16 Apr 2000 Silverman, Linda Krega. "Through the lens of giftedness" Roeper Review 20, 3 (Feb 1998) Tolan, Stephanie S. "The Lemming Condition" Roeper Review 20, 3 (Feb 1998) Webb, James T. "Nurturing Social Emtional Development of Gifted Children" ERIC Clearinghouse on Disabilities and Gifted Education Reston, VA. Available http://www.ed.gov/databases/ERIC_Disgests/ed372554.html June 1994 Weber, Patricia. "Mental Models and the Identification of Young Gifted Students: A Tale of Two Boys" Roeper Review 32, 3 (Feb 1999) Winner, Ellen. Gifted Children New York: Basic Books, 1996.