An educator, free at last, rocks the boat on gifted programs

Paul Carpenter

September 5, 2008

In the 1960s, when Carol Wolford was an exceedingly bright student at what then was called Kutztown State College, she majored in math, but some people discouraged that.

Math was for guys.

''I switched to library,'' she said. That was a fortuitous decision for thousands of students at Parkland (briefly) and at Jim Thorpe for most of her career.

''For 37 years, I was a school librarian. I loved it,'' she said. ''I miss the kids. I loved the kids so much.''

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Not long ago, however, Wolford retired, and that is fortuitous for another reason. It allows her to speak freely about a disgraceful trend in public schools.

While the system pours resources into programs to help the weakest students, it all but ignores the brightest, the ones most likely to solve society's problems.

Wolford started out in modest circumstances, the daughter of an Allentown firefighter, Robert Spangenberg, who died fighting a fire in 1983. Before going to Kutztown, she benefited from a (then) meaningful program for gifted students in Allentown's schools.

When she went to work in the public school system, she saw what politicians did to the gifted programs.

The accommodation of gifted children is required under special education laws, just as accommodations for disadvantaged children are required. Gifted children have just as many problems, often falling behind or failing because their special needs are not addressed. Albert Einstein's experience as a child is a good example.

Because all the political pressure is aimed at the low end of the spectrum, however, education officials simply ignore the law and let gifted children languish.

Wolford belongs to Mensa, a group for people in the top 2 percent of intelligence based on IQ tests, and Mensa has long supported gifted education. In fact, she is now the Local Secretary (president) of the Lehigh-Pocono Mensa chapter.

In the current issue of that chapter's ''Magniloquence'' newsletter, she takes advantage of her retirement by writing about gifted programs in her ''LocSec Column,'' saying that, for the first time, ''I can open my mouth without fear of retribution.''

Her column recalled an in-service presentation on special education, made to a faculty group years ago.

''All sorts of developmental challenges were covered, including mental, physical, vision, hearing, speech and dyslexia problems,'' Wolford wrote. It even covered students whose criminal behavior could cause them problems in class.

''Guess who was forgotten,'' her column said.

''I listened to this spiel for most of the day and heard how we can throw money at every kind of special student except the gifted,'' Wolford said, but when she raised that point, she was ordered to apologize by a school official.

She said the most promising students -- ''future scientists, inventors, doctors,'' etc. -- are ''those on whom we spend the least time and money. Is the money there for sports?''

She pointed out that she has friends with ''special needs children'' who went to Harrisburg to demand better accommodations for their children. They also organized other parents to help with the lobbying.

''Have the parents of gifted children ever done that?'' her column asked.

When I talked to Wolford, she praised Jim Thorpe's system, but said public schools generally violate the requirement to provide meaningful services to the gifted. ''They hire people for a few hours a week so they can say they're doing something,'' she said.

''The kids who are going to be [solving society's problems] need to have more time and money spent on them,'' she told me, but ''gifted parents don't want to start rocking the boat, and I don't know why.''

In world history, civilizations that shift focus to fun and games or other frivolities, instead of nurturing the best and brightest, have a way of going to pieces.

Look at your offspring. When they are starving or sick or suffering because of crumbling infrastructures, who will help them? Football players and imbeciles?

It is time for people, and not just those in Mensa, to start rocking the boat.

paul.carpenter@mcall.com 610-820-6176

Paul Carpenter's commentary appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays.