(5)   Click here to watch Dr. Benbow discuss the importance of gifted education:

…With giftedness, kids get pigeonholed into one category. And—and they really are as different as a group—You know, people say “Oh are they maladjusted?” No they’re not maladjusted. Sure we’re going to have one or two, just like in any group of individuals you’re going to have a group—But you know, on the whole, uh, gifted kids turn out well. They’re socially mature, socially skilled, and they attempt to contribute in nice ways to society. But I think that—what I’d like to add is—that right now a lot of people are very hesitant about having programs for these kids in our schools. They feel that they are elitist or what have you. Why give more to the individuals who already have so much? And so you have these trends of getting rid of gifted programs and so on. And what people don’t realize when they do that, is that they hurt the very gifted kids that they want to help the most. Now let me explain what I mean by that. And that is—You know, if you took away programs for gifted kids, say, in the school that my kids went to—You know, it wouldn’t affect my kids as much because you know, I know what to do. I’ve been highly educated and I have resources. And I would figure out some way to challenge my child, whether I would hire a tutor, send him to a special program, whatever. I would make sure that my children were challenged. And so would most middle-class, upper middle-class, and so on, parents who have some education—do for their kids. They have the resources and they would use them so that the kids would receive the kind of education they need. But what happens when you remove those programs, uh, and you have those—the lower—the kids from the lower SESs in those programs? You have parents there who may not know what they should do, who may not understand how important it is to challenge their bright child. They certainly don’t have the resources to spend $2000 for a summer program or to hire a tutor. And so what happens is, is that you remove programs for gifted kids from our schools—our public schools—those parents who have the means and resources will somehow find programs for their kids, and those parents who don’t—those kids will be left behind. And you will widen the gap, and the very kids that you want to help the most are going to be left behind. And there is really nothing more satisfying than when you can take a child who comes from maybe meager, modest circumstances, and you can provide him that intervention that pulls him up, that opens up doors and new vistas and new opportunities for them that they never even thought was possible. There’s nothing more satisfying than that. And that’s what schools were all about. And when we get rid of our gifted [programs], those are the kids who suffer—the minorities, the kids from the lower SES. It’s not the kids from the upper class. And that’s what I’d like to say because people don’t think about it that way.

(6)   Click here to watch Dr. Benbow talk about how her work in intelligence has impacted her work in other areas:

Well, you know, our work is with gifted children so we’re dealing with the upper end. And we’re working with them starting at age thirteen–then of course as you’ll hear later about our study—we are tracking them throughout their adult lives. A lot of our kids now are no longer kids. They are adults, and they’re in the process of developing eminence, high achievement in whatever field they may have chosen to partake of. And what I find as a dean, is that—a dean of a college of education—is that I’m really working with my gifted kids grown up! And so many of those principles of talent development, eminence and so on that I have been studying and working with for so many years are so applicable to the process of what you find in universities. Because really universities are places of talent development. Whether you’re an undergraduate or graduate student, or a faculty member—people are busy developing the talents of others or developing their own talents. And to be really versed in that literature, and understand about intelligence—how it unfolds, how you can influence it and intervene—and looking at the very upper parts, which is really what universities are about—encouraging excellence—that has a great beneficial influence on me in my life as an administrator. So, not many people may think about it in that way, but that’s the way I view my role as an administrator–is a facilitator of talent. And having had that experience and background I think helps me maybe see my role a little differently than others do, but it also helps me approach it in a compassionate way.

(7)   Click here to watch Dr. Benbow discuss how her thinking about grade acceleration has evolved:  

I don’t think that there is anything major that I’ve changed my mind on. It’s just that your—your thinking develops and becomes more sophisticated. And of course times change. I think when I started off as a graduate student working with Julian Stanley we really believed in radical acceleration and skipping kids several grades, bringing them to college at a very young age. Partly that was a response to what was available in our schools at that time for those students. AP courses at that time really weren’t that widely available. Kids didn’t have the option as readily as they do today of taking college courses while they’re in high school, and so on. Our schools today provide many more things for our gifted kids to develop. It’s still not sufficient; they still need more challenges. But it’s much better than it was in the 1970s. We have progressed. And what I would say is that I think my thinking on the need for acceleration is that I still believe in acceleration—I still use acceleration. I guess I was much more hesitant about the use of the radical acceleration, and I do feel that it is better if you can—if it’s possible to work it out—to bridge the students more slowly. When they get into their high school years, take a college course on the side. Take AP courses. Maybe graduate a year or so early, but enter with advanced standing. And make that transition much smoother. And I think that’s going to be more successful. That’s not to say that our kids early on didn’t—who we radically accelerated and went to college at age 14 or 15 haven’t done well. They have. I just think we can do it better and make it easier for them now. So if my thinking has changed and evolved about that—It’s not so much my mind on acceleration. It’s just that the context and the circumstances have changed somewhat and I guess maybe I’ve backed off a little bit and see that this is a better way of doing it.

(8)   Click here to watch Dr. Benbow discuss the career development of highly talented women:

What we’re also finding in that way, when we’re looking at the gender differences, is that if you look at males and females, and if you look at how they construct satisfying lives, they’re choosing to construct them a little differently. And here’s an area that I don’t think we have yet contributed to—but I think has the biggest potential; and that is—we have had a lot of studies on eminent men, and so on. We understand talent development and career development in men pretty well. But until recently, women didn’t have the opportunity to achieve. And there may still be limits, but they’re not there as they were to the extent that they were 50 years ago, where your choice was to be a teacher, a nurse or a secretary, if you worked at all. Nowadays, women can become lawyers, they can become physicians, they can become professors. And we don’t know—and I think our study is ideally set up to do—is to say what are the career development paths of highly talented women? Who before couldn’t make these choices, but now that the opportunities are there for them–how do they develop? Do they develop along the same way, the same influences, as males do? Do they follow different paths? Are there things that they do at different time periods? There are lots of questions, but we certainly are seeing at age 33 that the males and the females feel it just as important to get a good education, to be successful in their careers. And they feel just as satisfied with their lives. But what we’re finding is that the females, in order to feel more satisfied, need to do—have a more broad set of interests being fulfilled. It’s “Yes I need to be successful at work, but it’s also important for me to have friends, to have a family, to you know, develop my spiritual sense.” Whereas for the males in our study, more often what you’re seeing is “What’s most important for me is my career development, making an important contribution, earning a lot of money.” The males are much more focused on their career development. Whereas with our females, in order to feel equally satisfied, they need to have all of these things, and they need to juggle all of these things. And so it’s a much more complex equation. And it’s going to be so interesting to see over time how these paths of our males and females crisscross and change. And you see priorities—I mean, you–you hear at age 50 so many men saying “Gosh. I focused so long on career. Here I’m at the pinnacle of my career and I’m finding out that this is all there is to it!?” And they go back and want to do different things, and they have a midlife crisis. Maybe women, because they’re balancing them all along are going make different things and come at that stage and say “Gosh. I’ve done my family. I’ve had my–you know…” and so on. “I want to spend even more time on career.” Who knows! We don’t know; I’m just speculating. But they’re definitely on different paths, and I think that’s going to be another interesting contribution.

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