Gifted? Is that in the DSM IV?

For fuck's sake. I am torn between scorn for a woman touting her oh so special child and concern for said child who, from the mother's descriptions, seems to exhibit symptoms of real psychological issues. The inability to switch tasks is not generally a sign of a high IQ rather than a sign of high functioning autism. I make no claims of psychological expertise but I am good at research and there aren't a lot of scientific articles supporting the gifted community's views.

There are plenty of smart children who, especially with access to early education, are able to accelerate their studies well past the norm, and they often have diagnosable issues like ADHD and Aspergers and such. Even the pre-adolecense version of bipolar, which they rarely diagnose so young. That is no excuse for an anti social child. At those ages you really need to try and teach your child to be social, rather than isolating them into "special" classes. It is nice to help them in their accelerated studies, but don't let them get away with asshole behavior.

Psychology has a practical side. It isn't just about diagnosing developmental issues in children, but working with them to help the child exist in the real world. I don't know the real statistics, but it seems in popular media, at least, that more parents are coming out in favor of just "accepting" the issues rather than helping the child learn to cope with them. Yes, many wouldn't be issues in different societies, but telling them they are right and everyone else is wrong is a good way to set them up for failure and disappointment. Understanding is one thing, exacerbating is another. While I am not upset at having bipolar, for example, I do understand that I must work to exist within modern civilization. Perhaps in the past bipolar wouldn't have gotten in my way, but now it does and I shudder to think how I would be if I had grown up with parents who tell me it was ok to act out.

Intelligence and asynchronous thinking do deter certain types of social interaction, especially in children, but separating the poor child further endangers their social development. No matter how clever a child is they still have to go through developmental stages in speech and social interactions. Many disorders are not genetic but environmental, or a combination thereof, and allowing a child to develop poorly makes it really hard on them later in life.

Logic Priest

Academics

PZ Meyers has a post and link up that is frankly upsetting. Yet another way the US is falling behind due to privatization: higher education. We all hear the crap about public education failing, and that now includes public universities. Republicans have pushed for school vouchers to gut the primary and secondary education of our country, now they funnel funds to over priced and under qualified for-profit schools like Devry and Pheonix, where graduation rates are terrible, hiring rates are worse, and they cost as much as an ivy-league school.

The over political nature of faculty jobs, the remaining funds universities have going to coach salaries and non academic president's salaries have led to good scientists and educators leaving the system to make money elsewhere. Even as the states and the fed cut primary and secondary education funds, even as states and the fed funnel money out of them to tax breaks and for-profit schools, we have science funding under attack. There seems to be an all out war on education, on science, on intelligence in general. The US lead the world in science and technology for years but now we have an entire political party who cuts funds from and even demonizes education and research, the basis of such leadership. They think that private corporations will advance the world? Even while the private corporations suppress inventions that threaten their monopolies and sue each other over vague patents to keep innovation out? It seems like every card is stacked against an intelligent generation. From kindergarden to a PHD it costs more and more for less, with no prospect of a good job or even the ability to start a new company, since it will be sued out of business the second a tech giant sees it as a threat, the US is headed for a new stone age. The oligarchical nature of the Republican party isn't just about making as much money from bribes and insider trading and outsourcing as possible, it seems to be actively working towards making a new peasant class, blindly following the conservative march towards destruction.

Logic Priest