Were You Part Of The "Mentally Gifted Minds" Program In California Scools back in the 70's?

Nibiruians have told me that, every member of these programs has a cel on some vault/spaceship that is adorned with unseen pictures and items that you would cherish, from your lifetime. Like, we were minks being prepared for that final collar. Well, some of us did right, but some, not.

I tend to agree. Some of what I found in my digs was that they absolutely were concerned about how we would turn out--attitudes & etc. We were both a threat & boon to the state, depending on those attitudes we held. I think that is much of what the black folder of homework is about--uncovering what our impulses were, attempting to steer us towards altruism through reason, & a heavy dose of making us fear ourselves perhaps. I'm not sure but it's the sense I get after going through all that old homework and that those pieces of paper were psychology wrapped in a cloak of education. That was not okay.

Man: A Course of Study (MACOS), I think, was intended to teach us to look at the world with inquisitive eyes that, even when confronted with things we find horrifying, to look to find answers as to why that particular society developed in that way. The Heroes Journey? The teacher literally had me put myself into a comic strip where I was the hero trying to correct some wrong. Was that right to do or wrong? Mixed on that as it was a heaping of expectation of performance in the real world perhaps in a climate where most students weren't even taught to critically think, to identify biases, view things from another's perspective, or even question their own biases & failures in thinking. And ofc, the shoving on of political beliefs. In a class where there was to be no "wrong" answer, both my sibling and myself were told we were wrong because we didn't feel as if radiated, burned & destroyed citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were justified. And they showed us what was done to these people before they asked that question. Yet, we were "wrong". That wasn't okay and a clear imposition of political dogma. And the protest analysis part of that homework? On one hand, it can be argued that they were teaching us to examine protests critically but also arguably in a clinical and detached way so that we're not part of "them". Instead, at best, we harp publicly trying to use reason when we see causes for concern.

Where they really messed things up was the insertion of the Human Potential Movement. Again, my opinion but I know that I am the most discomforted by the fact that there have been clear-cut indicators, actual source documents, & more that showed an intention to use the beliefs of this particular movement to try to shape us further. The use of imagery, meditation, hypnosis, and ffs, even the suggestion of using LSD was found in print, linked to the gifted program. Is it any wonder that we are so muddy headed and questioning about what happened to us? Even if none of these things worked, at the end of the day, the fact that these things (and maybe the LSD in that damn Tang) were used on us indisputably. To make us more creative, smarter, maybe unlock super powers--the reasonings do not justify the ends which was a shattering of a sense of self and uncertainty in who we actually are. How many of you are like me now? Questioning your actions, thoughts, motivations when it comes to serious things because you don't know what was done? Self trust is precious and the very fact that these things were done eroded that. At least for me.

That is my opinion of these things. I think perhaps the reason why we don't know what they wanted for us in the program is because it was so many things. At best, I would say little creativity autobots psyched up with the intention of saving the world like a little hero through a tightly constructed sieve. Intention is the hardest thing to uncover & prove but what they wanted for us should not matter. In my opinion, if we struggle with what was done to us & have impacts on our sense of self due to all of this mud, then we can find ourselves by finding what we think and feel through what truly resonates within us as an embodiment of heart, "soul", and mind. We were all labeled "gifted" for our minds which means that if they did aim to fetter us in this way or that, we should be intelligent enough to shake free of those fetters. They may have tampered with our minds but our hearts are still ours. If they had been successful with telling us how to feel, then I wouldn't be still angry about being told I was wrong about the immense suffering of civilians.

You get to decide what to do with yourself and your talents. Nobody else.

Hey, AO. Great points all around. As for the first part, I suffered BADLY from that the first 40 years of my life. I find that these days, I have enough knowledge and experience where I question myself far less. But it used to leave me crippled with anxiety and indecision pretty much after leaving the program through my late 30s.

As for using my talents, I've long since reclaimed them as my own. I've used my ability to teach myself rapidly to great advantage in my own career, and the way they taught us to look at the world, through questions and processes, has helped me see through the extreme amounts of bullshit being flung around right now.

At this point, I'm just searching for answers out of my own curiosity more than anything. The programs, and the people who ran them, I think are long gone, as are whatever goals they had planned at the time. The world we live in now in no way resembles the world they were preparing us for. Though admittedly, we haven't had many people chime in about the current gifted programs, but we have seen plenty of news stories justifying phasing them out.

Did anyone else ever almost get kidnapped?

One of the most disturbing experiences of my young life was when a man tried to kidnap me when I was about 9. I was in the program at the time, and I've never really connected it to that...I honestly think he was a child molester that had nothing to do with it.

I was walking alone on an empty beach in 1981 (us kids did things like that back then) and a man started following me. Probably in his 30's, he kept calling out to me and saying I needed to come with him.

I took off running and ran along the sand, the tidepools, the cliffs of southern California until I finally found somebody's unlocked gate and was able to get up to Pacific Coast Highway. When I got home, my shoes were ruined, the soles were destroyed I had been in such a panic.

Probably not related. But I read that others woke up in cars going to strange places and didn't remember how they got there.

My younger brother almost was. My mother figured out what was about to happen one day at a park and caused a huge scene to throw the guy off, which worked. My brother was in a program similar to GATE but not identical - they never did any of the weirder stuff we did.

I have no personal recollection of anything like that happening to me though. But there's a lot I still don't recall from that time.

Wow, scary. That was about the time "Stranger Danger" started.

I don't have negative feelings about the GATE program, I have read just a little of this giant thread but I'd really like to make myself useful if I have anything to offer, as a result of this program.

I've lost all interest in having a "normal" life...dropped out of society a year and a half ago. I'm just sitting here, waiting to be called upon. The world isn't ending as fast as I thought it would so I'm probably going to jump back into the workforce. Unless there is something more interesting...

I have mixed feelings about GATE. Some of the stuff they did with us led to a period of deep obsession with the occult at an age where my knowledge should have been limited to the haunted house at Disneyland. Got over that in my early teens thankfully.

But I hear you on the other part. I've always sort of just played along with the whole "normal life" bit. I gave up on it personally long ago. Didn't do HS prom or graduation, didn't go to college, never got married, never had any kids. I've missed all the important milestones that "normal" people are supposed to have. Not that I'm complaining, I've kept busy and made a name for myself in my career, and had some fun adventures along the way, but any "fitting in" I did has always been a carefully crafted facade.

Sometimes GLP gets more of my actual personality than anyone else does, simply because I can post as an AC and not have to maintain a public persona. Maybe that's why I still come here after 14 years, now that I think about it.

By the way, welcome

This thread is a great read. Lots of rabbit holes to go down. Ignore the Ludens garbage early on, that was someone trolling.

I don't think we've ever figured out anything more about the OP or why they started this thread in the first place.

lol the Ludens thing though to be fair that one was cleverer the others in that there actually is something written called Homo Ludens by Hulzinga. Contrary to internet troll's opinion, it had nothing to do with Ludens Cough Drops.

To the newcomers: Just know we've been hit with trolls several times & some who may not have been honest in their intentions. There's plenty of source stuff buried in the thread. If a link is dead, just describe the context or page from the thread that it is on and I will see if I can find it again. May not exist online anymore but will try.

MILAB MK / MJ

So glad to hear that for you! I've been doing much of the same. Unfettered eyes and all and yes, reclaiming my gifts. Infinitely more accepting of them though I'm probably forever going to curse the Human Potential Movement for their shenanigans. You're right though--most of them are probably long gone at this point. I poke at the subject to see what new has been uploaded to the internet, looking to find out more. It's more about curiosity at this point even if it does sometimes promote me to verbal outbursts when I find something that, as a parent, I would find deeply questionable if it had been done to one of my children.

As far as the current gifted program goes, haven't heard much on that either. It still exists. I guess that was the upsetting part was when I stumbled across research papers on MRIs of gifted children and I can't help but wonder how those children feel about those MRIs and tests. They are children--not the world's guinea pigs.

Yes, I was put into gifted classes back in the 70's after they gave me an IQ test. I remember going to the school on a Saturday with my mother to discuss advancing me a grade because I was so bored in class and was always the first to finish my work.

After I took my IQ test, I was waiting outside, and I heard my Mom speaking to the teacher about the results. My Mom said, "Do not tell him! I don't want him to know." But the teacher told me later. 137. I rushed through the test just like I always did. I liked being the first one done, so I am sure I could have scored much higher.

My Mom also refused to allow me to skip a grade, and this really affected me later as I was so bored with school and lost interest. I would finish my work and look around the room watching everyone else furiously writing and think, "What a waste of time. Why am I even here?" I couldn't wait to get a job and go to work.

One more thing, I remember being put into a "speed reading" class. They would have us read several paragraphs and time us. Then there would be a short quiz to measure our comprehension.

I honestly don't see that as being beneficial learning for a child and in fact, to this day I have to slow myself down when reading because I rush through the material!

I never had kids so I can't quite share the emotion, but I've sometimes wondered why my parents never asked questions. Of course, both of them were sort of new-agey anyway so I think it's likely they didn't find the lessons all that odd. But astral projection, meditation - these are things for people old enough to grasp them. Not for 9-year-olds who barely have a handle on real reality.



Welcome to the thread! I had this problem too. By the time I got to high school, I was so bored that I just stopped doing any work at all in protest. According to my grades, I was one of the slowest students in the school. My junior year, I talked them into letting me do homeschool, and teaching myself, I finished junior and senior year in 6 months with a 4.0 GPA. I immediately started working in a career that I still am in now.

Making us GATE kids work at such a faster rate of speed than normal pretty much set a lot of us up for failure once we hit the normal public school system. We got trained to grasp big concepts rapidly, to fill in the blanks without explicit directions to do so. That doesn't actually translate well in the real world where everything has to move at a speed catering to all.

I imagine you still have occasions where your mind "runs away with you" and you have to stop yourself and slow down to explain it to others?

I'd love to hear from parents who have kids in these programs now. My GF's granddaughter was offered it and obviously I sort of cringed inside, but then Covid hit and that was the end of that conversation.

Do we have any parents here with kids in the current gifted programs? Do any of the weird things we all remember sound like anything that is happening now?

I have no problem believing they carried on with gifted education minus the weird stuff. From the replies here, it seems like the iterations we all went through ended sometime in the 90's.

Both of mine were briefly in it. No odd memories or gaps. I did sit in on my eldest's gifted program in the 3rd grade. They were making board games (basic game theory). We moved & that was the end of that. They was an attempt to steer them towards intelligence work & cryptography after being moved early into college but it was purely an "up to you thing". They declined. My youngest entered it late. Curriculum was largely "expanded" subject learning. Instead of just math, they learned about the sieve of Eratosthenes, imperfect numbers, & more which was more along the lines of math theory, the theory of intellect, & a much more expanded humanities class that included training in trend analysis & etc. Essentially amped up basic curriculums to college levels. No weirdness at all other than one teacher showing what giftedness can do by catching pencils blind. This would cover the post-2000 program in two states.

I tend to agree that the program fundamentally changed with the end of the Cold War.

Yeah, I have trouble slowing my thoughts down sometimes. The speed-reading courses made knowledge a race for me, and I can't even enjoy reading anymore because I just blast through it looking for keywords!

GLP has helped me a lot by providing a huge amount of reading material. I think that's why I spend so much time on here.

I don't like speaking to others because I am just too intense in the subjects I like, and they think I am a "know-it-all".

I totally get what you mean. I think I also spend a lot of time here absorbing (and discarding) information. I think of what is going on in the world right now as a giant puzzle, and I've spent years trying to put it all together. That's why I am always insistent that even "annoying" topics - that I disagree with - stay part of the discourse. You never know when a nugget of wisdom will appear on page 45 of some thread, likely surrounded by arguments and name-calling.

I've learned to live with being a "know-it-all" though. Part of that is I don't open my mouth unless I'm fairly confident in the statement I'm about to make. I think the small group I keep close in my life is just used to it by now.

That makes sense. If you search around the internet, the experiences we discuss here all appear to end around 92-94. Sometime after that I think the programs probably lost whatever *special* government funding and motivations they had, and just kept the accelerated lesson plans.

That's good to know. Was a little worried as I know some kids who may be headed to gifted programs. In some ways, I wouldn't trade my time in GATE for anything - it's given me some tremendous skills I might otherwise have lacked - but at the same time, I wouldn't wish the "weird stuff" on anyone. It's left me questioning a lot of things my whole adult life, things to which I still have no absolute closure on.

My feelings are very similar. Even the possibility of using hypnosis (& memories perhaps) or "guided imagery" just leaves an uncomfortable feeling and far too many unanswered questions. For me, it leaves me feeling like my sense of self is destabilized, somehow less authentic because, to paraphrase a that old commercial, I'll all too often ask myself if what I think is me is real or Memorex. That's really not okay. One of the phrases that popped into my head years ago courtesy of this thread ("movers and shakers") was recently repeated to me by a former classmate. Same phrase. Same meaning. How must they have engrained that in our heads in the program where the phrase crops up again and again for us over the course of around 40 years? Having that echoed back at me bothers me and let's be real--no one should be telling children that the weight of the world is on them. Atlas wasn't a child. We were and, on top of that weigh. here we are with, as you said, questions & no closure though I can guarantee someone will come along and tell us our intended purpose for the 100th time in this thread.

Minus all of that garbage out and yes, there are things that I enjoy knowing how to do because of the program even if they are mostly useless to me like codebreaking or backwards & upside down writing. I've got so much different knowledge stuffed in my head that may not be the most useful but still never fails to impress on how diverse & strange it really was.

Yes--I had to slow down my reading a lot. Found myself blowing through books all the time and running out of reading material. Skimming and scanning lessons as well. I still use both of those to this day as my vision deteriorated very badly. Honestly, if it weren't for learning to scan for keywords, I probably wouldn't be able to read without extremely enlarged text. At least I don't have to worry about reading too fast anymore. Dubious gain?

Poked it again and have some new terms that is likely the source concepts of much of what we've experienced. Definitely would encourage looking for these things.

Individualized Program Planning Model (IPPM). Created by Donald Trefinger. As the name states, this is where our educations would've differed & splintered based on our own identified talents & probably the self-selected projects for independent research, learning, & etc.

TRIAD Enrichment Model (TRIAD) Three phase expanded learning & research training for "advanced" material.

Purdue Three-Stage Model: Development of divergent & convergent thinking skills and creative problem solving where the third stage is applied to real world problems with solution creation.

Creative Learning in a Unique Enviroment (CLUE): Creative brainstorming, use of brainteasers & logic puzzles, research, emphasis on self introspection, learning & using visible thinking techniques (Project Zero), and field trips to locations for "hands on learning".

Semiotics/multimodality--Simply put, it's training to read the signs of things from the world around including symbolism and integrating that with written word to better comprehend sociocultural communications. (like the odd protest movement homework I found, probably much of the arts stuff tbh).

Suggestive-Accelerative Learning and Teaching (SALT): This is the big one, imo. SALT proponents claimed that this technique could accelerate learning by 3-10 times that of normal. SALT used methods to "calm the mind" and bring it into a suggestive state before presenting materials. This is "heads down". According to below, the use of "baroque music" with a bpm of 40-60 is specifically mentioned. There's entire playlists of music that is for "accelerated learning". Grieg "In the Hall of the Mountain King", Pachebel's "Canon in D". "Scarborough Fair" would be another that is in this range. The original "Greensleeves" would be too fast for SALT. I remember it being slower than the actual "Greensleeves" so that could've been SALT, too. What do you all remember?

More on SALT: [link to pdfs.semanticscholar.org (secure)]

I am going to have to rescind my comment that the "weird stuff" seems to be absent. Just talked with my youngest about SALT. Youngest had a "heads down" experience in middle school but can't remember which teacher. SALT may still be used in the gifted program. That shit needs to stop.

Anyone ever watched the TV show Alias? Show about private ops and the “c-i-a”. Well, There was a whole thing about using the standardized tests to for recruiting agents. They showed how the had kids screened and programmed based on these tests implemented by the k-g-b. Yeah. None of this is coincidence. And how many are RH negative have I read so far. Hmmm. Very interesting

One more find on SALT. This one is interesting because it talks a lot about using it for learning languages (Spanish in the majority of it). However, at one point in it, it discusses the use of psychodrama to "test" the students knowledge after they have gone through the process of atmosphere change, oral intonation techniques, visual imagery and whatnot to get students into a receptive suggestive state for the introduction of learning material. The final class day is for the students to create a psychodrama.

A typical theme for such a psychodrama would be the founding of the country. Students would have to take the parts of George Washington, Ben Franklin, John Adams, and other important functionaries at the Declaration of Independence. Students have learned the backgrounds of these people and then take a part that is consistent with the important dignitaries in the Declaration of Independence.

That's not Spanish.

[link to files.eric.ed.gov (secure)]

This one rings a LOT of bells. As I recall, my teacher for grades 5-6 used to use "new age" type music, but that fits well into the bpm mentioned. Interestingly I still use this technique to learn new skills. It's like I hit an "off" switch on my brain and just absorb whatever I am taking in, comfortable in knowing I will be able to retrieve it again when I flip the consciousness switch back on. And even many decades later, it still more or less works as a learning tool.

I figure since I've been on this thread forever but don't really feel like signing up, I'll just sign "Ex Gate Kid" from here on out.

Still here, I see! Hi!

My Dad locked me in and put the kibosh on me being advanced in school or whatever. Tore up all our mail. Never went out.

Nice of him to protect me but my brain was underutilized.

I try to share info online and help my community,
but its like being Notsure in Idiocracy.

Blessings, all.
Head on a swivel!
Dont go to the care facility!

Berkeley, mkultra experiments.

Hahaha, reminds me of years ago when my daughter moved in with friends. They were wanting to invite me for dinner.
She said "No, you use too many big words and it is weird."

However, my bff says I can insult someone to their boots and they don't even know it.
Proud of that!

My girlfriend's kids are in their late 20's - they like me well enough because I'm stable and treat their mom well, but basically I don't get invited over very often for the exact same reason.

It's okay, I can live with that lol.