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

I did the high school thing too, 1.5 years in 3 months, Principal shook my hand for highest test score in school history!
Ignorant me, I thought I would get a scholarahip or something.

Survival was my goal, and that worked out, hahaha.
What a life, eh?

I hope none of you get depressed, there is too much to do and fix and learn, and I learned to pray, myself, at age 36, and that was fhe key to surviving this insane world!

Not the prayer...the listening for answers, thats what really helped.

Good life to all.

I spent 40 years as an atheist, and while I'd like to say I found God, it was sort of the other way around. I was perfectly happy in my atheism when God saw fit to smack me upside the head and force me to pay attention. That's a longer story but faith has absolutely, 100%, brought me more peace than I ever knew prior. When I first started commenting on this thread years ago it used to spin my head, a LOT. There's a lot of disturbing aspects that remain unexplained. Faith is what has allowed me to just let go of all of that - to utilize the good, and release the bad.





And wishing you the same in return!

Ay, carumba, what a conundrum.

Im sorry to hear it tho.

Where do you find those that want to converse in your language
is up to chance I guess.
I got married to my neighbor of 17 years, 11 years go. All by "chance," if you will. We discuss everything.

My kids partners...about 2 minutes for one, my future dil will discuss the stars, ufos, schools, flowers, etc. but gets antsy
in about 1.5 hours.

I joined the chamber of commerce, but she warned me about asking the sheriff too many questions at the sheriffs meeting...

They just wanna go home, eat, watch tv, or?

I was in the programs, tested a few times per year... seemed weird.

Now that I look back they were just isolating the aspie types.

Hear, hear!
I used to say you couldnt get me in a church thru the side door!

Some wise lady told me about praying
"Why dont you just try it?"
But at this point it is hearing the answer, the warning or advice, that helps, and as you said, the peace, letting go, is the diamond in the crown!
Peace, the greatest gift!

No.

That may be true, though trust me, this thread is worth the time to read it if you were involved. I'm actually not all that surprised to hear you say that you were, as we share a lot of common interests and personality traits (and I have mentioned as such before on a few of your threads). Especially the ability to work in both left and right brain disciplines, and switch between them rapidly, with ease.

You'll fit right in with the posters here. We all have some weird similarities in how our brains are wired.

I have learned that I will never get that opportunity. Not that I don't care for the people in my life, I do, greatly. I just understand that I will always be choosing my words carefully and I am okay with that. This thread and GLP is one of the few places I do speak completely openly, as being an AC allows me to decouple from my "real life" and say whatever I want. If people don't "get it", that's fine. But it's my only real outlet.



For me, it was a warning. And having been an atheist up to that point, it was also terrifying and very confusing at first. And the warning came true shortly after. My faith has been unwavering ever since.

Kudos to you for having the skill of choosing your words.
Its a lot easier for me when I write. How you hold your tongue I will not know yet, haha.

For me it was slowing the thoughts long enough to hear the still small voice.
Invaluable. Took about 50 years, plus.

Saved in some awful scary times by warnings tho, I get it. Real demon sh*t. Warnings.
Cats help me a lot, very sensitive to evil.

And...
"Beer makes life a little more acceptable."
I wrote that on my neighbors fridge and he still takes it as a universal truth. Thanks for the toast.

Blessed days to you, nature, fulfilledness, all that.

Thinking back on my own experiences now. I definitely think this could be related.

Yes I was, but in Buffalo not Cali

4th and 5th grades. We got bussed to another school for the program

We got to do fun and interesting things, regular school was boring.

It was nice not having other kids trying to cheat off my tests

Oh boy....In Texas in the 80's they called it the ACE program.
I remember the students but not much of what happened other than the thought experiments that others describe. The way that we were treated by the teachers seemed different as compared to other students, we were definitely held in higher regard. It seems strange in retrospect that I can picture others from class and recall their names but I could not tell you much about what we did. Definitely memory gaps. I do recall the heads down exercises, group think exercises, memory exercises, some strange situations that seem "out of place". Not much at all on the art side but heavy on the science and engineering side. The books, "A Wrinkle in Time", choose your own adventure. Seems like we had a group that would come in with specific books to choose from.
One situation that stands out was a field trip from Texas to Tennessee. During this trip, we stopped at another school and met small group of kids who were also in the program. The strange part is that we met at night and had free run of the school. Not much oversight other than the two ot three "teachers" that were with us on the trip. I cannot recall the purpose other than meeting with some other kids and my only memory is that we were trying to "chase" or "catch" one of the kids. I could not tell you if we were there for an hour or overnight.
Reading thru so many comments here, I thought maybe the number of students classified as "gifted and talented" may be high, however brief research indicates that the population appears to be 3% or less overall. Maybe the culture at the time was normal for many of these experiences but now seem out of place? Don't know.
So many correlations here. Has anyone tried to determine the number of unique posters and / or list the correlating experiences?
A Wrinkle In Time (CHECK), Greensleeves (CHECK), Free reign on the library (CHECK), Bus trips (CHECK), Speed reading exercises (CHECK), The "shape game" (CHECK), Pulled out of class for testing (CHECK), Fringe Science(CHECK)

That would be challenging to do as it spans so many years! If I had to take a guess I'd say maybe 100-150 posters with more than half remembering fairly similar scenarios. I wish I could give you a better answer!



Still sends a shiver up my spine. I think that book title was used as code for a book on something else.

Hey, this is really random, but it just came back to me. Figured I might as well ask if this is true for anyone else.

From the age of maybe 10(?), I had a reasonably large scar on my right upper arm, maybe an inch, inch and a half in length. Never knew how I got it. It's not there now and I don't really remember exactly when it faded. I totally forgot about it until now. Probably unrelated but sort of curious if it might be.

I did this several years ago as I was curious and found roughly 400 unique posters as well as calculating percentages of reports of memory disturbances. I shared that data and got called a data miner by a few. Not unlike my being the one to actually provide the most hard source data on what the program was doing and yet, somehow being called a "handler" for providing people information so that they can positively identify the very methods that were used. Anyways, so there you have it--at least 400 unique users and I believe it was 40% that reported memory disturbances in regards to gifted and talented programs. Results are somewhere in this thread.

I'm good with your numbers, honestly. Mine were both off the top of my head, and extremely conservative. 400/40% is not an unreasonable projection as far as I'm concerned. I appreciate you having done the work. Ignore the idiots, data mining each other for lost memories is quite literally the whole point of this thread.

Amen to that. It is literally what we're doing here. Comparing memories, trying to remember bits and pieces, seeing what we can find to sort it out collectively. It's literally what the programs taught most of us to do. I just imagine they never expected for us to do use what we were being taught against the program, itself. Irony!

Take good care of yourself.

I was in middle school in the early 80s in norcal. I went to the computer lab, they had early pcs. The weird part is that I went 2 or 3 times a week for 3 years. I remember nothing from the being there except the green screens on the pcs.

ditto

You can't always use your full vocabulary with everyone, sometimes you have to adjust to their level. Casual conversation is not always the place for intelligent conversation.

I can relate to that. I remember when I was younger I would sit in church and sing along with the worship songs while I read The Bible at the same time. This seems like I always have to be doing 2 things at once to really focus.

Maybe they were special, and maybe we're not looking for validation, but just answers. It's just an interesting thread about a part of our lives that most of us have never really thought much about. Now that we are adults with more analytic minds, we can look back and ask, What was that about?

I personally tested unusually high for my age and grade all throughout my grade school years. As a female (later in life) I became a science major, receiving all A's in college. It all seemed incredibly easy to me. Modern education has been dumbed down for a while now. An education in America compared to some other countries, is like comparing a fast food job to the job of a brain surgeon.

We may have started out quite intelligent, but the modern school system doesn't exactly foster that on the individual level (God bless the home schooled).

Would definitely be interested in finding out what was behind all these programs and why they did them. I believe that's the only reason for this thread - no one is here to say, "Hey, look at me I'm so awesome!". My own statements were only to show that as part of the gifted program, I likely was actually gifted. So what? There are many ways of being gifted that can't be shown on paper.

The heads down, speed reading, group think, memory exercises--that was all very likely to be what was called SALT--Suggestive Accelerative Learning and Teaching. It took me years but I finally found it and posted about it a few pages back (poss 308 or 309 thereabouts). Previously, in my hunts, I had only found articles suggesting the use of hypnosis & even LSD in the NAGC Quarterly as well as discourse from gifted education researchers on the possible use of altered states to boost learning and creativity. SALT was likely what emanated from all of that discourse.



I'm not sure if it's related as I was never able to confirm this memory but I did have a peculiar flashback of hiding in a small bathroom and jamming my small shoe under the door to make it hard to open. I don't know where I was or even if that memory is real. Nothing to corroborate it.



I think that was definitely the case. In the 60's through the early 80s & perhaps beyond, humanism and trans humanism were incredibly popular. At the same time, we had the Cold War & reports of the USSR also delving into the paranormal, claims of clairvoyants & telekinesis, and maximizing human potential. It was the Human Potential Movement. It absolutely influenced gifted education. John Curtis Gowan suggested in his "Operations of Increasing Order" that if there were any that were capable of such feats, they would be found in gifted children. Gowan founded the National Assoc of Gifted Children in 1958 at the same time the NDEA of 1958 was passed to form the gifted programs, themselves.



I did try but focused on reports of memory disturbances & family military backgrounds. It didn't go over so well as I was accused of being a data miner despite my being a memory impaired former gifted student. If memory serves, I found possibly 400 unique posters & that was years ago. The rate of reports of memory disturbance was high but could be that our confusion leads us to searching about it, thereby skewing that finding. Unfortunately, I deleted the excel I created since it was controversial.

Count me in on the "A Wrinkle in Time" unsettling group. I still have my original copy, have not re-read it yet. When I think of it, a visual image of Mrs. Who pops in my head. Greensleeves unnerves me as well. Check on all the rest though from what I can remember, which is all fuzzy. The shape game is called "Tangram".

Also, still kicking. Obviously.

No one gives a shit anymore.

Fuck off, the past is gone.

Suggestive-Accelerative Learning and Teaching (SALT) links are on page 310, midway through.

No. If you don't like the discussion here, you can always move along. Just because you don't give a shit doesn't mean that others feel the same way.

Toodles.

I would like to say sorry in advance to my long lost relatives separated at a young age for what I am about to do.
Without asking permissions and any way to contact you for approval that will also impact your lives as your genetics are linked to mine will also be tested.
I have consented to full testing from what I consider an honest trustable research source with all the latest top research equipment and brain mapping.
I am in my older age with not much time in my life to properly study my advanced ESP abilities in the name of science. I will be an open book and submit to invasive testing. Finally giving science the evidence needed to prove ESP abilities. They will search out others with similar genetics to find out how many more of us there are with advanced abilities and how it works.
Wish me a pain free, privacy protected experience. I am old, it is my time to do what I can to better mankind's research and understanding in the last years of my life. If believe it would be a crime against humanity to withhold essential information and proof of unknown human potential.

Yes. I was in the program in upstate NY.

My memories of the program are spotty. I remember some things like the vision and hearing tests, music, writing exercises, field trips, tangrams, but feel like I should remember more for all the time I spent in these classes.

I do remember this lady did the program in multiple schools locally. We occasionally had students join us from other schools or vice-versa and she knew all of us by first name.

What really peaks my curiosity is the lack of records I received from the request. I spent years in this program and they only had a single sheet of paper on file about it? Definitely has to be gov/mil related in some way. I just want to know what it is they found in me that had me under such careful scrutiny. It can't just be high IQ only.

No, don't think so. Never lived anywhere long enough to be put in a program.

did get a scholarship to an elite school, for ninth grade.

did not return for the next year. Boring.