Were you in the "Gifted Program" ?

reply to post by Kayleigh


Hiya Kayleigh,

I wasn't in MGM but was in TAG in the 70's one state up. I'm not surprised that you were having some dust bunnies in your noggin moving about playing the brain training games. Pretty darn sure we were exposed to a lot of the early variants of those to "maximize our potential" so to speak.

Responding because, like you, I was late diagnosed, after "severe autistic tendencies" were noted by health professionals, with being high functional autistic back in 1994. My eldest was diagnosed with Asperger's and my youngest has only very mild tendencies. Interestingly enough, my eldest was placed into the gifted program at the 3rd grade (that state's grade for initial identification). My youngest wasn't placed in it until the 5th grade. This year's teacher is a bit of a strange one but a likable kind of strange.

I think the possible association of autism spectrum disorders and the gifted program is really very interesting. Dabrowski basically stated that the gifted were overly excitable and extremely sensitive/empathetic. He called us the OE's. Although autism tends to be mistakenly associated with a lack of empathy, it is mostly an issue of overload that causes the lack of expression. Autism, at least in my, my fellow autistic friends' and eldest's experiences, is an over intensity of everything, including emotion/empathy, and not that far off from Dabrowski's ideas of being over-excitable.

If I recall correctly, scientists and mathematicians (STEM) notably scored higher than average on the Autism Spectrum Quotient. That said, as most of my friends' resident diagnosed autistic friend, I was frequently used as a comparative baseline by others to see if a little quiz based on it actually worked. I do know two of my friends who were also in gifted programs (Texas and California) scored above 14, consistent with "scientist" but not even remotely close to a diagnosed autistic (my score was 40-42). Their scores were both 17. That, however, is based on an online quiz and not an actual diagnosis. Personally, I'd say they cheated a bit and regularly get into discussions with one of them about that to this day. All in all, hard to say but I do find it interesting.

I understand your reluctance to share more potentially unsavory recollections. I've got a few of those as well and am really unsure of what to make of them. I do suggest looking at patents and research papers to see if you can find corollaries between the Cocoa Puffs and actual things.

I was in one of those programs. There were 12 of us in the class in my fifth grade year. Two burned out on drugs, two had kids and got married early, three became teachers (though at various levels), three of us (including me) became computer professionals, two became sports medics.

If they are tracking the kids in these classes, they are going to find incredibly boring results if the kids in my program were any indication.

This is a long one, non skeptics and true help only please. I'm looking for open opinions and relatable stories.! This is a true story.

Well. I'm a 21 y/o male. I've come to the conclusion that my family is heavily involved in masonic/Illuminati lifestyle.

Some history to start. I'm the oldest of two brothers. I grew up in a fairly suburban area. My mother is mixed black and white and was adopted to an all white family in Portland Oregon. From there they moved to Virginia when she was just a child. I went to one of the best elementary schools in the northern Virginia area, where I was the one of the only kids with color in all of my classes up through 6th grade. I was molested at a very young age by a family member. Ever since I could remember I had issues schools and family members never really wanted to put up with. I was never special ed, but was always made to believe I was special and needed "extra" attention. I would spend most of my days in the counselors room, clinic, and principles office- though I was never an unruly student. They kept trying to trek inside my mind. Asking me questions they really had no business asking me. Many times I was taken to get my IQ evaluated. The administration would ask me questions about my home life and I'd be honest. From there they would forward and relay information about what I said to my mother where she would deny all of what I alleged (now people start thinking I've got mental issues). My teachers would lie and get me in trouble claiming I had said bad words which I didn't. They started making me take tests in other rooms, Performing random evaluations and even began setting me up with "peers" outside of school. I could never concentrate in class and did terribly on my report cards. But test after test would conclude that I had nothing wrong with me, no ADD nothing.. And would be told that I'm quite possibly one of the brightest kids they've ever been subject to test. And that quite simply I didn't "apply myself".. Mind you they are telling this to a 10 year old. School never made sense to me, and I was always more intuitive than my classmates. Teachers picked up on this, quick.
Whenever I had problems in school that my mom couldn't handle- as far as getting teachers to accommodate for my "special needs" she would simply bring in the big guns.. My grandparents.. Now, them being white it almost made school administration bend over backwards just to accommodate me, I was treated like a spectacle all of a sudden, given more privilege than my other classmates more "special treatment".. This occurance happened all the way through highschool. All my grandparents had to do was show their face and magic happened.

All through my childhood I knew something just wasn't right. Aside from the fact that my grandparents loved me, me and my brother were spoiled drastically by them. I mean MASSIVE amounts of time and money were put into making sure me and my brother "looked the part" for society. We were groomed differently than most kids our age. My mom always put a barrier between my brother and I. He was told secrets and taken on special trips I was never allowed to be apart of. She even told him things about me I wasn't aware of myself. My grandparents embraced the fact that my little brother was academically inclined. They treated us differently. I was the artsy kid and to this day I love drawing. My grandparents always felt the need to lie to me and pretend that everything was alright when it clearly wasn't. My father was never really in the picture and soon my mother wasn't either.. Me and my brother were left in an apartment all alone when my mother got incarcerated. My grandparents came and took custody of my little brother but left me to fend for myself.. I was in 7th grade and my brother a year younger. I was forced to live with a neighbor who didn't even claim guardianship. And was doing this as a "favor". Soon enough my aunt and uncle came to take me and my little brother under her wing as Godmother- she eventually claimed gaurdianship.
There we were emotionally/mentally abused. When Highschool started I KNEW something was wrong. I was depressed and had feelings of suicide. Cried and looked dead into my aunt and uncles face and told them I needed psychiatric help and that the things I was feeling wasn't right. they literally laughed and told me I needed arts and crafts. I was in 9th grade at this time. I never got along normally with my classmates. I was never into pulling the girls or sports. Never really into hanging out. I was the loner all through highschool.

Soon enough my mom is released from prison. And I go back to live with her. This is where I decided I had enough. I told my mom everything. How I was molested and everything. And how I practiced homosexuality with some mates of mine for some years after that. This is partially why I'm so withdrawn from the world to this very day. She acted surprised to hear the news but I could see that somehow she already knew. And it seemed that my other family members had an idea as well. Together we went and got some psychiatric help. I was put on meds but felt the physical and mental strain the pills put on me.. My mom began acting very weird and soon told me she too was molested as a child by her adoptive brother. This is when I started seeing signs.. That people wanted me to keep my mouth shut and that money and time had been put in to keeping this secret unearthed. My friends started acting strange, as did my grandparents and little brother. I felt people watching me and following me. My counselors thought I needed hospitalization and tried to coax me into taking more experimental drugs. I soon found that police began shadowing me. I first put it off as paranoia but some things that continued to happen was just way beyond coincidence. I began to enlighten myself with God. From there I learner more about the masons and secret societies. When I began asking my family and counselors about this topic I was instantly made to believe I was wrong and that all my studies of this had no validity. My family began to fear me and wanted less and less to do with me.. They praised my little brother who successfully made me look like a clown and far surpassed me in the areas of school and society. I felt smarter than everyone around me and couldn't see why people acted so scared of me and tried so hard to get me to believe I was crazy and needed more mental health evaluations. My counselor tried to subtlety distance me from my family - when they were the ones I was trying to help and enlighten.

Some time passes and I get hit by a car( which i think was planned and staged) at about 35mph whilst walking to school. I ended up getting a 20,000 dollar settlement. Ever since then family has been trying to win me over. Agreeing with what I had to say trying to treat me out to places. My grandparents were the ones who recommended the lawyer who got me my settlement and by no surprise when I had my first meeting with them two of the lawyers had the eye of the illuminati tattooed on their forearm. My grandparents meet a lot of people because they are senior members of the local Methodist church, where they sport triangle robes and host candle light séances in disguise as time to pray for the lord. My grandfather felt the need to introduce me in particular to his eldest friends who would stare at me with most curiosity and discontent and would ask me questions that were well beyond my age in maturity. They would share jokes and sarcasm that I fakely laughed with.. The kind of jokes and sarcasm that only people of an inner circle would understand. Jokes I had no idea the purpose of and found rather uninteresting. My grandparents denied any involvement with the masons. Until my 18th birthday where he asked me what do I want for my birthday. I usually say money. But this day I asked for a bible. Not just any bible.. But a bible made before the created the NKJV bibles. His face looked ever so bland..and went from a warm and fuzzy smile to a cold and blank expression.. He simply stated "i wouldnt read that..but oakay sure hun.." and walked away with ponder. The day of my birthday I blatantly asked "what do you know of the masons grandpa?" ...my grandma answered for him and said "grandpas father was a mason just a little club where men go to talk and Smoke their cigars.." She said this with the warmest smile. And then they handed me a bible, it was indeed the NKJV.. The one I specifically asked not to get.

Some more time passes. I'm going on 19... My little brother was teasing me about being a conspiracy theorist. I ignored him. Then he said out of nowhere.."bro can I asked you a question?" I said sure. He then asked me and I quote "do you think you are going to descend or ascend??...because your not going to ascend". I'm am absolutely floored and shocked he would ask such a thing..I'm confused.. Like how would he know to ask me such a thing, has he been researching all of a sudden?? I'm just absolutely flabbergasted. So I reply a few moments later in a very angry/insulted fashion " I don't know man, but I'm going to heaven..". He busted out laughing and said "wow, no,no your not going to ascend..sorry man.sucks..but the prophecy says you cant." This may sound cheesy or corny but tell you all the truth. This actually happened. I was scared and confused and chose not to talk to him for the duration of the night.


Some more time passes. My mom turned on me and started acting more strange. She mocked me. Began to date a mason( I was COMPLETELY offended). My brother didn't want much to do with me. I stopped seeing my counselor for i felt that she was trying to get me institutionalized. I left home. Went homeless. Scared to death.. Looking at people act like puppets, even my own family.. I felt alone. So I called my dad...the man who was never there for me.. I begged to come and live with him. I stayed with my aunt who took me in prior just until i got my plane ticket, and thats when # really got weird... I began having nightmares and hearing voices... Every sign told me not to go back and live with my dad. The voices..the way my aunt was acting..feeling even more watched and followed. Voices told me I was the devil.. And that If i didn't have sex with a woman to redeem myself of my molestation and prior experimentation with homosexuality as a kid I'd be going to hell.. I'm freaking out, cursing my family for being masons and raising me in a ring of hidden masons..I knew my family knew I was molested before I told anybody.. Everything was adding up. I even overheard things about me being chosen to die as "one". I was DISGUSTED to say the least. So I hurried and made my way to the state of Washington in hopes of getting some relief and a chance to start new. Things got worse. I was admitted to a mental hospital for being suicidal. I was put on meds for voices.... I NEVER TOLD THEM I WAS HEARING VOICES!!!! How'd they know?? The meds contorted my body and was quickly put on something else. I was diagnosed with schizophrenia.. Even though I came in with suicidal thoughts not voices ( though I was hearing things like demons).. My issue is how did they know if I didn't tell them I was hearing anything at all, let alone diagnose me...
I now receive SSI from the gov't. I'm on my way back home but I plan on doing things without the support of my evil fammily (though i do love them).. I think my family privileged me because I was naive to the evils I was doing and a part of... Me being raped and performing homosexual things to other boy as a child.. I can almost guarantee they knew.. Everything in my life seemed staged and planned. I feel the evil nature of my family worshipped the fact that i took pride in being a virgin knowing that I was molested, groomed differently, and raised to think/believe a certain way.I was only took pride in my virginiry because I felt clean and that I had a gift to give to the right woman. I never took pride in feeling like my family worshipped the ills of what I was apart of, that in itself disgusts me.


I'm not doubting medical expertise. But I feel I cracked a family secret and have said too much... Now they strike me with another mental illness as serious as schizophrenia to make me seem crazy and unable to be around "normal" people. (THEY ARE TRYING TO SILENCE ME)

Please help. Im in fear for my life and I'm not just being paranoid.
Serious help and pointers are much wanted and appreciated. I am now 21, still a virgin, and on a mission to live again.

WHAT SHOULD I DO NEXT ?

I was so bright they gave me the job of delivering milk to all the classes just before lunch, I had to miss the daily geography class.
Funny enough, my geography mark went up.

they did accelerate me one grade though, 5 to 6...right into a class were the girls all had bras


Mostly though it was go be gifted out in the hallway or the library...
just show up for the tests, which I passed well enough...I found by keepimg a text book in the bathroom at home I could learn the whole years worth of a class in a couple of weeks...

now it looks like all the experts were wrong:
I have aspergers so I am actaually a 'tard

reply to post by WhiteAlice


WOW~! Star for you on this ! Thank you !!

Made me think about my late mother, who, according to my uncle (her brother), always accelerated in very subject in high school and always was a tutor for the teacher in very class. She became an ER RN for one of the first heart or brain surgeon here in Portland OR. Her and her surgeon were such a close knit team, that he would call her up sometimes at 2am for Emergency surgery and she would go without question, after which, he would hand her $500.00 from his own pocket and say "Thanks, I wouldn't know what to do without you Pat" $500.00 in 1955=3k-4k+ in 2014 yeeeeah ..

However, she had a very dark side to her as well, at home, extremely demanding of everyone, and snippety to dad; later I had learned she had bi-polar and manic -depression. Living with her was literately HELL on earth. Being told I was a bastard child, and every other name in the book in one breath and not 10 mins later, I was her best son anyone could ever have .. ARRRRRGH..

I was in the doctors office with her and she wold tell the doctor what was wrong with herself and why that was and the doctor would look at me out of the corner of his eye and smile and listen then say.."Yep your right Patty, doctor so and so says hello..." and they would talk for like 20 more mins about new surgery procedures and whatnot .. TOTALLY over my head. We'd walk out and he'd smile and say.. "take care of her, she's an excellent RN.." smile at me and wink knowing her condition; telling me to be patient with her. There was no doubt they loved talking 'shop'


Not sure what to make of this data and disturbs me a bit. What do you make of this? I have a family member who is very intelligent as well but, shows no signs of this? Genetic perhaps or induced some how ?

reply to post by Komodo


She must've worked for Starr. My grandfather had a successful quadruple bypass performed by Starr years and years ago so he is good. Your mother sounds similar to my mother actually. She was the administrator for a pretty big chair of a medical research dept at a well-known university. Even though her chair retired, that same university calls her in to do work for them because she's the best. Like your mom, she's also as mad as a hatter. Really stunning behavioral similarities. She'd go into nightly tirades where she'd really rip into me with such loves as "you're crazy and that's why your father doesn't want to have anything to do with you" (reality--she was blackmailing him to keep him away) and that I was a loser who'd never amount to anything. Pretty violent, too (and that's an understatement). She'd hop in the shower and as long as I cleaned up the wreckage of myself and the house, she'd come out and treat me like I was her little angel. I don't know if she's bipolar or not because she claims no memory of the abuse against the claims of myself, sister, and father. It's a little weird and I'm very cautious with her. I started trying to diagnose her as a teen. Paranoid schizophrenia (too clean), Korsakoff's (nice try but blackouts are too brief), narcissism, dissociative identity disorder, and etc. The only thing I am pretty confidant of now is that she is a psychopath.

I'm not really sure what to make of some of the psychological phenomena that seems to be involved with the gifted. Positive disintegration, this kind of method to help the gifted "self actualize", has a lot of scholarly literature on the subject. I've read a good deal of it. In some of the articles, it seems like the intention is to guide the gifted through crisis (a kind of watch them burn without offering a fire hose but telling them where the fire hose might be). However, I bring up Gowan a lot in this subject because he deliberately renamed positive disintegration to developmental forcing and also discussed the eruption of mental illness from it (namely, disassociation/schizophrenia).

How I got down that path, I really don't want to say so I'll just say that I noticed a disconcerting pattern. That really piqued my interest and it just so happened that my closest friends all also happen to be gifted. Their ages ranged from 22 to 41 so nice range of age and they were in the program in various states (Texas, California, Oregon, Pennsylvania and etc). Pretty darn good sample (I'm a statistics junky). I asked them if they heard voices as teens and all of the males said yes. They were really pretty shocked that I guessed their biggest, darkest secret. Schizophrenia isn't supposed to be out of the norm for iqs over 130. It's supposed to be the same statistical representation so either I collect male friends who suffered from temporary schizophrenic breaks as teens that happen to be gifted or they suffered temporary schizophrenic breaks because they were gifted. If Gowan wrote that positive disintegration aka developmental forcing can induce a schizophrenic or disassociative state:

Elsewhere (Gowan 1974:134) we have seen the traumatizing effect of the "not-me" on the young child at stage three, and we have detailed the dissociation occasioned by the premature rupture of the conscious overlay, exposing the collective preconscious in our discussion of developmental forcing (Gowan 1974:187). Gowan, Trance, Art, and Creativity

So that's a pretty overt statement that this process of developmental forcing aka positive disintegration resulted in a very broken young child. Some whacky words going on in there but basically, the idea was to expose a child to what was thought at the time to be the source of all epiphany. Gowan called it the "numinous element" but it is also referenced as the smoking mirror. The inspiration for this was looking at the statements made by some of the greatest authors, musicians and thinkers across time where they made reports of uncertain inspiration, like what they wrote simply came from the air itself. Stage 3 would be based on Dabrowski's levels and this link is also worth a look:

positivedisintegration.com...

That should raise an eyebrow or two for you. The questions that arise are: Was this kind of push a normal practice for the program? Gowan was the president of the NAGC and a lead researcher in the gifted so possible. If it were, then how was this done? Gowan states that the use of psychedelics, trance/hypnosis, lucid dreaming and meditation can induce these states. Dream journals/talks of lucid dreaming? Does anybody remember that?

"Heads down"?

"Your Minds Eye." "Room will be darkened. Students must find comfortable position. Eyes may be closed or open. Closed is preferable. . . . Concentrate on slowly breathing, releasing energy from body."

Visualization exercises?

"You're standing on a sandy beach. . . . Feel the sand between your toes. . . . See little white fluffy clouds drifting, drifting. . . . See yourself sipping your favorite drink. Taste it . . . . enjoy." At the end of the exercise, the teacher is instructed to count to ten, thereby "giving the students an opportunity to adjust to returning."

Gifted and Talented Program Curriculum Raises Concerns

And Dr. Stanley Krippner authored an article for the Gifted Child Quarterly discussing the possible benefits of using '___' and hypnosis. So there is evidence that yes, some of the methods outlined for this "exposure of the self to the collective unconscious" was being used in the programs or, at the least, the tools to do so were introduced and quite possibly for the purpose of positive disintegration. The problem is that there is a huge degree of difference between who are teachers were and who the researchers were and how much was actually done. There's the distinct possibility that they introduced these techniques to us and we, eager to please those oh so ambiguous teachers, tried doing this stuff on our own.

It's sticky and there is not a whole lot of really direct documentation. Just a heavy presence of positive disintegration, one report of some similar activities being used in a classroom curriculum, and well us. And our records in the program are destroyed.

In the program I was put into, we played the stock market almost exclusively. This was in first and second grade. We were also taught algebra, and various other things.

If we made the most gains out of all the teams in the nation, we "won" a trip to Washington DC.

At the time, I didnt make much of it.. I enjoyed the challenge. Looking back though, there are certainly some points of curiosity, to say the least. Strange program... As far as I can remember, they actually used real money to make the investments based on what we were doing, as children. Thats what they said, at least. Again, another thing that didnt mean anything to me at the time, but is quite strange looking back on it.

In third grade, the entire program was scrapped and I was sent back to typical studies. Third grade eduction after learning things like algebra set me up for a lifetime of being very, very bored in school. This, very obviously, resulted in me being the stereotypical "bright kid that doesnt apply himself." Seems there are quite a few of those..

reply to post by Serdgiam


Yet another bright kid that doesn't apply themselves, LOL. That was present on every single one of my, my son's and my mother's report cards. We consider it to be genetic. Saying that, though, isn't it funny that so many of us have had that exact phrase on our report cards over such a wide time frame with so many different teachers in different schools? It makes me wonder if teachers, as they go through school, are taught to say "*insert name* is a very bright child but do not apply him/herself" in cases of very bright children who they want to push harder. Do a search on bright child does not apply himself and see what comes up. It's actually pretty staggering.

So many of us in the bright and lazy crew, lol. Apparently it dates back to 1920 (published) or even 1912 but back in those days it was "superior child" instead of "bright" or "very bright".

If a superior child does not apply himself his scholarship rating may be mediocre or even poor, although his intelligence score may be high.

archive.org...

Interesting thread. I was in the gifted program, as well. It was called GATE, if I remember correctly. I could definitely say that my life got very weird after I became a part of that program. I also did get the feeling that being a part of GATE was more about being just a member rather than being constantly stimulated. I'd have to seriously think about my life before and after GATE. It seems like I was more anonymous before GATE.

I haven't thought about the TAG program in years, but I found this thread fascinating, so here goes. Given what we now know about CIA MKUltra programs and other experimental methods of mind control, I wouldn't put anything past them. And I can't help but notice many similarities in our stories.

My childhood was pretty normal. Working-class family, Pacific Northwest. I was the only child until I was four. I was already reading, so my parents put me in school early. My book smarts took them by surprise. I started new schools for kindergarten, first and second grades, so I was already a bit shy. At my final new school, the teachers convinced my folks to hold me back into first grade to be with kids my own age, for "social" reasons. They agreed, figuring it was better to do so at a new school with a fresh start. Three weeks into the year and I was disrupting the class, having finished my assignments early. They had a conference and moved me back into second grade. None of the older kids would talk to me, they were too cool. None of the younger kids would talk to me, they were in awe. This solidified my status as something of a loner.

I was still at the top of my class, even being a year younger. I remember my folks being impressed to see me write a report on the honeybee in under 20 minutes. I don't remember taking a lot of tests until about fourth grade. Our primary school had K-3, the middle school had grades 5-8. That left no place for grade four, which was all by itself 20 miles away at a smaller elementary school in a tiny town. They always said it was because the district didn't have space for all those kids, throughout the 80s. Years later, they expanded the primary school and did away with the special fourth grade. I never considered there might be anything unusual about it, until now. You never know, right?

It was in fourth grade that I saw the speech therapist. We went to a tiny closet room and took tests and did puzzles and worked on my lisp. To this day, I don't remember much about my actual classroom, except my awful sea-witch teacher. All I remember about fourth grade are the playground and the tiny closet with the nice lady with all the tests.

It was in fifth grade that a few of us were invited to join TAG -- it was called Odyssey of the Mind in our region. One or two periods a day were reserved for the seven of us, from three grades, to go down to the computer lab, where we got to play with the latest Macintosh, build bridges from toothpicks and do logic puzzles. A few of the top scorers got to attend conventions in the city, mostly boys, always the math geeks. I remember feeling bitter they wouldn't let all of us go.

It was structured elitism at its best -- they rest of the school was jealous that we got to have fun instead of doing busy work. Meanwhile, within our inner circle, they made sure we knew that we were all good, but some of us were better. We were all smart, but some of us were smartest. Those who didn't make the cut for top military recruitment were studied and surveyed and ultimately kept entertained until they hit high school, when interest in propelling gifted students seemed to vanish.

My family moved to a small rural school before I hit eighth grade. I was several grades ahead in math. I should have moved on to algebra and geometry, but instead was forced to take eighth grade math with the other twelve kids in my grade. I went on to become a smart-ass rebellious teenager and graduated from state university with a journalism degree. Funnily enough, I did actually score higher on my SATs in math than I did in language.

These days, I'm raising chickens and learning to grow food. I have since lit my journalism degree on fire.

Having just stumbled on a fascinating phenomenon, I'm compelled to ask: How many of you also have Rh negative blood? It's rare, but among truthseekers and high-IQ types, it's very common indeed.

Best of luck to you all.

yourmaker
when I was a kid, man...I was insanely rebellious. I would pretend to be stupid so I didn't have to do anything.
I would sneak away during vaccines, or come up with stories for whatever I needed...

School was not my forte at all except to learn how to manipulate people or situations I didn't like.

I was in my own gifted program.

*lol* My brother used to do similar sorts of things - he went through school in 'special' class - for the underachievers, but the Headmaster spotted him as being intelligent and using that same intelligence to get out of what he didn't want to do. Unfortunately, he still believes he's 'dumb'...

His being a 'slow' learner didn't help - but it only meant he's a tortoise learner. IMO, slow learners need a bigger grasp of a subject - a sort of overview - and time, before they can pick it up, but when they do, they know it inside out, backwards, and upside down!

reply to post by bigbluebarn


lol bigbluebarn. How very Dr. Seussian of you. Burning my accounting degree sounds very, very appealing. Look at what you planted in my head, lol. I remember asking on facebook a while back who all was in TAG. The response was interesting. Quiet little 1-2 word admissions of being in it but lots of chatter by those old schoolmates that weren't, talking about how they were always fascinated and jealous of our super secret little genius crew. One person thought for sure we were all being trained to be spies, lol.

Nope, just training to defenestrate eggs with extreme prejudice.

Rh neg here.

I was from about 10 up. Though to be fair in secondary school (US high school) It didn’t take much to get into the gifted program as the school was full of dip ****s.

Ironically at 10 and 11 I was in the gifted group and special edd group at the same time. Go dyslexia.......

reply to post by crazyewok


Yeah right, we all know you ewoks don't go to school above the 5th grade! I hear ya though, throughout my whole school career in NY, I had 2 good math teachers. The one teacher in 4th grade that got me started liking math, we started learning algebra then, and the math tutor I had in 9th grade when I was tossed from school. Other than those two teachers, I mostly learned on my own and was teaching the teachers good tricks on how to skip and combine steps to solve math problems lol. I always scored way low on standardized math tests until my first regents test, which I got a 96% or a 98%, I can't remember which. My low math scores were never due to wrong answers, but due to "failing to show the proper work" on paper. I always took to combining steps in my head..... Didn't matter the right answer to them, but "showing the work" on paper. One of the major failures of the school testing systems when I went through it IMO.

Ok only read a few pages so far. Been searching for a long time for relevant 'info' or whatever I could find really.

My situation probably differs greatly from others, being what I am involved 'with'... but...

Queensbury Elementary, Warren County, New York.

In 1994 I was in a 'gifted' program. This was my 2nd grade year. Other siblings were in the same program prior to me. The reason I focus on the 2nd grade year of this program, is because at this age, your brain is moving into a certain 'phase'. This is when (at least for me, my siblings and others) they utilize a device that is 'guised' as full immersion advanced learning solutions (subcontracted by DARPA, simple search reveals) primarily for the 'disabled' or otherwise but also applicable for 'gifted' and ESPECIALLY useful for linguistic learning and military conditioning.

This is basically a conglomerate of what the Monroe Institute learned (brainwave entrainment) coupled with VR + extreme sensory overload, so we can break the psyche down to peices, then program it directly like from a baby. :-)

Ok this post is melting down. I will get more specific later. This stuff pisses me off a little still.

Incase you have not derived...

I have a purposefully created polyfragmented dissociative identity disorder system.

How dooooooo, you do

Oh, I also was in 'ENCORE' when my family moved to Nashville. Just saw that one mentioned. Getting up the balls to call queensbury to see if they have any records etc, but we believe it was called 'GATE' like the g/t and gat acronym I see here as well.

I don't remember much, my siblings who are older, remember a little more, but queensbury was a small coughciacough town so I believe all the kids enrolled in the program were also DUMB-ME's if you understand that acronym. Lol...

a reply to: Apoceclipse

I don't know if it's any consolation or not but I believe you in your description of a device being used on you. I, too, had some whacked out probable research performed on me a long time ago that would've been "state of the art" at the time. Basically, brain entrainment through biofeedback and AV (like this: www.amsciepub.com... ). The idea of using computer technology for education, including "attitude changing" has been around for a long time within the programs such as this one whose author was involved with a couple of curious entities that don't have many tracks such as the Brooks Foundation in California.

Effects of Electronic Data Processing in Future Educational Systems

I'm sure that you and I are not the only ones that have some rather bizarre memories of experimentation. I have a couple friends who are in their 20's that won't even discuss their experiences. One referenced being taken down to the school basement and being put in a thing that looked like a dentist's chair, refusing to talk after that because the memories were "too dark". Another wouldn't even discuss the subject at all because he left all that "evil" behind. I don't know what happened to them but I found their responses unnerving. Whether it is a child's perception of what would be perceived as frightening without intent to frighten or not, they really messed up.

The fact is that we were part of a research pool within the Department of Education. Interestingly enough, I did find that the DoE does not actually have oversight of the gifted programs across the nation. Those are all under state oversight. That, however, should not imply that there are not national bodies involved in the research, curriculum and implementation of these programs.

Here's one of them: www.gifted.uconn.edu...

As far as the intentional breaking of some of us, I do not know. I haven't found anything that says that we were being intentionally broken. I have found reference to an awareness of a child being broken in 1975 and I've given a link to that in this thread. However, just as it happened last time, that link no longer works but can still be located through the Wayback Machine. The fact that it keeps being removed from the net is just...wonderful.

I'm dissociative as well but whether that has something to do with at-home child abuse or the program, it's really hard to say. It is, however, why I am interested in the "positive disintegration" stuff. Overall there is some seriously whacked out stuff that has gone on over the last few decades within the program.

Here's a fun one to try to sleuth out: "the Genesa model". This thing was actually discussed for use within the gifted programs. Welcome to hippy hell.

eric.ed.gov...
www.deepdyve.com...
www.genesa.org...

Thanks for the reply. I am quite sure of the sensory overload 'part' of it. FYI I am not so much searching for answers about this program as I am other things.

The 'cats out of the bag' as far as me being an 'asset' etc.

I do know for a fact that many programmed multiples are routed through these gifted programs, but then again, you also have some that are too uncontrollable for school as I became. As well as certain siblings.

Anyway, again, not trying to put this on anyone else, but if you think intelligence angencies don't scout the gifted you would be...wrong. Do they 'get to' them all? Of course not allllll...

Good research by the way.

Chomp chomp mmm yummy.

a reply to: Apoceclipse

Actually, I don't deny for one second that the intelligence agencies have a finger in the pie with the programs and even recruit from them. I recall some of my friends being shoulder tapped while I got tagged with "issues with authority" at age 16, lol. It's really hard to argue with things like this:

NSA: www.nsa.gov...
NSA: www.nsa.gov...
DARPA funding: w3.sista.arizona.edu...
DARPA: i-a-e.org...

The fact of the matter is that those people working in these agencies were most likely some of our peers. The gifted program is mandated by Congress to be run by psychologists and psychiatrists in an effort to locate and refine those students for the purpose of "national security" (see the NDEA of 1958). National security, in this sense, would be defined as engineers, intelligence agents, cryptographers and more. Because they were being run by psychologists and each one of us had "individual education plans" and psychological assessments run on us, they would be able to determine who was more "fit" for those purposes than others. Ergo, my "issues with authority" and lack of shoulder tapping. I was undesirable and I'm definitely not sore about that.

My eldest was id'd as gifted in the 3rd grade and was placed into college at 15. He was doing some shenanigans which made the school clearly uncomfortable such as convincing his peers to make sacrifices of cutlery to a fruit and staging an uprising in a classroom by winning a logical debate against his teacher. Interestingly enough, he was still steered towards intelligence agency work by one of his specialized advisers, cryptography in particular. He's more rigid and rule bound than I in terms of psychological difference. He did not accept it.

Thanks. I've read over 1000 abstracts on the subject of the gifted and talented programs. Much of what is within an university database is unavailable to be read fully unfortunately but, oftentimes, there is enough to get the "gist" of the subjects. I still dig now and then just in case I can find a new gem. My interest in it is for myself as the program was a player in my life and for my children as both of them have been tagged. My youngest is in it as well and it's done way differently these days. It really is just extra curriculum at this point with a focus on "creative learning".