From Clark, "Growing Up Gifted" Seventh Edition
Economically disadvantaged or low socioeconomic-status (SES) gifted students.
• Low SES alone can be the most debilitating factor in the circumstances of a child, and
where it exists enormous amounts of potential can be lost.
• If the circumstances of poverty are added to cultural differences, the growing child risks
alienation and very limited intellectual development.
• Some children of low-socioeconomic status are also ethnically or racially diverse;
however, many are not, and yet both groups are culturally diverse.
• Economically disadvantaged (low-SES) students are being reared by poor, low-SES
parents out of the economic (rather than ethnic or racial) mainstream.
• The family’s role in the success of low-SES gifted learners is most important. They must
encourage and monitor progress, communicate high expectations and standards for
academic achievement, and view socioeconomic circumstances as motivators to succeed.
• Many low SES families are characterized by the values and attitudes of poverty, which
include a victim orientation, survival thinking, short-term planning, and dependency.
• Children who withstand difficult circumstances and succeed despite the problems they
encounter; they are known as resilient children.
Identifying and providing for low-SES gifted individuals.
• The most serious deficiencies for low-SES children are reported to be in cognitive
functioning (e.g., the inability to observe and state sequences of events, to perceive
cause-and-effect relationships, and to categorize); language skills (e.g., limited
vocabularies and nonstandard grammar); and reading.
• A major problem encountered in identifying and providing for gifted students among the
low-SES population is the attitude, shared by teachers and parents alike, that giftedness
cannot exist in this population.
• By including the strengths and special needs of low-SES gifted learners in the curricular
planning, these children have a better chance to develop their giftedness.
