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

When I looked at all of the stuff I could find on the gifted in that university database, I looked at things written in the 19th century to the present. The early stuff was definitely trying to figure out how to get more gifted in the world. I believe the comment I made on this thread was like we were some sort of breed of poodle. One of the things that startled me though was a brief abstract from the US Army discussing the gifted, written in 1917. In that abstract, the gifted were acknowledged as essentially having the potential of becoming the leaders in the world, for good or bad. Martin Luther King Jr was likely gifted just as Karl Marx was and look at how much change both of them brought about. In that Army abstract, however, it was quite clear that they viewed gifted children as being potentially dangerous unless we were molded early on in the right way. Now this time period in the US was pretty messed up as you had the Galleani anarchists, the Wobblies, the Red Scare (think McCarthyism except worse, the race riots, and much more. This is the first really strong era of paranoia in the US that brought about the formation of the FBI as well as the authoring of the Espionage and Sedition Acts. It was a time period where the world was faced with assassinations, bombings, and revolutions. Is it any wonder that the military, at that time, would view even children as being potentially dangerous if they perceived them as becoming the next Galleani or Marx? There was a distinct shift between wanting to breed people like us like poodles to viewing them with suspicion even at a young age.

And then it shifts again to becoming an interest in aiding development, figuring out how gifted came into being, only to shift here and there, depending on the time period. Was the McCarthy Era more oppressive or controlling for the early gifted? Were the 90s gifted bombarded with technology in the hopes of developing future technological leaders? It all depended on the time--the attitudes of the state, the global climate, and which way humanity as a whole was developing.

In short, I don't think there is any neat answer that covers all of us because some of us were in the gifted program in the 60s while others were in it just a few years ago. What the gifted program was at those times probably differs wildly. I spent the most time on my time period, which was the 70s to early 80s with a look at the 60s as the run up before I went in. It definitely was heavily infused with human potential movement stuff. There was absolutely weird things going on with, gag, ESP related stuff from testing to teaching what would be cold reading. I still have homework from the gifted program that I discovered and the assignments were bizarre and creepy in their wording. Not all of them but a lot. There was a whole section on violence within society. We were taught how to dissect protest groups, identifying symbolism used in them (the raised fist, the white dove), discerning their motivations/cause, deciding whether they were using passive protest or guerrilla warfare, and more. That period came out of the Civil Rights era, the Free Speech Movement, and the Anti-War movement so it was a mix of "let's make you super whatevers" tossed with a bit of "watch your brothers and sisters while being the most altruistic person you can".

So, the answer to this question would be: It depends on the era that one was in it. Overall though, I'm sure the CIA probably funded some of it but the agency that was and is most involved isn't the CIA. It's the NSA. I haven't gone to their page in a while but they had a link to K-12 education right on their front page and every year they recruit kids from the gifted program for summer internships. Very easily verifiable.

I highly suggest that, if at all possible, you all start reading what's on databases for yourself. Jstor has a thing where you can read older scholarly articles. There's quite a bit on Google scholar but not nearly as much as an university database. If you have a kid in college, borrow their access for a weekend. That's what I did.

I don't think there is any real way of knowing of whether something actually worked or not. I did divulge what happened to me within my home (which was way, way over the top--I even have the very tape in my possession that was used) in therapy a while ago and my therapist stated that it didn't really matter whether or not it worked because it did work. The very idea that something might have been done to change us tangibly, to eliminate a portion of our memories or whatever, is enough to have affected us greatly. The goal is to try to remember as much as we can and get used to not knowing for sure. It's not comfortable. I started employing a system of double checks on myself to try to understand why I may possess a certain sentiment or whatever that strikes me as odd. It's kind of paranoid but what can you do?

As far as memories go, with the help of a parent who has come partially clean (same parent that tanked my mind, ironically enough), I've been re-exposed to objects and sounds from that time period. Recall isn't something that can just happen without something triggering it so finding the objects or sounds that you had in your life at that time actually is very effective at triggering recollection. It's like the responses when people saw the tangram puzzles--that was real and a lot of people remembered them. Burr puzzles would be another. Music has also been a really powerful device for me. I could not recall the songs that I listened to but it took a lot of surfing to find the songs that had lines that really popped out at me as representing an emotion, a feeling, sense or thought from that time period. "The Logical Song" by Breakfast in America--holy crap, that was pure TAG driven cynicism and sorrow. I remember feeling that so very well and the first time I was sitting in my room as a kid, listening to it. I know every word and it still brings up a lot of feelings for me. That's the kind of music you're looking for.

Doing these little things definitely help fill in the blanks quite a bit but it's not perfect. I also hit up Goodwill a lot as I will see things I once owned there like the fuzzy brown bunny bank I spotted a month ago. All of these things are triggers for memory and they are critical. Even if I can't remember a lot of things still, I at least have a much greater sense of myself, who I was and who I am, than I did 7 years ago.

If I find anything else that might work, I'll definitely post it. To me, this is probably the biggest and most serious issue for so many of us and I know all too well how awful it feels.

This thread is an oldie but a goldie as I always like to see it pop up. Thinking of way back then as we in the wide world believed in that American dream. This post also reminds me of some popular programmer on tv where some spooks came to Ireland to capture some puter geek Irish child who would go on to save American jurisprudence.

Life imitating art, art imitating life, who knows really as I remember of spook America needing Celt DNA as to supersoldiers in the nam.

A warren indeed of few entrances to a warren of many path.

Watership Down.

Embedded programming for now.

Minions of chaos AND minions of order. Set to be triggered simultaneously, perhaps.

Keystone. "keyTones".

I was also part of these programs. Our school called it probe, standing for people reaching out to broaden education. We had a special classroom in which we were shown weird s*** and asked to comment on it, given difficult problems to solve, and assigned high-level tasks. I quit the program because I found it irrelevant to me and my interests.

That and the fact that I am a lazy bag of s***.

I know exactly what you're talking about. It's almost a trope. Government takes interest in individuals with "special abilities", typically children, and then, whatever follows up usually not to the "special" individual's benefit. You see it over and over again in tv shows and movies--sometimes either coincidentally or not actually hitting on things that were actually done in whatever time period of gifted program--even the really weird stuff. Especially the really weird stuff. I sometimes wonder if those tropes influence us enough to make that uncertainty that we're all facing into something potentially nefarious. Then, I have to laugh at that though as I have a TAG homework file where we studied how tv influences behaviors.

Oh the irony.

I was trying to save some time by summing up the gist of the 300 pages of this thread by making a wordcloud. I usually do this for things like multiple hour long podcasts/other items from the deluge of info online that I want to read but dont have the time.

Turns out I should have just read it all, as the time spent processing the data was rather difficult with all variables involved, but that is okay.

Anyway, figured I would share it in case anyone else thought it was useful.

Cloud is weight sorted word occurrences from all pages of the thread, quoted posts have less weight but are still added weight to show significance because they were quoted. based on ~26k words/strings. there are probably still some random html tags here and there and useless punctuated singular letters, but I think it is mostly okay.

[link to i.imgur.com (secure)]

Not to be snarky seeming but honestly, anybody who has read this thread in its entirety knows the answer to that question but as a mild rehash:

From Operations of Increasing Order by John Gowan. As a reminder, Gowan was an educational psychologist who did research with gifted childrena nd founded the National Association of Gifted Children in 1958--the same year that Congress passed the National Defense Education Act that created the gifted programs. (This is no longer available online but I kept a copy.)

""I dreamt I was walking through an enormous field of wild red roses. 'How many roses are there here?' said a voice. 'Oh, at least a million,' I answered. 'Are there any sports among them?' the voice queried. 'Yes, here is one,' said 1, appropriately sighting one which had flects of white on its petals. 'And how many such sports do you think there are here?' asked the voice. 'Oh, probably a thousand, if one assumes that once every thousand roses there is some mutant variation.' 'And could these mutants be developed into distinctive colors and patterns?' inquired the voice. 'Of course, for that is the way our domestic varieties originated,' I replied. 'Ah,' said the voice, 'but you had to have a gardener who believed in the possibility of such development and then set about to accomplish it.' 'That is true,' I agreed.

There are many more children than roses, and they are much more important. Do some of them have talents and potential in exotic abilities which we do not even understand, and so cannot begin to stimulate? The gardener has produced a domesticated rose much bigger and more beautiful than the wild variety; could we do the same with children? But who will be the gardener for humanity? What are the talents of man? Are we sure we know them all? What if any are the boundaries of his abilities? Or are they as evanescent as was the limit of the four minute mile? What might we accomplish if we truly educated our children for the maximization of all talents which they possess?

A century ago lightning calculators were exhibited as sideshow freaks. Since my dream I am haunted by the nagging possibility that some children possess similar exotic talents, which, because they are not appreciated by society, are not cultivated or stimulated, and we are therefore back looking at the wild rose mutation, rather than visualizing what it might become with husbandry. What are some of the possible powers of mankind?"

I think that should be pretty clear that yes, to some potentially immeasurable extent, they were looking for children with exotic abilities as that is the entire premise of Operations of Increasing Order. Gowan published this a year after he stepped down as president of the NAGC. He also mentions in either this or "Trance, Art, and Creativity" that educational psychologist Mary Meeker (creator of SOI testing and the SOI-LA used for identifying gifted children) that Meeker had published or was publishing a book titled "Psychic Children". And, of course, there's also Stanley Krippner, who was a psychologist and parapsychologist, researcher of gifted children, and dreams. For those who are still writing dream journals, Krippner advised dream journals to help identify potential telepathic or prophetic dreams.

Toss in parapsychology research on ERIC which we sadly found one because of one of the child subjects came here looking for help finding what had been done to them, class materials that have gifted children making Zener cards and testing each other, old archived newspaper articles mentioning the gifted programs summer edition which included parapsychology and teaching kids ways to basically simulate ESP.

Yeah, we know the answer to that question, too, but we also made sure to do our homework to back up our claims with traditionally reputable sources.

Not to be snarky seeming but honestly, anybody who has read this thread in its entirety knows the answer to that question but as a mild rehash:

From Operations of Increasing Order by John Gowan. As a reminder, Gowan was an educational psychologist who did research with gifted childrena nd founded the National Association of Gifted Children in 1958--the same year that Congress passed the National Defense Education Act that created the gifted programs. (This is no longer available online but I kept a copy.)

""I dreamt I was walking through an enormous field of wild red roses. 'How many roses are there here?' said a voice. 'Oh, at least a million,' I answered. 'Are there any sports among them?' the voice queried. 'Yes, here is one,' said 1, appropriately sighting one which had flects of white on its petals. 'And how many such sports do you think there are here?' asked the voice. 'Oh, probably a thousand, if one assumes that once every thousand roses there is some mutant variation.' 'And could these mutants be developed into distinctive colors and patterns?' inquired the voice. 'Of course, for that is the way our domestic varieties originated,' I replied. 'Ah,' said the voice, 'but you had to have a gardener who believed in the possibility of such development and then set about to accomplish it.' 'That is true,' I agreed.

There are many more children than roses, and they are much more important. Do some of them have talents and potential in exotic abilities which we do not even understand, and so cannot begin to stimulate? The gardener has produced a domesticated rose much bigger and more beautiful than the wild variety; could we do the same with children? But who will be the gardener for humanity? What are the talents of man? Are we sure we know them all? What if any are the boundaries of his abilities? Or are they as evanescent as was the limit of the four minute mile? What might we accomplish if we truly educated our children for the maximization of all talents which they possess?

A century ago lightning calculators were exhibited as sideshow freaks. Since my dream I am haunted by the nagging possibility that some children possess similar exotic talents, which, because they are not appreciated by society, are not cultivated or stimulated, and we are therefore back looking at the wild rose mutation, rather than visualizing what it might become with husbandry. What are some of the possible powers of mankind?"

I think that should be pretty clear that yes, to some potentially immeasurable extent, they were looking for children with exotic abilities as that is the entire premise of Operations of Increasing Order. Gowan published this a year after he stepped down as president of the NAGC. He also mentions in either this or "Trance, Art, and Creativity" that educational psychologist Mary Meeker (creator of SOI testing and the SOI-LA used for identifying gifted children) that Meeker had published or was publishing a book titled "Psychic Children". And, of course, there's also Stanley Krippner, who was a psychologist and parapsychologist, researcher of gifted children, and dreams. For those who are still writing dream journals, Krippner advised dream journals to help identify potential telepathic or prophetic dreams.

Toss in parapsychology research on ERIC which we sadly found one because of one of the child subjects came here looking for help finding what had been done to them, class materials that have gifted children making Zener cards and testing each other, old archived newspaper articles mentioning the gifted programs summer edition which included parapsychology and teaching kids ways to basically simulate ESP.

Yeah, we know the answer to that question, too, but we also made sure to do our homework to back up our claims with traditionally reputable sources.

Not sure why it double posted but as curiosity question spurred by familial events and that post--do any of you have weird family histories? My family does on both sides. On one side, a relative from another branch was distraught to find out that we were never raised to know that some family members were born fey (basically, Irish for clairvoyants). On the other side of my family, my great grandmother was the local shaman/clairvoyant.

I'm not a huge fan of psychic anything but I ask this because of Meeker's curiously seemingly impossible to find book that Gowan mentioned. If the gifted testing included something that would show a propensity for a higher degree of intuition, which someone would reasonably have if they were culturally perceived as a clairvoyant, then surely my family would potentially not be the only one to have these weird eccentricities to it.

Why cant we form a class and sue the DOE, NASA, D of Ed, and DARPA for full disclosure as to what they were looking for, why, and how? FOIA requests would be a more moderate version. A law suit would attract untold numbers of included people, perhaps draw media attention, and definitely require a response, truth or perjury.

What was the selection criteria, purpose, and end game?

Who remembers being tasked with "seeing" outcomes in the current scenario?

Wow, you guys are stll here. blessings.We have so much to offer this world, yet we are the hi risk. best to you all, love.

does anyone who's followed this thread have a feeling now, kinda like 'game on' or go time?

what if something great was seen, but incubated... maybe the setbacks were to teach us how to be good people during the comeback?

love wins.

Yes, it is "go time".

Love, patience, protect

All proceeds as planned

Yes. Absolutely.

And yes, it's definitely "go time". My fellow TAG classmates and I have all noticed this in each other and discussed it. This kind of scenario is, I think, literally what we were built for.

Trust your gut/intuition, trust your activation, and allow your skills to rise to the occasion

Our counter-measures are the unknown in this situation unfolding, what will arguably clean-up the rogue elements bent on hurting innocent people

Let go of fear, be in-the-moment, and operate from love

Just a reminder.

Much love

appreciate all of your thoughts, it helps.

lies lose, love wins.

knowledge grows. it creates.

Arizona here. Early-mid eighties. Was in the gifted program and then skipped a grade. Won a spelling bee too. Very creative and artistically talented.

I can only remember a project about the solar system and that I didn't like leaving my regular class to attend the gifted stuff.

Talked to the school psychologist a few time trying to determine what kind of things I was interested in studying/learning about.

That's about all I can remember. Pretty sure I am somewhere on the Autism spectrum. I watch no TV and only read nonfiction stuff like textbooks on Materials Science and other nerdy topics.

Used to have a focused interest in the Occult for whatever reason. Something about the idea of "Unseen Forces" resonates with me but I don't know why.

Further back in this thread, I did manage to track down some old archived newspaper articles discussing a "paranormal phenomena" program within the gifted program in the 80's that are deeper in the thread. Some researchers that were involved with the National Association of Gifted Children were also interested in parapsychology. I can't remember what page these links are but. I also found gifted program curriculum online as well that basically had students create zener cards and test each other with discussion of results. I wish I could provide you with what pages these things are on but I'm tired and cannot remember.

I'm on the spectrum myself and was in the program from the 70's to mid 80's as well. Same thing. I remembered sitting on the floor in my bedroom when I was about 10 or 11 and trying to improve my accuracy at guessing the suits of cards in a playing card deck.

I'm emotionally and mentally exhausted and got angry enough today to just want to throw in the towel and let the chips fall as they may. Definitely needed the reminder to love, be patient and protect.

I don't remember if this was one of the scenarios but I do recall being presented with example scenarios and being asked what the outcome might be.

Written 9/22/19... I find this comment strangely prophetic.

I've seen this thread forever and only clicked on it today.
70's and 80's here.
Pulled out of class for testing and psychotherapy. Tracked and still pulled out, tested and "counseled"...Given additional self directed learning opportunities, which I actually quite enjoyed.

One thing on a brief scan that struck me was a comment regarding being unhypnotizable. Several times while in school a hypnotist would come in. It never worked on me. Still doesn't. Lol.

Kind of a bump to read more. I don't have lost memories, just memories of lots and lots of additional testing that my classmates weren't subjected to despite being in the highest track of the class.