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

That would be no.

I remembered this from TAG. Not sure why. The class was talking about Leonardo Da Vinci and how he could read & write upside down, backwards. If I recall correctly, we learned that his journals were written entirely upside down but I haven't checked to see if that memory is accurate or true. Will do that after this post to crosscheck the memory. We had to try to write upside down & write so that it could only be read in a mirror. Anyways, the lesson also involved other things as well including his cryptex & how it was made, using lemon juice to hide a secret in plain sight that can be revealed with heat, & cryptography. Most of us can probably code break to some extent, at least with simpler older codes. I know that my diary at the time was written in a code that I created in TAG & full of really pivotal secrets like which boy was cute.

I remember a lot of that, actually. What I found sort of interesting recently is one of those images where the words are all jumbled, but the first and last letters are correct. I decided to flip it upside down for heck of it, and I could read it even faster. Useful skill? Not really, more like dumb human tricks, but still fascinating how the pattern recognition skills they taught still hold strong so many years later.

I used to smoke and wait for those smart asses in the lavatory !

Last Edited by the deplorable ar-15 nut on 11/07/2023 12:24 PM

You ought to take a read through some of this thread. It's been one of the more interesting long-running topics here. I don't think any of us who have been posting over the years consider ourselves lucky, if anything we were lab rats who have paid a hefty toll for our involvement in a program designed by ex-hippie eugenicists. I get that people read the title and immediately think it's a brag...it's not. If I had a choice, I would go back and have a normal childhood, not one that spent 8 years to people pushing experimental education techniques for motives that are still unclear. These programs have left a majority of us who went through them broken people who have a very hard time functioning within a world that does not work the way we were taught. It's not limited to GLP, this is a well-known issue and you can find many discussions online about it. They make memes out of it at this point.

Actually, upside down speed reading could be intensely handy in the right situations. If one is sitting across from someone who has papers before them, one could theoretically quickly read those papers. There's a few papers on learning to read upside down as a skill that maximizes visual perception and reading expertise. They probably had us learn to be proficient in it for many reasons though half of the stuff is usually what I'd qualify as "stupid party tricks", too.

It is pretty remarkable how many skills we do all remember even when the memory of learning them is fuzzy. I'd totally forgotten about the code breaking stuff until I found myself having to break several types of codes in a game and was rapidly doing it. It took doing it to remind me of learning it. Memory is so weird.

It has come in useful, yes. Not frequently, none of the "stupid human tricks" have really, leading to a very logical question surrounding their original purpose and intent. After years of this rabbit hole, I have to believe that there was a plan at some point to harness these trained behaviors...but judging from the overall burnout rate I'm guessing it was abandoned. I think the only useful skills I retained and actually use deal with objective reasoning and learning new skills rapidly.

I have to ask the fellow posters, has your opinion on this subject changed over the years? I was just shy of 30 when I started remembering a lot of this stuff, and it bothered me a lot for a long time. These days, over a decade later, I've pretty much let go of it, especially as solid answers don't appear to be forthcoming and are slipping further every day. I mostly check in now just to see how everyone still here is doing. I'm still interested in the topic, but the effect it has on my day to day life is basically totally gone as far as new memories coming up, etc.

Not to dig up an ancient reply (decided to poke around the thread a bit for old times' sake), but I have started to have this suspicion over the last few years. I won't go into why here, and I know it sounds crazy, but it does appear that there is some kind of protected/long-term study status assigned - maybe not in a meaningful way overall, but in the way that smaller things that might be an issue for others routinely appear to not be one for us. I will remain vague, as others who should know what I'm talking about most likely don't need me to clarify. Proving it as fact is a whole other story, of course.

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Had this as well but in the US, higher speed & there were definitely words between the images.



Yep! Reaction speed test as well, kind of like a video game.



We're probably not but a lot of the things that we learned to do (at least in the US, presumably UK as well) were intelligence agency skills. A few of my TAG friends did get tapped for intelligence work. A while back though, I did see that the US based NSA was still creating curriculum for US gifted programs.

I daresay that this is probably the greatest and most accurate description for the 50s to 80s gifted program on this thread yet. This has my vote.

I was in the gifted and talented program in Texas

No to all your questions

Heck nobody in my town even knew what a psychologist was back then let alone one at a school

At first I found this entire thing to be pretty upsetting but that's definitely mellowed out some. I was just talking to someone the other evening who was asking me questions about why it is that I'm so different from others (but in a good way, they made sure to add haha). I explained all of this, citing the benefits and the downsides, the specific things that I recalled that were quite bizarre, & more. I used to be worried that I didn't know myself and feared that there was a part of me that was fabricated. I don't feel that at all anymore as I remember learning a quote from MLK Jr in all of this and that was the following:

There comes a time when one must take the position that is neither safe nor politic nor popular, but he must do it because conscience tells him it is right.

How do we know what is right? Our conscience and at best, this program gave us the tools to follow the money, look deeper, take in huge amounts of information, and put it together in ways that (hopefully) make sense and aren't akin to some plate of spaghetti slapped on a wall. At worst, it gave us neuroses and ofc it would because they did some really bizarre things that would and should unsettle anybody who had it done to them. The best part though is that we learned that there is no box and to question everything, even ourselves, and we've done a bang up job of that for the most part. So I know me and I also know that if there's anything that's bugging me about my thinking, that I'm going to question even myself. They gave us a load of tools to use. How we determine to use them is up to each and every one of us.

And to answer your other question about leading a life that is perhaps too convenient, yes and no. On one hand, they did follow Terman's Termites but on the other hand, could it not be that the reason why we seem to always land on our feet like cats is because we were literally taught how to be reflexive & responsive to crisis? See? More questions and that's good.

Yeah not California but TAG in another state. I had a blast, loved it, got all fucked up when I went to a “regular school,” but what does it all mean now?

I remember the frequency thing!!!

Yep, and it is prevalent in current time.

Hands up

One of the best threads ever in my personal memory here.

Wonder where everyone went. We should reconnect to compare dots...





Last Edited by MagentaMage on 03/19/2024 01:38 PM

Thing is, you could be cut loose any time

Back then, 10 years later, now...

You know it when it happens

And you're not necessarily presented to the school as Oh SO Smart (although, you probably had good grades etc). Because a lot of times, you were pulled out of class on a dubious pretext.

I had so many hearing tests that, even back in 2nd grade, i started to wonder if i couldn't hear properly. NOW i know that if i really couldn't hear, something would have been recommended to my parents.

So, no, the other kids didn't seethe with envy. They all had the same test in the same room as i did. It was a very small featureless room. I sat in front of a monitor with headphones on and watched blips on a screen. I think i raised my hand sometimes.

The other kids thought i was a fucking idiot because I kept having to do this test which probably was testing something else anyway.

So, fuck you smoking in the bathroom ready to kick my ass. Just fuck you.

It was so much fucking fun to get abused by boomers searching for ?

And my whole life everyone act like I was super into astrology on a dangerous level when i really don't remember doing anything other than reading my horoscope sometimes

And other stupid shit.

I get that some schools, you got to learn extra fun stuff and that's cool.

Some of us didn't. No one fucking envied us over the stupid shit we did. Usually they were doing something in regular class they liked just fine

Try dreaming your next days' classes every night for seven fucking years.

This was not fun or special. I don't remember any snappy name. If i achieved anything, no one cared.

And the most interesting thing: i never told my parents. Why not? I don't remember.

Anyway, my last post...

I check this thread from time to time. I remember the night it got posted.

I wasn't in the same program as this asks about so idk why i even read it or posted in it.

I used to have friends in this thread but usually when it gets bumped for the past few years, it's someone bitching that they just had to do regular school (they should thank God for that) or they're tougher than us and cooler than us. So fucking what?

Kids at my fucking school were tougher or cooler than me, but they didn't kick my ass. I don't know what they thought i was doing.. but they didn't really care. It was like that

I stupidly joined the Marines, the "Jar Head Program".

But were you a 'special tester'? -you should know what this means/is...

Any other Montauk AFS/Camp Hero 'alums' recognize this song (from there)?

https://twitter.com/_/status/1765333027746361575

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GATE

I remember that GATE

https://twitter.com/_/status/1775975543302685177

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