Musings on Giftedness

[atropus]

I preface this by clarifying that I am relating ideas about "academic giftedness" and to a lesser extent "creative genius" as opposed to "physical giftedness" which is a whole 'nuther ballgame (and for which success is very much down to the luck of the draw).

I have done a lot of unpacking about "genius" and "giftedness" as they were labels I had

Comments

[ext_943945]

I saw this on your brother's page and clicked because while I am of an age (perhaps fortunately?) I was never 'tagged' as gifted, I know the pains it can bring; I was jumped up a grade partway through year 3 and have no fond memories of the experience. Being the smallest in your grade is never easy but then being bumped up a grade where you are even more out of place AND all the kids know you were just a runt from the next hall makes for a tough, or often impossible adjustment. My children didn't manage to avoid the label and my youngest, now 24, still writes poetry expressing anger at some of the absurdities and outright stupidities she endured from clueless adults. I and she will neither one forget the language arts teacher who thought giving her "gifted programming" was having her do all the same work as the others in her grade, then asking her to do additional work at a university level, which she got no particular reward for completing. The teacher seemed completely baffled when my daughter refused to do the "gifted work" and it was useless trying to explain that my daughter viewed this as punishment 'for being different'. (She'd gladly have done ONLY the advanced work; that wasn't the issue. She just saw no point in doing all the easy/stupid stuff and still having to do more than everyone else in addition).
That P word, potential, can set her off in a rave; she was the one who pointed out to me that teachers never utter that word without following it with an insult or complaint. You simply never hear the P word without it being followed by "but "
P.S. Your description of "the gifted child" sounds VERY much like not just a gifted child but specifically a child with Aspergers syndrome or high functioning autism. I raised two of those. (I have three kids; two were labeled gifted for academic and one for her skills in the arts)

[atropus]

Thanks heaps for your input. Yah, fair call on the Aspergers/ASD thing. I know it doesn't account for all gifted people, but it is certainly something that my experience reflects. I'd say that seeing as most of my friends tend to be fringe/geek I have a (MUCH!!) higher than normal number of friends who are on the autistic spectrum (whether or not they have been diagnosed, or even recognise it themselves - I'm sure that I have offended a couple of them by calling them "kinda Aspie" to their face.

In the teacher training that I have done (particularly a teacher aide course I did it focused a lot on extending gifted children within the bounds of the normal work. Blooms Taxonomy for example can allow teachers to target questions to a child's level of ability so that a whole class can be working at different levels on the same material.... and there are a lot of these strategies around, but the teachers have to have the training and ability to pull it off.

When going through a box of my school work a few years ago I stumbled on essays written on such meta topics as why 'writing this essay isn't a good method of assessment' and numerous protests at being made to do busy work. I think that there are some schools where inconvenient children are being accommodated by the system, but it doesn't mean that the current system is the best way to help them flourish.