How were you told?

[Clarence15]

How and when were you told that your child was G&T?

Do schools actually make a point of telling parents? Is the child aware that they are in this category?

I know that my dd is bright, and she's working in the higher end of the class above at the moment. But she's not in a G&T category (as far as I know) although her teachers have always told me she's very bright.

Is it important to you that you have this title for your child, in order to ensure they are properly challenged, or are you happy to let the school get on with it? Do you actively speak to the school about it or not?

Thanks

DadAtLarge Wed 22-Jun-11 17:43:30
"As I've stated in other threads, there is simply no way any state primary with 25-30 pupils in the class can cater well for the brightest children. They can't even cater "adequately". If they are they are likely failing in their jobs because their focus should be on the children who are struggling, not the bright ones.

I completely agree with you that there should be some motivation from the child, but by the time they reach secondary school, our system has knocked a lot of the interest, enthusiasm and curiousity out of them"

So if I keep repeating that the brightest pupils in dd's secondary appear to be full of enthusiasm and curiosity, how do you account for this? Am I quite simply wrong about their enthusiasm and they're faking it? Or do I have to assume that they can't really be bright after all if they are still curious and enthusiastic? And what about my university students: some of the brightest ones I know have been educated in state schools- and they seem pretty enthusiastic to me.

Of course some schools are awful, some pupils get discouraged- but that doesn't have to mean that they all do.

My daughter has been on the gifted and talented register since being in year 2 at primary school. She didn't know this and neither did I until parents evening in year 6! I was always told that she is gifted and I knew that anyway (and so did daughter) but was never told about G&T and knew nothing about it. Since starting high school (she is in year 7) it hasn't been mentioned. I asked form teacher about it and she says that G&T doesn't really exist. Its just a name. Obviously my daughter is in set 1 for lessons and gets A LOT of homework especially maths cos they are taking GSCE, but there is nothing mentioned about G&T. So the only difference to daughter is that she gets extra work and gets to go on school trips to different places than some friends, such as visiting Oxford uni and doing maths challenges against fee paying schools.

We recently got three letters home in the space of two weeks, stating that Ds2 was G and T in three subject areas. We had been to parents evening only a few weeks before this and it was not mentioned then

"So if I keep repeating that the brightest pupils in dd's secondary appear to be full of enthusiasm and curiosity"
cory, you keep saying this like you've found some major flaw in a universal truth. "Gravity can't be true because I've seen helium baloons float upwards".

(State) schools are on a mission. To allow them to cater for the range of abilities they have no choice but to slow the fast ones down. Some schools do a better job than others. But all schools fail all bright children. That a child still has some enthusiasm left at the end of the school stay doesn't automatically mean the school has done a fantastic job. I suspect you'll find that the bright children most likely to have survived schools' efforts are children who have a very supportive family background. The part parents play in keeping their children enthused is under appreciated.

I am sure there is something in that last paragraph of yours, DAL, but it does not explain how dd has been developing an interest in subjects that are not supported at home because both her parents hate them/are crap at them.

I do know of people from families actively hostile to education who say that a teacher made all the difference- and those children have not been privately educated.

My own feeling is that there is no universal truth about all schools: a really inspirational teacher, or even better a group of such teachers, can make a vast difference in any system.

Of course, dd would probably have been enthusiastic about education in any case because she is my dd. But when she comes home visibly excited about something she has been discussing at school and wants to carry on a train of thought opened to her at school, why can I not take that at face value, why should I have to tell myself that it can't really have been anything to do with school?

Of course there are plenty who are failed by their schools. But not all schools are the same. And not all children are the same.

Besides I don't quite understand how this slowing down can really work when so much of what they do is project work with their own fact-finding and reasoning.

Do they give them instructions:

-No, you must only advance really stupid arguments to account for the Peasants' Revolt/the extinction of dinosaurs/the diverging opinions on global warming. Intelligent arguments are not allowed on this level.

-Your analysis of the imagery in Romeo and Juliet must be really basic and not involve any deeper understanding of the text, because we don't do that in Yr 9.

-Your essay is too advanced in vocabulary and sentence structure: you really must try to dumb down.

"Your essay is too advanced in vocabulary and sentence structure: you really must try to dumb down."

I believe you really, really don't get how the dumbing down happens in schools. Teachers don't give kids instructions to dumb down. Teachers do it themselves. For example, in English lang/lit spelling mistakes are often overlooked because a) worrying about spelling hampens the flow! b) not everybody can spell brilliantly so we have to "even the playing field".

Remember what Labour did to spelling in GCSEs? No minus marks for misspellings. Not even in English papers! So what incentives for teachers to get pupils to spell correctly? Some may do, but overall it's not a priority.

Teachers routinely tolerate bad grammar as well. "You was", "them books" etc., are often overlooked because, well, the kids are used to those expressions among their family / friends.

That's just in English. In maths it's a whole lot worse! Teachers themselves are often unable to appreciate more efficient ways of dealing with a problem. They know one way, they stick to it. For example, I taught my DS the technique often associated with Trachtenberg for quick multiplication. Take multiplying by 11.

243524 x 11

Traditionally:

243524
x11
_
0243524
243524
_
Add the above

However, if you look carefully at it, it's simply a matter of adding adjacent numbers. So you can skip all intermediate steps and put down the answer down as (0+2), (2+4), (4+3).... (4+0).

There are similar rules for multiplying by 6, 12 etc. Once mastered this is blindingly fast even with larger numbers where carrying is sometimes involved. My DS is capable of recognising where this technique is best used and is very proficient at using it. He can see the pattern in multiplying by 101 (add the neighbour's neighbour). He can square 46714 in less time that you can type it up on a calculator. But teachers don't know these methods and even if they do they have to stick to one (inefficient) method to ensure the whole class can understand. Dumb! But essential. We always insisted that when DS is in school he should use the method the school prefers ...and he always complied. Till one day I saw him doing his homework in the study and using his fingers to add 15 and 4. Why? Because that's how they do it in school!

The carefully cultivated anti-competition environment in schools doesn't help. Some children need competition or they won't give their best. But schools aren't worried about you giving your best (if you're in the top few percent).

I could go on. Dumbing down happens in numerous and subtle ways. Anything that doesn't expect and demand a child's 100% best effort is dumbing down. Anything that praises a child's half-hearted effort because it happens to be above the average expectation for that age is.... dumbing down.

I don't agree there is anti competition environment. My DCs ordinary comp are always entering competitions and encouraging the dcs to do so. DS took part in a local engineering competition last week. There are the international robot wars competitions, times spelling competitions. DS took part in a national court competition where given a case and had to put on a full court case taking all the roles in a majestrates court. They competed against other schools by taking the prosecution role in one round and then the defense in another round. These are all competitions which intelligent academic children can get their teeth into.
The Rotary club are very involved in these competitions and sponsor a local photography competition as well as the engineering one above.

bruffin, let's stick to schools and academic subjects for the moment. Where does your DS child rank in the class for maths? Why aren't they ranked?

Talking about subtle ways to turn kids off a subject, I like to refer everyone to ibizagirl's experience above:

"Obviously my daughter is in set 1 for lessons and gets A LOT of homework especially maths cos they are taking GSCE ... So the only difference to daughter is that she gets extra work"

Extra homework is obviously a very imaginative way to cater for the gifted!

The lesson kids convey to their mates? "Pretend to be dumb, you'll get less homework"

I am talking about schools. Education isn't just about where you stand in the class. One minute you are saying there is no competition in school and when it is pointed out to you that there is , it's the wrong sort of competition I suspect the competition they take part in has far more application in life out of school.,They are applying what they have learnt to real world problems.
My dcs do know where they stand in class, test and exam results are not a big secret. There may not be an official ranking but they can quite easily tell me who came top and what results they had.
They are both classed as highly intelligent , mature thinkers and in DS's case we have abstract thinking thrown in as well and are thriving in their school environment which is what matters to me.

DAL, I can totally and utterly see your point of view here :)

And your maths examples are ABSOLUTELY FASCINATING

Incidentally, what is your opinion on bright kids going to school in order to learn social skills and to learn how to suffer fools a bit...? Just wondering.

"I suspect the competition they take part in has far more application in life out of school"
Yeah, it's also competition where everybody can extract some sort of victory (or, at least, not "suffer" too much in defeat). ;) It's a sissified form of competition.

Some schools won't even have competition in sports ... so no 100m race on sports day! Real life ain't like that. You can't turn up for the Olympics and expect every competitor to get a gold medal. My theory is that there is no official ranking because schools suppress competition in academic subjects as a "protection" measure. bruffin, what do you think is the reason for not having official rankings in academic subjects?

Video games manufacturers know what motivates kids. They spend millions on that kind of research and have huge success in addicting kids to game products. Boys are especially susceptible. Play any game and you'll see it's about beating the other guy, it's about scoring more than him, it's about getting the upper hand. Even when there's no other guy involved, it's about beating your previous score, reaching a new personal best. Remove numbers, remove ranked competition and you remove the main tool you have for incentivising (boys especially).

EyeOfNewt, my home educated kids still get to meet teachers - we have a mix of good and bad teachers among our family and friends - so the kids will get opportunities to learn how to suffer fools (if that is such a key skill) ;)

No one has ever said anything to us, but it is generally acknowledged that ds is "gifted". The label is not applied to him and we have never said anything about it to him.

He is not accademically challenged in school one little bit and I have yet to determine how much I think that matters.

I want him to be happy and to fit in with his peers. I want him to love learning but I can fire his imagination outside school. He actively does not want to be doing something different to his peers so at the moment, I leave things well alone.

"I suspect the competition they take part in has far more application in life out of school"
Yeah, it's also competition where everybody can extract some sort of victory (or, at least, not "suffer" too much in defeat). ;) It's a sissified form of competition."

No everyone of those competitions had very clear winners and losers. As i said before there is no point in ranking as the children know exactly where they stand in class without anything being official.

DadAtLarge "But all schools fail all bright children".

I really don't know how you have found the time to visit all the schools in the country to come to this conclusion, must have taken you AGES.

Verbally, followed by a letter for ds1.
By letter for dd (she's older than ds1, and I rarely see her teacher as pick both up via ds1's classroom).

Said what they were considered to be G&T in.

I leave the school to it. Am satisfied that they are progressing rather than stalling. How the school ensures progression in the classroom is up to them, but I do support any 'extras' that come home with them.

yy Gooseyloosey - I completely agree. When talking to ds1's teacher the most important info she can give me is whether he has friends, is socialising and seems happy in school. DS1 has the potential to be a bit of an oddball (a lovely one) and so the social aspect of school is my focus at the moment rather than his academic prowess or what his reading age is.

Pooka - ds is an "oddball" too and I have found other people's attitudes to him very hard to deal with. As I have said before, he really does not understand what motivates other children and finds social subtlties hard to grasp - these are the things he needs to focus on learning. I would give anything for him to be an "ordinary popular" child.

Cory - I have found your posts on this thread really interesting. My elder son is 12 yo and so is now of an age to begin to take responsibility as you describe. He is at the very top of his cohort, is able in all subjects including art and music and is a sunny-natured self starter. He is at a selective independent school and so is about to begin 8 weeks of school holiday.

What can I do with him?

So far I have arranged a week of sports coaching with a friend and decided to take him to a major local exhibition of a famous artist, which will mean that we can read about the context of the work first. He has also ordered a couple of new xbox games.

I had wondered about watching Evan Davis's recent economics programmes with him and he has a complicated airfix model to make. And, of course, some of the time he will spend with his friends. But he'd love to have some sort of project ongoing and it's that desire that I struggle to know how to fulfil.

I'd look at what he was interested in, Amaretti, or in anything that might feed into an interest of his. Art exhibition and economics progammes sound good. Am hoping dd will spend some time reading French books; am making sure a dictionary goes in the luggage; she is very interested in history and drama so brushing up on her MFLs makes sense in that context.

About the ranking, my experience is that they know where they are in the class by the time they get to secondary.

But they also know that this ranking doesn't really matter in the long run: you won't get into Oxbridge or achieve the career of your dreams just because you happened to be top of your class at secondary school. It's not that competition doesn't matter to them, but that they realise that it won't be against these particular people they will be competing.

Thanks cory. He's come home from school today with an essay competition (with a cash prize!) that has some good titles. A good starting point I think, as he will choose the direction that he takes himself.

We were told by the Neurologist, i was expecting to hear the worst as my daughter was very sick and we were always told she may have some development probs.

that sounds brilliant, Amaretti! a competition will give him an incentiveto explore new ideas and if it's an inter-school competition will give him a chance to measure himself against people like himself