School for the gifted

[NameChangedNoImagination]

If there was a school for the gifted, would you send your child? I would have loved one when I was a child. Where learning is accelerated to your own pace and where you have time and encouragement to study special interests.

I was most definitely bullied, particularly because I was very much into computers which were pretty esoteric in 1978. I eas given the key to the computer room at school and spent many hours noodling around with it.

“splicing tape on an old reel to reel tape machine (im not that old, it was old even then!) ”
@Fazackerley-my 18 year old does this. Apparently it’s now a “thing” amongst indie-music yoof. Nothing new under the sun.......

NRTFT. I know someone who had their IQ tested whilst at school (Private school. All year 7s in the school had their IQ tested)

Theirs was found to be 140. However this was an average between the logic and maths part of the test and the comprehension and English part. (Can’t think what else to call it)

On the logic/maths part the scores were through the roof. (Asked to join MENSA)

On the comprehension/English part score was something like an IQ of 60.

Most likely they were severely dyslexic but because they could read and their handwriting was neat it was ignored

The school pushed them into a fast track class and they floundered.

Left school with a couple of mediocre O levels

I think they must be very very bright without having had a great academic background because they have amassed a small fortune
and barely work.

They study markets and trends and buy and sell.
They certainly don’t work every day.

Their children are older but neither of them are academic. Their Dc are very bright but like the parent both are severely dyslexic (both diagnosed).

They chose schools which were “easy” for the dc. They didn’t want any pressure being put on the children like they had been put under.

Judging by this friend I think if someone is naturally bright pushing someone to learn facts and figures and write stories on them is going to make people miserable.
Better to do a bit of gentle guiding and let them figure it out.

Ha! I had a box of old reels that i used to cut and splice together to make new things. Gibberish but probably would have been a turner prize contender

@Oliversmumsarmy Your story is the perfect example of the kind of child who would be very well served by the kind of school I believe OP is talking about. With the ability to differentiate and stretch areas of extreme strength, and support areas of weakness (other exceptionalities and weaker study areas.) The problem is that with some of these students the spread of abilities is so extreme that they don’t fit anywhere.

I think if you are average in everything you get more out of education than if you are very advanced in one area but really rubbish in another.

To respond to the OP’s question - yes, I have chosen such a school for my ds (or rather, he was offered a place there). In an ideal world mixed ability schools would cater for him. But in his good state primary it has very much depended on the teacher that year - some years have been awful (no differentiation beyond the normal top level of challenge) and some have been OK (generally with more experienced teachers). He has found the pace excruciatingly slow, he has to mask a lot, he hasn’t clicked with anyone there.

At outside activities, he doesn’t have a problem making friends at all - it’s not a lack of social skills.

I don’t trust that the local comprehensive will be any better in terms of differentiation, so he’s going to a highly academically selective school where he can learn at his own pace. Crucially, I want him to have to work hard to keep up, to realise there are plenty of people cleverer than him, to learn to fail and keep trying. That just hasn’t happened at primary school, and I don’t think it’s healthy.

I am biased, because I went to a very highly selective school at 11, and thrived. I felt I fitted in, I was happy, I made friends for life. We learned so much more than the curriculum because the teachers knew that we could pass the exams easily without lots of repetition and drilling, and we bounced ideas off each other for fun. That’s what I want my my ds, too. I wish all the kids who could benefit from this sort of education could access it.

I recognise that fazackerley. (As in Butterworth-Toast?) Working academically on my own makes me feel intensely safe as well as being the context in which I've had the most exciting experiences of my life. That goes back to a stressful childhood for me too but basically it's a massive advantage and source of resilience. I taught myself so many totally random things.

Yes kalidasa a huge source of comfort and resilience. This thread has made me feel a bit sad though. What a strange little child I must have been.

I've had bits of that poem going round my head all weekend.

You both sound like Jo from Little Women up in her attic, doing her scribblings.

Yes sometimes when we are agonising over how odd DS1 is I have a moment of thinking 'hang on a minute . . .' Haha! It's so difficult isn't it - I do think we've maybe lost the idea of experience being 'character forming' a bit too much maybe. I used to skip school lunch at secondary school and spend the entire 85 minutes of lunch break (what were they thinking?!) alone in the school library because the horror of having to sit alone at lunch was just too much. I would be horrified if one of my children was dealing with this. But on the plus side I read a phenomenal amount! The school librarian had a 'suggestion book' but no one else actually used the library so we had a deal that anything I wrote in it, she bought. I was really into American novels by Orthodox Jews for a while so somewhere in Essex there is probably still a weirdly complete collection of this minor sub genre, I'm guessing still in strikingly pristine condition (read once).

kalidasa, be glad that you were allowed to go and sit in the library through that 85 minute lunchbreak. We were forced to go outside, so if you had to sit alone, you did so in full public view!

The thread is moving quickly!

I don’t think gifted children should get a better education just one suited to their learning needs similar to any child that had different learning needs support. The primary schools I’ve come across that are best with gifted pupils have gifted and SENCO provision in one team and come up with flexible individual learning plans for both gifted and non-gifted children with learning differences.

In my personal experience the idea of the tortured genius is overplayed. Most gifted children are just children who learn very fast and are often very socially adept. There are some very old studies that back this up.

I 100 percent accept though that the incidence of social issues may be higher even if still not the majority of kids and the difficulty these children have is very real.

I siltl think for very bright children the academic state and private schools with the most entrants per place are probably as good as you can get and better than free spritied do whateve ryou like at school situations - unless someone is particularly behind in many areas but justh as one particular area where they are good at something - the latter then makes them hard to place unless eg they are a musical genius at Chethams etc.

But the majority don’t have access to that kind of school.

Also agree entirely that education at the appropriate pace allows for challenge. The idea is to fail sometime to build resilience. Coasting can definitely create a fair of failure that holds a person back in life.

but I disagree that gifted NT children don't need special provision. I do think that that special provision can be easily provided with flexibility and differentiated teaching in a regular setting

That hasn’t been my experience with dc1.
This is a child who was talking about scientific concepts that you broach at GCSE and above when he was in Y5~6. One whose geography teacher says he is happy when he can’t manage to find one bit when ds1 is actually not quite right. Etc etc...
And has the emotional maturity to look around him and does a critical analysis of social behaviours. Of his peers.

He was bored and frustrated in state school. Horrified by some comments. And just getting more and more disengaged.
Better in his new (private) school but mainly because he started in Y10, they had already done some of the GCSE curriculum in Y9 and is basically doing 1.5~2 years in one year. Wo any major effort.

Having said that, I wouldn’t go for a boarding school. Yes it would have allowed him to be with peers and be more socially at ease. And yes he would have been stretched etc etc
But I think it would have come at a price by being separated from family.
And there is the fact he has to learn to function in a world where not everyone will just get things and where people will say ‘stupid’ things.

I can't imagine mine being in any other type of school now, with the exception of H.ed.
When you find the right fit it is amazing, is the best way of describing it.
If your child is weird their friends are too.
There friends are all very different but they share a passion that just succumbs everything else.
Some are academic some aren't, some have learning difficulties, some don't. Some are very rich, some are very poor. Some are extrovert, some are introvert. Such different personalities all working in the same subject.
Some people have even commented that they have a look about them and you'd know a student from there straight away, I don't know about that, sort of see it.
This done with a subject like Maths or science would be amazing and it would be hard to be convinced otherwise.

I think how well differentiation works in a class of non-gifted peers depends not only on how good the teacher / school is but also how gifted the child is and the ability of the rest of the class.

I think if you get a genius they are usually a genius in one area.

Schools tend to split people into grades, i.e. if you are bright you go into the top grade class if you aren’t you go into a lower grade class.
But when you are very bright in certain areas and struggle in others then you are going to struggle apart from a few classes

Feynmann (who went to normal schools right through) said "stretch sideways not up"

a) Care to name a source?

b) I might be more inclined to believe you if you could spell Feynman.

c) Feynman was accelerated in maths and physics and given advanced tuition in high school by Abram Bader, an outstanding teacher who had studied for a PhD with the Nobel Laureate Isidor Rabi. Bader facilitated Feynman's study of advanced multi-variable calculus, Fourier series, special functions, use of the principle of least action in mechanics etc. In short, Feynman received a bespoke personalised programme of acceleration in maths and physics. Bader was later recognised by the American Association of Physics Teachers with a distinguished service award for his early mentoring of Feynman. Does that sound like a "normal" school experience?

d) The "normal" school Feynman attended - Far Rockaway High school - produced two other Nobel Laureates. Normal - sure. I'd be quite happy to let my kids attend any school so normal and down to earth that it had only produced 3 Nobel Laureates. But clearly 4 or more might smack of elitism.

e) Feynman's co-recipient of the Nobel prize, Julian Schwinger, was also accelerated (radically) receiving his bachelor's degree at 18 and PhD at 21.

Spuriously attaching a big name to a concocted quote doesn't really work if the biographical details of that big name directly contradict the supposed words of wisdom and show precisely the opposite to be true.

Apologies for the extra letter in his name - overriding spell checkers gets fun

The quote is in "Surely You're Joking Mr Feynman" and was also in the TV show where he was chatting to his friend Ralph.

Yes, he was accelerated in Maths, but he was not moved into another school or another year group.

So the school produced other Nobel Laureates. Ah well. That is statistics for you.
Madoff went there too.

A school can be ‘good’ for a variety of reasons.

In the case of Far Rockaway, the demographics of the neighbourhood was probably a significant factor. Many Jewish families settled there and would have had culturally-inculcated academic aspirations for their offspring. I think that this would have contributed to the success of the local school. Intelligent children eager to learn would probably attract good teachers too. A feedback loop is then set up and the school prospers.

The connection between Feynman and his physics teacher sounds particularly serendipitous. I don’t think the individualised teaching offered to Feynman would necessarily be representative of what the school would be like for another student.

It was an ‘ordinary’ school in the sense of not being selective but some of the children passing through its doors might have inspired some of the teachers to go that extra mile.

Talking of the poster above who got the Librarian to get books by US orthodox jews reminded me I used to like reading Isaac Bashevis Singer in my teens.

@Xenia - I read a couple of things by him when very much younger - but in translation - my language skills are competent rather than skilled. Thank you for reminding me