School for the gifted

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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.

Is there a specific learning style that is typical of many gifted children? I tend to think that we're all different and learn in different ways. And I'm afraid I don't believe that a school for gifted children wouldn't end up as some kind of hothouse environment.

I have met many parents of gifted children over the years. In my experience, they fall into two distinct camps. Some believe that they have a "gifted child", and that informs their perspective on everything. Others believe that they have a child who just happens to be gifted, but that isn't the sum total of who they are.

I'm really wary of parents who insist that their child can only make friends with/feel comfortable around other gifted children. They remind me of some of the parents I met at NAGC events years ago, who were convinced that their children struggled to make friends in ordinary settings because they were so much more intelligent than their peers, whereas it was painfully obvious to anyone else that the children in question simply had very poorly developed social skills. The trouble was, instead of the parents actually helping the child to improve their social skills, they just accepted it as an inevitable consequence of being gifted. It is not!

Yes, there is a lot of evidence showing that gifted children learn differently. In the same way that children with learning disabilities are differently wired, so frequently are children with extremely high IQs. Hoagie’s Gifted is a good resource if you’re interested. www.hoagiesgifted.org

And I don’t believe I’ve ever come across a parent who believes that their child’s giftedness is the sum total of who they are. I’m saddened to hear that you have. It may be their area of concern, which is why they talk about it. But any parent I’ve met is searching for the best fit for the whole child.

Poor social development is also something that could be chicken and egg- are gifted kids sometimes lagging in social skills because they haven’t had the chance to practice these ‘soft’ skills when they are young with other children who share similar interests and think and learn in the same way they do? Who knows! I think if you sent your child to a school for children with severe intellectual delay, they would probably benefit in some ways (getting a good sense of different ways of learning, learning patience and compassion, and that there are a range of different people and learning styles in the world), but I doubt you would think it was a good fit long term, as her intellectual needs would be unlikely to be met. I don’t see how this scenario is any different from those at the higher end of the IQ spectrum (which is no walk in the park for many children and parents, so no showing off here.)

The reality is that in the area of education, these children are failed repeatedly and sometimes disastrously by our existing educational system. And giving parents another option- not to have bragging rights, but because it might be the right environment for their particular child/ is not evidence of parental hothousing. Far from it.

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on this one. I just wish that someone had focused a bit more on helping me develop my social skills as a child, and not just my academic potential. I was a whole person, not just a brain.

I'm very fortunate with dd as she is as gifted socially as she is academically. My nephew struggled with this area much more, but thanks to the persistent hard work that my DSis has invested over the years, he now has great social skills and is a happy, well-adjusted teenager with a lovely bunch of friends. I genuinely don't think this would have happened if he had only been exposed to other kids just like him.

I'm emphatically with Alexa on this one. She keeps putting it far better than I could. I'll leave it there or I'd run and run.

Very happy to agree to disagree Alexa. I totally respect your perspective. I think the most important thing I’m trying to get across is that sending a child to a gifted school isn’t giving up on their social skills. Many kids simply are less frustrated and stressed when their intellectual needs are met, and become more naturally social with peers who have similar (unusual for the general population) interests. I don’t think that’s in any way ghettoising them. Just catering to neurodiversity in the same way a school for differently abled children, or children on the autistic spectrum would.

But I do appreciate that it must have been hard for you being valued for your intellect above everything else. That can’t have been fun, in the same way as my trying desperately to hide my intellect at school to avoid being bullied wasn’t ideal. Thankfully I met my tribe in the long run, and even though I’m happy to mix with anyone and everyone, my close friends share my interests and many of them had a similar trajectory growing up, and I would have loved to meet them at school.

All good debate though.

It's a complex area isn't it. I was definitely an outlier academically and was miserable until I moved to a v v academic boarding school at 15, which I experienced as a huge academic relief but also a social transformation - I really had friends for the first time. But as well as the academic stuff I had chronic health issues and a quite stressful home environment which were no doubt also factors - sad to say, but boarding school was both physically and emotionally a much safer and easier place for me than being at home/day school. So what felt at the time like a primarily academic experience, leading to being much socially more functional too, was probably partly down to those factors as well. I was just much more relaxed and protected and accepted in almost every way.

For people of higher intellectual ability, isn’t it easier to stimulate them in a normal setting? (Eg give them a few magazines to read after they complete class work or a few problems they can work on or a novel/composition). With the internet perhaps they could get answers/teaching.

Whereas people of lower intellectual ability will probably struggle to do the extra academic things themselves.

Trouble with a school for gifted will be that some parents will push their kids to get in. Isn’t it easier to have lots of online resources eg khan academy, Edx etc that everyone can access if they want?

The comment about 'that's what private schools are for' made me chukkle. Private schools are for people who have enough money to pay for it. It's not for gifted children. I know plenty of under performing children in private schools who somehow manage to pass the entrance exams because they are coached to the exact questions that will be asked and trained to provide the correct answers to the interviews, by staff who work in the schools and who charge money to privately tutor children to the entrance exams.

And secondly, no I wouldn't. From discussing the subject at length with adults who are gifted, many of them felt way too much pressure to perform put on them either by their families, or by themselves. Some dropped out, some became depressed at university because of constant pressure. I think that regular school is fine, plus outside stimulation (music, drama, sports, extra science, computing, chess, whatever the child likes). And learning to work with and socialise with people who have different abilities is very important for us.

DS is now in year 7 in a secondary school with 1500 pupils and is very happy, could be challenged more in some subjects but the teachers are pretty clued up about giving him extra work and challenges.

However (sorry if I am contradicting myself a bit here) 'geeks' and 'more able' children do find each other in larger schools and socialise together a lot. DS had no friends in primary schools, he was that kid who didn't play football and spent his break times observing ants, the geeky kid who was 'a bit of a loner' (so said his teachers). Comes Secondary school, he has tons of friends, most who are higher achievers, some who are just good at the things that DS likes such as music or languages. Obviously they are all boys as girls are a bit yuk for a 12 year old boy...

Does anyone remember the National Academy for Gifted & Talented Youth?

Summer schools at Uni, loads of workshops, half term stuff.

My dd says she loves studying with people who are into the same things as she is. being an outlier in a state school, and interested and working towards careers that just can't be catered for in a normal school whether state or private.
I think once you get to the level where your peers don't understand you, then alternative provision should be available.
Why should the gifted have to work out of school hours to satisfy their insatiable appetites for their subject. If they are given separate work to their peers they feel like they don't fit in and how many schools will have teachers with time to find resources at a much higher level than the classes they teach.

Leapfrog123 can you explain to me how to discern the difference between “pushy parents who want academic hothouses” for their averagely bright offspring and the nobler parents (such as yourself, perhaps?) who just want an appropriate learning environment for their truly gifted child?

Being gifted and talented...what does that mean? If it means getting 100 percent scores while getting to opt out of society then that would exclude the TRULY gifted and talented working class kids who get the top marks (or slightly lower) with full time jobs / caring responsibilities.

My brother got 95 percents across GCSEs and A Levels while being a carer for a relative and working full time in the holidays. He lost out on various prizes to a richer student who could devote 100 percent of his time to his studies which i thought was wrong - a few years later that student didn’t get a 1st at uni but my brother did. That student wasn’t even able to get a decent job but my brother was because he’s driven.

Never underestimate drive when it comes to success.

Circeplease

Maybe I can answer that from my experience.
I heard from one of the audition panel at dd school that they can tell within the first few minutes whether the child is doing it for themselves or their parents. They have to be quite vigilant because obviously they don't want lots of children leaving because it isn't for them.

I'm not suggesting the odd one doesn't get through, but when they do they usually end up leaving. I've only known a few in the four years dd has been there.
It's also an environment of the children are the ones they deal with mostly, the parents really are on the sidelines and you have to have trust because you don't have any input as a parent, and certainly no control over what they do.
It's really not for everyone irrespective of talent.

I have three very good, very popular private schools fairly locally to me, one of them charges 17k a year, the other two charge 15k. The number of children who go to these schools who have been tutored privately since toddlerdom is very high, but most kids who sit their entrance exam at 11 everyone I know who has had children admitted in those schools are All tutored. Including those who have had scholarships which should be given to children of less affluent backgrounds.

I think once you get to the level where your peers don't understand you, then alternative provision should be available.

Communication is a two way street. You could just as well argue that once you get to the level where your peers can no longer understand you, then you need to consider whether your communication skills might be at least part of the problem.

Having a like-minded friend is a wonderful thing. However there are limitations to the amount of social skills that can be gained by refusing to engage with 99.9% of society because you (or your parents) consider them beneath you.

“You could just as well argue that once you get to the level where your peers can no longer understand you, then you need to consider whether your communication skills might be at least part of the problem”

This.

Bally

Tbh, I've not experienced any parents who think anyone is beneath them, on the contrary, when they are in a specialist school they all tend to think of themselves the same as everyone else.
I certainly don't think this, and am just happy my dd has a school that suits her.
None of them refuse to engage with society, they go home to a normal family and do normal things, are active in their local communities and quite often have friends and siblings who aren't into what they do, or don't understand. That doesn't mean that they or their parents think they are better than anyone else, because they aren't.

I can see the point of schools for children with particular talents that respond to early training- the Brit School, White Lodge, Chethams all spring to mind. But I don’t think that’s what people usually mean when we’re talking about gifted children, is it?

Yes, this thread started very much about extreme academic ability and I've taken us to be still talking about that, though I appreciate Romany that your experience is with specialist music school. I reserve judgement on that because I don't know much about it. I confess I'm a bit wary because I had a whole childhood of people saying things like "ah she's such a self-starter, it doesn't come from us!" and "ah she's so mature, and she loves boarding. They are always on the go!". To me, the reality is a lot more complicated than that, in a way that I couldn't really start to process until I had children of my own. No one set out to put my intellect above the rest of me, but somewhere along the way, the fact there's a (still quite small) child in there can get a bit lost when parents are trying to do their best for their unusual child.

Anyway I'm getting a bit off-topic. I don't believe you can separate children off for "cleverness" like this Mon-Fri and just say it's fine, we're keeping it real by sending them to brownies. If they were struggling to make friends and find common ground at their regular school, they will have the same struggles at brownies. Also OP was talking about her education as "endlessly boring and pointless". I think a degree of "I'm above normal school" is pretty much inevitable when you're talking about a school for the academically gifted.

@circe Sorry I’m just coming out of an incredibly hectic day as work... re: the parents who are pushing their average ability children, I suppose it would depend what the entrance criteria for the school were (whole can of worms there, I’m sure.) If it were based on a combination of IQ results, which should reveal raw intellect rather than coaching- and parent meeting (I agree that pushy parents are generally pretty easy to sniff out), I think that might enable the school to be able to go after the genuinely gifted rather than the pushed.

And for those who feel a school like this is an elitist idea, I feel so differently. In fact I feel as though true giftedness is genuinely egalitarian, as gifted kids can be found in every class, economic demographic and race. Of course the psychologists delivering the tests would have to be sensitive to methods of delivering and interpreting IQ tests for any 2e students, who tend to have a wide spread in the different subtests.

I feel as though a school like the one OP is describing, far from being pressured or only respecting the brain of the child, would actually support kids who currently struggle in mainstream to achieve their potential, leaving more energy for other aspects of life (brownies!). Happy well adjusted kids is the goal. And whatever it takes to achieve that is fine by me.

@BallyHockeySticks Sorry I’m just going to play devils advocate for a second- if you had a child who was offered a place on an extremely competitive Oxbridge course, would you expect them to turn it down because you’d feel like they weren’t mixing with people of mixed abilities? And surely the analogy of a specialist music/ ballet school is a very good one. We are talking about raw talent, manifested in different ways. Why should a mathematical genius not have the same opportunities as a musical one to be stretched in his or her area of talent?

Leapfrog- do you genuinely think you would get an accurate representation of our culturally, racially and economically diverse society in such a school?

I think the music schools are a good model for how a specialist academic school could work.
An e.g for academic work they all work in year groups, apart from the juniors and depending on numbers tend to have 2 classes so year 4-6 over two. So taking this to academically gifted the school would either take one subject like Maths in which the children would be separated into ability but then the other classes mixed. So in other words choose the specialism per school.
Or have all the subjects and those who specialise in a certain subject are in the high group for this.
Then, you could have a Y6 working with a Y9 or any other mix or the particular subject.
So for the music, they all do academic together, may be streamed like other schools but the music part you could be with anyone, from any year.