Gifted & talented should be stopped!

[lijaco]

I think this should be stopped it isn't accurate, it isn't fair and parents become self obsessed with it. Learning then becomes pressure for kids from parents to be top. If you didn't you wouldn't have this section. STOP IT!

What do you mean 'repeated a year'? Do you want her to go to secondary school and be more than a year younger than nearly all her classmates? I think that's a recipe for disaster myself. I wouldn't pay for the privilege.

Who had a dig at your daughter? I asked in what way she needed "support" in sport. Your answer appears to confirm what I suspected and which is indicative of the tone of much of this thread, ie she is in a normal range ("clumsy child") but you prefer to put a pseudo-medical slant on it by saying she needs "support".

Genius is not a dirty word. When it is used properly, though, it implies putting a child up, not by one year, but by, say, five or six years. For most primary children that would actually involve changing schools. Tell me that's reasonable, for he system or for the majority of children - go on, I dare you. Logically, this is what should have happened to me. My teachers rightly decided that, not only was this too much, but even a 3 year promotion within junior school would do me no favours socially. What do you know? They were right. And th biggest shock of all is it didn't matter. I still went to Oxford and got my scholarship, so ho hum.

I don't think our education system is wonderful/can't be improved - I think it is a serviceable product for the money paid in by the "masses" (yes, them again - sorry!) I should add that I am from the "masses" myself.

Lastly, the "sunbeam" comment was not a jibe at your child or any other. It was a jibe at starry-eyed parents.

Cathe1, what most of us mean is not that people with genuine problems should not get help. However, it is not the case that everyone who is extremely gifted is going to have problems. You can't make a category of "we" and insist that it includes every genius on the planet. I have worked in academia all my life and some of the most brilliant minds I have come across have not belonged to people with social problems. Some have had problems, some haven't. Some of the most brilliant people in my field have also been extremely successful socially. And this is true of the great geniuses of the world too. One remembers Einstein because he was odd, but that doesn't necessarily make him typical. Shakespeare by all accounts was a well adjusted socially successful man. So was Bach. Someone mentioned that 1 in 6 gifted children have sensory problems. That means 5 in 6 don't. Which is by far the majority.

I think help should be offered where it is needed, for the problems people have. If a gifted child has problems, they should get help. But it doesn't mean that you should automatically offer help to her friend who happens to be even more academically brilliant but doesn't have her problems. It's the assumption that all brilliant people are the same that is silly.

And offering help to a "clumsy" child, when there are still children in wheelchairs who miss out on their education because they can't get to the classroom, seems like overkill imho. Truth is that it is extremely difficult even for a badly disabled child to get a statement and appropriate help.

ManIFeel has interesting insights into giftedness. I was possibly less gifted, but still enough to teach myself to read several foreign languages with a little input from my parents, and certainly well ahead of not just my peers but many of my teachers at secondary school. I was mildly bullied, but had no obvious social or behavioural problems. I would have been horrified if I had found that money was spent on me for some kind of disability.

I've come across this thread very late in the day - my oldest DS probably comes in this category - high achiever all through school, put up a year in prep school, one of top 5 marks in English GCSE and just offered a place at Oxord to do PPE (now at state school) - but it is so stressful to go on and on trying to promote their interests, say they need special treatment, and no matter how hard you try not too you become pushy and stressed. My advice would be really just to chill a bit, they find their own levels, they join extra activities (like learning Mandarin in lunch hour) and just get on with things. At the end of the day they get crappy Saturday jobs in Tescos etc, and go out into the same real world as all the other kids - where being precocious and self obsesed is the last thing they need to be happy and fulfilled. Not many of us get an education geared to our attributes - being a bit bo;red is not tooo bad - we all hae to go through that at some time in our lives whether for work or as parents. By the time they are 25 none of this will make a blind bit of difference.

Sorry, should have checked post for typos, do have a few brain cells myself!

when you say prep school is that private ed higgle? I find that most g & t posters on here have privately educated children.

Yes, lijaco, we were quite well off when DS 1&2 were little and went down the private route, but swapped to state system at 11 as a result of becoming very broke (bankrupt in fact) looking back I don't think I'd go down prep school route again, DS1's friends who are also hoping for Oxbridge places all went to state primaries. ( About 8 of them in his year)I think the real advantage of private education is that if you are both very busy working then there are loads of activities on offer and all the sporting side is taken care off without incessant driving to and fro. Remember though this is with 20:20 hindsight and maybe if I was back at day 1 again I'd still do the same - we all get very stressed out about doing the best for our children. The point I wanted to make in this thread really is that at the end of the day we all go out into the same world and compete for the same not so amazing and challenging jobs no matter how G&T we are - in fact on the whole I think those with a bit less brain power and a bit more common sense (which DS1 is totally lacking in) probably have a better time.Also we are very lucky in this bit of the South West with good state schools and Grammar Schools which are excellent. My message is really not to get too worked up about it all, by the time they are late teens they will have found their own paths.

higgle i live in north west and i see a lot of disadvantage. I wasn't being offensive. Just asking the question really. we don't even have grammer schools just state or private. Very class distinctive!

Hello Higgle, I agree, I try to sit back but from a large and diverse family and with 2 older chidren, I find ( and so do her teachers) this youngest one is constantly trying to "fit in" by deliberately failing tests and dumbing down. She is fiercely logical and questioning and the teachers say she is exceptional. She had a terrible last year with a group of very influential girls at school emotionally blackmailing " we will only be your friends if you give us the answers" stuff - it took months for me and the staff to work out what was going on. Fortunately the ringleader has changed schools. Nonetheless, she has finished the curriculum and her headteacher has written to County for her to move on. This has now been agreed - bearing in mind she is only 14 days to young to move on this is not a huge jump. That is why I still insist that the cutoff dates for schools are not sensible.
I wonder whether anyone has opinion on the "talented" aspect of "gifted & talented" - the posts ( and mine too concentrate on gifted) but the term is used to apply to children who have exceptional ability in sports & music as examples too. Is there such a strong voice against them having additional opportunities too?

Hi lijaco, I am in the South East, a small semi-rural town with the highest teenage pregnancy rate in the country, highest elderly population ( I guess one balances out the other!) low industry and high unemployment - lovely scenery but a rubbish road system which maintains us as a "sink town" and we do not have grammar schools. I have nothing but praise for my daughter's junior school, they work very hard with a group called the Excellence Cluster, that is gov't funded for areas of economic need, and last year, as an example, a group of G&T children from junior schools across the town went to a secondary school for a term for a maths project and all took and passed the Global Maths Challenge - all these kids are identified by their schools, not by their parents and they had a great time. Class of about 15 and no-one throwing furniture. As they go to schools where evacuating the class into the playground because staff are being attacked is not too unusual, they could actually perform without either being bullied or sitting in silence to avoid ridicule. G&T is for all children identified by the school and I think we should support and encourage it - then we should have better assistance for chldren to go to HE - of course I have an agenda - I didn't go to University because I had to get a job to support my mother and my siblings. Having an ability did not pay the bills. So, help children who are able, because they do not have the power to help themselves.

Cathe1 on Wed 07-Jan-09 00:26:09

"I wonder whether anyone has opinion on the "talented" aspect of "gifted & talented" - the posts ( and mine too concentrate on gifted) but the term is used to apply to children who have exceptional ability in sports & music as examples too. Is there such a strong voice against them having additional opportunities too? . Is there such a strong voice against them having additional opportunities too?"

Have you ever heard of musically exceptional children whose needs are met out of the school budget? Or anyone that suggested that having an exceptional talent for gymnastics was a special need that meant you had the right to special help?

Exceptionally gifted musical children get the same basic music lessons as ordinary children. Which is naturally going to be totally inadequate to their needs. Anything above that is funded by the parents, unless the child can win a scholarship to a musical school. We lived on a very tight budget when I was a teenager, to fund my brother's weekly sessions with the maestro. He was lucky to have inherited a little money to pay for the quality violin he needed. No school would agree to pay for that sort of thing out of the special needs budget. And rightly so.

The same goes for children who are exceptionally gifted in gymnastics and sports. They may get picked to play for their school, but there will be no money to pay for the extra, higher-ranking coach they will need to develop their full potential. Ballet lessons, extra art lessons- all that sort of thing is paid for by parents.

Dd has a friend who is exceptionally good at swimming and competes regularly on an international basis, there are already mutterings about the olympic team. The state school does not provide swimming lessons beyond the basic teaching of the breaststroke. So her talent is not exactly getting cosseted. No need to envy her parents; they are doing it on their own.

I think those of us who have academically gifted children should count ourselves lucky, because it is so much cheaper to supplement the needs of an academic child compared to those of a musical or gymnastic child. All my dd needs is a constant supply of books ( a lot of which can be borrowed or bought second-hand), regular access to the internet and the occasional exhibition etc. playing without extensive coaching.

Peanuts compared to what it would cost to meet her real needs if her exceptional talent had been for opera singing or playing the harp or show-jumping. The truth is that there would be needs we couldn't fully meet and she would have to make the best of it.

It is not that anyone is against the idea of musical or gymnastically exceptional children having additional opportunities- but on the other hand noone is suggesting that the state system should fund those opportunities.

If my brother had had to give up on his extra violin lessons and settle for a lower than optimal achievement, he would still not be anywhere near the position of a child with severe cerebral palsy who is not given the opportunity to communicate with her peers, because there is no money for equipment. You just can't compare the two.

That is why the school should, and do, prioritise the needs of a child with severe delays above those with a particular talent.

also those children with a special talent in art or music do not need extra lessons. My son is extremely musical and makes all his own music and puts it onto cds. He can play the piano/keyboard/ trumpet very well by ear and was able to from a very early age. He has never been taught by extra funding from me, even though he excelled in the music class at school. same for me with art really just loved to do it and only had lessons at school. i don't think a talent can be taught as such. Talents are a gift from within. A talent is through self motivation, enjoyment and opportunity. I wouldn't have known my son was musical if i hadn't bought him a keyboard at age 3.

cathe1 just read your post i too came from a background where i had to work to pay bills at home. i did go to university in the end but as a mature student when married. i didn't have any opportunity growing up

Though if you want to play classical music to a professional standard you will need to have specialist coaching. Even the most gifted person in the world can't become Yehudi Menuhin by practising X no of hours on his violin at home- unless you have the right sort of coaching you won't get to that sort of level. Talent alone wouldn't have got Menuhin to where he did; in other words, he would not have been able to express his full potential. A lot of it is technique and a lot of that you do need to learn by observing really great masters.

Same, I imagine, with things like world class showjumping or ballet or quite a few arts.

Doesn't mean that the state system has to find the money to develop absolutely everybody's talent to absolutely the maximum level it is capable of. It's not a perfect world, we have to settle for giving people a reasonable chance to get on in life.

It's a long time since I've read such articulate and thought-provoking posts as those by ManIFeelLikeAWoman; I am going to reread and give them more consideration.

I totally agree that there are some extremely gifted children out there in a range of areas, i.e musically, artistically and academically (like that little girl who studied maths at Oxford when she was about 10 for example, or the kid writing concert piano concertos aged 5). They need to be recognised and supported properly and have their special talents nurtured of that there is no doubt, and rightly so IMHO.

But the thought that there are all sorts of yummy mummies out there thinking that little Tilly has a vocabularly of 13000 words at the age of 2.3 and three quarters so she must be far brighter than most children or little Noah can differentiate between mauve and magenta and he's only 6 months, two weeks and 3 days old so that must be indicative of him having a brain the size of a planet, is frankly mad.

I'd venture to suggest that about 98% of the kids we read about here will be pretty ordinary, bog standard kids academically by the age of 16. Granted, they might have several A* GCSEs but there's nothing unusual in that these days let's be honest.

However, this site is big enough to take it all isn't it? I fully support the right of most people here to have an area to boast/gloat or whatever they want to do about their children.

Caveat - This does not detract from the fact that there almost certailny are a handful of parents posting here who do have truly girfted/talented children and I am not doubting that for one minute.

My DS1 hs been labled as G&T and I havent noticed my difference TBH. His school sent out a letter and a platic card and a website address and that was about it. I is confuddled.

I also have a dear little soul who is at the other end of the scale and his school equally confuses me.

I do try but I dont seem to get anywhere. Just girding my thingies for this term's round of IEPs etc etc.

Realise this post doesnt add much to the debate but at least I have let it out (and breath).

Carry on.

OMG I have just re read my post and noticed all the mistakes. Blimey no wonder she is having problems I can hear you say

It has since transpired that all those little kids studying maths at Oxford (note only Oxford as Cambridge will not take students younger than 17) were all to a child forced ahead by pushy parents. Ruth Lawrence is now estranged from her pushy father, that other little girl could not cope with the pressure of her studies and her parents and ran away to the South Coast at 15, where she was found three weeks later working as a chamber maid. Speaks volumes to me...

Also there is a lot of speculation that Mozart's earliest works were in fact written by his father and passed off as the child's... Even Mozart seems not to have been immune to pushy parenting.

Mozart pere is the Classic example of a pushy parent, hawking his children round the courts of Europe.

This is the thing when labelling children gifted and talented some parents become more pushy with their children. It has a devastating effect. There are g & t children but do they really need the label.

I'm re-thinking my views on G&T tbh. To me the idea of schools identifying particularly able children and supporting them accordingly was a logical one.

But I am beginning to wonder about the whole G&T thing.
My ds1 is in yr7 and with regard to challenge and stretch and enthusiasm for learning he has had probably his best term in education so far. He is in a non-selective school and is in a mixed ability form group for all lessons. Teachers deliver lessons in a way that different children can approach at different levels according to where they are working, but there is little sense of students being 'selected' or 'identified', but rather the higher level challenges are offered to all, and those that choose to can take them up.
Similarly he has had huge pleasure and boost to his self-esteem from joining a boys' choir (extra curricular), even though he is not particularly musically talented. If this opportunity had only been available through audition to the most musically talented students, he would not have been involved. But his enthusiasm is welcomed and his musicality has improved as a result.

In the school I work at we have a G&T policy and a G&T list, and when you see in practice how sometimes the identification of students can be wildly wrong, and that this then affects who gets "invited" to special events, at the exclusion of others who might benefit more... It just makes you question it all again. For example one of the brightest students 'on paper' in our school in yr9 has not been on the G&T list for the last 2 years, despite my mentioning it to the G&T co-ordinator at least twice; simply because of an administrative oversight and/or the lack of pushy parents.

I am also reading this book which is making me think about the problems with the current government G&T policy.

Identifying gifted children is one way of working; it may not necessarily be the only one. I was educated in the Swedish state system at the time when it was the world leader in education. There was no streaming whatsoever in primary school, and in secondary school only in a few subjects (maths, English and your second foreign language). Also, private schools were virtually unheard of, so the entire population were being educated together. Don't know how teachers coped, but they clearly did.

Very interesting roisin. Glad to hear he's thriving.

On the talented issue, I'd add that I think this scheme (identifying the able musicians/sports people) is even more biased towards wealthy middle class kids than the gifted one. In my experience the children that succeed at sport/music/drama are those who have been steered towards violin/tennis/stagecoach lessons and the like by parents from an early age. Children whose parents haven't been able to provide those experiences are most unlikely to get on the scheme. That coupled with what's been said about schools not actually providing for the talented children anyway makes me think it's a bit of a nonsense.