Clarifying Giftedness
In a recent article appearing in the
Cincinnatti Enquirer titled
Finding the Gift in Every Child, the author sets forth several interesting premises about gifted education.
- It’s a shame children have to be labeled at all. Words like gifted and challenged seem rigid and exclusive when the truth is that children, their abilities and inabilities, come in a jumbled and motley assortment.
- Some children can and should move more quickly and wade more deeply into some coursework. It isn’t fair to hold them back, or deny that they need to be served differently than other students.
- Schools need to create learning environments that are shaped around the child, rather than trying to shape the child around the environment.
- Teachers need support in the form of training to deal with wide ranges of ability levels and learning styles and they also need support staff.
- Caution should be exercised when identifying gifted children. While identifying children at early ages may help the brightest students get off to a good start, it may be too early to see the gifts that are just starting to bloom in some students.
- In addition to academic gifts, schools must acknowledge and support gifts of empathy, leadership, kindness, creativity, organization, and problem-solving.
- We must help all children see their potential and work towards it.
I receive many e-mails from parents who want to know if their young children are gifted. What a difficult question to answer. I’m still not sure if I know what the term really means. I do know that it means many different things to different people—including experts in the field. I personally think it is too much of a “catch all” term and does not really describe much about a child. I would understand much more about a young person if strengths and weaknesses were described to me, as well as personality traits and learning styles. So, I agree somewhat with the author of the above article. I agree that the term gifted is rigid. It is certainly not very descriptive.
The author acknowledges that some children should move more quickly and delve more deeply into some coursework. I know this is definitely true. I also agree that teachers need lots of support in terms of training and additional people power to make this work. A point is well made about needing to create learning environments that are shaped around the child. I’m afraid the
No Child Left Behind Act has made this almost impossible. Little room is left in the curriculum for variance or creativity.
The concept of the need for caution when identifying children is an interesting one. This concept poses the question: Is a person born gifted or can giftedness be developed at various points during one’s life? Can we fit people into neat little slots when they are young and expect them to always stay in those slots?
The author also stresses that we need to acknowledge and support various types of giftedness. Here are a couple of questions to ponder. Is one type of giftedness more important than another type of giftedness? Should we expect schools to address all types of giftedness?
Finally, we must help all children to see their potential and work toward it. I guess I would restate this to say we must help all children see the possibilities in life even if they aren’t obvious. The young people will then need to decide if they are willing to work toward those possibilities. Much needs to come from the internal drive of the individual. Just providing opportunities does not mean that everyone capable will take advantage of them.