Two challenging years teaching high-achieving kids in a “selective” secondary school in New South Wales back in the late ’60s was enough to kindle a lifelong interest in kids who, for whatever reason, have discovered that being good at something is the most fun of all.
The grade 8-12 kids in that school possessed three things in abundance and not necessarily in this order: intelligence, creativity and perseverance.
All three characteristics taken together defined them as high achievers and two out of three, as with many other kids, was not enough.
Those kids were good at different things, had different interests, challenged their teachers in different ways.
There was no stigma, nothing that made these kids “special,” no special programs or separate classes, just a school full of kids scaring the heck out of less-than-fully prepared teachers.
Which brings us to the long-unresolved controversy in public education about what occurs under the banner of “gifted” education.
I’ve never liked that term any more than “talented and gifted.” I came, in later years, to believe that the term “high achieving” broadened the field satisfactorily beyond the four per cent or whatever percentage specialists in the area designate as defining true “giftedness.”
Part of the problem is that by its very nature and structure, public education has never been good at recognizing human achievement potential in its myriad of unique forms.
You’ve heard the stories: Winston Churchill failed Grade 6; Steven Spielberg dropped out of junior high school and was persuaded to come back and be placed in a learning-disabled class. He lasted only a month and then dropped out of school forever.
We all know of people whose true abilities remained undiscovered until later in life when they became successful business entrepreneurs, writers, tradespeople and educators.
What’s my point?
“Giftedness” is more often identified as something specific to the academic purposes of public schooling. No question we need to challenge these kids, but what is usually seen as an academic advantage can pose both psychological and emotional challenges that limit the broader personal development of the “gifted” person.
Formal schooling tends to focus on kids who test out as intellectually advanced, but may or may not appear to be advanced in other areas.
This alone must be frustrating for kids who are just not good at tests, at least the kind of tests usually devised by people who are good at tests.
Howard Gardner, professor of cognition and education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, formulated a list of eight intelligences that he suggested are intrinsic to the human mind: linguistic, logical/mathematical, visual/spatial, musical, bodily kinesthetic, intrapersonal, interpersonal, and naturalist intelligences.
Gardiner’s thinking has become widely accepted, and many, but not all, educators now adopt a broader definition of giftedness by using multiple criteria to formulate gifted-education policy.
Gardiner suggests that nurturing multiple intelligences needs to be a requirement of basic education for all students and an essential part of the mission for all schools.
He proposes that providing stimulating and challenging learning opportunities for students should recognize the full breadth of multiple intelligences — not just academic potential.
In other words, let’s think about the kids who might be discouraged and lost in the scramble to define successful education by test results alone.
Easy to say, but not so easy to accomplish in a class of 30 kids when all we know for sure is that no two of these kids are the same in terms of achievement potential.
Ideally, each individual student would be evaluated for physical, social and emotional skills without the traditional prejudices that limit definitions of giftedness to academic potential.
In fact, that’s a useful way to think about the possibilities for the “individualized” approach now endorsed by B.C.’s visionary Education Plan, if the actual logistics of that plan are ever realistically addressed, much less implemented.
Geoff Johnson is a retired superintendent of schools.
