Schooling Central

Hi Happymum,
Thanks for the reply. I'm about to head off to bed and rest from all this crazy school business. Yes, I am toying with the idea of a 'group' attack, oops I mean, approach. The school funnily enough used to run a gifted parents meeting and advertised it in the newsletter, it hasn't been advertised for awhile...not many parents went though. The stigma attached to even attending this meeting is not good, the couple of times I went I tried to creep in undercover so no other mum saw me and asked what I was doing at the school at that time...ie canteen helpers, classroom helpers... The old story that no one really wants to hear you say that you are attending the gifted children's meeting....Only today I had a comment from someone about some kids attending CHIP and really should they be in there, are they really clever? It is endless the amount of stuff that is going on at the moment and as mentioned, the two extremes in the school is going to divide the place to an even greater degree. The gifted kids parents and the parents of kids with major difficulties. Thankfully I have one friend who actually does have a child who is struggling with processing information etc...she fully recognises the ability in our child and acknowledges the unfairness that the struggling kids are get mountains of resources yet every child deserves the chance to be extended to their utmost.

Anyway, the school prinicple would be absolutely apposed to any parents setting up any group that wan't signed off by the council. The gifted meetings previously were held by he vice principle. We couldn't advertise our 'new' group without that in itself being a major issue. Perhaps I can rally up a group to meet at a coffee shop...not sure...so many of them are so quiet and stand back worrying..they don't seem as angry and ripped off as me but then I have made life changing decisions to go to this school.

I have plenty of supporting information that the was given to the school in regards to the ability of our child...it is making no difference. This includes recommendations from CHIP specifically for our child. I think it gets down to the fact that the school has bitten off more than it can chew and unfortunately the ground swell of the two academic extremes finds us in the middle of perhaps an unstoppable down spiral for this school. Time will tell.

So yes, the decision is to stand and fight (in the nicest possible way), give in or go elsewhere.... I'll keep you posted.

Hi TMCR and welcome to the forum!

How sad that things are not working out as you had hoped at your child's current school. I don't know if you have read my other posts on this forum but we have also had a frustrating start to this year. Can I ask how your child enjoys school? I'm not suggesting that a child's happiness should be an absolute measure of a school's performance, but it's obviously a factor. We have always felt that it would be very difficult to justify moving schools when our son is happy at his current school, especially after we had a very bad preschool experience, and know how terribly that impacted on his (and our!) life. More recently I question how 'happy' he is at school. He hates art, music, LOTE, spelling and still whinges about maths now and then. There's not that much left! He seems quite comfortable there socially, and for a smart chess nerd we realise that this is something to be thankful about. The school he is at is not all bad, but for us the frustrations continue to mount and some days I feel as desperate as you.

I hope things look up for you and you find some resolution of your issues with the school. I will also keep you updated on our journey.

Annabel.

Hi Annabel,
Thanks for your interest. I do think the happiness of the child is very important. After talking to our ds this morning he tells me he doesn't like LOTE either, he said "It is boring. They say stupid things that we don't understand and we just say them back. If they said things that interest me then I'd like it." He likes Art, hates music, says it is boring and all they do is sing stupid songs, lol! Maths is still boring (even though I have spoken to the teacher about this and the year co-ordinator! ). He likes literacy (yes this is where he gets left on his own to write stories of his choosing at any pace he pretty much feels like ). He likes the sport activities.

I suggested that there are better schools where the work would be interesting and would he like to move to one of those schools....."OH NO, I HAVE HEAPS OF GREAT FRIENDS AT SCHOOL THAT I CAN PLAY WITH, I THINK THE SCHOOL IS PRETTY GOOD, IT'S PRETTY OK " So the panic set in and he really was keen to show me that he loves the social part of it and he definitely wouldn't want to move schools. I went on to say that he could still see those friends but make new friends at a new school...no, he wasn't up for that.

So yes he is happy from a social perspective and that is super important to him...I know he could make friends anywhere and be just as happy but he loves familiarity and as I've previously said we've moved house quite a bit and he does ask us when we're moving next out of worry...he says he likes where we are and can we stay here. There are lots of reasons to move him to a new school but just as many not to.

After sleeping on it last night I think I might approach the Vice Principle who has traditionally led the Gifted meetings and ask when the next one is. If she says there is little interest I'll let her know that I am interested and could she meet with me monthly but also advertise it. The other angel would be that the new prep mums haven't had a chance to show interest as there hasn't been a meeting organised this year. So then at those meetings I will calmly put forward some of what I'm seeing and feeling and hopefully the VPrinciple will be able to assist in resolving some of these issues. She is quite approachable although needs to find some conviction to stand up to the principle a little bit more I think.

Anyhow, that's where we're at. I am glad your ds is finding the social side enjoyable too and that you can find ways to improve the academic issues he's experiencing at your school. I think there is safety and strength in numbers and atleast at my son's school I feel if a group of us can get together at a gifted meeting and calmly seek clarification around our issues then we are off to a good start. We can only try. Good luck with your journey.

I feel that mathematics is a terrible measure of giftedness. I know it's a big thing here because there have been terrible performance statistics in Australia in numeracy. That leads so many parents into feeling that their kids are gifted simply because they find school maths too easy. Many parents jump at the notion that if a child can do maths at 1 or 2 grades higher, the child must be gifted and should be accelerated. My best subject was mathematics, and I have done University mathematics to understand that mathematics was the worst subject for judging giftedness!

Mathematics is a close world inside the mind. It does not need experience to learn mathematics. It seems to be in the human mind by design. That's why some kids can be 3 years ahead of other kids in mathematics by simply having self-discovered mathematics a bit earlier. We have math whiz doing University mathematics at 12 years old who never became anything better than a normal or less than normal adult. Some people can even multiply 200 digits numbers entirely inside the mind. It turned out that the mind was suffering from a disability that short-circuited something to produce this strange ability (at the cost of so many other skills).

It's a relative thing. If we compare to kids in countries like Singapore and Japan, most average kids in these countries are about two years ahead of Australian kids in mathematics but does that mean they are gifted? Not at all! after you consider sports, literature, science, teamwork, music, visual arts and general ability.

A trully gifted child is not one that can do maths 2 years ahead of his/her fellows. If a child can do 2 + 2 = 4, that's just the logic of the brain. But if a child starts to ask "what is a number?" or "Why 2 + 2 = 4?" or "What kind of number are 1, 2, 3, 4, ... ?" or "Do number really exists?", then it's the sign of a gift. This child starts to see concepts of sets, entities, kinds, categories, the countable, the uncountable and relationships of abstract concepts that are unrelated to reality.

I feel that the better areas to judge giftedness are sport skills, music, literature, visual arts, natural voice, ... In academic areas, I prefer the ability to observe and analyse (science), the ability to relate and form abstract concepts, the ability to generalise beyond specific items to create classes, ... These skills show the promise of an inquiring mind that will develop into an independent thinker. A child that has a philosophical mind since childhood is a sign of giftedness.

I agree that one area, whether it be maths or reading etc is not always going to be a perfect way of measuring whether a child is gifted. Not surprisingly there are a number of different beliefs/viewpoints on what gifted is considered to be.

As far as I know the 'moderately gifted', 'highly gifted' etc terms come from the labels given to a particular score on an IQ test. There are studies that support what you are saying in terms of excelling in one area is not a measure of giftedness. Studies have shown that gifted people are usually highly able across a broad spectrum.

If a child is suspected to be gifted due to excelling in one or two areas then I would recommend that an IQ test be performed. From there, the needs of a gifted child can be more closely met rather than waiting and seeing if they are still performing well ahead in secondary school. Indeed, if they are gifted and not catered for they are more than likely to not be excelling in secondary school.

The maths standard in Australia is very poor and dropping so yes it could be that a child who is one or two years ahead is simply a student who is performing at what is in most countries to be average. I guess I would caution however any parent second guessing themselves on their child being gifted because of this type of thinking. In almost all cases from studies I have read, the parent's intuition regarding the child and their potential has been spot on.

Research also tells me that if a child/person is gifted but is not given appropriate means to turn their potential into talent on a page, stage or wherever then that is potential lost.

So when it comes down to it an IQ test can provide probably the most reliable measure of what is generally accepted to mean gifted and most importantly from there, the needs of that individual met to ensure their potential is turned into talent.

I know that IQ is designed to measure raw intelligence. It's great if we can measure raw intelligence, but this is also precisely what it fails to do. It only makes sense to measure raw intelligence when a child has not been taught. Teaching blurs this raw intelligence. The dilema is when kids are too young, they are so variable. You can only get a measure that one child is better at doing something than others in same age group for that moment. Three months later, it's a completely different story. When they get to about 8 years old, they really even out a lot. By this age they have been taught too much. We can no longer measure raw intelligence. That's why at schools, they don't accept IQ test as the proof of giftedness. They only accept real "talent" that is demonstrable with high performance against the academic syllabuses.

Academic giftedness often does not go with social giftedness which helps kids to become popular among peer groups. That why people coined the word "nerds" to describe academically gifted kids. This is probably where academically gifted kids give parents and teachers trouble. They often fail to mix well into the social circle at schools. I personally suffered this myself when I was a kid as I could not join in with other kids doing whatever kids at my time liked to do. I learnt from this experience myself that academically gifted kids should be encouraged to improve their social skills and learn about relationships, building bridges with kids at peer group (rather than older and more considerate ones).

My own child is at year 4. She started out as a loner and too shy to make friends (like me). She did not speak much English until starting school. We focused her a lot on building friendship and enjoying school life rather than running away from social development and put all energy into academic achievements. We asked her to invite many kids home to play. The social development effort really paid off. Now she is outperforming her peers in most academic areas and in the arts while enjoying life at school and love to be with kids at the same age. So my message is about "working on weaknesses" rather than dwelling on strengths. We feel that this is logical for young kids at primary school age. It works better to enable them to turn giftedness into real talent. We asked our child to improve social interaction with other kids and blend in silently. At the same time we encouraged her to quietly working on her academic strengths at home. Eventually it shined at year 3 when she won the most awards in the UNSW school competitions (6 out of 6) for her school. That's when the teachers and peer groups really took notice. We aimed to develop an independent thinker with confidence and a good temper. We are very pleased that she is getting better every year.

So when I look back at the strong similarity between my child and myself, I can see a real difference. The good social development has been giving her both a happy childhood and steadily improving academic performance at highest levels. So in a way, we hold her back to achieve a greater balance and performance down the track.

It is always interesting to read about how other people make similar or different decisions and what the outcomes are.

My parents didn't believe in holding back as far as educating their children were concerned. Both my brother and I started school one year early and we both made HSC records for our schools. So when it came to my own son, I knew that he would be alright to start as soon as he was ready cognitively. But since by that time, parents were already sending their kids to school as late as legallly possible, I did have to think about whether my son would then be placed at a big disadvantage, in terms of being the top student academically, winnng competitions and getting scholarships, etc. To cut the story short, in the end I have decided that these are not as important as enabling him to learn advanced materials at his readiness through the school years. He has been doing very well so far in all areas except sports, and he is not at all shy or diffident. There admittedly have been issues about "immaturity", but maturity will come some day. To be philosophical about the mishaps he does get into, more times than I did in my entire school life, hey, he is also having a lot more fun than I did!

Oh, I'm not sure there is something called raw intelligence. We just become wiser all the time with learning and experience. To me anyway, it's the readiness and capacity to learn, and the ability to apply and synthesize information that are important.