Dialogue: Clever kids need help to reach their full potential

Gifted and talented children must be identified and given teaching and learning experiences appropriate to their needs, says MICHAEL TOWNSEND*.

There are, on average, three to four gifted children in every classroom in the country. They face a bleak educational future, underachieving and unchallenged by a general curriculum and a lock-step school system.

The Working Party on Gifted Education, in its recent report to the Minister of Education, highlights the problem and suggests some answers. Put simply, exceptional children need exceptional treatment, with teaching and learning experiences appropriate to their needs. We already nurture the physically gifted. The report highlights that we need to do the same for the intellectually exceptional.

What do we mean by exceptional? While it's common to say, in an encouraging way, that everyone is gifted at something, this is nonsense. A person's best skill may still be only average when compared to the same skill in others. Gifted children learn faster and better than their classmates and often think differently.

Jamie, of New Plymouth, who recently passed the School Certificate examination in science at age 8, is gifted. Jonah, who showed outstanding potential as a schoolboy rugby player, is also gifted. In common with 15 per cent of preschoolers and school students, they have the capacity to perform at a level significantly beyond others of the same age.

As early as 5 years old, regrettably, too many exceptional children are asking why they have to learn things at school that they already know, like how to write a story, do mathematics or read. Some third and fourth form students are already capable of what is expected of fifth form students in some areas.

School is boring and frustrating for them, leading to lower motivation to achieve. Some children even deliberately underachieve in order to gain acceptance from their less able schoolmates.

Even before adolescence some of these problems are chronic, with painful consequences for the families, and many such children drop out of school.

Contrary to another popular myth, exceptional children do not make it on their own. They need some special provisions in the way they are taught.

So, what does the working party want the minister to do? The major recommendation is for an addition to the legislation covering how schools operate. This additional clause would require schools to identify gifted and talented children, and to give them teaching and learning experiences appropriate to their needs.

If New Zealand adds such a clause, after more than 60 years of pleading and advice from educators in previous reports to Governments, we will finally join an international community that recognises the special needs of gifted and talented children.

If enacted with teeth, this legislation could dramatically affect the development of gifted and talented children in New Zealand. Our teachers would be better educated in their understanding of gifted children and how to implement appropriate teaching strategies. Schools would receive more assistance, such as advisory services and resources for programmes in gifted education.

Gifted and talented children would be located in every ethnic, socio-economic, gender and disability group.

These children would receive an equitable share of teacher time and support, as well as a curriculum expanded in breadth, depth and pace to accommodate their learning needs. There would be specialist agencies to monitor and support these activities.

These are the guarantees sought in the remaining recommendations of the working party.

These all seem to be sound recommendations. By empowering schools and preschools to help gifted children reach their potential, we enhance developments in the economic, industrial, scientific and cultural life of New Zealand.

However, educational issues always have a social context. We live in a country with a relatively egalitarian ethos. We don't like class systems. We are critical of huge salaries for some individuals and poverty for others. And we have a great heart for those who are intellectually, physically or socially disadvantaged.

These values are evident in our school system. Our egalitarian concern with success for all has resulted in an unwillingness to give educational experiences to one child that are not appropriate for all. Many have argued that this has reduced the academic rigour of school, and universities are not exempt from the same argument.

Any dumbing-down of educational levels is especially harmful to the motivations and aspirations of gifted children. The intent of the working party is that all children, including the gifted and talented, be encouraged and given the resources to develop their potential to the fullest. This is an equity driven by the attainment of excellence for all, not by a manipulation of educational standards.

We already accept this philosophy in sport. Gifted and talented athletes are identified early and given experiences and opportunities (including special school provisions, school holiday training camps, sports academy assistance) to help them develop their potential. As a society we rightly celebrate these physically gifted people.

If we equally celebrated those people gifted in other cultural, creative and intellectual pursuits, this celebration would lead us to demand that they too be given different experiences and opportunities to foster their development.

The working party has shown how the minister could recognise the existence of the special learning needs of gifted and talented children, protect their right to an appropriate education, remove an existing international embarrassment, and vitalise the future of New Zealand. Let's get behind its recommendations.

* Michael Townsend is an associate professor in educational psychology, with research interests in gifted education, at the University of Auckland.