Fabricated Facts and Actualities about Giftedness

With the limited resources that the Traditional schools have and the inefficient training the our teachers go through have given way to a lot concoctions towards the gifted child's capacities and towards the true understanding of their needs. The general notion that prevails amid the teachers, parents and people in common is that these children can take care of themselves and are capable of learning on their own. This statement by far is just restricted to retaining its status as a NOTION by the researchers and scientists working on the brain.

With the little knowledge that I have acquired in this area, I would like to point out a few FABRICATED FACTS and the TRUTHS about these ingenious brains!

FF:

Gifted children have generic intellectual aptitude which make them gifted in all fields.

TRUTH:

Giftedness is conducive to a specific given domain of learning. A gifted child may not be gifted in all areas and also it is possible that the child is gifted in a specific area but is learning disabled in another.

FF:

Gifted are children who show extraordinary academic abilities.

TRUTH:

There is no logical advocacy for this myth. A child cannot be coined gifted merely on academic achievements. Even a child who does extremely well in music or dance or 3D imagination also is gifted in the given domains.

FF:

Being gifted = high IQs

TRUTH:

Little manifestation has been acquired regarding giftedness in music or arts in terms of IQ. Furthermore, IQ tests calibrates a biased range of competencies.

FF:

Co-operative learning in heterogeneous (diverse) groups provides academic benefits and can effectively substitute for specialised programs for scholastically skilled children.

TRUTH:

Recent studies have shown that gifted students benefit more if grouped with other gifted children, and that co-operative learning cannot substitute for specialised programs for these scholastically talented students.

FF:

Self-assertive parents who push their children to overachieve create gifted children
TRUTH:
Gifted children drive their parents crazy and are pushing them continually for extra stimulation, who are trying to accommodate their needs and nurture them.
FF:
The talented lot should keep pace with learning to read and write early.
TRUTH:
There is no correlation between reading and writing skills in these ingenious souls. Some children may learn to read extremely well but are pathetic at writing skills.
FF:
These gifted children grow up to becoming successful or become some eminent personality.
TRUTH:
Many a times these gifted children or prodigies go unnoticed in adulthood. Their talents go waste as they are not like one of the common lot. They have their own needs and not many parents or educators understand these specialised needs of the child.

Special Learners!!

Only the brave dare look
upon the gray -
Upon the things which
cannot be explained easily,
Upon the things which often
engender mistakes,
Upon the things whose cause
cannot be understood,
Upon the things we must
accept and live with.
And, therefore only the brave
dare look upon the difference
without flinching - Richard H. Hungerford

There are so many students around who are suffering at the hands of Traditional teachers who are not willing to change their ways of teaching and approaching the child's genius!! Having visited couple of schools and meeting so many young minds and coaching so many of them, I feel clustrophobic when I see so many children falling prey to the old & traditional systems of our country.
Our Indian Curriculums are readily and very proudly making INTELLIGENT COMPUTERS out of our generation..........instead of making the INTELLIGENT THINKING HEADS who make those artificiallly intelligent IDIOT BOXES!!
We dont need computers who work on a set of instructions, we need souls who can think and have an individual rationale and logic!!
Very proudly the schools have their books printed and write "complied by the staff and the management of XYZ school".........But if one has to analyse the books they are sooooooooooo haphazardly compiled that its obvious that the child will have problems with literacy.

PLEASE THE INDIAN SYSTEM OF TEACHING IS MARRING THE GROWTH OF OUR CHILDREN .......THE EDUCATION IS SUPERB BUT THE METHOD OF TEACHING IT IS BELOW ZERO LEVEL.........DO SOMETHNG ABOUT IT!!
Let all the children develop - be it special learners (problem or gifted) or the normal average student!! let them all excel not only in the books but also in their holistic development!!

Visual Spatial Learners at a threat......

         In a Sequential world our Visual-spatial Learners are always at a disadvantage. These VSLs are continually under a threat of being misdiagnosed as weak students or children with ADHD/ADD. In our increasingly material world, it’s becoming a trend amongst young educators/teachers to conveniently label children with such complex and serious terminologies. This kind of irresponsible behaviour not only disintegrates the potential of such Visual learners but also devastates the parents of such children.

This article is especially for the parents of such children who are right brain dominant and fundamentally are Visual-Spatial Learners.

        I have a son who is a Visual-Spatial Learner himself and would like to create awareness among parents whose children are also VSLs but unfortunately have been misdiagnosed of being ADD or ADHD. Due to the similitude of symptoms of an ADHD/ADD and a Visual-Spatial learner, it becomes all the more necessary for parents to be extra vigilant of the learning styles and behaviour patterns of their child. Here are just a few eye openers:

1. Daydreams, has a hard time paying attention. – ADHD

A VSL thinks primarily in pictures, hence most of the time is busy visualizing Concepts and Ideas.

2. Has trouble listening to what is being said. – ADHD

A VSL’s strength is visual power and severely lacks auditory skills. Hence, processing auditory commands is a difficult task for the child.

3. Is easily distracted from tasks and play. – ADHD

4. Doesn’t follow through on obeying instructions. – ADHD

A VSL is a whole-part learner. Learns concepts all at once. Hence, sequentially learning is a challenge for them. To get distracted comes naturally to them as they don’t believe, rather CANNOT learn step – by – step.

5. Is disorganized and messy. – ADHD

A VSL is a good synthesizer. Sees the big picture and generally misses out details. They might be extremely messy, one might feel that their rooms are perpetually hit by tornadoes, yet can find a needle from a haystack.

6. Doesn’t want to do things that require ongoing mental efforts. – ADHD

A VSL generally is excellent at math reasoning than computation. They learn the whole word easily than to learn to spell them, which require ongoing mental efforts. They must visualize the word/concept in order to retain them into their long-term memory. (The Glenn Doman method of teaching works wonders for these little marvels of our sequential world.)

7. Often fidgets or squirms; seems to be in constant motion. – ADHD

Touching, feeling and sensing are very essential sensorial needs of a VSL. They are much better at keyboarding than handwriting. Due to their continuous need to be on the move gives them the unique ability to scan, scan and scan continuously, hence, creating unique methods of organization and arriving at solutions more intuitively.

          There are a lot more comparisons for the two, but these were just a few from the list so that the parents may be able to understand their child better. As parents we need to be more aware of our child’s learning styles than to solely depend on a teacher’s note or an assessment done in about an hour’s time by a so called professional. Even if one has to get the child assessed please make sure the assessments are done correctly. A child who is just 3, 4, 5 or 6 years of age cannot be assessed in a matter of a few hours.