Gifted and Talented: Homeschooling the Talented & Gifted Child
One of the most challenging types of student is the gifted or talented child. The gifted child is extremely bright; quickly grasping ideas and concepts you are teaching and making interpretations or extrapolations that you may not even have considered. Gifted children may also have a creativity that shows itself in original thinking or artistic creations. Students who are gifted or talented are sometimes overlooked when educators talk about students with special needs.
The empirical article I found entitled "Why gifted kids often fall by the wayside" by Jenny Tabakoff was posted on June 14, 2002. The main idea in this article is that when gifted children are put into classes for gifted children, they often "turn out to be the stars of the school". The published article I found entitled "Putting the Well-Being of All Students (Including Gifted Students) First" by Tracy L. Cross, Ph.D. has a similar theme. The approach this article takes says we should challenge students in highly systematic and informed ways, wherein learning takes place just within the intellectual reach of the child. Both of these articles have very similar interests in that both are looking to better the education of the gifted and talented children. Both feel that schools should be encouraged to identify the needs of the students as individuals.
Sometimes having a gifted student in a normal classroom can be dangerous for the well-being of that student and possibly the students around him. In the first article by Jenny Tabakoff, she states that "Having an exceptionally bright child is a mixed blessing, particularly if the school is unable to provide enough intellectual stimulation. A bright, but bored child is at risk of developing emotional or behavioral problems". In the second article Dr. Cross feels that "in schools that do not plan for the nature, needs, and knowledge of the individual child, underachievement is prevalent, as is a growing sense of self-doubt and feeling not valued."
In the first article Tabakoff interviewed NSW Association for Gifted and Talented Children president Helen Dundeney. She said that the association has 1800 members and averages about 300 calls a month calling about their gifted children. "Most of the calls are about the child's social and emotional needs: they are not happy, or parents have seen 'the spark' go away, or the children are having trouble finding friends within their age cohorts, or are having behavioral problems." In some cases gifted children should be accelerated into higher grade levels. The child should experience school as challenging and remain confident. This would therefore benefit all students both socially and emotionally. At any age and in every classroom, there is a wide variation of children's social development and emotional development. We have all known young children who are socially or emotionally mature or older children who are immature in these areas. Dr. Cross's research indicates that only in rare instances are gifted children negatively affected socially or emotionally when they are accelerated. She thinks that with proper training, teachers should be able to deal effectively with social and emotional variations among their students. As a result, a student who is able to master the course content more quickly than others should not present a problem when grouped with older students, some of whom may be on the same social or emotional level.
After studying both of these articles I feel that gifted and talented students have special needs. I think that all schools should be able to offer programs for gifted children. I think that this is necessary to bring out the absolute best in every child, especially gifted children.________________________________________________________________
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mimi Rothschild is a homeschooling parent, author, children's rights advocate, and Founder and C.E.O. of Learning by Grace, Inc. She and her husband of almost 3 decades reside with their 8 children in suburban Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Rothschild co-founded Learning By Grace, Inc. because "our current system of education has broken its promise..." Learning By Grace, Inc. delivers Internet-based multimedia education to PreK-12 children in the United States and throughout the world.
Rothschild has authored a number of books about education published by McGraw Hill and others. Her Daily Education News Blog contains feature stories on alternatives in education.