Any young parent who trawls through the Internet in hope of
find useful information to help their first little darling to become a genius
and get a leg up over other kids in this brave new world would tumble across a
common dilemma called "giftedness".
It is very easy to get drawn into this unfortunate dilemma when every thing about the kid seems to be a small miracle and a promise of major greatness to come.
The Americans invented Intelligence Quota (IQ) tests long ago and applied this
to their education system. This idea of raw intelligence testing has been
nothing but debatable, and even though it has been abandoned in US public
education (and never really adopted in other English speaking countries), it
left its mark and still currently commands an army of followers across the English world.
The eager middle class mums with lots of time for the kids
often put in an enormous amount of effort to teach the little darlings before
they start preschool. These pumped up kids eventually enter public education
with their gears humming and tyres screeching but soon fade away and settle
into a normal rev much like all the others. Then the blame is square on
teachers and schools who dare to let the bright sparks fade away. They would go as far as spending hard-earn money to get a psychologist to administer an IQ test on their children then take to schools as evidence of greatness. Some how psychologists always seem to be able to produce good IQ reports which would be promptly rejected by schools as unofficial evidence.
Parents of "gifted" children gather on Internet
forums and websites of gifted and talented associations to share their gossips,
brags and greatest ideas or bitterness about government and public schools'
failure to cater for their young geniuses and how the public education system
is designed for the "commoners". They are helicoptering around places
such as the various associations for gifted and talented children and various
online educational forums around Australia.
Often Internet blogs on gifted kids provide much hilarious
entertainment for most of us, but the die-hard stakeholders seem to hold so
much zeal and hope on what seems to be this purely modern American idea.
We now occasionally see more articles surfacing on
newspapers about how soft Western education systems seem to have become due to
the invention of a new concept called "fragile self-esteem". Western
educators now desperately fear that they would hurt a child's fragile
self-esteem so many no longer dare telling a child that his/her work (in areas other than science and mathematics) is
anything but a great work of arts. Some where along the road, people have
forgotten that by not telling a student the true worth of his/her work, how the
hell one can give a meaningful encouragement? So students are set to have a
rude awakening when they make it to second-rated colleges and university and still have a taste of
harsh reality.
It looks like the idea of "giftedness" is going
pretty much the same way as "fragile self-esteem" but the irony is
that it is admitted in theory by public education systems but rejected in real
practice. All education systems around the world only recognise proven talent
or performance before they invest resources for further enrichment.
This makes people wonder if parents who scream
"giftedness" about their kids are those with over-sized ego or just
shrewds who are trying to convince teachers and education officials to
siphon the scarce educational resources to benefit their already advantaged children. At least we are less affected by the racism in the US where white mums often try to use "giftedness" as an excuse to attempt to segregate their kids from black students in public schools even though we still a white-flight problem in Sydney areas with a lot of NESB families. Or perhaps one can only guess that a lot of these parents could come from a mix of recent US arrivals in Australia, Aussies who have lived and worked in the US, highly Americanised individuals or perhaps just have a point to prove or to be proud of. Whoever they are, we certainly have a rowdy bunch and some seriously interesting free entertainment when they throw dirt at the heavily tutored and high performing camp.
It is also worth noticing that this idea of
"gifted" does not seem to exist among ethnic NESB people (even in
those who are well educated and affluent). It is also not popular among parents
who send their children to expensive private schools where many teachers have
no problem telling kids that their work is of poor quality and confidence must
be based on evidence of real competencies. So even when praise is heaped on a kid by teachers, the parent might just say to their kids, "Perhaps, but not enough. Off you go to tutoring and please get the grade to do medicine or law."
Some interesting talks on the Internet
- A satire on white American idea of gifted children (2008)
- SMH Gifted child's mum sues Queensland Education Department (2005)
- Educating Gracia: a lesson for all (2008)
- Daily Telegraph blog about the noise on academic tutoring and Asian students in selective schools
- SMH Helicopter parents not doing enough to let children fail (2010)
- Bitter Crusader against Selective Schools out of missing out on selective school placement
