Saturday 1 February 2014

The dilema for those who scream "gifted" and its root in Americanisation



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




Does DIY work?


A lot of parents would have asked themselves if it is possible to do it yourself when it comes to gaining access to NSW opportunity classes and selective schools.

The answer is "Yes, it is completely possible." but there are a few hurdles along the way. Some of them are listed here as random musings heard from a lot of people who have tried and succeeded and those who have failed.

- My child is probably not the most academically capable one out of every 500 students. Many schools in the area have not had 1 OC placement in the last 10 years!

- I am supposed that I was good enough to become a medical doctor myself but I cannot even answer these prep questions very well. Perhaps I am just old, out of touch, out of practice or the game has changed.

- It is best to leave it to the people who know how to play the game. Send the kids off to these places and they know what to do. We have our specialisation and they have theirs.

- I suppose we can do it ourselves but we won't do the best job and the kids will just end up in the lower selective schools which are not really any good.

- Hey, I am a tutor for past 25 years and my students have become highly qualified specialists, engineers, medical doctors and so on but every one has a specialisation. I do high school level and HSC and stuff like math ext. 2 but I won't do it myself when it comes to my own kid and an area I do not know enough about.

- Yes, you can do it yourself but the kids must be willing to do the work and getting into the top 10 selective schools is never easy.

- We just do not have the time for it! I had a look at it and it would take a lot of time and learning about it. We can earn a lot more money spending that time doing our work and pay some one else to do it. But I suppose the kids did not want to work.

- I am a school teacher myself and I tried to help DD get into OC class when DD was in year 4. But it did not work so now I sent DD to a tutoring place as they might know what to do. I always thought that my DD is able to read at year 7-8 and do math at year 6-7 level but the tutoring place is telling me that DD could barely cope with their year 4 OC program let alone doing year 5 selective program.

- At school, they don't teach grammar and math word problems. There is no chance hoping that school can help my DS. I had a look at some materials at the shop but I have no idea how to teach. They are just questions and answers. Teaching is a different thing.

- I suppose I can teach my DD but there will always be a lot of kids who are just as smart and they work harder and prepared by tutors who know what to so it is hard to get a place in one of the top schools.

It is interesting to notice the difference between the UK and Australia. Even though the UK is the mother country, the tradition of grammar schools is extremely popular and powerful. Coaching is thriving in the UK to get into their grammar schools (11 Plus test) but in Australia, Caucasians generally detest the idea of academic coaching, yet they love sport and music coaching. As the result, while a lot of ethnic NESB students openly attend tutoring and the Greeks attend their own Sunday schools ... Aussies who use academic tutoring almost always go into hiding. As the result, lots of ethnic NESB students go to class-based tutoring while Aussies and other ethnic Caucasians prefer private 1-on-1 tutoring to keep things quiet.

It is also worthwhile to notice that Caucasian kids with middle class mothers and a tradition of bed-time stories tend to have an excellent start around preschool and kindergarten. They are well ahead in everything from reading, listening, counting and writing but the students from ethnic NESB from East and South-East Asian backgrounds leap up strongly around middle of primary years regardless of their family social status.


Thursday 30 January 2014

Opportunity and Selective School talks on the internet

Here are some active and informative chains of discussions and news regarding Selective School and Opportunity Class in NSW. Often it is much easier for newcomers to just look through what people have written for the last few years.


Official sources about selective schools

NSW Opportunity Classes (year 5)
NSW Selective Schools (year 7)
Victoria Selective Schools (year 9) 
Western Australia Selective Schools (various years)
Queensland Academies (year 10)


Sample practice tests

These sample tests are very old and they put up only as example for people to know the test format and question styles. It is a bit silly but the Selective Practice test for year 6 is more or less only suitable for year 4 students to practice for OC test. So when a year 6 student who have NEVER seen these papers before and could score 90% on them, do not hope for much, probably only enough to enter one of the low selective schools ranked about 15th-20th in NSW. The NSW OC Practice Tests are now only suitable for year 3 students.

NSW Opportunity Class Practice Tests (year 4)
NSW Selective School Practice Tests (year 6)
Victoria Selective School Practice Tests (year 8)


From around the Internet forums and blogs

Wikipedia about Opportunity Class in NSW
Wikipedia about Selective Schools in NSW
Wikipedia about Selective Schools in Australia and other countries
Essentialkids about Selective Schools
Essentialkids about OC
Whirlpool about selective schools
Daily Telegraph Blog about virtual selective school xsel (2010)
ICAC inquiry about bribe for marks (2010)
Segregation and white flight (2011)
Sydney Boys HS - In memory of Rugby (2008)
Daily Telegraph blog about coaching colleges (2009)
Essential Kids about NSW public selective school fees (2014)
ABC TV: Intensive coaching: A day in the life (2015)

 
 
From online newspapers

SMH - Rumours regarding selective school past papers (2006)  
SMH - Selective school about migrants' students(2010)
SMH - Selective school "Mr 100%" (2010)
SMH - OC class and early opportunities (2011) 
SMH - OC not as feeder for selectives (2013)
Daily Telegraph - selective schools being hijacked (2010)
Daily Telegraph - selective schools about tutoring (2012)
The Herald Sun - selective school English as second language (2012)
Daily Telegraph - the cost of early start at elite private schools (2012)
Daily Telegraph - selective schools performance in HSC (2013)
The Guardian - selective school coaching in the UK for grammar schools (2013)
SMH - OC classes no guarantee of place at selectives (2013)
Online Opinion - Mark Latham about every one is a winner ethos (2014) 
SMH - Sydney Boys High School fails in its bid to relax selection process (2014) 
SMH - Why private schools add little to education (2014)
SMH - Private or public: schools of thought in never-ending debate (2014)
SMH - Selective Testing Times (2014)
Daily Telegraph - Sydney mum’s mission to prove the education department wrong (2014) 
SMH - Gifted students vie for a seat in popular OC classes (2014)
SMH - High schools group students based on test results (2014)
SMH - Testing times: selective schools and tiger parents (2015)