Monthly Column
July 2006
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Gifted children
and Glasgow University’s Department of Educational Studies A terrible (as usual) article on gifted children was
published in the Times Educational Supplement.* Some people from Glasgow University’s Department
of Educational Studies say that “thousands of gifted and able children
are failing to achieve their potential” (surprise, surprise) and why is
this? “Because they cannot
cope with the pace and pressure of lessons designed to stretch
them.” Well, we know what
lessons designed to ‘stretch’ them are for, don’t we? To drive them up the wall with
impossibility by being given something to do that is pointless and
irrelevant, boring and tedious, and which they know will give the teachers
opportunities for sneering at them. Children must be “allowed to make mistakes”
says one wicked woman (Ms Chris Smith).
“Being able is not a one-off and fixed state of
existence”, she told the Inclusive and Supportive Education Congress in
Glasgow. Implying, no doubt,
‘we can smash it up very well, and our success in doing so should be
regarded as really meaningful and permanent.’ “Abilities emerge, develop and show themselves in
different settings and at different times so that assessment has to be
ongoing and flexible” these academics assert. Of course it is quite easy to make someone’s life
so frustrated that they find it almost impossible to function at all,
especially at pointless work set by a hostile teacher or tutor. I know; it was done to me. And I found it surprising (at first)
that nobody took the decline in my functionality as meaning that something
was wrong with my circumstances which needed to be put right. No! I had
just become less clever, and should be frustrated even more. Another person (Ms Margaret Sutherland) from Glasgow
University said that “experiencing failure was a vital part of the
learning process and education was geared too much towards always getting it
right. Children need sometimes to
be taken to the point of failure so they know it is safe to do so and it is
not the end of the world. They
learn from that.” I thought the whole point was that it was the end of the
world. If you could be forced to
fail for long enough, eventually you would be thrown out with no way of
making a career (in a university, which was the only sort I could have) and
nothing you could do in the bad circumstances of the outer world would ever
be taken as justification for re-admitting you to the fold of academics with
salary and status. Yes, well, I knew that the people running my life wanted
to make me fail by overlooking my complaints and objections to the unsuitable
arrangements being forced upon me.
What did I learn from that?
That they were sadists and destructively jealous of me. And that I was in a terrible position
in having to try to make my way in a hostile society. Margaret
Sutherland, who has jointly carried out research with Ms Smith on teaching
gifted children, said the culture of praise in schools was another difficulty
in dealing with highly-able children.
“If you tell a gifted child they have done something brilliantly,
but they know it took the minimal effort, then they will think ‘if
that’s all it takes to get a gold star then that’s all you will
get’. They won’t go
the extra mile,” she said.
“If someone is always telling you how great and how clever you
are, the chances are you will avoid challenge and difficulty and not achieve
your capabilities.” This is, of course, pernicious rubbish. It is entirely fictitious psychology
being used to provide a rationalised justification for maltreatment. I did not have high standards for my
work in order to get praise, but in order to get something out of my
life. However, when I got praise
for doing something in what I felt myself to have been the optimal way, that
was a welcome reinforcement. Being deprived of the opportunity to do anything in a
way that I could myself feel good about (i.e. being prevented from taking as
many exams as possible as fast as possible) was made no better and even
chillier and gloomier by the fact that I knew there was a policy of never
praising me for anything academic but only for non-academic things which I
did not care about. ‘What effect was this supposed to have on
me?’ I wondered, when the headmistress whom I hated (and regarded as
silly and pretentious as well as malicious) made a fuss about my craftwork
models or my learning to swim.
Did she really expect her approval to make me any more inclined to do
that sort of thing? If she did,
how could she? And eventually I
concluded that the object of it must be to distract me from my work (or from
the work I should have been doing) by keeping my mind engaged on speculations
about the internal workings of her psychology. Apparently there is now a TeacherNet website, designed
to support all those involved in the education (destruction?) of the gifted
and talented. There are also
organisations in this field referred to as ‘widely respected’,
such as London Gifted and Talented and the National Association for Able
Children in Education. Clearly
techniques for the destruction of the able have been brought to a fine art
and are explicitly promoted. They were really well enough understood when they were
used to destroy my prospects in life over half a century ago, although less
explicitly advocated. Conclusion: I have already suggested that it should
be illegal for any state school to accept as a pupil/victim anyone with an IQ
of 150 or over. While it is still
legal, state schools should be avoided like the plague by the able and
gifted, and institutions designated as ‘Academies for the Gifted and
Able’, or anything similar, should be especially shunned. Also, it should be realised that it is exceedingly
probable that anyone with a high IQ who has been to any sort of school, and
especially a state school, has been exposed to hostility and provided with
unfair and artificial handicaps for their future career. Anyone who is reasonably satisfied
with their own position in life should help them to work towards remedying or
at least alleviating their position by contributing towards their support a percentage
of their own salary or other income.
When I can get 100 people each to contribute £1000 per annum I
shall be able to run my excruciatingly constricted residential college cum
publishing company on a slightly more productive and less grimly painful
basis. That is my first target for support from society at
large. At present I have none. We welcome links to our website www.celiagreen.com from
high IQ associations and those for gifted children, from university
philosophy departments and from libertarian and free market
organisations. There will be
items appearing on our website which should be of interest to members of such
associations. Addendum: I often refer to myself as
being ‘absolutely unqualified’ when I was thrown out at the end
of my supervised ‘education’. Every time I say this I should add the
rider that, although this left me with no way of earning a living, let alone
providing myself with the circumstances of an academic career, it did not
mean that I would have been unable to carry out the functions of many
academic appointments. I knew that applying for them would be useless on
account of my dearth of paper qualifications, although this was only by
social convention regarded as relevant.
I did not think I would need to take any exams in order to be
functional in several areas, but although I was past the age at which taking
as many exams as possible as fast as possible had seemed the most suitable
and desirable activity, I could still take exams in anything other than maths
at short notice with an adequate level of success; however, no one would
discuss how I might do this in order to regain a foothold in society. The practical work in science exams had always been a
stumbling block in my life because one had to be at the mercy of an
institution in order to do it, and no one had ever been willing to arrange
this for me, except by placing my life entirely at the mercy of the Woodford
school (and that only to obtain A level practical work, not the degree level
practicals that I needed to take external London degrees in physics and
chemistry as soon as possible).
However, I thought, if there were any realism, Oxford University
should be prepared to accept my lack of practical course work, in the
egregious and exceptional circumstances, if I were allowed to take a degree
in physics or chemistry at short notice.
Otherwise I would have to try to take a language degree quickly. * 5 August 2005. Update “Schools have been told they must put their brightest
and best forward to join an academy for gifted children, and will be expected
to make sure their top five per cent of pupils are challenged and given every
chance to shine.” (Daily Mail 11 July) This is a gruesome proposal and should be shunned. There is a distinct feeling of
desperation in the determined hunting down of victims. Let none escape! Schools which do not send in names
will be punished! But why is this necessary? The lives of the gifted and talented
are being quite satisfactorily destroyed at it is, without subjecting them to
added torments. We must, it seems, make sure the top five per
cent of the population’s children are ‘challenged’
(discouraged and undermined) and ‘given every chance to
shine’. Surely a direct
contradiction, at least so far as the top one or two percent of the
population is concerned, which would be better off leaving school and taking
as many exams as they feel inclined before the standard age with
correspondence courses or just with textbooks and CDs at home, with
absolutely no monitoring or interference from education authorities,
not filling the time being ‘challenged’ with pointless problems
designed to keep them at the mercy of teachers. Further comments on the National
Academy for Gifted and Talented Youth, responding to a Professor of
Philosophy who tried to get me to agree that that such a place must be
good for some gifted and talented young people, even if not for all of them. How
can you possibly imagine I could think it was in anyone’s interests to
go to a If
you have compulsory ‘education’, you are decreeing that everyone,
whatever their individual differences, must have full-time
‘education’, i.e. must spend large tracts of their time in ways
which society sees fit to regard as ‘educational’, and which
might be completely different from what an individual or his parents would
spontaneously consider as being the best thing to do at a certain age. This
is quite independent of how wicked and destructive one perceives the
motivation of those concerned as being. Actually
I have a better idea. Lower the
school leaving age and instead of setting up a NAGTY, spend an equal amount
of money on financing the top 5% of the population to come and work in my
independent academic institution from say 14 to 21. (They could stay on after that if they
liked.) That would enable me to
reach a much more productive scale of operation. Well, actually, a productive scale –
as yet we are not really in a position to be productive at all. As
I have already said, I would really recommend anyone with a child of educable
age to leave this country. Though
it is not too clear where they should go, as the modern ideology is so
ubiquitous. If
I had not, unfortunately, been the offspring of socially displaced families,
hence needing to get into contact with a different stratum of society, I
would have done much better to leave school at 13 when I was confronted by
that age limit, give up on the idea of going to university, and start
immediately on building up my capital by investment until I reached a point
at which I could set up an independent university to do such research and
publishing as I saw fit. That
would have given me a head start of 7 or 8 years compared with what has actually
happened. I
think that the high IQ associations should make available correspondence
courses on investment and, of course, draw attention to this Institute as an
advantageous place to come and acquire experience of investment and
strategies for survival in the modern world, as an alternative to
going to university. But this, of
course, they will not do because of their adherence to the ideology which
makes them wish to suppress all realistic information about us. Celia Green |