I have been thinking about this recently as I am trying to think of a way to provide educational opportunities that would make money to pay rent to have a place to provide these opportunities and I thought maybe the idea that what you provide was for gifted children would get a certain kind of buy in. Part of me thinks that we have a gifted label for children because our expectations are so low. We read this guy Piaget at teachers college who proposed stages of cognitive development. I just felt it was some old man who hadn’t spent much time with kids – I had been a nanny for preschoolers for 10ish years before this time and all the kids I met were way more capable than he made out. It was like he hadn’t listened, or perhaps he just didn’t provide opportunities or conversations that allowed the kids to shine. Maybe he just did some testing.

We also have a tendency to think gifted as early reading, spelling, mathematics… hmmm, so can a dyslexic never be gifted? What about someone who doesn’t talk… Obviously, this is wrong then… A teacher once said to me something along the lines that “gifted is as gifted does.” I, of course, just googled that..  someone wrote on the internet saying that that is what teachers say, many teachers apparently…. and then went on to say gifted children are conceptual thinkers followed by some examples of lesson plans…. sigh.

Mostly, I think children are born wanting to learn, more than wanting as it is a biological necessity. What say they are all potential geniuses and we make them dumb, use a stunted language with them, don’t listen, don’t let them be obsessive about dumb stuff, or give them time to be interested, make them do particular subjects because they are ‘important’, we focus on curing them of their idiosyncrasies… My child is 12, and she is so better than me at some stuff (weirdly, the stuff she is oh so interested in). This is to be expected as she is one person and I am another.

So what kind of thing should one provide for a gifted child? The same as what you should provide for all children. Otherwise, how could we find out how they are gifted…  Opportunity, time, intelligent conversation, resources (including other people interested in the same weird stuff), problems, and lots of things to be curious about – fewer answers.

Einstein was open about that he wasn’t gifted. He  was curious and just liked problems to solve, and he was patient and persistent until he solved them. He said:

“I am not more gifted than the average human being. If you know anything about history, you would know that is so – what hard times I had studying and the fact that I do not have a memory like some other people do… I am just more curious than the average person, and I will not give up on a problem until I have found the proper solution. This is one of my greatest satisfactions in life – solving problems – and the harder they are, the more satisfaction I get out of them. …. it is not a matter of being more gifted but a matter of being more curious and maybe more patient until you solve a problem.”

I do know how to stop people from being curious – ask questions you know the answers to, and then quickly give them the answers…  don’t let them have a good tutu.. don’t talk about ideas – just do arithmetic learning.. give them uninteresting work.. have them worry about food, be scared.. no resources.. don’t give them any time to think for themselves.. Weirdly, this is stating to sound a little like school and poverty! Teaching gifted learners is just playcentre with different resources.

The thing is, together, we need to construct all the knowledge together. No one can be the one who knows it all, so we  delegate… I don’t know what I don’t know, but do I know H knows stuff I don’t…

When we finally get the “not school” up and going, I want to do the cup of paint on the end of a string and swing it thing and then use the resulting drips on a graph and work out the maths by failing about. I know some dead guy has done this (probably with less mess and while someone else made dinner), but I want to have a tutu. I will model curiosity.

“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” Also Einstein…