Here are stories about giftedness and gifted children from around the world for the month of September 2014.

Too much focus on 'average' students

Here is an interesting view on gifted students in school. Ronald Sutherland, General Manager of FYAH 105 Fm in Jamaica, believes that schools pay too much attention to "weak" students while neglecting the gifted ones. Most of the focus seems to be on those in the middle, the average students.

Weaker students have remedial classes to help them, but the gifted kids have nothing due, he says, to the belief that gifted kids will get by. This is the same attitude that we hear in America and it shows that attitudes toward gifted kids are similar all around the world.

Sutherland wasn't speaking only as a radio station manager. He is a former teacher and so presumably has some first-hand experience. He says, "I have seen kids at schools that I've taught... where the kid is very bright and pretends to be dunce, because they want to fit in." This is the same thing that we see from gifted kids in the U.S. and in other countries as well. Part of the problem he believes is that mediocrity is what the dominant culture is about. Again, this is what we see around the world.

Gifted children, wherever they are, have the same need for challenging academic environments, but it is difficult to provide such environments because of those attitudes about gifted children being just fine on their own and because the focus is on the average, on the mediocre.

He wants to see programs that "facilitate the development of excellence." I couldn't agree more.

UM receives $1.2 million gift

If only we had more people like Suzanne and Dave Peterson. They donated nearly one and a quarter million dollars to the University of Montana. The Petersons are not, of course the only wealthy people to donate a large sum of money to a their alma mater. What makes this donation special (at least to those of us interested in gifted children) is that it goes to the cause of gifted education. The money will go to the creation of a new position: Suzanne and Dave Peterson Distinguished Professor of Gifted Education. Do you see that? "Professor of gifted education.

The donation has some benefits that aren't immediately understood. For one thing, it means the college of education at the university will be able to conduct research on how and why gifted children are best motivated to succeed. It also means that the area has more opportunities for people to study gifted children and gifted education. The University of Montana will now be the only university in the Northern Rockies offering a "comprehensive education in the field of personalized learning."

How gifted and talented programs are failing our kids

Articles like this one make me simultaneously sad and angry. Jenn Choi tells the story of "Aiden," a twice-exceptional child, whose parents ran into numerous problems getting him the kind of academic services he needed. But you don't have to be the parent of a 2-e kid to understand those problems. My son was not 2-e (unless you count underachievement as a disability), but I could relate perfectly to what Choi wrote about "Aiden."

Gifted programs are rarely able to accommodate 2-e kids. But even worse, they often don't even accommodate gifted kids - unless those kids are also high achievers. Parents often spend hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars on testing for their child in order to advocate for their child. What happens to parents - and their children - who can't afford private testing? If the schools can't or won't take the steps necessary to learn what the children's strengths and weaknesses are, those children are likely to languish in the classroom. And that's the "best" problem that might develop.

We really need more from our gifted programs. They shouldn't create more barriers for our gifted children. They should eliminate the barriers that already exist, barriers due to disabilities, poverty, discrimination, and motivation and emotional issues. This is why it is so important to identify children according to their aptitude, not their achievements.

Parental focus on gifted children seems misguided

Here's another article that gets my hackles up. Only a person who lacks an understanding of gifted children and the issues they face can write such an article. Jennifer Baker, the author of this piece, seems to think that parents who ask the question "Is my child gifted?" are misguided, looking for the wrong information.

She cites Paul Tough, who tells us what researchers have found to be critical to success: "grit, curiosity and the hidden power of character." I don't know about you, but I never had to go to my child's teacher and point out that his "grit" and "power of character" were not being addressed by the curriculum. Curiosity was never a problem, at least in the sense that my child had an ample supply. If we had a problem with curiosity, it was likely to be that the curriculum was squashing it.

Baker is right in saying that giftedness is not a guarantee of success, but unless we understand that our child is gifted, we may be unsure of what to advocate for. We also may not understand why our child can talk like a thirty-year-old one minute and then act like a two-year-old the next minute. We may even allow some people to convince us that our child has ADHD when he doesn't. Had Baker said that parents who think that giftedness is a guarantee of success are misguided, I would have agreed with her. Unfortunately, that's not what she said.

Hans van Zon - Let the sun go down on these reactions to your opinion piece about Giftedness!

September had to be the month for annoying articles about gifted kids. Here is yet another one. This one is about a Dutch opinion piece, proving once again that inaccurate and ultimately harmful attitudes toward gifted kids are the same around the world. The article is in Dutch and the English translation isn't the best, but the gist is easy to understand: gifted education is elitist. It also suggests that the children are elite and that parents of these children are not allowing their children to be children.

I've heard all that before. I know I was told personally that I needed to let my child be a child. I was doing just that. But he was the child he was - not the child others wanted him to be. Will we ever get past these myths about gifted kids? The article itself was pretty bad, but the responses of some people were even worse, using phrases like "supposedly intelligent kindergarteners" as they pondered why parents would "do this" to their child.  Do this? Like send their child to a class that would serve their child's needs?