July 4, 2012
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Teaching and Learning
Recently I’ve been asked about how I view methods of teaching gifted (really really smart) HS students. The suggested method is breaking subjects into flexible “Units” which students complete at their own speeds – the very bright student speeding through many more units faster than the rest of the class.
Teachers presumably (as the the Khan Academy system) would act more as a supervisor and tutor than as a lecturer. The units would be either commercially produced or made by the teacher ( a daunting task for many teachers).
In your opinion, would such a system improve the learning of gifted students, or just allow them more time to pursue their own narrow interests and emerge semi-educated?
What part should digital/computer access play in gifted education?
Do you know any gifted students? What problems, if any, have they had with their schooling?
How do kids learn anyway? What was your school experience?
Comments (3)
Nobody wants to talk about learning? Hmmmm, maybe that’s why the US educational system is so screwed up.
On the other hand, it seems to me that those interested n education tend to use a lot of important-sounding jargon to express rather simplistic views.
I’m interested in education and don’t use jargon!
The main problem with US education, as I see it, is that from elementary school through college, we have lost sight of what education is really all about.
Our son is profoundly gifted. His son is also gifted.
We live in a very small town. When our son was a child, our school district did not have offerings for gifted children. That frustrated me, but my husband and I found ways to provide stimulating experiences for our son outside the school setting. We took him to plays and museums. We sent him to space camp and enrolled him in Boy Scouts. We traveled. We bought him subscriptions to many magazines and made sure that he always had a wide array of books available. We did not tell him that he was gifted until after he was married and had his own son. I was very happy with the outcome of our efforts, especially when our son was studying abroad and one of his professors actually wrote us a letter and told us that he had never seen anyone like our son.
Our son grew up very well adjusted and has always been able to get along with anyone and function in any situation.
Our grandson is nine years old and is in a project based immersion program for gifted children. Our grandson has been told numerous times that he is very intelligent. He has a very narrow range of interests and lets other children know that he is far superior to them. He tends to let adults know that he thinks that he is more intelligent than they are. Someday, I think someone is going to “take him down a peg”, probably in a very painful way.
It’s hard to say whether our grandson’s attitude would be different if there was not so much focus on his intelligence or whether that is just the person that he is, but at this point, I am not impressed with programs for the gifted. I think that in many ways gifted people just are different from others. I think that they do perceive the world differently. Maybe it is better to help them fit in than it is to single them out.