Lur

Today I want to discuss the madness that is 'Gifted and Talented'.

Today I'm inputting data on kids who the teachers think are 'Gifted and Talented'. This is clearly only been around a handful of years since I don't remember it from my school years so there you go.

An anecdote before we start to prove I'm not alone in my feelings of WTFery about it all: a student was being interviewed to attend next year. The interviewer said (and it was she who told me this story later, with a whoop of glee, so that's THREE of us now), 'hey, you're bright, why aren't you listed as G&T?' to which he replied, 'I am, but I think it's so stupid I didn't want to mention it'. GO KID!!

Basically, if your teachers spot you're 'G&T' in their eyes, or through a test score, or by showcasing some amazing talent in the public view or whatever. Now, the obvious problem is that if you're a shy person no-one will spot ANYWAY, thus denying you whatever use this thing brings (I can't personally see any; I have NO idea what it actually is FOR). Also, if you don't want to pursue the thing in question, you therefore become EXPECTED to. Plus...oh, it's just really, REALLY dumb. Agh. While I appreciate that talented people should be encouraged, at this age I do take real umbridge to certain kids being picked out for the spotlight while others languish in nothingness, ignored and abandoned. I find that rather offensive. Especially since I think the theory is that teachers will spend more time encouraging the G&T kids to be fantastic and basically ignoring the others. In fact I know this happens since there are one or two kids who are lovely people if a bit in-the-rough, smart in a street sort of way and hopelessly unsuited to academia who if someone would just take the time to encourage them to do it, would make fantastic apprentices. But since they're not G&T, no-one cares.

And as I said, I encourage that these kids are recognised too. But why can't there be some extra classes or something for them, something that doesn't make the other kids feel ignored or less than they are? Although as I said, I actually don't know what they get out of being G&T apart from everyone cooing over them in class from time to time. There doesn't seem to be any programmes to enter them on or anything. So what is even the point apart from to make the majority feel bad, HUH?

There are many silly things in education but in my opinion this is one of the sillest.