19 December

A senior teacher I worked with said one day, “we need to do more for the gifted kids”. I said, “how do you know which kids are gifted? Are you gifted? Would you recognise a gifted child?” It was a serious question. There are so many stories of gifted adults who went totally unrecognised at school. A truly gifted person will often be a total pain in the arse at school. What makes them gifted is that they won’t think the same way as most people. Most teachers aren’t gifted, and nor should they be, but that should be taken into account when assessing real ability. I was reflecting on this after the annual school awards round. When I was at school and when I was teaching, these were rarely anything but teacher’s pet awards. Kids who didn’t create waves, who jumped through school hoops well. Dux awards at primary level were nearly always ‘crawling mum awards’. They’re social awards, not academic awards, they too often reward social and socioeconomic status. Look at how often they match exactly the cliques in adult society in a given town.