retired_kylakras

What?

retired_linton_justin

Simply HAS to be an alias

retired_kylakras

Haha

retired_suzannechua

I was in this sort of programme. I completed 4 years of it. Then I made it to high school and I found out I'm above average if that haha.

retired_bball3378

Just unspeakably jealous of the sheer brilliance that oozes from your every utterance sir.

retired_traci29

i got given this tag when i went to school. the main effect was that i stopped doing any work because i reckoned i didn't have to work as hard as anyone else because my natural brainpower could see me through. i must have been on to something, because this approach worked until my masters.

Stings

Ah, been there and done that.

Basically spot on ceefax, I was put under such pressure from people that I crumbled horribly. Fun stuff.

retired_steevo93

To be fair, that's always going to be less of an issue in an independent school anyway, as the majority of the kids will fall under the Government 'guidelines' for G&T.

True, but her objection to the scheme is not that it would be redundant, but that it would be damaging and give kids a false impression of their abilities by needlessly applying this rather extreme label.

That's a very sweeping generalisation. The genuinely G&T kids I have taught have been a mixed bunch of know-it-alls and meek and mild types.

I didn't say they all had the same demeanour, just that they're all subject to a certain amount of hullaballoo and fuss, and this doesn't go unnoticed by the kids.

No more than the norm, I suspect. Streaming and setting has been the vogue in upper primary schools and secondary/grammar schools for many a year.

True, and that can have a similar effect. But G&T is a little more extreme, don't you think? Even though it amounts to basically the same thing (taking the top X % and setting them apart) that's not the way it appears to the kids when the words 'gifted' and 'talented' are being bandied about.

You're very right in that the criteria are set rather low, but some of the generalisations you've made are a bit odd. I personally feel that the tag is given to kids all too easily, when a genuinely G&T child will have qualities in a broad range of subjects.

Which generalisations are odd? And I agree with everything else - the tag is far too easily applied even without the G&T scheme, which will make that problem worse.

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retired_txanya

I got given this label when I was young and it pretty much ruined my attitude to education. I'm 23 now and I finally have some enthusiasm again.

Basically I got called a genius when I was about 9 or 10 and as I leveled-out nobody would accept it. It was always that I was being lazy or argumentative or whatever else they decided I was doing when the reality was that I'm just not as intelligent as everyone thought I'd be.

retired_linton_justin

My cousin was like that. So stupidily clever he won a scolarship to attend King Edwards school in Birmingham (saving his family around £3k a term in school fees) went on to get straight "A"s at everything and has just graduated with a 1st from Cambridge. He's a geek though, even appeared on University Challenge recently ffs