Education for your gifted child is a given, for any morally responsible parent. When you recognize that your child is gifted in some particular area of talent or intellect, getting the school system to understand that unique ability can be a challenge. For the most part public schools are designed to accommodate the “normal” range of children. Because it’ a legal requirement not only that you send your child to school but that the state provides public schools to meet that need, most of the children in public school are neither gifted nor special needs.
As such, the majority of the resources and the skills of the teachers by default are around the need to teach large classes of average students. There is nothing wrong with this approach as our society depends on proper education for everybody. But what this does mean that public schools have nothing to contribute towards providing specialized classes for gifted students.
Now there are gifted programs in most schools that offer classes that are “accelerated.” This means the curriculum is more challenging and complicated, so the student conquers a higher level of learning than other kids in their grade level. But if you look at this approach closely, this is not a program for gifted children. These are classes for highly intelligent students or kids who are exceptionally good at learning, so they will be the ones to earn scholarships to college.
But very often, truly gifted students do very poorly in these kinds of classes. That is because usually when a child has a particular area of excellence, that does not mean the child is capable in all areas of academics. So your child might be a brilliant musician, mathematician, chess player or dancer but in every other way average in his or her ability to handle the routine workload of school.
The outcome of putting such students into gifted programs is (a) they don’t get specialized training in their particular gifts and (b) they do poorly in accelerated programs, which results in poor self-esteem and lousy report cards, which disguise the pure genius of this child. These problems with how public schools handle gifted kids point to the need for you to look into finding private instruction that can design a program to take your child to the next level in his or her area of specialization while teaching the other academic subjects in ways that the child can excel in every endeavor at school.
Private schools can provide the focus on your child’s particular area of excellence simply because they are in the field of gifts and talents and they don’t have the burden of providing education for everybody. Specialized training needs the services of dedicated teachers who themselves are outstanding in that field of study or your child’s gifted area. So if your son or daughter is a phenomenal talent in playing the violin, you need violin teachers who can bring that talent along and knows how to take that talent to the next level and the next level.
Private schools can afford to keep such gifted teachers on staff. They can also afford to have any specialized tools or equipment that are needed to help your child develop his or her gift. Further, the field of excellence your child will develop has a path to success that is unlike the roads most kids take to state college and beyond. Your child may need to seek specialized education beyond high school that makes recommendations and a resume that a private school can help your youngster develop.
The private school setting can tailor your child’s curriculum so all of the routine academics can be taken care of, but there is plenty of time for your boy or girl to focus on their gift under the tender loving care of a skilled professional. These gifted teachers can become mentors to your child to show him or her the path toward success and greatness in the particular area of genius where your child is gifted.
These are compelling reasons to find the perfect setting that will polish and bring out the talent or gift in your gifted child. It might be more expensive, but if investing in top-notch education for your youngster means that he or she genuinely realizes that tremendous potential, it is worth whatever it takes to make that happen.
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