Imagine if your child was like young Thomas. Thomas was the last of seven children in his family and did not learn to talk until he was almost four years of age. From the start of his schooling he was unhappy at school, and the school was very unhappy with him.
Thomas started school at the age of seven - but after spending 12 weeks in a classroom with 38 other students - Tom's overworked and short tempered teacher finally lost his patience with the child's persistent questioning and seemingly self centred behavior. Thomas was declared, ill behaved, disruptive, and “addled” by his teacher. Thomas’s mother withdrew him from the school, and he never went to school again.
His mother made the right decision. Thomas had all the indicators of being gifted, but in those days the gifted child was usually miscategorised in the way that Thomas was.
Usually we define gifted students as those ”who give evidence of high achievement capability in areas such as intellectual, creative, artistic, or leadership capacity, or in specific academic fields, and who need services or activities not ordinarily provided by the school in order to fully develop those capabilities”.
There has been some improvement in our ability to identify the highly gifted but the definition of gifted is problermatic. Schools are still not designed to educate really gifted children and most often, as in the case of young Thomas, they do not have the expertise to recognize them.
India’s most famous gifted youngster is Chandra Sekar. He began operating the family PC at the age of 6. His father was amazed at his abilities and hired a computer tutor to help him. Then Chandra Sekar read that a 17-year-old American had become the world's youngest Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE). He became determined to beat that record. In 2000 he sat the MCSE tests and passed. He was ten years old! Within two years he enrolled as an undergraduate at the Anna University in Madras.
Young Chandra Sekar was lucky. It is estimated that there are thirteen million exceptionally gifted people in India and sixty five million highly gifted people. On top of this there are another sixty five million with genius level IQ’s. A staggering 143 million people! So where are they?
Sadly without a feisty mother like the world’s greatest inventor Thomas Edison, or a father who could discover their particular talent like Chandra Sekar most remain undiscovered.
A few will have become School toppers and flown off to lucrative jobs in the USA. Some will be leading scientists etc, but many will lead lives of blighted possibility. Cast out, or driven out of schools like Thomas, or with their gifts not found by their school like Chandra Sekar.
