New outlooks in dealing with gifted children

My sister and I were considered ‘gifted children’ when we were at school; both accelerated up a grade. Whilst we both experienced the usual challenges that one faces in their formative school years–being younger than everyone else posed even more interesting challenges in high school. The outcomes were vastly different for myself and my sister: she has continued to be precociously successful, and meshing well in society; I changed courses several times, ran off overseas, finally found my niche after first seeking ‘independence’ (whatever that truly is).

Now it is suggested that gifted children remain with their age group, and given enhancement and enrichment activities. Agreed, but another though having discussed these current programs with parents who have gifted children: having a supportive schooling environment and available teachers to act as mentors and idea champions for these kids is also crucial.

Because of tightly stretched budgets, pressures on time, and a lack of really good teachers (or any teachers at all–note that primary and secondary education tends to be a pull factor in overseas recruitment), it can be very easy to let gifted children slip through the educational net because they’re already doing well. Children who have learned along the way to be self-motivating and have an environment in which they can seek out their own challenges find their own way to thrive. Those who struggle, or choose not to excel out of rebellion or wanting to fit in with the crowd–and there are a lot of them–find it difficult to reach their potential or to find the niche where they will enjoy it the most–which may not be the conventional academic successes that is usually predicted of gifted students.

For several years I counselled gifted students who made similar choices that I had in high school–to allow the emotional pressure of trying to be a ‘normal’ teenager get in the way of appreciating and valuing their uniqueness. The outcasts, the pariahs, the ‘loners’. If emotional stress does indeed affect decision making, in a turbulent age it can be even more difficult for one to find their way on a path that is right for them, and to understand that there are choices that they can make to learn to appreciate their gifts. Sometimes one just has to grow up an experience the real world to understand the past in its context; sometimes these kids don’t allow themselves that chance.

Creativity and Science

How to Unleash Your Creativity – an article in Scientific American.

I’m more of an academic-journal fan, however Scientific American makes discussing and reading questions and answers on the mind, language, consciousness … even theoretical physics … really accessible and easy to understand.

Why Czech archaeology never ceases to amaze me …

Archaeologists find grave of suspected vampire

By ČTK / Published 14 July 2008

Pardubice, East Bohemia, July 11 (CTK) – Archaeologists have uncovered a 4000-year-old grave in Mikulovice, east Bohemia, with remains of what might have been considered a vampire at the time, Nova TV has reported.The experts made the terrifying find within their research of a burial site from the Early Bronze Age.

One of the graves was situated somewhat aside. The skeleton in it bears traces of unusual treatment.

When buried, the dead man was weighed down with two big stones, one on his chest and the other on his head.

“Remains treated in this way are now considered as vampiric. The dead man’s contemporaries were afraid that he might leave his grave and return to the world,” Radko Sedlacek from the East Bohemia Museum said.

This is for the first time Czech archaeologists have uncovered a “vampire’s” grave, Nova said.

In ancient times, people believed vampires are the dead who occasionally return among the living to harm their health or property.

http://www.praguemonitor.com/en/377/czech_national_news/25427/

It’s drive, but on a different planet.

It’s six on a Monday morning and I’m back in the laboratory with a couple of techs, everyone focused, concentrating on their tasks at hand (except for me, I guess–I’m blogging, aren’t I?). And I wonder what drives us–what drives them. I think we all have different motivations, some because this–being here, slogging away at their investigative task. Someone once told me that it takes a certain kind of mind to want to do this, a certain kind of personality–which is true of all vocations, I think, even those that I can’t understand or don’t particularly like are perfectly fitted to the people who exemplify what is the very best of their professions.

More on this later, when I get home–something’s pushing at me to try and write this out, to try and speak what it is that I’m feeling, but things are finally clicking along now with the work thing and I need to catch that wave.

Никого нет дома.

Okay, this is a completely bizarre addition for my ‘learn at least the basics of every UN language for International Year of Languages’ goal: learning to touch-type in Cyrillic has actually improved my grasp on the language ten-fold. Which isn’t saying much as my Russian was only really associative by way of Czech–but having tapped my way through a couple of basic case work and sentences, I can actually understand having to put words in different cases and genders much faster than when I was trying to learn the same for Czech. I think this is partially due to having to have learned the words the ‘hard way’, through a related language that was placed in the Latin alphabet, but also because I am very much a kinaesthetic learner. This is a really bizarre, but interesting, personal finding!

The internet is not accustomed to Cyrillic yet, though–I see that WordPress’s admirable attempt to convert the title of this post into ‘net readable code put it into a bunch of symbols. It’s a really nifty part of this interface that allows one to change what the post’s file name is, however.

How much of the Internet is written in Russian? In Chinese? In Spanish? The statistics hunter needs to go on the prowl.