Grades not everything

GIFTED EDU CATION PROGRAMME
Litmus test is if it will produce individuals useful to society

From News
TODAY Tuesday July 15, 2008

ZUL OTHMAN
zul@mediacorp.com.sg

BRIGHT they may be — the brightest of their cohort, in fact — but when it comes to intellectually gifted children, good grades should not be mistaken as the critical goal of any gifted education programme.

Top marks in examinations do not, after all, “necessarily create a good entrepreneur, violinist or politician”, according to Professor Robert Sternberg, a keynote speaker at the 10th Asia-Pacific Conference on Giftedness which opened here yesterday.

The litmus test for such programmes is whether they produce individuals “who will make a difference in the world”, he told Today.

And the way to do that is to identify and nurture children “gifted in creative and practical competencies”, said the Dean of Arts and Sciences at Tufts University, a private college based in Boston.

It is an outcome that Education Minister Ng Eng Hen said Singapore also hopes to achieve with its Gifted Education Programme (GEP), which was introduced in 1984.

“Our system aims to nurture an admirable individual, one who will be an inspiration and a pillar of strength for his or her community and also a valuable global citizen,” he said in his address to 1,600 participants from 29 countries.

In particular, such programmes are needed to develop “creators, inventors and problem solvers”, said Dr Ng.

He cited a well-regarded study which found that a group of 2,409 adults in the United States, identified as the top 1 per cent of ability at age 13, had produced 817 patents and published 93 books by the time they reached their thirties. In addition, half had earned a doctorate.

While such data for Singapore’s GEP graduates — there are 8,000 in total as of this year — are not readily available, a 2005 Ministry of Education (MOE) survey of six cohorts found that “not only have GEP graduates excelled academically, they are serving in diverse fields in both public and private sectors — academia, education, engineering, finance, law and medicine”, said the ministry.

GEP graduates have received various international and local awards, such as in science and technology, even sports, and more GEP graduates (22.1 per cent) in their mid-20s continue to be involved in community work compared to non-GEP graduates (15.2 per cent), the ministry added.

This year, however, the MOE has begun phasing out the GEP, which is offered from Primary 4, at the secondary school level. Gifted students would be placed in integrated classes to allow them a chance to mix with a broader spectrum of people.

The issue of greater integration between elite students and their mainstream friends is also an issue in other countries, but Professor Kuo Chin-chih, president of the Asia-Pacific Federation of the World Council for Gifted and Talented Children, told Today it was important to continue investing in such programmes because students “are our natural resources”.

“I think that although we need to give opportunity to every student … we also need to communicate to our society how to pay more attention and give more resources to gifted education,” she said on the sidelines of the four-day conference, being held here for the first time.