Q: When I was 11 or 12, a teacher gave me an article on gifted and talented children called “The Gifted and Talented Kids Who Couldn’t Weigh a Giraffe.” In it, a group of gifted and talented children were given a problem, as were a group of kids the tracking system placed near the bottom of the class. The gifted kids were obsessed with finding the right way to weigh a giraffe, and they couldn’t do it. The other kids just went nuts and got creative with it because they weren’t so obsessed with the right answer.
Gifted programs these days are very controversial, but there are pluses and minuses on both ends. Should gifted programs exist, and if so, in what form?
Seymour Papert: I have complicated feelings about this issue. It’s terrible for a kid who really wants to streak ahead, to learn deeply, to be held back because of the pace of a class, other people, or the curriculum. Having these programs is a solution to this problem, but it’s a superficial solution. The deeper solution is to get away from curriculum and classes and create a learning situation in which all individuals are able to pursue their own interests and develop knowledge at a pace they can adapt to and choose themselves.
Insofar as gifted and talented programs are aimed at giving people a learning opportunity that’s supposed to match their particular abilities, that’s good—but the same should be true for everybody. Everybody should be able to learn in an individual, personally directed way. If this were true, we wouldn’t need special programs for gifted and talented kids or learning-disabled kids.
Seymour Papert Related Stories:
- Time Travelers
- Blocks, Sand, LEGO, and Computers
- The Gifted and Talented Kids Who Couldn’t Weigh a Giraffe
- Genuine Multimedia
- How Children Learn
- Seymour Papert Quotes
Source:
Papert, S. (1995). Seymour Papert: Learning through Building and Exploring (The Multimedia Today Interview). Multimedia Today. http://www.multimedia.hosting.ibm.com/mmtoday/magazine/papert-1.html