Education of gifted youth
Making the provision for appropriate educational programs for talented and gifted children is critical to any education board. There are many programs available for such children. Salford University in England, for example runs a program, which offers residential summer courses for students of all age and ability. It is a learning program which is taught remotely via the internet. There are a variety of subjects which are on offer, mathematics, humanities, physics, computer science and English.
All children are gifted in some way, shape or form, but some children stand out from the others in the crowd. These children are the ones that need to be pulled out of that school group and encouraged to achieve great things.
One of the courses which is available, is for children who are very talented at sports.
One Sports Trust for Youths offers an Orientation camp, this encourages talented young athletes, whose ages are between 14 and 17 to better themselves. It is a way for the gifted (in sports) to gain better grounding in the Paralympics and Olympic pathways. It prepares the teenagers for the vocational, sporting, academic and personal challenges which lie ahead.
By attending one of the sporting courses, the youth can gain insight into the world of performance sport, it also outlines just what would be expected of an athlete and how much training must be put in by each individual. Talented or not training is a daily commitment to all athletes, and it does not involve a couple of hours in a gym then go home. There whole life is taken up by their commitment to the sport. Education is the key, by making the youth aware of the commitment they will have to make to their chosen sport, and the hours it will take out of their lives to enable them to reach their ultimate goal.
If however, you are talented academically, and have gained over whelming results in you’re A levels, and your home was somewhere in England then either Oxford or Cambridge would probably be the Universities which are first on your list. It would be considered by many parents that their child had definitely ‘made it’ if they attended either one of these Universities.
Any one with a top IQ of 2% can joint British Mensa. This means that the only requirement to join is an IQ which is measured in the top two percent of the population. Children can join but parents must provide the relevant information before this can happen. Although Mensa is for the gifted it is not an educational program for them.
In America the Johns Hopkins University is a dedicated centre for talented youth. Its mission is to seek students of the highest academic ability, and offers them challenging educational opportunities, that encourage achievement and help with the development of the student’s intellect.
In 1972 a psychology professor at The Johns Hopkins University Dr Julian Stanley introduced a talent search, designed to identify the young and gifted and reward them. Since then the University has become a centre dedicated to helping educate the gifted.