It's good to keep up with what is happening with gifted children around the world. We most often focus on what is close to home, which means what is happening in our local schools, in our state or province, or in our country. However, attitudes toward and treatment of gifted children are remarkably similar around the world, regardless of country and culture. This is the first of a monthly series that will take a look at gifted children around the world.

The stories here are those that appeared in August of 2014.

704 gifted children in Baku make early entry into first grade

In America, it can be quite difficult to get a gifted child admitted to school early. States have established birthday cutoff dates and children born after that date must wait until the following year to start school. Parents are often given the opportunity to appeal and request early entry, but their appeals are more likely to be denied than approved. My son missed our cutoff date by a mere 28 days and despite being emotionally and socially mature and reading at a third grade level, he was denied early entrance into kindergarten. I ended up sending him to a private school where he was still not challenged sufficiently.

It is interesting to see the approach in Baku, Azerbaijan. In that country, the Minister of Education is seeing to his new order on rules of early admission of gifted children into first grade. Not only is early admittance of gifted children to school an acceptable practice, there is a process in place to see that these children have the opportunity to be admitted early.

Of course, the details of that process may paint less that an ideal picture, but the focus on the needs of gifted children is certainly better than what we see in many other countries.

Group wants to aid gifted Filipino kids

We see many kind people working on behalf of those in need all around the world. The people in need, however, aren't very often gifted children. But that is not the case in the Philippines. There a group is working to improve the eduction of the country's gifted children. Of course, the group is The Philippine Center for Gifted Education Inc. (PCGE), so we would expect them to do such work.

What they are working for is interesting. They want to create a national database of gifted and talented children. The organization is working closely with the Philippine Department of Education to identify gifted children in the country and establish a database of those children. It's interesting, not just because of the desire to create the database, but because the information would be used, according to Ammie del Rey of the PCGE,“to determine what abilities they need to enhance and come up with programs to address obstacles to their growth.” Rather than coming up with a program and then finding the children to fit into the program, the organization hopes to do what makes more sense - find the gifted children, discover what they need, and then find a way to provide it. If only all countries would do this for gifted children.

Parents furious over class changes, unaware of cluster model

The title of this article is rather misleading. It makes the parents sound a bit on the ignorant side, as though their anger is based on lack on knowledge on the cluster group model of education. There are a couple of problems with this idea. First, cluster grouping refers to putting all the gifted students into one classroom so that they can then work together. This is a useful strategy when a school system does not have enough gifted children in one grade level to fill a classroom.

A second problem with the idea suggested in the title of this article is that what the school actually created were heterogeneous groups. Rather than all the gifted kids being cluster grouped, children of all different abilities were grouped together. This practice is called heterogeneous grouping. It seems quite obvious that the parents were quite aware of the difference in the two ways of grouping students and were not happy with the change. They were especially unhappy because they were not told about the change. The administration failed to inform parents of changes to the program.

So what's wrong with heterogeneous grouping? Take a look at what the school's principal, Dr. Sherry Pinto, said. According to the article, "Pinto explained the change was implemented so that average students could be stretched and gifted students still challenged. Pinto also said the cluster model is more philosophically sound." Why is it that gifted children need to be in a group in order for the other students to be challenged? What is preventing teachers from providing more challenge to students? What difference does it make that gifted kids are in the group? The philosophy is, as a statement issued by parents says, "... that the students at the higher end of the academic spectrum will elevate the students at the lower end of the spectrum."

Interestingly, this very school was a case study mentioned in a paper called "Design Principles for Learner-Centered Schools." And what was one of the conclusions in this paper? "Advanced learners will suffer from being placed in more heterogeneous classrooms unless advanced learning opportunities were consistently available." This is typical of what we see in gifted education in the United States. Our school district did something similar. They dismantled a twenty-year-old successful gifted program which consisted of self-contained classrooms for gifted kids in favor of heterogeneous grouping.

Gifted son should find a use for his gift

I wonder how relevant this story is to gifted families in countries other than the US. In the US, many gifted children are misdiagnosed with ADHD. This is not to say that gifted children are immune from ADHD, but too many people seem to think that gifted children almost automatically also have ADHD or see normal gifted behaviors as symptoms of ADHD.

This article is a "Dear Annie" letter, in which a writer requests some advice on an older family member who was identified as gifted in his youth. At age 34, he is married with three children - and living with his family in his parents home. What follows in the letter is a litany of this man's failures, which are quite familiar to those of us who know gifted adults who did not get the kind of accommodations and treatment they needed when they were younger - and that includes being challenged so that they know how to respond to challenges in life.

What is "Annie's" immediate response? She asks, "Has Billy been tested for attention deficit disorder?" My first question would have been, "Was he challenged in school or did he find the work too easy?" Neither question, of course, helps Billie or the writer looking for advice, but it's the attitude. And that attitude is what leads to the increasing misdiagnosis of gifted kids and to solutions - usually some drug - that is not going to address the real problem.

It is, as I said, possible for gifted kids to have ADHD, but the diagnosis should be made carefully. SENG (Supporting the Emotional Needs of the Gifted) has a handy checklist to use even before referring a gifted child for an ADD/ADHD evaluation.