Last week, again, I
was reminded of how pivotal good teachers (not educators) are. An educator passes on knowledge, whereas a
teacher understands and takes the time to draw out of the one they’re teaching
(child or adult) the very best of what is within that person.
I am of the firm view
that there is a direct correlation between intelligence and sensitivity and an
inverse relationship between intelligence and arrogance. The tragedy is that educators mistake brazen
and confident (arrogant) behavior and a perceived good work ethic with
intelligence. They often misguidedly
project on to the sensitive ones their preference in such behavior and, as
sensitive beings, these highly intelligent children or adults withdraw into
themselves.
The information I
share is semi-anecdotal, purely because I draw on my own experience and have no
empirical research with which I have backed it up. Everything
I am writing about is from a general point of view and is not meant as a target
for any particular educator or group of educators.
I have two extremely
intelligent and extremely sensitive grandsons.
Their natures are completely different, with the elder having found his
confidence at an early age. To him,
everything comes easily from academics to sport and he is loved and fêted by the school
system. So far, so good…
His younger brother is
just as intelligent but has not yet found his confidence in himself and his
abilities. He has an attention deficit and
comprehension disorder and he needs to either have things explained to him one
item at a time or to have instructions repeated so that he can assimilate the substance
of the instruction. Due to the fact that his educator is not
prepared to take the time to understand his very real comprehension problems,
she refuses to “give him special treatment” and will not repeat or explain
instructions clearly – in fact, she goes out of her way to make it difficult
for the child, if one can credit that any adult would even consider such
behaviour. This attitude is breaking his
spirit and tends to make him either withdrawn or disruptive by turns. His educator, even in the private school system,
cannot see past his, what to her is, erratic and ‘medicatable’ behavior and she
shuns him completely to the point of actually telling him to “do what the hell”
he wants to do. I’ve not yet mentioned that this young boy is
in Grade 3 and is at a critical and highly impressionable age. The more this happens, the more this highly
intelligent and sensitive young person withdraws into himself. His confidence erodes further and he turns
inwards more and more. Thank God (I mean
this in the strictest sense) for my daughter, who recognises
and understands.
The problem does not
lie with my grandson; it lies squarely with the educator who does her job but
either does not have the ability or has not been taught how to teach sensitive
yet intelligent children.
I stated above that my
views are semi-anecdotal. There’s a
reason I used that strange term.
I have three highly
intelligent but sensitive children who are all adult now. School life for all three of them, although
different, was just as dysfunctional.
To my elder son,
academics and sport came easily but there was a time when I saw that his school
grades didn’t match up with his abilities.
In his Grade three or four year, although his marks were very good, he became
disruptive in class and the school advised medication to calm him down. I put him on the medication for all of six
weeks. It turned my cheerful, clever
child into a zombie and I stopped that farce.
Through numerous tests which I had done, we discovered that my son had a
severe form of tactile sensitivity. A
good definition I found of this condition is as follows and more information
can be found at: https://kidcompanions.com/tactile-sensitivity-what-it-is-and-the-common-signs/
“Tactile
sensitivity or hypersensitivity is an unusual or increased sensitivity to
touch that makes the person feel peculiar, noxious, or even in pain. It is also
called tactile defensiveness or tactile over-sensitivity. Like other sensory
processing issues, tactile sensitivity can run from mild to severe. It is
thought to be caused by the way the brain processes tactile input. For these
individuals, touch makes the person feel overwhelmed and often leads to
avoiding touch when possible. They may be sent into fight or flight over
very small, everyday touch sensations.”
Often, my son would
take the hardest scrubbing brush or rough stone he could find and scrub his
hands until they were raw because the painful sensations wouldn’t subside.
Together with the
above, my son also suffers from what has recently been discovered to be a real
medical condition called “hidden hearing loss” which typical hearing tests
don’t measure. Sufferers are often told
their hearing is normal and it is, outside of noisy environments. There is very real distress in struggling to
discern what others are saying in classrooms, crowded social environments and
business meetings. My son found it extremely stressful to concentrate in a
noisy classroom leading the educator to label him as absent during class
discussions. Once again I thank God for
pointing me in the right direction and my son spent many months with a
wonderful occupation therapist who helped him overcome his affliction.
My second child, my
daughter, showed very early on in life how intelligent she is. Once example out of many was when she was three
and came to me, distraught. Her brother
had told her that she was stupid because she had no muscles. “But, Mom, I can’t have no muscles or I
wouldn’t be able to move.” That sort of
analytical ability is rarely found in one so young and I fed that gift in her
early years. Two years into her school
life, my child was coming home from school every day in tears because she couldn’t
understand the work. The school informed
me that my highly intelligent daughter was ‘coping’ with her schoolwork and
that she ‘only had an average intelligence’.
I knew firsthand that this was rubbish and, once again, I took my child
off to be assessed. As a result of the
tests and, once again, I thank God for His intervention, within two weeks, my
daughter was accepted into a school where they specialised
in intelligent children who were not coping in the mainstream school
system. My daughter thrived in her new
environment where she was given the individualised attention she required.
One of the really annoying aspects of
communal schooling is that records from the previous school are required for the
new school. The ‘intelligence’ tests
which were done at my daughter’s previous school were accepted as valid and,
when, in Grade 7, the transition into high school was to occur, the school
psychologist asked me what my plans were for my daughter’s high school
education. I informed them that she
would be rejoining mainstream schooling.
The psychologist regurgitated the rubbish that my daughter was only of
average intelligence and that they didn’t expect her to get further than Grade
9. I ignored the ‘advice’ I was given
and my daughter was put into the mainstream schooling system. She had to work harder than other children to
catch-up on curricula she’d missed but, (and here again, educators are not
teachers and these people did not recognise her intelligence through her
sensitivity) my daughter passed Grade 12 with a University Entrance pass. She went on to successfully complete an
international qualification as a fashion designer. Currently, she is one of the most successful
people I know, as a partner in an international business where she travels
internationally to motivate and educate hundreds of thousands of people annually
and, lately as a partner in a successful secondary, South African business.
My younger son was blessed, in Grade two,
to have a wonderful teacher who understood his ADD, ADHD and Dyslexia. She nurtured his, what she described as “frighteningly
clever” brain and he thrived. In Grade
four, this wonderful woman left the school and my son floundered. He is extremely charismatic and that helped
him to be accepted by his peers and the school system but he didn’t achieve in
his school work.
When he was ten and not coping with his
reading as he should, I took him to be tested and it was discovered that he has
erratic eye/brain coordination. What was
discovered was that his comprehension was that of university educated adult. However, apart from his dyslexia, his eyes
read every word or part of a word at least eleven times before his brain
absorbs the context. This makes reading
and definitely oral reading extremely difficult for him.
When he was in high school, his Grade 9
educator pulled him up in front of the class (the school were fully informed of
his learning disabilities) and insisted that he read to the class. Of course, he failed dismally and, in front
of his peers, this educator told him that he was retarded and he was sent to
sit at the back of the class and not participate. He never told me of this. He simply withdrew within himself. He deliberately failed his Grade 9 year in
the hopes that I would remove him from the school. I didn’t understand the problem and thought
that he was just being difficult and, sadly, I forced him to board at the same school. This lasted for a few months until I
discovered what the real reason was behind his failing. He was moved into a private college and his
marks jumped from seven percent in most subjects, to high 70%s and low
80%s.
What has happened in my family alone should
give all educators and teachers pause. I
and my daughter are aware enough parents to take matters into our own
hands. What of the hundreds of thousands
of people who blindly accept what the school and educators tell them? How many brilliant young lives have been
ruined by a system which does not or will not accommodate their learning
requirements?
It is not a tragedy, it’s a travesty.
