Marguerite Narinesingh, a former principal of Priory Junior School, is passionate about Jamaica’s gifted and talented children. She speaks of them with an infectious and excited fervour. Working with children of exceptional ability, she believes, is her true calling in life. How did she come to realize this?

‘When I was involved in teaching, I saw up close how a neglect of gifted and talented children led to them becoming bored and troublesome in class, especially the boys. I saw so much wasted potential because teachers really had no idea how to deal with exceptional children. My experience taught me that a very high proportion of children who were troublemakers and disruptive in class were very bright. They were simply bored and not being challenged.

Jamaica still has no national education policy for educating the gifted. We deal with them in ‘special education’, but this tends to focus on children who are educationally challenged. In the new curriculum on special education being taught in the teaching colleges, only one hour out of thirteen is allocated on “giftedness and creativity”.

Of course helping slower students come up to par is of the utmost importance. But we also have to pay special attention to our gifted and talented. I honestly feel it is critical for the future of Jamaica that we maximize the potential of our youngsters. Encouraging the gifted has nothing to do with elitism. It is simply about giving them a full opportunity to achieve everything that they can.

Jamaica has a lot very talented people. But for some reason we as a society tend to focus on our athletes and singers. You know every young boy wants to be a deejay or footballer. But we need to put greater emphasis on the need for academic excellence. Sports and music are very important parts of our cultures. But if Jamaica is ever going to become a successful, productive and crime free country, it will be through using our brains, not our bodies or voices.

Sometimes I can almost cry to see the brilliance and ingenuity I see in so many young Jamaicans going to waste. Look at that illegal pipe at Petrojam. I heard Mr. Chistopher Chin Fat talking about it. He said that 2,000 feet of pipe had been run under water. He called it a substantial work of engineering and expressed surprise at the resourcefulness and ingenuity of those who had done it. As he put it, what a waste! Imagine if these talents had been channeled in a productive capacity!

And look at that study that was done by Ruth Doorbar. She found that 13% of those on death row were exceptional compared to only 2% to 5% in the normal population. That made it even clearer to me that it is vitally important for us as a nation to have our gifted youngsters become all that they can be.

In 1991 a national task force presented a working document on the education of the exceptionally gifted. The proposed definition of the gifted was “Those with the potential to perform or create at a level that is exceptionally superior to that of their age peers”. It is a good definition, but it needs to make explicit that there are many areas in which a child can be gifted, not only academics. One can be gifted, intellectually, creatively, artistically and even in the area of leadership. Look at the dons in the ghetto! They are certainly gifted leaders. But again the talent was just directed the wrong way.”

Mrs. Narinesingh has a Master of Arts Degree in Educational Psychology specializing in Gifted and Talented Education. She currently runs the S.T.A.R. (Scientific, Technological, Artistic and Research component) Program for gifted and talented children. This offers services that complement those available in regular schools. A believer in the old Jesuit adage that ‘Give me the child at seven and I will give you the man’ she concentrates on primary level children between the ages of six and twelve. She emphasizes above all the facilitative instructional method.

“We need to teach children how to learn. Too often in our teaching system we emphasize rote and authoritarian methods. What often happens is that some teachers and principals feel their authority threatened by very bright students and end up demoralizing and discouraging them. This hostility causes a lot of very smart youngsters, especially boys, to become alienated and to reject academics altogether. My teacher training emphasizes that it is okay to have children who are smarter than you. You should even be prepared to learn from the child.

The first step of course is to identify the gifted. Our program links with schools at all socio-economic levels. We have both informal and formal networks. I talk with principals and teachers but also get a lot of word of mouth referrals when parents tell others about us. We also get children recommended to us from the MICOCARE testing program and from independent psychologists.

I am not sure if we are the only ones in Jamaica offering this type program. I do know of the School For The Gifted And Talented in Mobay run by Viveine DeOkoro. Making people more aware of the special needs of the exceptionally able is one of the reasons why we are holding our Convocation of the National Delegates to the World Council of the Gifted and Talented.

We are inviting everyone who is working with, interested in or wants to know more about gifted and talented youth in Jamaica. We want this to be the beginning of a national program. We have two main objectives on our agenda. The first is to make people aware what programs are available, to let them know what we have. The other thing is to make some serious decisions about where we are going in this area in the new millennium.

I have made presentations at international conferences about the gifted. We were very well received and have been asked back every time. The first was in Hong Kong in 1995. The second was in Istanbul Turkey this year. I discovered that since the Hong Kong Conference many countries had put gifted programs into place. Jamaica is simply being left behind. That is another reason we decided to hold this conference. If we are going to progress as a nation, we are going to have to stop letting the brilliance of our youngsters go to waste. You hear people say all the time how Jamaica is full of ginals. But you know a good ginal has to be smart. What we have to do is transform this ginalship into positive creativity.

“Whither The Gifted?” will be held from 9 am to 12:30 pm on Saturday October 23 at the Crowne Plaza Hotel. All are invited.