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Sherrlene Uy

Teacher - English and Research, Glendale School, Inc. (QC, Phil)

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What are the challenges that gifted and creative individuals face at present?

Hi everyone! I am working on a research about the gifted and creative individuals. I'd like to know what are the challenges that the gifted and creative people experience in your country. Share your thoughts please :) Thanks!

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  • James McGuiness

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    Feb 22 2013: The number one problem I have encountered is that there is no new and differentiated conventional wisdom for the Information Technology Revolution or Digital Revolution and those who sign checks are often still totally ensconced in Industrial Age thinking. What good is it to think outside the box and create outside the box and even create to change the box if you need funding from those who think they already know everything when indeed they know very little?

    Lots of people have bought into the Internet web/modality as the defacto destination of the Digital age. It is not. It is a primitive cacophony of rationales most of which perpetuate self-imposed limitations which freedom from linearity and the printed page make obsolete. The Digital Revolution is a revolution in reverse where office holders and even power holders in the household like parents don't understand the true power of emerging technologies and judge educational and human development imperatives by views established in their parents times and before them. It should not be a main objective to create a mere "grade-getter" when indeed technology exists to allow us to design in social development models which unveil and help us address the myriad of motivational issues which decide whether a young person actually connects with what he or she learns and becomes personally interested in managing their own picture of relevance. There is a great defeatist attitude in many quarters that assume right away that there is no market, it's too hard, it's too esoteric, blah, blah and more blah. Like an automobile had to exist before anyone would build roads for it, someone has to throw some major money into creating the new model that replaces the factory model of education with idealism at every turn. And devil be damned about tradition. This is about the future of the world--not the past.

    • reine des violettes

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      Feb 23 2013: I can hear your frustration!
      Alas, the predicament you articulate is an age old one. The purse strings that would enable are tightly griped by the reactionary and traditional sectors. It has ever been thus. Artists were never free, but had to please their sponsors, and so accept their paradigms.
      But I actually think it is slightly better now than it used to be, from the point of view of how communication is now possible in ways undreamed of previously. and the connections that could be made. there is room for hope. Even just TED is a good thing, and can grow.
      The human mind has a marvellous facility for finding resolution. We are inventive beings. Sometimes it takes a seemingly inordinate amount of time before the problems-that-we-need-resolution-to are realized (as in education). But they will be, because the old ways won't be effective any more, and old buildings crumble under their own weight. The thing is for the forward thinkers with vision to be ready with plans.

      • James McGuiness

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        Feb 23 2013: The biggest stumbling block is over-coming the "belief" that people won't pay--that they need to be given "free stuff" paid for by advertisers. That to me has been the worst perversion of the Internet--the chance to finally create economies of pure value which exclude the myriad compromises that come with commercial sponsoring only to have a mad dash to drag commercialism into a new medium where it does not belong in the same way it managed to underpin television. And this history of offering free but limited and compromised "stuff" on the net has created somewhat of a defacto welfare state where people don't get that this is actually undermining the very value system upon which our world has come this far. So in effect you have to challenge capital sources to break from this patter on faith that you have something of such merit that people will see that they HAVE TO HAVE IT. Then you have to execute and sustain the product until it proves and the word gets around that whatever else they do, they have to find the resources to get this new technological masterwork. Years ago people paid $5K for a computer and $599 fr a word processor program. But the trend has long been to pay as little as possible and get as much for nothing. Leading a value renaissance takes big money and a multi-year plan and older conventional wisdom doesn't like that in America. Venture capitalists want you to have a market ready to fill, not create one that may take more than half a decade of expense to start showing that all the investment was worth it and more. I'm sure that it will be but then the wall is hit that I am nobody even though I can show that no one else has been in the places at the times I've been to put such a comprehensive change engine sustainably into place. It's maddening knowing you know that we are primitive and you have the plans for the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey. The apes don't know what to make of it.

        • reine des violettes

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          Feb 23 2013: I know. As an original artist/writer/musician penniless for most of my life (and no time to chase money if I want to do my true work)you may imagine how I feel about people not comprehending the value and meaning of copyright.
          I do think the grip of this trend is worse in USA rather than England (where I am), though also the English have a habit of giving their inventions away!

          We need a renaissance in values - paying for what is valuable - and knowing why we value things... and also perhaps a resurrection of the word and concept of 'virtue'. If virtue were rewarded......
          I don't know what the answer is except to hold to what one truly believes, (because one knows why one believes it), and to set little tiny balls rolling, just in case they snowball. all the best.

      • James McGuiness

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        Feb 23 2013: The catch phrase for my concept is "using virtual reality deliver a reality of virtue". We have something in common, I'd say.

      • Dennis Wright

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        Mar 4 2013: Reine de violettes, thanks for your endorsement. I am in Canada and perhaps the Empire has managed to stay ahead of the tidal wave of corporate management so far. The system in Ontario, where I am , is generally recognized as superior but we still lag behind the Finns. They have largely eliminated competitive academics, I understand, to create schools without failure. Students excelled when the treat of failure was removed. For more on schools without failure, reference William Glasser, a proponent of Reality Therapy. He has several good books in print, including "Schools Without Failure". He focuses on co-operative and team learning which removes the idea of there being winners and losers.
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      Sherrlene Uy

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      Feb 23 2013: I guess this all boils down to the "convenience" that some teachers get when they teach using the traditional way. It's not that I am against it but I think it is pretty limited and teacher-centered. It's like we're holding the necks of these children so that they'd give out the answers we want.

      Some teachers tend to be "offended" when the students think differently or when they ask questions. Is it time that we have a new breed of educators then? What do you think?
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        Fritzie Reisner 100+

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        Feb 23 2013: This may differ widely in different countries. I cannot remember seeing teachers offended at the asking of questions, and I have observed and taken classes from many, many teachers.

        At least in schools where I have visited or learned myself, this would be most uncommon. Here that would be a caricature very detached from reality.
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          Sherrlene Uy

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          Feb 23 2013: Oh, is it right? Well I guess that's more of an Eastern culture when an elder say something, it seems like a fact already... It is quite unusual if you correct elders here
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        Fritzie Reisner 100+

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        Feb 23 2013: My mother did not like to be contradicted either, and she was European:). But the classroom dynamic around here is almost always welcoming of questions that are asked respectfully. And kids are encouraged to put forward different points of view.

        The atmosphere may have been different in some schools fifty or more years ago, as I know people remember intolerant teachers from their youth and from that limited experience assume that was, or is, a universal trait of schools and teachers. This also may have been very different in parochial schools than in, say, urban public schools. When I was young parachial schools were known for a sfrictness of manner, but I have no personal experience with those then or now.

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