Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Questioning assessment of kids based upon parents

No5no5 has summed up exactly what I had meant. Apologies if I have caused any offence, I didn't mean to imply that there aren't any working class and low income families who aren't passionate about education. I had just meant that if you don't come from a family or community where education is valued that it is just that much harder to pick up and use the skills the OP was referring to, regardless of your level of intellect.

It's interesting, this has got me thinking about my own lack of regard for education (well, interesting to me at least!) My family is very highly educated but had very little interest in my education (let�s say they were fairly bohemian and had had� complicated upbringings of their own�). However, while they might not have had the faintest idea what subjects I was being taught, let alone how well I was doing (or how badly, as was more often the case!) my family were passionate about the books I read, regularly discussed politics and current affairs and I was exposed to academics and intellectuals through their friendships and work. My mum has 5 degrees, but was barely making more than the basic wage and raised me on her own; no one in my family really cared (or even knew) if I passed or failed and I found a lot of my parent�s most educated friends incredibly pretentious. As far as I could see education wasn�t worth much (though now I know different � but it has honestly only been in the last 12 months I have seen how I have sold myself short).

The work various members of my family have been involved in has exposed me to the fact that functional literacy is something many lack and is much less prevalent than you would think. If I walked away from my formal education with only a basic understanding of and appreciation of the three Rs, despite my �extracurricular� exposure then I can only imagine what it must be like for people who don�t have a history of education in their families and/or where education is seen as elitist and something other people do. I imagine it is very hard to pull yourself out of that and, as others have said, would make it very hard to advocate for your kids.

I had no inkling about the possibility of my own giftedness until we had dd and for me learning about her has been, as it is for many, a revelatory experience for me too. Had I not made that discovery I suspect I would have continued my own �contempt for proper grammar and sounding/being too smart� (thanks no5no5), not realising I owed myself better. While I have no doubt that I am no where near the level of my pg dd � these kinds of threads send me down a path of thinking about my own experience in new ways, so thanks � though apologies if I have gone off on a somewhat self indulgent tangent!