Talent: A characteristic feature, aptitude, or disposition of a person or animal; the natural endowments of a person; a special often athletic, creative, or artistic aptitude; general intelligence or mental power.

Gift: A notable capacity, talent, or endowment.

Given the definitions above, everyone is talented in some way since in order to remain alive there must be some mental power. As well, to be able to survive, there must be some general intelligence.

To see a child as gifted, one must believe that every child possesses some notable talent that distinguishes them from others as being particularly suited to one aspect of life over another.

In our current system of education, when a child enters school for the first time, the goal is to discover the child’s weakness and then force the child to strengthen their weakness with the expectation that this will make the child stronger.

In a child centered system of education, the discovery is of the child’s talents, making them stronger in their abilities so that they can overcome their weaknesses. Developing the child’s gifts gives them the confidence in themselves to share their gift with others and receive the gifts of others as well.

Arts education, gifted and talented programs are the foster children of education, shuffled from place to place, hoping to someday be adopted into a permanent home.

The concentration in education is on conformity, creating an artificial norm that ignores the diversity of our children while forcing them to reject their talents, deny their gifts, and adopt the unnatural roles society has chosen for them.

Educating our children by means of a ‘common core” curriculum and a “master schedule” systematically destroys the child’s ability to believe in themselves, to respect themselves, to love themselves.

When a child feels they are irrelevant, everyone and everything else becomes irrelevant and we see the breakdown of society and the weakening of mankind.

We must begin to act wisely and change the system of education so that it strengthens our children, our community, our nation, and ultimately our world.

Join the Movement to Save Our Children!