The Gifted Child
PROFESSOR J. L. Mackie, formerly Professor of Philosophy in the University of Otago, and now occupying a similar position at Sydney University, makes a strong case against the Education Department in his talk "The Waste of Talent" recently rebroadcast from 2YC. He castigates the Department for laziness and an invincible mediocrity of approach to the exceptionally gifted child, who is, largely speaking, promoted by age rather than talent. But what, it seems to me Professor Mackie ignores is
the whole question of state secular education. The state does not purport, nor cannot, to give an all-embracing view of the universa within which the talented and the less talented will find their place. Athletics, and let us say, music and science, are self-subsisting universes, in which it is taken for granted the research of the gifted individual is vital. But citizenship? What does the state want? Surely, the well-adjusted, safe person who will not kick against the pricks, In this World, the gifted outsidet is a problem, and the State is wise to regard him as such. The defects Professor Mackie notes are those of State secular education, and his diatribe against the Education Department seems to me beside the point.
B.E.G.
M.
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 41, Issue 1054, 6 November 1959, Page 17
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205The Gifted Child New Zealand Listener, Volume 41, Issue 1054, 6 November 1959, Page 17
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