Schools ‘depriving’ gifted children

Press, 2 April 1987, Page 12

Schools ‘depriving’ gifted children

PA Wellington The most gifted children are possibly the most educationally deprived, a visiting British mathematics professor says. Professor Christopher Zeeman is president of the London Mathematical Society, foundation professor of Warwick University’s mathematics institute, and director of the university’s mathematics research centre. He is on a three-week lecture tour of New Zealand’s universities, funded by a bequest of Professor Henry Forder, of Auckland University. He says brillant students are disadvantaged in the democratic system.

“Today’s democracy sets the speed of the class jto go at the speed of the lowest two-thirds.

“It is very good that the lowest two-thirds should have things done at their speed, but the penalty is that the very gifted get irritated and bored, and their potential is not fulfilled.”

Professor Zeeman said average children had a much better chance than their brighter peers because they were stretched and had to work hard to keep up with the syllabus. He has designed mathematics “enrichment” material for under-stimu-lated 13-year-olds in the form of a video and a text-book, and the British Government plans to issue it free to all schools in the United Kingdom.

Professor Zeeman said the video was just the first in a series, and it was aimed at the top 25 percent of 13-year-olds in mathematics. The first video is about geometry perspective in art, and it explains what perspective is needed to make a picture look good, and what the underlying theorems are.

"They have given up doing geometry in schools, and it is the very thing children would have liked.” The video idea arose from the professor’s Royal Institute Christmas

lectures on television in 1978. The demand for more of such lectures for 13-year-olds was so great that Professor Zeeman began 10-week mathematics master-classes for gifted children.

The best 13-year-olds from about 40 local schools were invited to spend about hours on a Saturday morning for 10 weeks learning concepts usually outside the school curriculum, and frequently at university level. Some 20 institutes were now running masterclasses, Professor Zeeman said.

Like New Zealand, England also has a problem with a shortage of mathematics teachers.

“The answer is to pay more, because you have to compete with the computer industry.

“New Zealand has crucial problems in moving away from agriculture to technology, and if it is going to survive, the core is, first of all, to get good teachers.

“But you cannot do that overnight, so you have got to provide enrichment material. “The Minister of Education ought to buy the rights to this video and book, and then issue it free to all New Zealand schools.” Professor Zeeman warned of New Zealand’s falling behind in mathematics and technology, and buying in science. “The great mistake is to think that you can buy in science, because if you do that conditions will fall.”

Other countries will keep the “leading frontier” of technology to themselves, while assigning repetitive jobs to the New Zealand industry.

Mathematics is the core of all technology, and if standards continued to fall, New Zealand would not be able to compete with countries like Japan and Singapore, he said. One of the problems in producing qualified mathematicians in New Zealand was the university structure. Warwick University runs a three-year honours course, while New Zealand mathematics students cannot take honours until their fourth year, he said. “In Wellington there are about a dozen in their fourth year, while there are about 120 in the course at Warwick.