We believe that every child is born talented, that every child is creative and that every child is an achiever. That our education processes often fail to identify the child’s talent, leave alone nurture it is a failure of the system and not the child. This is perhaps due to the obsession of the educational system with linguistic and analytical abilities and a assessment process that often seems to label children with rote memories as intelligent and others as not.
Most assessment processes become a motivational tool for a few and disempowering for the rest. It is well established that people in general and children in particular repeat the behavior that is rewarded. Unfortunately, this labeling result in a select few children being rewarded and the majority of the children feel ignored and often rejected. Also, once so labeled, it is the select few who then receive teachers’ love, affection and attention, see their names in the scrolls of honor and receive trophies and medals.
Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences suggests eight independent intelligences, we tend to test only two- linguistic and mathematical intelligence. In fact, a skill (not intelligence), that of rote learning overshadows all others in typical assessments and National Olympiad.