Tommy Collison

This is a blogpost that’s been bouncing around my head for months. I don’t know what prompted me to write it now, but here I am. It’s a blogpost regarding the Centre for Talented Youth of Ireland (CTYI), a summer course for “talented youth” in DCU each summer, and also “talented youth” in general. What I’ve got to say about it is not always positive, and it’s possible I may offend some people. I’m prepared to write the post anyway.

To start, I attended the “Centre for Talented Youth” in July last year. To be allowed into CTYI, there is an aptitude test that you have to pass. It’s a three week residential course in DCU, with a choice of doing a number of different courses such as Medicine, Journalism and so on. I did Journalism and found it to be an excellent experience. Most of what I know of Journalism today, I owe to Andrew Payne, the class teacher. There’s a blogpost I wrote last year discussing my CTYI experience here.

What do I dislike about CTYI? The set-up. If I had a cent for every time I’d heard or seen someone say that CTYI is where they’re ‘truly understood’, I’d have several Euro. I’m not saying that being understood is a bad thing (quite the opposite) but it shouldn’t be the case that you’re not ‘understood’ at home. “Being around my own kind” is another one I’ve heard a lot, and this one’s worse.

CTYI’s Quad

People are setting up these gifted kids as being hugely different to other people, when they shouldn’t be. I mean, if you give them 3 weeks together and tell them that they’re only here because they’re in the top 5% of those who took the aptitude test (an oft-quoted but unsubstantiated claim), they’re going to develop an attitude that it’s not in our interest for them to develop. Who’s “our”? I’m talking about Ireland as a whole. We’ve got a lot of smart kids here, but we’re doing them (and us) no favors with our current gifted kids program. There’s a fair amount of arrogance at CTYI. Its sister program (CAT – Centre for Academic Talent) started last year and it wasn’t long before those in the CAT program were being given a hard time. Labels like “not really gifted” and “CAT? Centre for Almost Talented!” started being thrown around.

The main point of this post is for me to express my dislike of those who use the term “gifted kids” or “talented youth”. I got into CTYI, but I don’t for a second consider myself gifted. I’ve found out what I want to do in life and I’m motivated to achieve that by working hard, that’s all.

We’re not doing these kids any favors by instilling (some would even say “encouraging”) these kids to think that they’re different from others.

In my opinion, these kids were nurtured a certain way. They were quite intelligent and driven, and that’s great. Somewhere along the way, though, possibly by some overpaid psychologist, the term “gifted youth” was introduced and this changed everything. Being talented; being able — that’s fine, but gifted.. something feels wrong with that term.

Being smart isn’t the problem here, it’s what we’re doing to these kids by giving them this label. Most of the people I met at CTYI were fiercely intelligent, but something was amiss. These were people who had been told they were something special and had taken it to their head.

So, teachers, parents, educators: By all means encourage your child to read more challenging books or get extra work from their teacher if they find the pace of the class too slow, but don’t put these kids up on a pedestal. It is doing them absolutely no favors.

I hope that I’ve made people think with this post. Comments are more than welcome below. I welcome a hearty debate, but if it starts getting abusive, I will start deleting your comments.