Shifting responsibility
for discovering and nurturing each other's talents is the cancer that is slowly eating away at many young people. How many wrong turns can a child take? How many enemies does it take to completely ruin the life of a gifted child? Andreas Salcher sheds light on the current school debate from the completely suppressed perspective of the gifted child. He shows that it is important to take responsibility for your child's talent - without ifs and buts.
A compact presentation of the latest scientific findings impressively proves that discovering a child's talents is no longer a secret science. However, it takes time, attention and tenderness to make use of them. Concrete examples from Austria and Germany vividly illustrate places where children are already enjoying learning to understand the world and where their individual talents are being discovered. The best schools in the world cost no more than the worst. Therefore, all children have a right to develop their talents. DER TALENTIERTE SCHÜLER UND SEINE FEINDE was awarded the Golden Book for selling more than 25,000 copies in Austria. Andreas Salcher was voted "Author of the Year" for this book in 2009.
Reading samples
Gillian Lynne was a lost cause at school
Her parents were of the opinion that Gillian had a learning disorder. She couldn't sit still or concentrate on anything. Her mother took her to one of the learning disorder specialists available at the time and told him about all the problems Gillian was having at school, that she wasn't doing her homework and was constantly disrupting. Gillian sat on a chair on her hands for 30 minutes and didn't say a word. The doctor listened patiently to her mother and then told Gillian that he needed to talk to her mother alone and would take them outside. Before they left the room, the doctor turned up the radio. As soon as Gillian heard the music, she jumped up on the table and started dancing. After a while, the doctor pointed at Gillian and said to her mother: "Mrs. Lynne, your daughter is not ill. She is a dancer."
The mother listened to the expert's advice and gave her daughter to a professional dance school. Gillian Lynne later said: "It was wonderful for me. People like me who couldn't sit still. People who had to move in order to think." Gillian Lynne became an acclaimed ballerina at the Royal Ballet and appeared in films with Errol Flynn. She founded her own dance company and met Andrew Lloyd Webber. For him, she created the choreographies for "Cats" and "The Phantom of the Opera", among others. Today she is a global star and a multi-millionaire.
Gillian Lynne was born in England in the 1930s and not at the beginning of the 21st century in Germany or the USA. Today, she would most likely have been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and treated with Ritalin or Prozac to reduce her hyperactivity. Back then, people didn't know that such a thing existed. Today, no one knows how many children in the USA are given Ritalin to make them more well-adjusted and well-behaved. Estimates vary from one to eight million children! The use of Ritalin is even increasing among pre-school children. There is therefore a danger that this drug could one day become the biggest drug problem in the USA. In Germany, the comparable drug is called Prozac, and more and more experts are warning parents about the often too carelessly diagnosed ADHD and the prescription of Prozac. In Austria, this problem is still in the realm of unreported cases. Recent studies show that ADHD is often diagnosed in particularly creative children. Brave new world - Aldous Huxley sends his regards.
