Sometimes a gifted ‘prodigy’ makes the media, but more often they sit quietly at home, because they do not attract Dutch education. ‘He doesn’t see the point’, says Petrouschka Allen, mother of Milan (18). Her son slipped to HAVO, failed his final exams and has been playing games in his room for months. Milan likes it that way, Petrouschka is worried.
That is why they drove from Limburg to Gouda, to the Mandeville Academy, where ten gifted people between the ages of 16 and 20 can research what they want in a pleasantly worn canal house. They dropped out or graduated at an emergency rate, but mainly ‘to get rid of the school system, not because you want it that way’. Here they can think freely again.
There was to be an open evening on Friday, 21 interested parties had registered, much more than in previous years. A result of the TV documentary Through the treesabout the extremely gifted Tim, who also cannot settle in education and eventually ends up at Mandeville.
Mandeville wants attention for gifted people for whom Dutch education from the first day of primary school is not sufficient. They deserve that just as much as children with Down syndrome, for example, believes founder Harry Veenendaal, himself a gifted person, who is in charge of daily management in addition to his job as a lawyer.
The open evening was blown over in storm Eunice. Milan gets a tour on Saturday and wants to start right away. Ask why exactly, and he doesn’t get past ‘it’s a way of thinking’. Petrouschka sees it too, she and her husband are now going to think about where they should get the money from.
Mandeville is a non-profit foundation, according to Harry Veenendaal the school can manage with 170,000 euros per year and some sponsors, such as tech company ASML. But most of it is coughed up by the students themselves: 15,000 euros for a year of education and room and board in a spacious room of their own.
They rent the building from the municipality of Gouda at a low price. The foundation sponsors three students from a special fund and encourages everyone to earn back their study costs themselves, because they have the brains for it. Two went straight to the AIVD (‘brilliant hackers’), another became a forest ranger.
In school, Mandeville students often heard things like “that’s a conclusion you don’t have to jump to yet.” Quite a few arrive somewhat battered. They feel numb or have been bullied a lot.
I sit around the table with the current students. They say things like ‘econometrics was a must’, and ‘I’m looking for the creativity I used in school here’. But also: ‘It is not only sad, I have very nice friends who are not gifted.’ That’s Juul, one of only two girls. They adapt better to regular education, hence, but not always to their delight. Sophie went to high school when she was nine in the hope that it would finally get interesting: ‘I would advise against that, I thought it was terrible’. Just as boring, plus now also without connecting with classmates.
Giftedness starts at an IQ of 130, but there are significant peaks at Mandeville and there is more to it. These are people who deepen a philosophy of science class together so much that they have to go to sleep exhausted afterwards. ‘At five o’clock in the afternoon, just like little children’, says Harry Veenendaal, somewhat endearingly. ‘They don’t do anything for years, but when you find the on button on them, it suddenly goes terribly fast.’
The website mentions a long list of guest lecturers, such as Maarten Feteris (former president of the Supreme Court), Alexander Rinnooy Kan (professor of Economics and Business, UvA), Ger Koole (professor of mathematics), Remco Breuker (professor of Korea studies). Member of parliament Pieter Omtzigt will give a lecture in March, about which he tweeted happily. Harry Veenendaal sees many characteristics of gifted people in Omtzigt: ‘Unparalleled in the content, of course, but communication with people who are not so fast can be difficult. And the extreme sense of justice that you cannot deviate from. That is really the hallmark here.’
The Netherlands often stopped looking at connections, ‘because everything was approached in such a reductionist way’, the students say. That could indeed be the real problem. Not them.