Gifted education involves several procedures such as testing, identification and tracking students to challenge their potential to the fullest. Initially, students take several tests including tests of intelligence, creativity, and motivation and must perform well enough to get into a gifted program. Following this testing, they have a label that they and others know quite well, gifted. Frequently, this means grouping them separately from their non-gifted peers. Accordingly, they follow a different curriculum, and attend different programs that are not available to others. Also, some practices that often occur when teaching or interacting with gifted students, such as a teacher’s or parent’s praise, convey direct and hidden messages. These messages, in essence, consistently remind them of how superior they are. Ultimately, they are taught to enjoy their superiority with a minimal or no clue about being virtuous. Most educators pay a great attention to increase their self-esteem while they were indifferent for the possibility of arrogance and conceit. Nevertheless, the “privilege” of being in the top 5 or smaller percent dramatically shapes the identity of the gifted individual from early ages. With the self–esteem enhancement movements in 80’s, the importance of humility as a significant virtue has been ignored among educators. They mostly perceived lack of self-esteem as a big problem whereas lack of humility was rather acceptable. However, potential of the gifted individuals, like any other person, deserves a more gracious treatment that regards them as human beings rather than better human resources for the nation and economy.

Corollary to the deficits in educators’ approaches to the gifted individuals, their emotional and moral development have been omitted. When one searches the studies on the development of positive moral characteristics of the gifted, such as, humility, there is almost no study on those issues. Humility in itself is a crucial virtue for several reasons. First, humility allows gifted individuals to recognize that they cannot control everything in every situation. Their superior abilities compared to their peers become a huge burden because others and their own expectations about themselves are mostly quite high. Failures and unexpected academic performance are less tolerable for the gifted. Crucially, humble gifted individuals can successfully handle challenging situations because their moral development valuing humility functions as a buffer zone and make them more resilient against challenges of life. People can have a more realistic view of themselves as long as they are well aware of their real inadequacies.

Vera and Rodriguez-Lopez (2004) pointed to the positive role of humility on competition in the organizations. They argued that fear of failure impedes people from taking initiative and humility helps people to reduce their fear of failure with the premise that people with no experience of failure are unlikely to try again. Secondly, humility helps gifted individuals to have a better and more realistic understanding about one’s self. Humble gifted people can realize their own weaknesses. This is also important for the gifted because very few people criticize them while many others praise their ability. In such a social climate, a true understanding of oneself is not an easy task. Thirdly, humble people can empathize with others easily. Gifted individuals mostly have concerns for others and have a keen moral sensitivity. However, feeling of superiority can hurt their healthy relationships with others; thus, other people become less likely to enjoy being together with them. Humble people have an increased valuation of others without a decrease in their valuation of themselves (Means & Wilson, 1990), and, thus, the need for humility is even more important for the gifted individuals.

Humility represents a major dilemma of gifted education: Although several procedures, facilities and resources are developed and implemented for the gifted, they inherently trigger a grandiosity effect. As a result of that, usual practices in the gifted education seem to nurture a less realistic view of self which is not less dangerous than the lack of self-esteem. Unfortunately, educators tend to ignore the presence of the dilemma and insist on particular practices without pondering upon the potential damages. What kinds of precautions can be taken to raise humble gifted individuals? What other messages should be given to them? Among many possible methods to overcome this problem, the following recommendations can be taken into consideration in educational and psychological practices.

1. Giftedness as a responsibility

Conceptualization of the giftedness needs fine-tuning. Traditional perspectives that seek the differences between gifted and non-gifted individuals have created a self-fulfilling prophecy: Gifted individuals have been marginalized and alienated. So-called unrealistic perception of giftedness has led to a perception of “superiority” over others. Remarkably, giftedness, as a concept, implies being the one who was awarded with some qualities which other people do not have. The concept also implies the passivity of the gifted because he was given, not necessarily because he deserves it. Corollary to this, gifted individuals should be taught about the responsibilities along with the gifts. Unlike the current practices, educators should emphasize the individual and social responsibilities corresponding to giftedness.

Individual responsibilities of the gifted individuals are related to the importance of realizing their personal strengths and skills and investing for their potential appropriately. In educational context, many gifted students tend to take the classes easy and pay attention to other “more interesting” things. They tend to make no effort beyond what the classes require, and their potential is not challenged. Individual responsibility defined as fulfillment of one’s own potential should replace externally defined responsibilities which are neither challenging nor motivating for the gifted.

Social responsibilities are critical for the gifted individuals because their potential can lead to both positive and negative changes at the societal level. Many scientific innovations facilitating our lives today are the gifted minds’ contributions to human beings. On the other hand, they could have devoted their potential to harmful innovations, too. The gifted individuals, therefore, are those who can build the civilizations with all advanced systems of technology, transportation and communication, and destroy them with mass destruction weapons, such as atom bombs. Employing the strengths and capacities to the benefit of human beings should be set as a basic goal for the gifted individuals.

2. Importance of effort over ability

Overemphasis on abilities and consideration of abilities as fixed traits tend to block gifted individuals. If people think that they possess a superior capacity and this is more or less stable, they may have difficulty in making for their goals. They often compromise their high ability with less effort that may result in underachievement and dropouts. The importance of effort and struggle over ability and performance should be integrated to the educational system.

Valuation of effort can be achieved through differentiating the curriculum for the gifted students. For example, the research indicate that easy learning materials and having a better standing in the class with respect to school achievement lead to ability attributions while mental effort and task commitment induce effort attributions (Dweck, 2006, Nicholls, 1978; Schunk, 1994). That means students tend to attribute the achievements to their abilities in easy tasks while they tend to attribute their performance in hard tasks to their hard work. Preparing the curriculum at an appropriate level of difficulty, by which students can be challenged but still can comprehend the content with some effort, should be a major task for the educators. In this way, the frame of reference for the gifted becomes the degree to which they struggle toward their goals rather than the gifts, capacities and strengths they possess.

3. Learning goals instead of performance goals

Goal setting is a crucial aspect of the education of the gifted people. Goal setting is influenced by the way educators assess student performances. There has been a tendency to evaluate school performance through objective, psychometric measures. Even though those measures are more reliable, the information gained from those measures are restricted, comparing the gifted with their counterparts instead of indicating the level at which the gifted fulfill their potential. Learning goals which can be set through individual projects should be the focus of evaluation rather than performance goals which tend to reduce the evaluation to the numbers. Learning goals also seem to be safer for the gifted since it focuses on the discovery of strategies that lead to desired outcomes whereas performance goals tend to have deleterious effects as people are preoccupied with the end result. Therefore, a third task for the educators is to preserve the gifted students from the detrimental effects of mechanical measurement of the performance. In this way, students have criterion set at their own pace for their success rather than external criteria set by others.

The above suggestions, which can be the basic steps of the fundamental changes in the system, can be further enumerated. The dilemma with the gifted education mentioned above is institutionally induced; therefore, the solutions should be addressed at the institutional level. By virtue of those changes in the educational settings, the programs for gifted education can become more individual-based and less mechanical, ultimately caring more about the critical human virtues such as humility. The political developments helped the gifted education programs to blossom, but it brought some side-effects. Educators must see those gaps and generate solutions that care about the gifted individuals.

References

• Dweck, C. S. (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success. New York: Random House.
• Nicholls, J. G. (1978). The development of the concepts of effort and ability, perception of academic attainment, and the understanding that difficult tasks require more ability. Child Development, 49, 800-814.
• Schunk, D. H. (1994). Self-regulation of self-efficacy and attribution in academic settings. In D. H. Schunk & B. J. Zimmerman (Eds.), Self-regulation of learning and performance: Issues and educational applications (pp. 75-99). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
• Vera, D. & Rodriguez-Lopez, A. 2004. Strategic virtues: Humility as a source of competitive advantage. Organizational Dynamics, 33, 4: 393-408.

Who are gifted students?

Gifted students display distinctive qualities in many ways. They usually think differently than their friends; they can come up with extraordinary ideas and self-developed thoughts; details are important for them; they have the ability to learn quickly and progress in academic and intellectual fields; they display high performance in one or more type of art. However, these talented people only make up 2% of the society. These individuals do not like to overexert themselves to increase their grades in education, nor do they study in a systematic manner or do homework. They tend to choose practical solutions, produce new ideas, and try to develop these ideas. They analyze and question whatever they learn, but nevertheless they can still be disorganized. They are often the students who cause problems at school. Awkward and disruptive in the classroom, they can be argumentative or uninvolved in activities. Research into the lives of many people who throughout history have caused great change has discovered that the outstanding talent of these famous people usually passed unnoticed by their teachers, and they were actually problematic children in their early years as students. Edison, for example, was taught at home by his mother, an experienced teacher, because he could not conform to or thrive in school life.

To help teachers to recognize gifted students, various tests have been introduced into the education systems of schools in the West. One of these exams is the IQ test. Some consider IQ tests as the most efficient way of discovering the abilities of students, while some other educationalists say that the only “skill” an IQ test indicates is the ability to take IQ tests; in fact the more you take, the higher you score.

In general, gifted students are recognized by the following qualities:

1. They are quick to learn; they understand and learn the topics in which they have greater ability more easily than other pupils, and they comment on or question the information provided.

2. They try to improvise on whatever they learn; they ask questions that will assist them in progressing in the topics they learn and constantly try to develop on these subjects.

3. They enjoy speaking with older people and usually choose the company of friends older than themselves. They obtain pleasure from discussing with older people, usually teachers.

4. They have the ability to judge and transform information.

5. They have extraordinary desire for intellectual activity.

6. As well as being energetic or overactive, they can also be introverted individuals who prefer their own company.

7. They absorb even the tiniest detail in subjects in which they have an interest.

8. They study only to satisfy their overwhelming desire to learn, and not to please their families or teachers.

9. They are curious, continually asking why and how and other similar questions.

10. They have very good memories.

11. They easily figure out complex objects and events.

Gifted individuals may have many more qualities than those listed above. Another aspect to consider is that if a child has one or a few of these qualities we should not come to the conclusion right away that he is a gifted child. A child could be talented in one certain topic. An individual who shows outstanding performance in mathematics could be completely unsuccessful in social studies and even worse in art, and a student who is successful in art may be very poor at physics. The understanding that an intelligent student must be successful in every field of education is misleading because this is not the case with all individuals. Further, methods of discovering a student’s ability in one field may not be suitable for other subjects.

Types of education for gifted students

In different countries of the world there are various kinds of education for gifted students. These can be categorized as separate education, combined education, and individual education.

1. Separate education: Separate education is grouping students to be educated according to the subjects in which they show higher performance. This kind of education is usually regarded as unsuitable in present-day understandings of schooling on the grounds that if not well balanced separate education may encourage selfishness, a sense of arrogance and unsound personality.

2. Combined education: This is a form of education where talented individuals continue studies in their usual environment among their friends in the five different formats noted below:

a) Education in special classes: Students known to have a higher rate of ability are taught in special classes in their own schools.

b) Early education: This is enrolling gifted children in schools earlier than the normal school age, usually a year earlier but in some cases maybe even two years, depending on a child’s general intellectual performance. This format is not advised because early education is said to have negative effects on the physical, emotional and psychological development of children.

c) Accelerated education: This is where children known to have outstanding intelligence are advanced to a higher class. This can be implemented two times at the most.

d) Groups of equal ability: This is a form of education where students with the same abilities in certain subjects are taught in specific, segregated classes and then encouraged to develop their skills in their topic of interest.

e) Enriched schedule: This is where a skilled individual is provided with special activities in his or her own classroom alongside the normal curriculum.

3. Individual education: A student with outstanding abilities is provided with a specific education in their own field of interest.

Recommended types of education

If we look at the various kinds of education, the most appropriate forms of learning seem to be groups of equal ability and the enriched schedule because separating children from their usual environment and friends can induce various problems.

Education of groups with equal ability

This is a method where students of equal ability are taught in one class. The ideal number of students per class is three, and a teacher is usually assigned to the class as a counselor.

After lessons the students research the topics relevant to their interests or abilities. This research begins with easier tasks, and while they are investigating the topic the students are actually learning and practicing different methods of learning. They learn in sequence how to research a topic and what to do when they are faced with a problem. The students learn study and learning methods without realizing that they are actually learning. This is a very effective method, and in this kind of education students gain the chance to learn and research, develop and innovate while remaining among their friends in their normal environment. Therefore, they are not subjected to the negative aspects of segregation, and gifted students in higher classes become an example for younger, outstandingly gifted students in lower classes.

Education with an enriched schedule

In the enriched schedule education program, the student continues his or her usual education in his or her own classroom guided by the teacher to perform research in the field in which he or she has greater ability. He or she then explains the research discoveries to classmates. Thus, while students are developing skills in explaining discoveries they are also teaching their friends and representing model students in the classroom. Teachers play a big role in this type of education. It is their duty to recognize the students’ fields of interest or abilities and arrange a program suitable to the students’ characters.

What the education of a gifted student entails

Gifted students should not be told of their superior capabilities because the word “superior” or “outstanding” could lead to arrogance in the student, which will cause problems with classmates. Students who think they are superior will begin to think that studying is unnecessary, which could lead to them abandoning their education completely. Nevertheless, their education can be customized according to their greater abilities.

Gifted students are individuals who need special education and trained, professional teachers, just like a student with hearing problems, a blind student or a student with a learning impairment.

Conclusion

The main differences between a student of normal learning capacity and one of outstanding abilities are that a gifted student can achieve what others think impossible. A ship being commanded from land, the discovery of electricity, the invention of motor vehicles, priceless classic paintings, music, literature and works of art are all the products of extraordinarily skilled people.

Outstanding talent is a gift from God, a great blessing. One who has a gift and the people responsible for discovering it and ensuring it develops, namely the mother, father, and teacher, must recognize it in the early stages and educate these children in a beneficial manner so that they will be able to do work which is of interest to them, work that ordinary people would not be able to do. In this way, they will be able to benefit others as well as themselves.

They must also develop in their character and spirituality. If a talented person does not have a good character, he or she could become more dangerous than a person of normal intelligence. Great responsibility lies with teachers and the education authorities.

It is the collaborative work of the mind and heart that will yield the desired spiritual and behavioral education of gifted people. But, how is it possible to satisfy the mind and the heart both at the same time? Traditionally, the heart is associated with religion and the mind is associated with science. So, cooperation between the mind and heart means cooperation between science and religion. Unfortunately, some religious subjects that solely depend on acceptance rather than investigation have been overemphasized during the course of many centuries for various reasons. As a result of this overemphasis and other incentives, Western society has broken the ties between science and religion, leading to an unbalanced relation between the mind and heart. In this imbalance, the mind is united with the ego and oppresses the heart; hearts are suffocated in the name of rationalism, and science is used as a means to deny religion.

It is true that religion is a way that eventually recourses to submission and acceptance rather than questioning. However, a correct perception of religion will never contradict the requirements of the mind, because of the fact that both religion and the mind originate from God. Therefore, a true religion will accept information about the universe that is arrived at by intellectual questioning as a way of acquiring knowledge of God; this consequently links the mind to the heart. A true religion will feed the heart in such a way that the love that sparks therein will give momentum to the investigations of the mind, enabling greater knowledge of God to be acquired, which will in turn increase the love of God and thus, link the heart to mind. It is the lack of this true cyclic relationship between the mind and the heart that has yielded uncontrolled, uneducated, self-idolized minds that boost the ego, creating a vicious circle in which the ego propels the mind. Therefore, the question is “how is one to achieve a unity between the mind and heart so that the education of gifted people yields humble servants to the community and to God?”

The solution to this problem lies partially in what can be called “ego education.” Although it may sound new, this concept is deeply rooted in Muslim cultures, and is called “adab.” In the context of this article, adab can be briefly described as knowing the ideal function and limits of the ego in order to be a good servant of God and a faithful member of society. Adab is traditionally learned from people who are already practicing it. This is referred to as education through the language of disposition (hal). Therefore, teachers who are already adorned with adab are needed to educate the egos of gifted people. It can be easily understood from a short reflection that the prophets and the saints throughout history and the sages in different cultures are those who represent the mission of ego education at different levels. For Muslims, adab is primarily learned from Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, who is the person that practiced and taught the way that leads to the point where the mind and heart are united under submission to God. Even according to the eyes of an outside viewer, Prophet Muhammad was an excellent and a distinguished person as a teacher, as a leader, as a servant of God, as a family man, as a commander, as a strategist . . . a person who came up with a totally new understanding of life and religion. In our context, we can take this as a model where a new approach to religion can be seen as an innovation introduced by a gifted person. Based on this model, it can be said that by learning the good behavior of Prophet Muhammad, who was a gifted person in many aspects, a method can be developed for the education of the ego of gifted people. Here, some of the conclusions from such an analysis are presented.

Ownership of the innovation

Although it is Prophet Muhammad who announced and taught Islam, it is God who taught him the religion and sent the Qur’an. Therefore, it is the Prophet who is the fountain through which the water of Islam flows, but the Prophet himself is neither the owner nor the originator of Islam. Similarly, any invention, be it a theory or a machine or a social system or a strategy, is only owned, originated, and inspired by God. The inventor is only the fountain through which God sends the innovation(1) as a blessing to humanity.

This point is important in many aspects. In terms of society, this way of consideration prevents the idolization of certain people and opens the door of thanksgiving and praise of God. For the inventor, it saves them from becoming an arrogant person and also leads them to thanksgiving and praising God. From another aspect, an invention is a gift from God to the inventor and society. Therefore, especially for the inventor, who, in this case, plays a role similar to that of a mother, this gift quickly leads to love of God.

Innovation as a unit of comparison

One of the purposes for the creation of the ego and the apparent potential it is given is that the individual can use these as a unit of comparison to learn about his Creator.(2) In other words, it is to humbly say “how beautifully created am I and how beautiful is my Creator” instead of arrogantly saying “how beautiful am I.” In a hadith, Prophet Muhammad is related as saying, “My Lord educated me, and how beautifully He has educated me.”(3) In the original text of this saying, the word adab is used for education. Based on this model, both being gifted in any area and the innovation that follows this potential are great units of comparison. A person who is gifted in any area can see God as the ultimate source of his own talents and as the omnipresent Lord who exercises His attributes in the universe on all scales.

Superiority versus neediness

Without the appropriate ego education, it is dangerously easy for a gifted person to indulge in the conviction that they can do things better than others and that they, not someone else, can invent something because they are superior to others. Such a conviction is powered by the ego and is also at the same time a means of feedback for further strengthening the ego in a vicious cycle. A gifted person can very easily fall into the deep and dark pit of arrogance with such thoughts, and will suffer in their social life due to this conviction.

An educated ego, on the other hand, knows that it owns nothing and it has no real creative power. It knows that it can only receive good things from its Creator.(4) What falls to its lot is only awareness of its poverty and neediness and praying to the Almighty for the satisfaction of its needs. This way of understanding leads to the result that it is the inventor who is needy of the invention, because of the way they have been created, because of the potential they have; in other words because of the “hunger” they have been given.(5) These needs can only be met by God, Who is the All-Rich, the All-Beneficent. Contemplation and experimenting in several ways must be considered both as conscious prayers and awareness of the neediness to reach the result of an effort.

Prior to the start of the prophethood, Prophet Muhammad used to seclude himself in a cave on a nearby mountain and contemplate the problems of society, the oppression, the unfortunate state of the women, the absurdity of the idolatry . . . Distressed by these factors, he wished for a salvation that would extinguish the fire within him and eventually deliver society from its wretchedness. This was the way in which the Prophet felt his neediness, and God replied to his conscious and unconscious prayers by choosing him as His Messenger.

So, what is so important about being gifted?

The special thing about being gifted is that the gifted person’s prayers are answered quickly in the way in which they are gifted. This is why certain people can do something or learn things very quickly and others cannot. A parallel to this is the acceptance of the prayers of the saints and the prophets. According to the Risale-i Nur, the prayers made in the language of natural need, innate potential, and in intense difficulty are quickly accepted and responded to(6) and such is the case with gifted people. The potential of the gifted person builds the foundation for the acceptance of their prayers, which are made in the language of their neediness in order to fulfill and develop their potential.

Servanthood as a gift

Every person is a creation of God on which different combinations of His names are manifested. This means that every person has a different and unique gift from others. In daily life, we usually recognize gifts of the people who achieve outstanding things. However, every person can realize the particular gifts given to them. The best of these gifts is the belief and love of God. Every person is given a potential to discover the existence of God and a potential to make an acquaintance with God that leads to His love. For every single human being, this discovery is unique; it is a discovery that nobody else can make for another. 

References

1. Nursi, S., The Words, Kaynak A.S., Izmir, 1997, First Word, pp. 4-5.
2. ibid, Thirtieth Word, pp. 228-229.
3. Al-Ajluni, Kashf al-Khafa, 1/72.
4. Nursi, S., The Words, Thirtieth Word, pp. 229-230.
5. ibid, Eighteenth Word, pp. 296.
6. ibid, Twenty-third Word, pp. 412-415. 

Americas gifted population

America has approximately 3 million gifted students, a number that represents 6 percent of its entire student population. The Council for Exceptional Children for the U.S. Office of Education reported that 39 states have legislation on gifted and talented education. These states generally define giftedness in terms of intellectual ability, creativity, leadership, and artistic talent (Zettel 1980).

Mitchell (1984) has reported that most states select gifted and talented students through multiple criteria. However, many school districts still use intelligence tests as the key identifier. Intelligence is measured through established IQ tests, and identifying the gifted is based on those scores. The population of gifted individuals is referred to as moderately gifted (IQ range 130-144), highly gifted (IQ range 145-159), and exceptionally gifted (IQ >160) (Clark 2002). However, using test scores alone is not sufficient to identify the great potential of highly creative students, for other factors need to be considered.

Giftedness traits

If a child displays outstanding traits, it is likely that he or she is gifted. In a study by Rogers (1986), the following characteristics distinguished the 38 gifted from the 42 average third and fourth graders: a brisk learning ability, an excellent memory, a long attention span, perfectionism, a fondness for older buddies, a broad vocabulary, a sense of humor, an interest in books, a knack in puzzles and mazes, maturity, inquisitiveness, perseverance, and intense observation.

Other factors that set gifted students apart from their peers are a rich memory, curiosity, reflectivity, and an openness to experiences. Resnick (1997) identifies six types of gifted students. The challenging student is creative and rebellious. The successful gifted student achieves most of the time and prefers to conform to the environment. The underground type is shy and lacks self-confidence. The gifted dropout student is angry and explosive. The autonomous student is intrinsically motivated and passionate. The sixth type consist of the double-labeled students who are both gifted and disabled and sometimes labeled as having ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) due to their lack of focus.

Modified programs

Gifted students learn faster, understand more complex issues, and have distinctive emotional needs. So, regular school programs must be modified to accommodate their needs. Gifted students should be provided with acceleration options and various forms of enrichment that broaden the conventional school curriculum.

Organizing a comprehensive program to satisfy gifted and talented students is a complex task. Schools should create such opportunities as acceleration, enrichment, self-paced classes, or advanced classes. Staff members should be educated to identify and provide an appropriate curriculum for gifted students. Differentiated Educational Plans (DEPs), which briefly describe the modified content, activities, and assessment planned for such students and his or her group should be filed for each student.

Once the DEPs have been implemented, students should be encouraged to move through content areas at their own pace. If they master a particular unit, they need to be provided with more advanced learning activities, as opposed to more of the same activity. In other words, burdening gifted students with more trigonometry homework or drills, just because they can do it and need to be kept engaged, is not considered to be part of acceleration or enrichment.

Two very helpful strategies in running optional activities toward enrichment and acceleration are compacting and contracts.

Compacting. Students are provided with enrichment and spend less time working on skills they have already mastered in the regular curriculum. For example, a seventh grade student who has a grade equivalence of above 8 in math is usually uninterested in math classes. The teacher can provide him or her with challenging puzzles, competition questions (such as Math Counts or International Math Olympiads), math project samples, and help the students develop advanced and versatile skills separately from their peers.

Contracts. Students and teachers agree on what students will learn, how they will learn it, how long it will take them to learn it, and how they will be evaluated. A science teacher and a student might agree on a cycle of 6-week periods when the student will complete and present a science project or a portfolio. Contracts should include a calendar, written student and teacher roles, a scoring guide (a rubric), and a product format. Students and parents must join the teacher in the decision-making process while outlining this contract (Parke 1989).

Compacting and contracts do not stop students from attending regular classes. Depending on the student’s characteristics, availability on campus, reports from teachers, and the curricula, a student, for example, might stay in regular science and social studies classes, spend half of his or her time working independently in language arts, and not attend regular math classes at all so that he or she can work with the school Math Olympiad team.

Before each campus decides which format will best serve their students’ needs, they should decide what is applicable and feasible. Special magnet schools, pull-out programs, a gifted school within a school, resource rooms, flexible grouping provision based on definite needs, and mainstreaming are some of the available alternatives (Daniel and Cox 1988).

When gifted students are taught in a traditional slow-paced classroom and subjected to an inadequate curriculum, they do not apply themselves, have low stimuli, and even drop out. If schools do not allow gifted and talented students to flourish, their achievement and motivation will fade in a relatively short period of time. Parents of gifted students may choose to enroll their children in alternative programs, such as home schooling or other gifted and talented schools.

Grouping

Rogers (1991) believes that gifted and talented students should spend the greater part of their school day with others of corresponding abilities and interests. Gifted students benefit from learning together and need to be placed with similar students in their areas of strength so that they can understand their learning differences in gifted classes.

Grouping gifted students cannot be considered elitism or a violation of equity in education. It is an erroneous belief that all students are best assisted in heterogeneous learning environments. There are many grouping methods in which average and below-average students may benefit as well as the gifted do. Rogers (1991) suggests many strategies and grouping options. He recommends a cluster grouping of students if schools cannot maintain a full-time gifted program.

In enrichment clusters, advanced learning experiences and higher-level thinking skills are combined in groups of various graded members. Students and teachers learn authentically, work on real problems, and act as practicing professionals to produce a product or effect a change for a real audience. The clusters work according to an extended and flexible schedule (Renzulli 1997).

Accountability

Prosperous people are accountable to the state and are obliged to pay taxes on what they possess. In return, the state has the duty and responsibility to provide services for these people. Gifted and talented people should feel accountable to God, state, and their nation for how they use their potential (for good or bad) and the extent to which they use it (efficiently or wastefully). They should not enjoy the relaxation of saying: This is the best I can do, for their potential is dynamic and subject to improvement. Pure talent must be accompanied by industriousness, perseverance, and conscientiousness. As Thomas Edison stated: Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration. As a result, a genius is often a talented person who has simply done all of his or her homework.

On the other hand, the state, society, and educational components are responsible for buttressing gifted and talented programs and for using these students’ special abilities instead of wasting them. Gifted and talented people should be identified and helped so that they can assist others.

Another critical component of educating the gifted generation is preventing the developing a corrupt, threatening mob of talented people obsessed with selfishness, evil, or lawlessness and deprived of moral values, ethics, and good intentions. Such an outcome is even worse than wasting the gifted generation’s talents. Notorious dictators, criminals, and militants are all known to be geniuses. We are held accountable for developing a fruitful, qualified, and fully activated gifted generation, one that is decent, just, and ethical and can lead and help the world.

References

• Clark, B. Growing up Gifted. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc., 2002.
• Daniel, N. and Cox, J. Flexible Pacing for Able Learners. Reston, VA: The Council for Exceptional Children, 1988.
• Mitchell, B. An Update on Gifted and Talented Education. U.S. Roper Review 6 (1984): 161-63.
• Parke, B. N. Gifted Students in Regular Classrooms. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon, 1989.
• Renzulli, J. S. A Bird’s Eye View of the Schoolwide Enrichment Model: A Practical Plan for Total School Improvement (1997). Retrieved 25 April 2002, from www.sp.uconn.edu/~nrcgt/sem/semart07.html.
• Resnick, D. and Goodman, M. Research Review. NW Education Magazine (1997).
• Rogers, M. T. A Comparative Study of Developmental Traits of Gifted and Average Children. Ph.D. diss., University of Denver, 1986.
• Rogers, K. The Relationship of Grouping Practices to the Education of the Gifted and Talented Learner: An Executive Summary. Storrs, CT: The National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented, 1991.
• Rogers, K. Grouping the Gifted and Talented. Roper Review 16, no. 1 (1993): 8-12.
• Zettel, J. Gifted and Talented Education from a Nationwide Perspective. Reston, VA: Council for Exceptional Children, 1980.

What is giftedness?

We should begin by realizing that giftedness is a particular degree or concentration of innate qualities such as arc given to every child by his or her Creator, a fact emphasized in several verses of the Qur’an, for example:

It is He who brought you forth from the wombs of your mothers when you knew nothing; and He gave you hearing and sight and intelligence and affections: that you may give thanks (al-Nahl, 16.78).

It is He who has created for you hearing, sight, feeling and understanding: little thanks you give (al Mu’minun, 23.78).

The counterpart to recognizing the special giftedness of a particular child is to recognize our special debt of gratitude for that giftedness, together with an understanding of the challenges and responsibilities which that debt brings with it.

Indicators of giftedness

It is important for parents to be fully aware of the ways in which giftedness can be manifested. There are a number of typical characteristics listed by authorities on the subject. No individual child is likely to be outstanding in all the ways indicated on the list.

1. Shows superior reasoning powers and marked ability to handle ideas, has outstanding problem-solving ability.
2. Shows persistent intellectual curiosity, asks searching questions, shows exceptional interests in the nature of man and the universe.
3. Has a wide range, of interests often of an intellectual kind; develops one or more interests to a considerable depth.
4. Is noticeably superior in quality and quantity of vocabulary, in speech and/or in writing.
5. Reads eagerly and absorbs books well beyond his or her years.
6. Learns quickly and easily and retains what is learned, recalls important details, concepts and principles; comprehends readily.
7. Shows creative ability or imaginative expression in such things as music, art, drama, shows sensitivity and fitness in rhythm, movement, and body control.
8. Shows insight into arithmetical problems that require careful reasoning and grasps mathematical concepts easily
9. Sustains concentration for lengthy periods and shows outstanding responsibility and independence in doing classroom work.
10. Sets realistically high standards for him or herself, is self- critical in evaluating and correcting his or her own efforts.
11. Shows initiative and originality in intellectual work; shows flexibility in thinking and considers problems from a number of viewpoints.
12. Observes keenly and is responsive to new ideas
13. Shows social poise and an ability to communicate with adults in a mature way.
14. Takes pleasure in intellectual challenges; shows an alert and subtle sense of humour.

It should be kept in mind that it is neither admirable nor contemptible to be gifted. It is what one does with one’s abilities that is important. Throughout the parenting years, it is wise to accept that the healthiest long-term goal is not necessarily a child who gains fame, fortune and a Nobel Prize, but one who becomes a contented adult able to use his or her gifts productively.

Throughout childhood and early adolescence, we must provide the environment in which gifted children can flourish. We can do this by trying to:

be responsive to the unusual questions the children ask;

be respectful of the children’s unusual ideas or solutions by listening to them without bias, as the children will see many relationships that their parents and teachers miss;

encourage the children to test their ideas by using them and communicating them to others;

ensure that the children can learn, think and discover without the threat of immediate evaluation or prejudgement.

Education of gifted children

Effective nurturing of giftedness in children and adolescents requires a co-operative partnership between home and school, one that is characterized by mutual respect and an ongoing sharing of ideas and observations about the children involved.

Because gifted children may begin school already knowing much of the material covered in early grades and because they learn quickly, some type of acceleration is necessary. For some children and in some situations, grade skipping is the best choice. Placing a child with older children with similar interests may be socially and intellectually beneficial and result in a more appropriate curriculum.

The following strategies, suggested in a Gifted Leadership Conference in Washington. illustrate how bridges in thinking can be built between giftedness and education.

1. Gifted students should spend the majority of their school days with others of similar abilities and interests.
2. Cluster grouping of students within an otherwise mixed class can he considered where schools are unable to support a full time programme for gifted individuals.
3. In the absence of a full time programme for gifted individuals, students might be offered specific group instruction across grade levels, according to their individual knowledge acquisition in school subjects.
4. Gifted students, individually or in groups, should be given experiences involving a variety of appropriate acceleration-based options.
5. All students should be given experiences which involve various terms of enrichment that extend the regular school curriculum, leading to the more complete development in their minds of concepts, principles, and generalizations.
6. Mixed-ability co-operative learning groups should be used sparingly, perhaps only for the development of social skills.
7. All staff should be trained to identify and provide appropriate curricula for gifted students.
8. We should eliminate the ceiling on learning (in other words, if a student is ready to learn algebra in 5th grade, the system should not just permit but support it.).
9. Computers can be used to keep up with the students’ pace. They are patient and will hold on to an idea for a long time. Computers can do more complex tasks when the students are ready to use them in more complex ways, and they can provide information when the student is ready for it.

Career planning for the gifted

Although parents and teachers may be concerned about academic planning for gifted children, they often assume that career planning will take care of itself. The student is simply expected to make a career choice around the last year of college and then follow through on the steps necessary to attain that goal.

Unfortunately, there is growing evidence that youthful brilliance in one or more areas does not always translate into adult satisfaction and accomplishment in working life. Studies have shown that the path from education to career is not always smooth, and it may be complicated by the fact that the social-emotional problems and needs of gifted students differ from those of more typical students.

Young gifted people between the ages of II and 15 frequently report a range of problems as a result of their abundant gifts: perfectionism, competitiveness, unrealistic appraisal of their gifts, rejection from peers, confusion due to mixed messages about their talents, and parental and social pressures to achieve, as well as problems with unchallenging school programmes or increased expectations. Some encounter difficulties in finding and choosing friends and, eventually, a career. The developmental issues that all adolescents encounter exist also for gifted students, yet they are further complicated by the special needs and characteristics of being gifted. Once counselors and parents are aware of these obstacles, they seem better able to understand and support gifted adolescents. Caring adults can assists these young people to ‘own’ and develop their talents by understanding, responding to adjustments and challenges and coping with strategies.

Conclusion

Bringing up a gifted child may be ecstasy, agony and everything in between. Adults must perform almost impossible feats of balance – supporting a child’s gifts without pushing, valuing without over-investing, championing without taking over. It is costly, physically and emotionally draining, and intellectually demanding. In the first flush of pride, few parents realize that their task is in many ways similar to the task faced by parents of a child with severe handicaps. Our world does not accommodate differences easily, and it matters little whether the difference is perceived to be a deficit or an overabundance.

The most important help you can give your gifted child or children can be expressed in a single sentence: give them a safe home, a refuge where they feel loved, and genuine acceptance, particular of their differences. As adults who enjoyed such a safe home background, they should be able to put together lives of productivity and fulfilment.

USEFUL READING

• BERGER, S. (1989) College Planning for Gifted Students, The Council for Exceptional Children Reston, VA.
• COX, J., DANIEL, N. & BOSTON, B. (1985) Educating Able Learners, University of Texas Press, Austin TX.
• FREDERICKSON, R.H. & ROTHNAY, J.W.M. (1992) Recognizing and Assisting Multipotential Youth, Columbus, OH: Merril.
• KERR, B. (1985. September) ‘Raisins, the Career Aspirations of the Gifted’, The Vocational Guidance Quarterly, 32, pp. 37-43.
• KAUFMAN, F. (1988) ‘Mentors Provide Personal Coaching’,Gifted Child Monthly, 9(l), pp.I-3.