George David: Obrazovanje darovitih

David George: Gifted Education

The task of all teachers and parents should be to search for opportunities to provide education that meets the unique needs and abilities of gifted students and to apply this knowledge in general education to enable all children to achieve the most they can. This book discusses the problems of defining gifted children, advocates a multidimensional approach to their identification and - most importantly - overworked teachers are offered new ways in which they can enrich, expand and make the curriculum for these children different. Our goal is to help overworked teachers to have more patience and see more, to give them basic knowledge that will help them define their goals in teaching such children, to make teachers and parents aware of the fact that some of these children in our schools are not successful enough and therefore do not fully exploit their great potential. It is an essential task of every teacher to meet the diverse and demanding needs of gifted and talented children, from identifying 10 percent of advanced and capable children when entering the education system to encouraging smart children in the sixth grade of elementary school to aspire to one day study at the best universities.
Teachers in regular schools, although not through their fault, so far have mostly not succeeded. Large classes, overloaded timetables and inevitably dealing with less able children often meant that gifted and talented children were largely overlooked because it was assumed that they would manage anyway. Of course, the truth that we are all aware of is that smart children cannot teach themselves, so if they are neglected, they will become bored, they will start to disrupt the lessons, create difficulties and regress. There are many reasons - socio-political and economic - why people in power want higher educational standards, and that means shabby performance charts and the like. By allowing smart children to be very successful with little effort, potentially exceptional results could be "wasted" and the school and the government could lose their credibility. More importantly, it is a fundamental human right of everyone in a civilized and educated society to be automatically enabled to fully develop their true potential. In any case, we all have to pay close attention today to the needs of highly able children, which means, for many teachers, a new way of thinking, a steep learning curve.

About the author
David George (Great Britain) is a pedagogical consultant. He is the founder and first president of the British National Association for Gifted Children in Education. He was a member of the Executive Board of the World Council for Gifted and Talented Children. He is a consultant for the British Council and UNESCO. He holds courses on the education of gifted and talented children all over the world.