YPIPCE
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The Rational for Education of the Gifted In our conform society, there are some strict concepts of when and what should be challenged and developed in children, without differentiating the abilities of different children. Abilities create needs. Therefore the needs of some children, are different from the needs of others.The needs of talented, precocious, intelligent children are different from other children's and the challenges to actualize them should be different.Each talent or gift needs to be challenged and fostered, watered like a plant. The most talented child needs the encouragement of its environment and suitable stimulation in order to spur potential, as much as, or even more than the ordinary child.If not properly encouraged (time - and contend wise) child might withdraw, even fight his potentials which might have lead him to scientific discovery, artistic creativity, creative leadership, or a self-actualizing, happy personality. Society, too, loses by ignoring the gifted, loses its creative leaders in the sciences arts, politics, and gains frustrated dropouts from school and sometimes from community and public life, sometimes from life itself. Giftedness might also be used for antisocial purposes - using talents for the "wrong" goals. Fostering giftedness has an important prophylactic aspect. It challenges the children, who might be potential absorbers of destructive influences from their environment, use their intelligence and talent for constructive social and individual goals.The gifted child if not made aware of his potentials might aspire to be like the others, which is not a bad thing, par se; but if considered the extreme cost at which it is achieved: of giving up the creative actualization of and talents - the price is much too high to pay for the child as well as for the society.The gifted child of today will, hopefully, be the leader of tomorrow. They must be given the opportunity to become aware of their potentials, given the challenges to develop their talents, to feel responsible for their deeds, to be involved in their society and aspire the actualization of his potentials for his own good as well as that of the society.The creative use of today's knowledge in science and in technology should be seen as ways and means to shape the future and not as ends in itself.We can not give children knowledge of the future; but we can provide them with the tools to deal with what the future will bring. Thus we prepare not only the personal future of the gifted child, but also the future of our society. The Young Persons' Institute for the Promotion of Creativity and Excellence was founded as a nonprofit association, about thirty years ago to help talented and gifted children to cope with their problems within a society that could not accept those who could not "conform": those children who asked more questions, who got easily bored because they caught things easily and quickly. The aims of our work was, first of all, to satisfy their needs to know, to create, to belong and to be accepted. In other words to accept the child as he could be and not impose on him how he must be. Further aims were to understand manifested and discover latent giftedness in children. To help the gifted child to become aware and develop his/her intellectual, emotional and social needs and abilities. We do it by challenging the intellect, the emotions and the social potentials through workshops (80-100 each semester) on topics in exact-, life-, humanistic-, social sciences and the arts. (Please see the enclosedlist of workshops). Another very important aim of our work is to involve the gifted in the presentpossibilities and problems of our society; to challenge and strengthen thechildren's whole personality thus preparing them to act in the future as creative,gifted, involved and responsible adults. By teaching and challenging the gifted children today we not only prepare them to react to decision-makers but, hopefully, give them tools to act and make decisions themselves for their own good and for a creative future of Israel. Israel for me, is not just a country to live in. As a holocaust child, Israel gave me back the right to exist as a human being and the privilege to be an involvedcitizen. I feel It as a duty to help the gifted child to actualize his or her potentialfor his own as well as for the good of our country. More than 35,000 gifted children attended our programs. In our follow-upresearch, on those who participated in our enrichment courses 25-20 yearsago, we learned from their answers that many of them not only act according to their potentials but achieved recognition in their fields (science, technology,army, etc.) usually much younger then their colleagues. I was very proud to present two of them as new members to our Boardof Directors: one is a mathematician, professor who, not yet 30, is worldwide known for his work in his field. The second is a young psychiatristwho already {aged 32} an internationally known expert in ADHD {Attention Deficiency and Hyperactivity Disorders} a very important field of researchfor us too, as many gifted children have some of the symptoms of ADHD.She had been the youngest medical doctor in Israel, at the age of 23. Another young medical doctor, who studied computer sciences as well, wrote a book and developed a computer program for the informed patientand the informed doctor. There is one who discovered an asteroid in the sky, during his space sciences study. Another is the chief scientist in one of the important departments of the Army. We are especially happy about the fact that 40% of our teachers are formerstudents of ours. Others brought and bring their children to enrole them in our program, which speaks for itself. Our Institute works with about 800 gifted children each semester, on theTel-Aviv University Campus. In addition to this we deal annually with about 350-500 children from culturally deprived environment in Tel-Aviv area. Wechallenge them through workshops on:
We start with the creative thinking which widens their world of concepts -intellectual, emotional, their ways of seeing - observing things from differentaspects, their ways of communication - with themselves and with the others. On this basis we take them out into the world of science. At the start scientific understanding of phenomena in their daily life, later into the wider spaces of their being.We also challenge them to social interaction to personal responsibility withinsociety and to the awareness of their ability to think, solve problems, decide, influence others, improve and change their environment.In one of our researches on the impact of our enrichment program on thechildren of those underprivileged parts of our town, we could see that there wasan increase in the intelligence of all the participants; the girls, who at the beginningof the program scored lower then the boys in their intelligence test, not only leveledbut scored higher average then the boys, in the follow-up tests. This finding is of utmost importance as the young girls of today will be the mothers of tomorrow We started our work in the culturally deprived suburbs in 1973 and the feedback echoed very good and gratifying results from the participants as well as from institutions they are involved with.. We were fortunate to be helped by donations, (a very generous one by the courtesy of PEF, Israel Endowment Fund) which made it possible to work in 10 to 12 suburbs each year. .Unfortunately, now we have had to reduce it to two only. After thirty years of work we can proudly look at our former students as doctors, professors, high army officers, etc. , usually much younger then their colleagues.Our work with children, their parents, lately also grandparents and teachers is most challenging and gratifying. Yet the perpetual struggle for balancing our budget becomes harder each year. Our yearly budget, with all our ramifying activities, is about $400,000. With the high security costs and the general economic situation in Israel - many children (about 25%) ask for tuition grants - even under-staffed and under-paid we hardly can make ends meet. For special projects, better teaching devices, we depend entirely on good people who like gifted children and share with me the vision that they might create a better world then ours is. |
