This is the transformation of the Ph.D thesis of the author submitted to the University of Pune, conducted at the Jnana Prabodhini's Institute of Psychology, Pune. The book intends to study intellectually gifted populations. This is an unexplored area, especially in the Indian context. This book studied a sample of 62 subjects who were identified as gifted on a standardized intelligence test when they were 9 plus years of age. About half of them, who studied in a school for the gifted were compared with the other half who studied in normal schools. This is a quasi-experimental design as it is a follow-up study, an experiment which has started in the past. Despite challenges in such a follow-up study, the author managed to collect data without much attrition.
It is a pioneering effort, as it attempts to train the gifted and utilize their potentials to overcome societal issues for the larger good of the community. The book attractively titled: “Why gifted education? A Comparative study of persons, who studied in the enriched educational programme (EEP) and normal school programme” is divided into six chapters. Chapter 1 describes the theoretical background and conceptual basis of giftedness, assessment of intelligence, and the concept of personality.
Chapter 2 reviews the characteristics of gifted, educational programs implemented. Chapter 3 describes the methodology of the research, Chapter 4 explains the data and its analysis, and Chapter 5 comprises results and discussion. Chapters 6 conclude with limitations and future direction.
This book begins by defining and describing the characteristics of the gifted, development of personality, and impact of school on personality, which explains school, is one of the most influential social agencies. The author elaborates on the need for special education in gifted children and also explains the various legislative positions across various countries including India. This book reviews aspects regarding intelligence, personality, their interaction, and their complex relation to each other. The model followed was the 6-year of schooling for the gifted called “Enriched Educational Programme” implemented in Jnana Prabodhini Prashala, Pune. The individuals from EEP were found to be different as compared to those who did not attend such programs. Changes can be seen in aspects such as expressional skills, motivation to reach the masses, but it failed to explain the extent of change seen because pretest assessment of personality was not done to compare with the posttest results. Yet, another drawback of the study, as acknowledged by the author, is the lack of directional hypothesis, use of nonstandardized tools, and nonseparation of very highly gifted from the gifted children. Furthermore, it would have been useful if some of the activities used for enriched education program were detailed in the book. It fails to explain how the other factors could have influenced the results in the 6-year of a longitudinal study.
Some of the interesting conclusions of the study showed that those who received the EEP were better in terms of academic, social accomplishments, and also in terms of having life goals such as “Betterment of society.” However, in terms of practical accomplishments, both groups seemed to be the same, as per the study.
This book is recommended for parents and teachers dealing with gifted children, academicians, and for those dealing with designing curricula for education to the gifted children. Unlike, most of the research in the field of education which either deal with those with either intellectual disability or normal children, this book is unique as it tries to look at educating the gifted children and trying to understand if it is practically feasible and yields meaningful results.
On the flip side, this book does not address the following:
How do we identify such children at a young age at the community level?
How do we standardize the curricula for such children?
How do we create resources for such an intensive program in a country like ours?
Most importantly, with the current Right to Education law passed by the Indian Parliament in the year 2009, no school while admitting a child can subject the child or parents to any screening procedure.
Despite these limitations, this book clearly shows that by focusing on the gifted children of the society, by imparting enriched education to them, we can create human resources with superior intellect, whose knowledge and skills can then be used for the good of the community.