Article/25/09/07
Gifted Students: The Untapped Potentials

By: Teuku Azhari Zakaria | Master Candidate in Secondary Education at University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, Arkansas, USA
 

Gifted students are one of the untapped talents in Aceh. Government need to do something to make sure these potentials receive proper intervention to fully
develop their talents.

 

CEH has undergone some major changes in its history. These essential changes, unfortunately, happen after the devastating and tragedic disaster; tsunami. This natural catastrophe is, hopefully, to change the course of the province’ developmental planning towards better good and more promising living area. One of the most promising areas to look into is gifted and talented programs.

Even long before tsunami, Aceh has had some high performing schools. These schools spread out all over Aceh districts, like Pidie, Aceh Besar, Lhokseumawe, West Aceh, and such. Some of them are private and some are public schools. Public well-performing schools are usually government’ project schools. Government wants to set a sample on well-performing schools for other to follow. In addition to these, in private sector, Modern Islamic Boarding schools follow and set a sample of their own. They are highly regarded and well-known in Aceh for high quality graduates, at least at province level. Distribution wise, most of well performing Public schools are at high school level while only few at junior school level and very few at primary level.

Despite the fact that the establishment of some encouraging, well-named and high standard schools dedicated to boost educational growth and performance in Aceh, in addition to some already existing ones, some potential gifted students remains under-represented. This is mainly due to classic, hard-to-solve problem of education in Aceh, financial. Sadly, this is not the only discouraging factor, selection, access, bureaucracy, and traditional values also add up to hinder gifted and talented students from getting access into ‘good’ schools.

The United States in one of many countries who pays serious attention educating their gifted students. They have invested serious effort and money to help students identified as gifted and talented receive proper education they need. Dealing with this matter, the US government has passed several policies like, among others, school voucher, charter school, home-school, and gifted and talented programs. These programs and policies are to help students develop to their full potentials. ‘Traditional’ schools systems only are not able to meet these specific needs.

This small illustration may seem to be a utopia to some people. However, I can assure you that this is not as hard as it sounds.

Undoubtedly, Aceh has great educational potential scattered all over the province. Unfortunately, for financial reasons, many students are denied from the access into special schools/ programs. Often, they cannot effort high tuition and fees charged by the schools. Parents can not afford to send their children to well-performing schools for financial reasons. Even though longing for better school and education, some students go to nearby schools, which sometimes have less than expected academic quality.

Single test selection is another issue; taking mainly ‘school smarts’ as selection criteria, well performing schools neglect other potentials. Students with ‘different’ type of smart will not be able to pas the selection. Art and musical prodigy for example, as their talents are still not highly-regarded, these students will always remain under-represented. This not to mention double exceptional students: students with remarkable ability, but have physical or learning disabilities.

Bureaucracy sometimes adds up to the issue. Practically, we have set of policies, guide line and code of conduct in almost every aspect of government bodies’ systems and their implementation. While rules and regulation is meant to be followed, some people always try to find way to get away around them. Rent-seekers will find way to get personal benefit out of government programs. They will, for example, “send” their children to study in the school without a proper entrance test, reasoning that the children will ‘adapt’ in their new environment. Such behavior will, for sure, refrain the other potentials students from getting their education or the sent students may not perform as well as they expected to, thus finally hurt their and school’ performance it self.

Some people, sadly, still preserve traditional value of education. They still take education as merely going to school. They do not posses strong desire to get high standard education. These people satisfy with simply getting into school system and being educated in it. They are not motivated to get into high-performing and well-established schools.

Obviously, some changes need to be done to decrease these phenomena. Provincial and local government should provide equal and better access to all students. Government should help students meet and improve to their full capacity.

To make this into reality, I propose to government, provincial and district, to establish gifted and talented programs. The programs   will serve students based on their giftedness. To make the matter simpler, government can first start with primary education. Selected students from various areas like, math, science, reading, music, art, and leadership are gathered and take some special training in the area of their expertise. Students will meet, let say, twice a week, in the area of their specialty.

Were I to suggest further in the matter, we can start with proper selection at district and provincial levels. To guarantee a proper and quality selection, students are tested and measured in their own field of giftedness. They are not only tested in the field of ‘school smart’, but also in other areas, like music, art and creativity. Taking Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligence into account, test committee will have to open possibilities for different kind of smartness. 

Next step is program design and teacher training. Program should accommodate all area of giftedness and proper curriculum for students’ gifts’ developments. Students are categorized based on their area of giftedness and help further the subject deeper. Students do not necessarily attempt to accelerate in all areas as they will loose focus and diverged from programs’ original attention: to help students fully develop their talents/ capacities. A focused and accurate approach will result in desired goals; meanwhile diverged attention will result otherwise. Having no focus will only consume students’ time and energy. It will produce everything but quality education.

In this sense, students will need only to advance in one area. They will focus to develop on one skill only. This is not to omit, neglect, or deny more that one talent a student might have; however, considering students’ time, personal and religious activities, and Zone Proximal Development, it will be for students’ best interest not to stretch them selves too much which will eventually wear them out. Instead, they just focus and sharpen one area; thus later lead to mastery.

The following issue is teachers who facilitate the programs. Teachers must be carefully selected and trained for the programs. Teachers and facilitators will, also, focus on their area of expertise to better help the students improve. Having to teach selected gifted students, teachers need to be well prepared. This is to avoid incompetency. Careful selection and dedicated training will help smoothly run the programs. Teachers then can concentrate on students’ gifts and guide them to fully develop their capacities.

Good, defendable selection, proper program plan, and quality are the three major aspects in this project. As one aspect correlate with each other, none of the aspects is insignificant. All aspects contribute equally towards the success of the programs.

To do this, government will not necessarily build new school to accommodate the students. Instead, some existing schools can always be used to conduct the programs. As many schools in Aceh take morning shift, schools are mostly not occupied or partially occupied in the afternoon thus enable government to run the programs in the afternoon. To ensure equal participation and open possibilities to as many students as possible, then, government is required to establish such programs in many different locations. Located in many locations, students will not have to commute far thus become more affordable for many students. The programs do not necessarily require huge number of students. Small class, in fact, is preferable. This will enable better teacher-students interaction.

In case of budget constrain, government can just focus on one level, like starting from primary education –as the most needy group age however take pleasure in the least attention. Having to do so, government can focus budget and attention towards the success of these programs. Also, because primary school level, so far, have the least gifted programs. Eventually, the system will benefit more students since they, hopefully, can further their true capacity at junior and high school level.
 

Hoping that we can improve our education, students can enjoy quality education that meets their needs and to prepare for future talented individuals, I strongly encourage the government to look into the matter seriously and take it into consideration. Hope our children and students get best education the genuinely deserve. (TAZ | www.acehinstitute.org)

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