Gifted Children and Adolescents: Exploring the Perspective of a Group That Still Needs Educational Attention in Brazil

摘要

Gifted and talented children are known as those with a valuable potential that may be stimulated to the benefit of humankind. However, in many countries they are known as those that don’t need any specialized educational assistance or stimulation or even worse that they do not exist. In Brazil, the educational Laws recognize this group, but the Brazilian educational system still struggles to properly attend them. Unfortunately, most teachers and professors that are supposed to help this group to get the best of their giftedness and high skills for the good of these kids and humankind, currently ignore them. In 2012 there was the 1st Meeting of Gifted Children and Adolescents sponsored by the Brazilian Council of Giftedness. During this meeting 21 gifted and talented children and adolescents have prepared a document called Declaration of the Gifted Brazilian Child to inform about their expectations and how the society may help them. This gifted group created 8 statements that now we have analyzed and discussed, considering their ideas, the logistics of attending their needs and the limit of these requirements considering Brazilian laws and World rights. According to our results these kids know what they need, what is missing and what they lose when getting no proper educational attention. The maturity of their requests revealed the lack of a proper formation of our professionals involved in their education that ignore and/or suffocate them and their potential knowledge, which may affect not only their future but also the Brazilian development and innovation capacity.