This energy must be respected and protected and not wasted. They are the power that is responsible for raising the status of any country and developing it. So, it was essential to pay attention to this category and provide all necessary to provide it with an excellent education to ensure the benefit of its capabilities. To do so, it is essential to identify the mentally excellent and their characteristics and methods of dealing with them.
Who are mentally excellent? And what are their characteristics?
The excellent is a group of students distinguished from the rest of their colleagues in various fields, whether academic or related to other activities. These students have unique advantages and a remarkable ability to innovation, creativity, and accurate achievement, and they score high in intelligence.
Basu defines superiority as “the ability to excel and achieve,” and Carter defines an excellent child as “a child who is perceived to be extraordinary in several qualities and abilities, especially those related to children exhibiting distinctive intelligence abilities, and more social and physical development than normal.”
Based on the above, high achievers are students who score high on IQ tests, have advantages and skills that exceed their peers, and score high in their subjects.
Many terms denote this type of student. It is common to use terms such as child genius, genius, talented, special abilities, and so on, all of which denote a high degree of mental superiority from peers.
There are still some differences between these terms, and we refer to the following distinction between the excellent child and the talented child:
- The performance of the talented child is above average, while the excellent child starts from the intermediate level.
- Talent is inherited, while the main component of excellence is environmental.
- Talent is energy and activity, while excellence is the product of that energy.
- Not every talent is excellent, while every excellent is talented.
- Standardized tests measure talent, while excellence is measured by observation.
Characteristics and Attributes of the Mentally Excellent
It is essential to know the characteristics of the child who excels academically because observing these characteristics will be credited with discovering them inside the classroom or at home and then dealing with them in a way that suits their distinction and difference.
Characteristics of excellence can be classified into the following:
1. Physical characteristics
The general health and the level of physical growth of this group are better than the average level and the excellence of peers, as evidenced by studies conducted by many psychologists, and this makes this group more active and vital, and the physical and motor growth of the excellent at a higher rate than the growth rate among their ordinary peers. It is noted that excellent children show their teeth at the age of two months, and they start talking and walking at a younger age than their peers, as well as this group needs to sleep in smaller quantities and for a shorter period.
2. Mental Characteristics
A mentally excellent child is faster than their typical peers in mental development.
3. IQ
Gifted children score above 140 in IQ tests, and their language is formed faster, so they learn to read at a young age, and their linguistic output, according to many studies, is higher than that of others at the same age.
Their flexibility and ability to think creatively are the essential points that distinguish them. They are able to move from one idea to another and from one style to another. They can create new ideas. They are characterized by the accuracy of observation, organized thinking, and the remarkable ability to focus, which makes them ahead of others in all fields of study.
4. Emotional and social characteristics
These characteristics include everything related to the emotional and personal aspects of the mentally excellent child. We find that they are cooperative and receive guidance with open arms. They can harmonize and are often characterized by good morals, as well as their remarkable ability to emotional balance. They are self-confident and can adapt and take leadership positions. In short, they enjoy emotional stability and autonomy.
In addition to the above, the mentally excellent have patterns of behavior that make them distinct from others. A love of knowledge, independence, perseverance, and initiative characterize them.
How to deal with mentally excellent people?
As has become clear, mentally excellent students are different from their ordinary peers. Adopting standard teaching methods and curricula with them will not achieve the desired benefit, as they need unique educational curricula to meet their different needs. Based on those needs, the mentally excellent were included within the branches of special education.
Mentally excellent people need special programs whose goals differ from the goals expected of ordinary students. These programs must be more prosperous and more diverse, in addition to the necessity of preparing an academic staff specialized in teaching this group. Based on these differences, many particular strategies have been developed to provide the care necessary for them:
1. Teacher
The teacher must follow special courses to learn how to deal with this group, where they are taught the psychology of the excellent and are also informed of the objectives of providing education to them and the methods of dealing with them. The teacher's behavior must also be characterized by a set of qualities, as they must permanently stay away from violence and exclusivity of opinion, and they must be a mentor, a leader, and a democrat, and they mustn’t provide ready-made solutions to them.
2. Curricula
The curricula in ordinary schools are based on the situation of the ordinary majority and not on the category of talented and excellent students; therefore, these curricula will be able to achieve their goal for the ordinary majority while their impact will be less for the excellent students, as they will not be able to motivate and excite them. This means that the curricula for talented people must be flexible and have a lot of fluency and expansion to the degree that allows excellent students to start their creative thinking and does not stop at a limit.
3. Family
The family remains the main starting point for the creative child. The family must pay attention to the abilities of its child, discover their excellence and fill their time with activities. It must also know how to arouse their curiosity, and it must not limit their abilities. It must always encourage and cooperate with the school.
Reasons for caring for the excellent students
Care is provided to the excellent people mainly to benefit from their abilities and to invest their potential to the greatest extent possible in all economic, political, social and cultural fields. This category is also a sector of active and essential human forces. It represents a latent human potential that needs to be directed and nurtured to employ in the service of society.
Moreover, this category has the intelligence, many talents, and the ability to innovate, making it the most able to open new horizons, receive leadership positions, and solve problems and stability wherever they are.
Today, developing countries are striving to benefit from the capabilities of their excellence in the footsteps of developed countries. They have begun to direct attention, care, and search for ways to care for them. In this context, it is essential to learn about the experiences of developed countries, such as Japan. It reached, within a short period, the refineries of developed countries, despite all the horrors of the Second World War, due to its dependence and interest in the minds of its excellent children.
Problems Facing Mentally excellent People
Some people believe that there are no problems facing this group, but in fact, there are many conditions and issues facing this group that may limit its excellence, and we mention these problems:
- They suffer from the harassment of teachers, such as disregard and underestimation of their abilities, which causes a lot of harm to them, frustrates them, weakens confidence in their capabilities and abilities, and may lead them to introversion and isolation.
- They may have arrogance, pride and narcissism due to excessive attention to the excellent student, which causes them harm and exposes them to the hatred of their colleagues.
- The excellent student suffers from boredom in the classroom if placed in a school that is not intended for the superior, which may lead them to create chaos within the classroom.
- Suffering from problems in the family. Some excellent people suffer from a lack of parents' attention to them and their creativity and superiority, as a result of their constant work on them, which discourages their genius.
- On the other hand, the excellent child may suffer from excessive and exaggerated attention that may burden them so that their mental development may be at the expense of their social and emotional development.
- It is worth mentioning here that the desired creativity of the child is achieved when there is integration between their mental, social, and emotional development.
- The excellent may also have problems making friends, as well as some psychological problems, such as isolation.
In conclusion
It seems clear and obvious the great importance of this excellent group, the owners of bright minds, for any country to develop and build it, and this is what makes any country in the world responsible for discovering these minds, removing every obstacle that stands in their way, and providing everything necessary to care for and take care of them to benefit from their energies.
The disregard of countries, especially developing countries, for these minds means an excellent opportunity to develop and improve society.
Therefore, governments must provide the appropriate environment for these excellent people, whether during the study period or after graduation, by providing suitable employment opportunities and fair wages to preserve them and prevent their migration and travel outside the country.
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