Luis Ortega I Córdoba, (EFE) children with high intellectual capacity (ACI), whose world day is celebrated on March 14.
In an interview with EFE, Alberca, author of publications such as “All children can be Einstein” or “Our wonderful mind”, explains that a child with ICA “thinks differently and very intensely” and, although “traditionally it has been considered as someone who had very good results” academically, it is a concept that “has passed”.
“Now it is understood more as a potential that must be learned to develop”, which is why it is necessary to “flee from the idea of an IQ” of 130 as a reference and “from the test” for its identification. Some intelligence tests that “are not exact” for high ability because “they do not measure the quality, just as the child is thinking.”
Currently, in Spain, children with ICA are included in the section of those who need “special educational support”, although the problem is that, once identified, “then we do not know what to do with them”.
The clash begins at school
“When the child is entering school is when the shock begins, since he knows he is smart and compares himself with others, but if he is not accompanied by school performance or an affective relationship with the teacher, the child begins to question what It is happening to him and that is where the drama of high capacity begins ”, explains Alberca.
Parents detect when their child is “smart” or if he interacts “more with adults or younger children.” On the other hand, the pediatrician “does not detect it as it is not a disease” and, sometimes, it can be confused with “Asperger or ADHD”, something that is ruled out when they go to a psychologist or an educational counselor.
“We need to normalize high capacity because it is not a problem and it has become a problem based on not understanding it and based on not working at all since we were little. It is a potential, and when the potential is not developed it does more damage than not having it”, argues Alberca.
In this sense, the “deepening programs” proposed in the new educational law that go towards “qualitative” learning are “very interesting”. At this time, since children are “recognized” who, despite “not giving such a high IQ, do show a lot of interest in a subject or a lot of motivation”.
System prepared in theory, not so much in practice
And although the system is “prepared in theory” to care for these children, for this care to be “real and effective” it is necessary, according to Alberca, to delve into “teacher training”, which ultimately “does not know very well what do even if they have very good intentions”, so “in practice it is very difficult to do it”.
The consequence in the child is “boredom” that the teacher “detects as a distraction”, immediately “escapes in his world” and is interpreted as “lack of work”, and “school failure” arrives, close to 50 percent in this group, which causes “dissatisfaction, apathy, anxiety or misunderstanding”.
“The highly capable child, especially in primary school, is a target for bullying,” Alberca warns, since “he asks what interests him and that may seem like pedantry or an excessive call for attention by the class leader ”, which leads to “teasers or mockery” typical of the “stalker’s mediocrity”, which he considers “a provocation to be smarter”.
“It would not be difficult to detect all the high abilities,” says Alberca, who is ironic with the official “figures” of children with ACI recognized by the Ministry of Education until the 2020-2021 academic year, barely 0.4 percent of the student body when ” it should be between 10% and 20% or even up to 25%.”
“Casual” detection and “arbitrary” figures
“0.4% is the coincidence of some looking at one site and others looking at another and something strange comes out,” says Alberca. In addition, the fact that Andalusia concentrates more than 40% of the children with ICA in Spain is an “arbitrary figure” because each autonomous community establishes its criteria based on a general framework.
“We have not detected anything, not even high ability but neither, for example, the difficulties of those who read badly”, criticizes the educational psychologist, who alleges that all the data regarding “diversities” of each student “are not reliable” and, therefore, “means nothing.”
A situation in Spain that is similar in Europe, where “nothing is being done” due, in his opinion, to the fact that there is an “intuition” that the problem “is going to be detecting it” and that later “parents and authorities” demand academic “results” and also attention to their needs.
Reorganization of educational centers
“The United States has another policy of trying to get talent,” Alberca explains, since “they like to boast that there was someone in their center whose talent has developed popularly.” And in England “it depends on the college and the county”.
“It is very interesting what they do in a southern region where they give all the students a musical test and test their abilities, just like they do with public speaking,” explains Alberca. All oriented towards “provoking creativity”, one of the main characteristics of these children, a stimulation that in Spain “is conspicuous by its absence”.
Alberca understands that high capacities are only “the tip of the iceberg” of the functioning of the educational system that should “already devise a different way of organizing educational centers, a different way both spatially and temporally, and consider the school with pedagogical lines”. EFE