Gifted Children in Romania
It is rather hard to ascertain the exact number of gifted children in Romania, but estimates speak about some 4% of new-borns. This figure is higher than the European average of 2%.
Corina Cristea, 19.04.2013, 16:19
One area where parents generally fail however is raising these children with very high IQs. And even if they had the expertise, Romania lacks the special schooling units matching their off-the-limits potential. Professor Florin Colceag, an international expert in excellence education, spoke about Romania’s gifted children.
Florin Colceag: “Romania ranks among the countries with exceptionally good rating in this field. I specialize in intellectual giftedness, I also tutored a great number of gifted people and I recognize a genius when I see one. Intellectual prowess is reported in only a small number of peoples, Romanians included. IQ standards are off the charts in the case of Chinese, Indians, Russians, Jews and Romanians. The word that best describes this condition is complexity. Such people have an absorbing capacity in several fields, can grasp several dimensions of a problem at several complexity levels, and this is particularly valid for Romanian gifted people. Paradoxically, Romanian giftedness is especially associated to the village idiot paradigm. The gifted types are usually confronted with overpowering situations, have no support in their efforts to overcome it, they face a complex array of problems, and for these reasons they’ve developed a certain capacity to solve high-difficulty problems, a capacity both extraordinary and unique. Unique is perhaps too much said, but it is a kind of capacity that only a handful of people exhibit, the ones I’ve just mentioned. Other peoples have developed different strands of giftedness, such as technical or administrative giftedness, but we Romanians are the chaos type. We thrive on chaos, and that’s the extraordinary side of it. Even if millions of Romanians have fled Romania, people who were top professionals, this did not deal a deathblow to our genius population. The fact that we are still facing the same problems we’ve always been facing doesn’t dent our giftedness whatsoever. On the contrary, today’s generations have some extraordinary abilities from an early age, many of them becoming overachievers at a later stage in life”.
Although it is not a rule, usually the minds of gifted children are ahead of their physical growth: they make connections between ideas and establish relations between concepts, while at the same time displaying remarkable concentration capacity.
Florin Colceag again: “At three years of age, children have the three characteristics of geniuses: curiosity, a sense of freedom and confidence in people. Most of them lose these traits as they grow up, because they are not encouraged to use and develop them. Ten years later, therefore at 13 years of age, their genius traits are gone, because kids had to integrate in an environment that rejects geniuses. They have to be less different, because being different from the others entails rejection. This is one of the greatest lessons children learn.”
Instead of being brought down by adverse social and economic reactions, gifted children put their natural potential to use, professor Florin Colceag says. Next he tells us more about the abilities of child prodigies in Romania:
Florin Colceag : “It all depends on age. At an early age, the capacity of Romanian gifted children to distinguish between what is significant and what is not and to create relevant scenarios equals that of the Jewish prodigies, in other words it is very high. Unfortunately, this capacity is not encouraged. If it were, we would have outstanding performances in a wide range of domains. Then come inventiveness and creativity, which grow at an extraordinary rate until the age of 12. If not encouraged, they stop developing after this age, but where there is an encouraging environment, they continue to develop and reach exceptional levels. Later, in teenage years, we have far-sightedness and the integration capacity, but on the other hand there is also the need to get away from a system that suffocates them. It doesn’t give them the strength to go on, it doesn’t allow them to breathe, it eats into their liberties. Hence, what we call the ‘brain drain’. We fuel the West with the intelligent people we educate.”
According to Florin Colceag, 80% of the gifted children grow up to be mediocre because they have not been involved in skill development programmes. The methods recommended by professor Florin Colceag for identifying and maximising the potential of gifted children include the feedback method. This involves parents and teachers discussing with kids and asking for their opinions at very early ages, to draw their attention to relevant details, to encourage them to create scenarios, to give them complex information and, not least, to ensure their contact with nature, which will leave a mark on their attitude.
