📋 Tender Overview
Training teachers, developing specific pedagogical projects and encouraging early identification were some of the main demands presented at a public hearing on policies for people with giftedness and high abilities (SD/AH). The meeting was promoted this Thursday (26) by the Human Rights (CDH) and Education (CE) Commissions.
Experts, managers and gifted and highly skilled people denounced isolation, prejudice and bullying and asked for more attention from public authorities on the issue. The hearing was chaired by Senator Damares Alves (Republicanos-DF), author of the request. This was the second round of discussion on the subject.
According to participants, investment in teacher training is essential. These professionals, according to the debaters, are mostly responsible for identifying gifted children and young people or those with high abilities. The initiative can expand the awareness support network so that families seek certification through a report and thus have access to public policies.
Representative of the Brazilian Council for Giftedness (ConBraSD), Denise Matos said that the lack of effective actions to implement structuring public policies leads to the invisibility of these people, especially in education. She defended partnerships between the public sector, civil society institutions and academia so that a planned and specific pedagogical practice can be applied to this special student.
-- We have been in dialogue with universities, with state governments, so that these people can be recognized. We need to remove gifted people from this invisibility that affects them, especially in the educational space.
Underreporting
Experts also warned that the lack of public policies ends up reducing the encouraging role of families, restricting early diagnosis to high-income families.
Gifted, mother of gifted children and educational law lawyer for students with AH/DS, Vanessa Pavanni Mello criticized the current national system adopted to identify this group.
She explained that the system is based on a rigid theoretical model, which takes into account higher than average skills, high creativity and high engagement with the task. However, for her, this method excludes fundamental issues such as mental health and the educational context of lack of support for the student, especially when they belong to a low-income family.
-- To combat underreporting, we need a powerful registry of gifted individuals and also an assessment, and this assessment must be multi-professional, pedagogical observation, and external specialized reports. That there is no legal value for each type of assessment; May they all serve. So that everyone is included, included, reached.
Representing the Ministry of Education (MEC), the general coordinator of Structuring the Inclusive Educational System, Olga Cristina Rocha de Freitas, stated that the National Policy for Inclusive Special Education is based on equal opportunities and non-discrimination.
According to her, the initiative seeks to strengthen the special education network through the support of observatories and centers in the states, responsible for training managers and teachers and assisting in the preparation and distribution of teaching materials.
The coordinator explained that the policy works as a link between education, health and social assistance, allowing special education students to receive comprehensive care. According to the MEC representative, the case study is the main instrument to guide specialized educational service, serving as the basis for the preparation of the individualized educational service plan. The medical report and psychosocial assessment act as complementary elements, he detailed.
-- The medical report is complementary, it is welcome. The psychosocial assessment is also very important in this context, but it is the case study that will guide the school, the orientation of the pedagogical work. It must be carried out by the special education teacher in partnership with the regular school teacher, with the family and with the student himself.
Research and data
The Mensa International Association is an institution created to identify and foster the development of human intelligence throughout the world. The director of communications in Brazil, Carlos Eduardo Fonseca, noted that the Legislature is the key for people who have giftedness or high abilities to be included as a priority in public policies.
For him, it is necessary to correct the distortion in relation to the public served by special education in the country. Despite recognizing the advancement in the diagnosis of people with autism, enabling greater entry and improvements in this teaching, he considered that people with giftedness and high abilities did not have the same experience.high.
According to research by Ipea, 50% of special education students in Brazil are people with autism, while SD/AH occupy around 2% of these places, with 43.9 thousand students with this profile. For Fonseca, Brazil needs to invest in research and the collection of more qualified data to better direct public incentive policies for these people.
-- When I talk about absences in the numbers from the National Institute of Studies and Research [Inep], what catches my attention is that of all the more than 5 thousand Brazilian municipalities, we have around 2.9 thousand municipalities without any identified gifted individuals. Almost a thousand municipalities have only one identified gifted person. In other words, it is a fish outside the aquarium. Imagine what its like to be a uniquely gifted person in a society? It means suffering bullying and some effectiveness from the State.
Isolation and vulnerabilities
The boy Eduardo Sabino de Oliveira, who has DS/AH, reported that he is currently away from school after a series of episodes of bullying and the lack of school support and a specific pedagogical project that would serve him. For him, who currently studies remotely, the sc
