Unleashing Potential: A Plea to Nurture India's Gifted Youth
…these gifted students, the 'mathletes' of the world, can shape the future. When you look at the issues facing society now — whether it's health care, climate change, terrorism, energy — these are the kids who have the most potential to solve these problems.
-David Lubinski, Psychologist, SMPY, Vanderbilt University
India needs to do more on identifying and nurturing gifted students
Recently, Prafulla Dhariwal, a remarkable child prodigy from Pune, received recognition from Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, for his significant contributions to Chat GPT-4o. Discovered and nurtured by Pune based Kaveri Education Society, Prafulla's potential was honed into exceptional talent. Despite gaining admission to IIT, he seized the opportunity to study at MIT. His journey culminated in joining OpenAI, where he played a crucial role in developing revolutionary technology transforming the world. Prafulla's story serves as an inspiration, showcasing the power of identifying and nurturing talent, and the impact it can have on innovation and progress.
Awareness of giftedness remains remarkably low in India, leaving many exceptional children unrecognized. Giftedness encompasses exceptional abilities in different domains- verbal, mathematical, spatial, or outstanding talents in art forms like singing, dancing, acting or in craft, painting, sculpting and design.
Giftedness is developmental- in the beginning stages, potential is the key variable; in later stages, achievement is the measure of giftedness; and in fully developed talents, eminence is the basis on which this label is granted.
-Rethinking Giftedness and Gifted Education- R. Subotnik, P. Olszewski‐Kubilius, Frank C. Worrell
This innate potential is a unique blend of early cognitive ability, distinctive talents, creativity, and the capacity for intense engagement. However, potential does not necessarily translate into achievement, and in later stages, only achievement can be considered as a measure of giftedness.
Transforming potential into achievement involves 3 key components:
1. Identification: Recognizing the child's exceptional abilities
2. Nurturing: Guiding and developing their talents
3. Opportunity: Providing platforms to harness their talents and achieve excellence
The journey begins with identifying giftedness
The identification process marks the starting point for nurturing exceptional talent. Identification and nurturing are time sensitive and should be done in the age window of 10 to 14, the earlier the better. Recent research shows that while gifted children sometimes do not excel in IQ tests, they can demonstrate high proficiency in a singular domain. Researchers have found that assessing students two grades above their level to be more effective in identifying gifted students, especially when the goal of identification is to provide supplemental educational opportunities.
When gifted students take above-level tests, the results are striking- gifted students in the top 2 percentile of their grade, successfully tackled unfamiliar problems, demonstrating innate ability well above their grade level. Many of them outperform students 2-3 years older than them, highlighting their advanced cognitive capabilities. Educational Initiatives (Ei)’s ASSET Talent Search (ATS) is a globally recognized above-level test that has been used to identify gifted students in India since 2009. Duke University’s Talent Identification Program (TIP) ran gifted summer programs in India till 2015 for gifted students identified through ATS and was extremely satisfied with the capabilities of these students.
Educational advocates believe that early detection is crucial for the intellectual development of gifted individuals. Timely recognition enables targeted support, fostering accelerated growth. This critical first step can be followed with personalized nurturing: tailored development programs with appropriate challenges, under the guidance of experienced mentors.
While gifted students are generally intense and curious, they are also often introverts, have minimal interest in classwork, and may be victims of bullying. Thus, they need support on multiple fronts: content and mentoring above their grade level, opportunity to explore their interests, learning with peers at their ability level, and tools to develop their temperament and focus. These students thrive when an environment that challenges them is presented. This environment is difficult to replicate in a traditional classroom.
In India when a child is identified as gifted, many parents mistake the identification as a trophy or certification of merit. In this regard parent education also becomes critical. In India the potential is used to achieve a rank in the many all-India entrance exams such as JEE, NEET and UPSC. More than 2 million students take the JEE, for admission to a few thousand seats. The supply/demand ratio of seats in good institutions to the number of students taking the exam is extremely skewed. Many professors from the IITs have confirmed their students are not of the same quality as the students couple of decades ago: they are often not motivated, have a unidimensional personality, lack creativity and many have mental health issues. The multi-year effort to ace an exam, that involves securing the maximum number of correct answers in a limited time, takes a heavy toll on these young adults. The TV show, Kota Factory, highlights some of the issues quite well.
India needs a systemic approach to giftedness
In some countries like the USA and Singapore, systems to identify and nurture giftedness have been around for the last 30 to 40 years and protocols for testing and identifying gifted children studying in grades 5-8 (ages 10-13) exist. In the US, systematic identification and nurturing of gifted children started with the Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Talented Youth (CTY) in 1979. In the next couple of years, Duke University and Northwestern University started their talent identification and nurturing programs. The flagship program of these Universities has been a 3-week residential program for gifted students. These programs have been the largest and the longest running giftedness programmes in the world. Several students, who were part of such programs, have now achieved excellence in their respective fields of work. Their remarkable career trajectories clearly confirm the case for detecting giftedness early and then investing in nurturing. Some students who have been identified and nurtured by Johns Hopkins CTY are Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, Sergey Brin, Google founder, Lady Gaga, and Terence Tao, a Fields medal winner.
In India, ‘Gifted World’ an alliance between Educational Initiatives’ identification platform ASSET Talent Search (ATS), Northwestern University’s Center for Talent Development (CTD), and GenWise Talent Development, conducts a 3-week residential program every May and July along with their university partner Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE) at their campus in Manipal.
Students from grades 6 to 10 are exposed to enrichment content 3-4 years above their current grade level. We encourage students to take courses aligned with their areas of potential and interest. The courses offered to students of grades 8-10 in the May 2025 program can be viewed here. The opportunity to work and stay with gifted peers provides a connection beyond their subject of interest. For such students, the role of a mentor is even more critical. The presence of mentors to guide, challenge and help students to navigate learning at higher levels, structure problems and projects to demonstrate creativity and task commitment, is crucial to the success of these gifted programs.
Hear students talk about their experience at gifted programs here-
As a society we need to invest in giftedness
Not Gold, but Men make a nation great. Just like Gold, students with extraordinary potential are an extremely scarce and a valuable resource.
Nurturing giftedness is crucial as it goes beyond fulfilling the individual’s potential, and impacts society at large. Nurturing is thus about facilitating groundbreaking innovations and advancements that can shape the future. Moreover, supporting gifted children in their social and emotional development is equally important, as they often face unique challenges on this front, that come in the way of their emotional well-being and achievement. Thus, investing in the nurturing of giftedness is essential for both personal development and societal progress. By nurturing gifted students in their area of their strength, we empower them to: reach unprecedented heights, drive life-changing discoveries, and build a brighter future for humanity. Like Prafulla, gifted individuals often bring unique perspectives and capabilities, leading to significant contributions in various fields.
Gifted children are everywhere
In society giftedness is distributed evenly amongst the rich and poor, the privileged and the unprivileged. A ‘Human Resource’ plan for a country that ignores this reality puts in peril the progress of the nation itself. Thomas Jefferson makes this point eloquently-
By that part of our plan which prescribes the selection of the youths of genius from among the classes of the poor, we hope to avail the state of those talents which nature has sown as liberally among the poor as the rich, but which perish without use, if not sought for and cultivated.
-Thomas Jefferson
Nurturing gifted students requires out of school experiences. This is because approximately 1% of a general class demonstrate this potential and effective nurturing requires working with peers of similar ability. It is extremely difficult to provide the right kind of nurturing within a school classroom, given that gifted students are spread far and wide, and expert mentors are hard to find. Online nurturing is an option but faces limitations given the importance of a well-knit community and hands-on learning activities. Hybrid models where the cohort is launched in real classrooms and learning is continued online with periodic in-person meetups, seems to be a healthy trade-off between effectiveness and cost.
Steinberg and Davidson rightly observed “Giftedness is arguably the most precious natural resource a civilization can have”. Unlike Gold, it is on the move, it appears for a brief period and disappears forever.
Acknowledging Privilege and the need to support all gifted children
A world-class gifted program requires investment in high-quality residential facilities, expert mentors and residential counsellors who ensure safety and support socio-emotional development. This unfortunately restricts access to gifted programs to privileged families.
A paragraph from the book ‘Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood’ by Trevor Noah explains privilege and what is needed to balance the scales, best.
For some, the concept of privilege is so hard to accept or understand. We hope this example helps them appreciate the same.
People love to say, “Give a man a fish, and he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, he’ll eat for a lifetime.” What they don’t say is, “And it would be nice if you gave him a fishing rod.”
That’s the part of the analogy that is missing. Working with Daniel was the first time in my life I realized you need someone from the privileged world to come to you and say, “Okay, here’s what you need, and here’s how it works.”
Talent alone would have gotten me nowhere without Daniel giving me a CD writer. People say, “Oh, that’s a handout.”
No, my friend, I still have to work to profit by it. But I don’t stand a chance without it.
-Trevor Noah, South African Comedian and Writer
Request for Support
Our 3-week Gifted Residential Program, held every May, provides opportunities for talented students from all backgrounds. Thankfully, corporate foundations like Godrej Foundation and HNIs have supported gifted students from underprivileged backgrounds to participate in these camps. We have seen remarkable growth in support for and participation of underprivileged students- in 2023 we had 12 students and in 2024 we had 30 students. Our goal is to expand this cohort to 250 students in the next couple of years.
When the program starts there is some apprehension, by the start of week two, the fear and apprehensions have evaporated, they all feel equal, learn together, collaborate, achieve great things, create great memories, prove things to themselves, see how good they are, and develop the confidence they are no less. This post shares the experiences of such students in more detail.
Apart from students from underprivileged backgrounds, middle-class families with gifted children also need support. The investment in providing a gifted child the right nurturance over 3-4 years can be as high as INR 4-5 lacs, which is out of reach for many families. The return on this investment though is highly disproportionate, making a strong case to support such students based on a combination of merit and financial need.
This year, GenWise along with the other founders of Gifted World (Ei and Northwestern CTD) has announced 150 Gifted World Scholarships worth INR 2 Crores. These scholarships will enable gifted students who are identified through Ei ASSET Talent Search (ATS), a globally recognized test for identifying giftedness, to attend 2-3 week residential gifted programs at the Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE) campus at Manipal, in May 2025. The gifted program is for students from grades 6-10. 50 of these scholarships are purely merit based, 50 are merit-cum-need and 50 are diversity based to allow access to gifted students from underprivileged backgrounds. More details about the scholarship program are available here.
Join us in empowering these exceptional young minds. Empowering gifted children to reach their full potential can lead to remarkable contributions in the upcoming decades, enriching Indian society and beyond. Let's create a brighter future for India and the planet. Your support can help us to identify and nurture more gifted students, provide them transformative experiences, unlock their full potential and inspire other students in their communities.
Write to us if you would like to support this initiative through funding or spreading the word to potential donors.