Gifted and Talented Education

Arguing for and Against Gifted Education

Those who argue in support of specialized course and school offerings for students identified as gifted claim that the educational needs of such students cannot be met within the mainstream of general education and that, almost by definition, the regular classroom cannot be the appropriate educational placement for gifted students. They often claim that gifted children should learn in the company of others similarly designated, citing the social isolation and stigma sometimes experienced by those who are performing at a higher level than peers. Proponents of gifted education further argue that it is an equity issue—that schools provide for students who are below average intellectually and academically through special education programs and thus, it is only fair that gifted students be entitled to similar specialized services. They argue that gifted students are often neglected in schools and represent an important national resource.

Critics of gifted education, including Mara Sapon-Shevin and Alfie Kohn, argue that gifted education programs provide enriched curricular and instructional opportunities to students based on limited and partial measures of intelligence and that giftedness as a general characteristic is, in many ways, a social construct. Sapon-Shevin has argued that gifted education programs are fundamentally elitist and meritocratic and tend to provide enrichment to students who are often (not always) already advantaged or privileged based on their race, socio-economic status, and family background. Gifted programs are also used to stem White flight in mixed race communities by providing a special program for gifted students that resegregates them within the context of public education. Jeannie Oakes argues that gifted programs are simply another form of tracking, but are not subject to the critiques of tracking because they are theoretically based on some measurable characteristic—that is, intelligence. Kohn has written about the ways in which parents insist on educational opportunities for their child that are superior to those provided for other children, becoming single-minded advocates and ignoring broader issues of equity and social justice.

...