Article 3: A Resuscitation of Gifted Education

Since its inception in the 1920s, the field of gifted education has remained in a constant ebb and flow. Public understanding and support, as well as, federal aid has mirrored this pattern, waxing and waning in response to national interests and concern from private institutions and foundations. Abraham Tannenbaum, a Teachers College professor and gifted education researcher, noted, “The cyclical nature of interest in the gifted is probably unique in American education. No other special group of children has been so alternately embraced and repelled with so much rigor by educators and laypersons alike” (Tannenbaum 1983, 16). Discourse between excellence and equity also has created a tension regarding the education of gifted and talented students. Often mirroring the pendulum swing of society’s priorities of “critical need to its elitist luxury” (Jolly and Kettler 2008, 427), gifted and talented students become a national priority when excellence is sought and a critical need is perceived. However, as equity becomes the predilection, gifted students’ needs are seen as an elitist luxury and are replaced with the priorities of students within other subpopulations.