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- Title
Giftedness as a Social Construct.
- Authors
Sapon-Shevin, Mara
- Abstract
This article focuses on gifted education. Teacher educators are told that a teacher for gifted children should have a good imagination, a superior education, the capacity to organize and plan, a sense of humor and humanistic sensitivity. Educators of the gifted are counseled that appropriate goals for gifted children include mental flexibility, openness to information, capacity to systematize knowledge, capacity for abstract thought, fluency, sense of humor, positive thinking, intellectual courage, resistance to enculturation, and emotional resilience. Providing gifted programs (i.e., excellent educations) to a small group constitutes the formation of a new meritocracy, but with all the advantages of sounding egalitarian (any one can be gifted, regardless of background) and in the best interests of everyone. Gifted programs function as escape valves for the schools, enabling them to continue a majority of their practices while at the same time removing the pressure of a very vocal, often politically and monetarily empowered, group of parents.
- Subjects
EDUCATION of gifted children; IMAGINATION; WIT &; humor; ABSTRACT thought; REASONING; EDUCATORS; PARENTS
- Publication
Teachers College Record, 1987, Vol 89, Issue 1, p39
- ISSN
0161-4681
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1177/016146818708900105