CRITICAL DIALOGUE: Inequity in equity: The paradox of gifted education in Australia.

This article presents arguments to support the provision of differentiated curricula and programs for academically gifted and talented students and identifies a range of socio-political attitudes which have militated against the development of such programs in Australian schools. Gross discusses Australians' traditional suspicion of any process which might be construed as elitist; our reluctance to acknowledge intellectual talent even while we enthusiastically foster talent in sport and athletics; the view of excellence and equity as conflicting rather than complementary; and the confusion between the concept of gifts and strengths.

Gallagher (1976) relates the story of Mr Palcuzzi, the principal of an American elementary school who, tired of hearing objections to special provisions for gifted children, decided to liven up a parent-teacher association (PTA) meeting with his own proposal. Gifted students should be ability grouped in their specific areas of talent, he announced, so that they could learn from, and with, other young people of similar abilities and interests. Age-grade barriers should be removed so that highly able 4th or 5th graders could learn with 6th graders if they had the ability and maturity to do so. Gifted students should receive a differentiated curriculum specifically responsive to their faster pace of learning and higher level of skills.

The PTA reacted with mixed feelings. Some found the suggestion disturbing, indeed elitist; others said it sounded all right in theory but would be impossible to implement in practice. What about timetabling? And where would the funding come from?

Palcuzzi had thought of that. Programs would be funded by a levy placed on the parent body. Parents would readily agree because of the prestige that would accrue to the school through the achievements of the gifted and talented students. In fact, he added, to optimise the program's success, the school would employ a teacher with special qualifications and expertise in the education of talented students. The gifted students would travel widely throughout their region of the state, learning with, and indeed competing against, gifted and talented students from other schools with similar programs.

The PTA members were horrified. Such a proposal was anti-democratic, they protested. It went against the spirit of American education. The establishment of discrete, elitist groups would divide the school and bring it into disrepute.

Palcuzzi sat quietly, nodding in acknowledgement of each of their points. Then he pointed out, gently, that the program he was proposing, complete with ability grouping, grade advancement and differentiated training, right down to the highly qualified coach, funding levy and inter-school competition was not, in fact, a new program for the intellectually gifted, but an existing program which the school had been supporting for many years -- its program for gifted basketball players.

It is ironic that, at a time when Australia is preparing to host, in 2000, the world's most prestigious celebration of physical giftedness and talent, many Australians are using precisely the arguments expounded 20 years ago by Palcuzzi's PTA to question the development of special programs to assist academically gifted children in our schools. It is politically acceptable, even politically expedient, to celebrate gifts of the body, but even in some educational circles it is regarded as politically incorrect to foster the gifts of the mind. This has had a significant effect on the education of intellectually gifted children in Australian schools.

The Senate Committee report

   If priorities for resources must be determined among educationally
   disadvantaged groups, it could be argued that gifted children are currently
   among the most disadvantaged of these groups. (Senate Select Committee,
   1988, p.5)

In 1985 the Australian Government appointed a Senate Committee to investigate the status and quality of school provisions for gifted and talented children throughout the nation. The committee represented every major political party, yet -- unusual for a cross-party committee -- it published a unanimous report with no party, or member, dissenting from any point. The senators were deeply disturbed by what they saw. They were critical of the low level and poor quality of the provisions they observed, and noted that `many academically talented children not only fail to achieve their potential but actually drop out of school in large numbers' (p.5). The report concluded that `most Australian schools do not appear to make any provision for the education of gifted children' (p.82) and in the damning quote which began this section they described academically gifted children as among the most educationally disadvantaged students in the country.

Two major concerns of the Senate Committee were the inadequacies of the teacher training courses then offered by universities and colleges of advanced education in their failure to prepare student teachers for the task of identifying and teaching academically gifted students, and the continuing reluctance of Australian academics to engage in research in gifted education. They endorsed an earlier, condemnatory, report from the Commonwealth Schools Commission (1981): `The paucity of Australian research and the absence of any real attempt to harness and interpret overseas research ... means that hypotheses are being stated, and programs are being developed, within a data base vacuum' (p.47).

A primary concern of the Senate Committee was the lack of teacher awareness of the underachievement endemic amongst their academically gifted students, and, indeed, the unwillingness of many school principals to accept that they had any gifted students in their schools. As a result of these concerns, the committee made several recommendations to the Federal Government. They reminded the Government that gifted and talented students are present in all groups in society, and recommended that both pre-service teacher training courses, and inservice programs for practising teachers, should include sufficient information about gifted children from minority and disadvantaged groups to enable teachers to identify and respond appropriately to these students. They also recommended that videotapes and associated curriculum materials should be prepared to assist gifted children in geographically isolated situations.

At that time, because of the socio-political ethos which militated against the development of gifted education programs, the report had little parliamentary impact. The Federal Government took a full year to respond, which it did by stating that everything that was necessary for the education of gifted students was already being done, and that, in any case, the ultimate responsibility lay with the individual states.

Since 1988, however, there have been significant alterations in Australian political, cultural and social attitudes towards the education of gifted and able students. Every state now has a government policy on gifted education, programs and provisions have been more widely developed, and universities in several states offer subjects on the education of gifted and talented students in their undergraduate and postgraduate education courses. Some, such as the University of New South Wales and Charles Sturt University, offer postgraduate degrees specialising in gifted education.

Education has certainly improved for academically gifted children since the late 1980s. Significant barriers, however, still exist, and these have their origin, principally, in the negative attitudes and perceptions of many Australian educators and, indeed, the community at large. Three issues will be examined in this article: the Australian wariness of elitism; the confusion, and indeed tension, between the demand for excellence and the demand for equity; and the peculiarly Australian argument that every child has a gift or a talent.

Before considering these three issues, which impact on the education of gifted and talented children in Australia, let us examine the arguments for assisting these children, who are often assumed to be already advantaged, to develop their talents further.

Why should Australia foster the talents of able students?

Borland (1989) has identified two primary rationales for supporting a differentiated education for highly able students. He calls these the `national resources' and the `special education' rationale. The two threads of argument support each other and are closely interwoven.

The `national resource' philosophy

In the late 1930s the great psychologist Leta Hollingworth (1940) began a memorandum to the American Council on Education with these words: `The development of all the world's natural resources depends on human intelligence, courage, stamina and will. It depends primary on thinking. Therefore, intellectually gifted children are among the most valuable assets of a civilised nation' (p. 116).

This call has been reiterated repeatedly in America's recent history. In 1990 the Journal of Educational Psychology devoted an issue to research in the education and psychology of the gifted, warning: `As a nation, we must guard against wasting the national resource that our gifted children represent' (Tomlinson-Keasay, 1990, p.399). Interestingly, this view of gifted children as a powerful national resource appears as strongly in communist as in capitalist societies. Special programs for gifted students still exist throughout the former USSR, in its satellite countries in Eastern Europe and in the People's Republic of China. They provide advanced instruction for young people talented in science, mathematics, visual and performing arts, and athletics (Urban & Sekowski, 1993; Zixiu, 1993). In Australia, the Senate Select Committee (1988) endorsed this view by noting that, without the contribution of its gifted citizens, Australian society would be poorer both materially and culturally. We would be less able to compete internationally. We would be less able to sustain a level of prosperity which allows our education systems to provide for physically and intellectually disadvantaged students. We would fall behind in social and medical care, and in medical and scientific research.

The national resource argument is potent and valid. Our intellectually gifted young people, if their talents are allowed to develop, will indeed enhance Australia's industrial, economic, scientific and cultural development in future years. Indeed, any nation's survival depends on the effective deployment of resources -- including its intellectual resources. The timely investment in the talented youth of a community for the benefit of all has been called `enlightened self-interest' (Ross, 1991).

Gifted children, however, will not develop to assist their country if they themselves are not assisted to develop. The catch-cries of `talent will out' and `the cream will rise to the top' derive from the assumption that all students of high ability will succeed, and that therefore those who do succeed (and are therefore most easily identifiable as gifted or talented) represent the full quota of those who have potential. Like most simplistic arguments, it is extremely seductive; however it is contradicted by the many studies of underachievement and serious demotivation among academically gifted children and adolescents (see, for example, Gross, 1993; Rimm, 1997).

The `special education' philosophy

This view holds that intellectually gifted children are exceptional children just as hearing impaired, learning disabled and visually impaired students are exceptional children. `Like all exceptional children, gifted and talented students possess special characteristics which affect their ability to learn to a significant degree, and they will not reach their full educational potential unless we modify their curricula substantially' (Borland, 1989, p.2). Like other exceptional children, gifted children differ significantly from the majority of their age-peers, and schools are not, in general, well able to cater for them. They require a somewhat differentiated provision.

The school which develops special provisions for its gifted students is not, therefore, `rewarding' excellence, giving `bonus points' or providing `something extra' -- descriptions which sometimes lead to the differentiated offering being seen as a pleasant but unnecessary embellishment to the children's educational program. By contrast, a curriculum differentiated in level, pace and content is a valid and necessary response to the educational needs of children whose speed of learning is significantly faster than that of their age-peers, whose style of learning often differs quite radically from theirs and who, if the curriculum is not differentiated, will be required to work through material set several years below their existing level of achievement.

The policy statements developed by most Australian schools include some statement to the effect that all children will be assisted and encouraged to develop their potential to the fullest. All too often, however, the statement contains the invisible rider: `as long as their potential is not significantly beyond that of their age-peers'.

Personally, I endorse both the special education and the national resource philosophy. I was a classroom teacher and school administrator for over 20 years before becoming a university academic, and I spent 12 of these years as a specialist teacher of gifted and talented students. I am all too familiar with the intellectual frustration and demotivation experienced by gifted students presented, day after repetitive day, with work which allows them no opportunity to develop their potential, and the isolation, loneliness and social rejection suffered by gifted students who are given little or no access to children of similar abilities and interests (Gross, 1989; Silverman, 1993). Many gifted children deliberately underachieve, concealing their abilities for peer acceptance (Gross, 1998).

However, the national resources argument also resonates strongly with me. I am hearing impaired and wear hearing aids in both ears. It is these medical `interventions' which allow me to pursue a successful career as a teacher and researcher; indeed, I could not function without them. I am very sure that the medical scientist who developed the hearing aids I wear was not a person of limited intellectual capacity, and I am grateful to the schools and teachers of a generation earlier than mine who assisted in the development of his or her potential. Educating the highly able is indeed, as Ross has it, a `timely investment'.

Let us examine, however, the factors in Australian society which militate against the development of educational programs for intellectually gifted students.

Elitism

Visitors to Australia are often surprised by the extreme egalitarianism which characterises so many aspects of Australian society. Ward (1958) suggests that our wariness of social or financial hierarchies, or even `chains of command', originates in our beginnings as a British penal colony. From its inception, society was split into two distinct and contrapositional classes each of which needed, but resented, the other -- the aristocracy and landed gentry who were there by choice and whose role was to govern and administer the new colony, and the convicts, unwilling emigrants who were leased to the gentry as bond servants and were forbidden to own property, while being required to look after, or indeed increase, the property of their masters.

This imposition of separate identities and separate interests engendered an intense class hatred, coupled with an extreme resentment against any privilege inherited rather than acquired by `honest labour' (Ward, 1958). Over the years, this resentment of inherited wealth and inherited power has carried over into a hostility towards high intellectual ability, which is viewed by many Australians as an inherited, and therefore unmerited, aid to success in school and university and, through this, access to higher-level employment.

The flawed, but seductive, assumption that intellectual giftedness guarantees social and economic success has led to a lasting distrust and resentment of intellectually gifted children and adults, and this has had significant effects on the development of gifted education in Australia. There is, however, an additional factor. Hand in hand with our suspicion of anything which can be construed as `elitism' is a genuine fear that if we foster children's intellectual or academic abilities, we will put them at risk of being rejected by their peers.

In 1978 and 1980 the Commonwealth Schools Commission brought to Australia Dr Miriam Goldberg, Professor of Psychology and Education at Columbia University. Goldberg's brief was to examine, evaluate and report on the state of Australia's provisions for gifted and talented students. She found that a major stumbling-block to the development of differentiated provisions for academically gifted students was their teachers' conviction that the ability to `get along with everyone' was of greater importance than academic success, and the consequent fear that `any school procedures which single children out as more able than the generality might jeopardise their sense of identity with, and acceptance by, the common man' (Goldberg, 1981, p.8).

This particular aspect of Australian educational values seems to have changed little over the last 20 years. Professor David Cohen of Macquarie University spoke for many Australian educators when, 12 years after Goldberg's first visit, he claimed that `the really important things in education cannot be measured, weighed or counted. I'm referring to things like self-esteem, like being physically fit, like getting along with other people, like having well-balanced emotional development' (Kusco, 1990, p.67). Carey (1994) in a special issue of Education Links which was devoted to a scathing critique of the principles, and even premises, of gifted education, described the education of gifted and talented students as `an excuse for elitists to justify their previously thwarted desires to differentiate themselves from the rest of us' (p.18) and asked: `When do we allow talented children to be real, whole people in their world, rather than to be Pinocchios training for some future big day when they become real boys or girls?' (pp.20-21).

The suggestion that gifted children will only become `real boys and girls' when they conform to the standards and values of the community is truly disturbing. It is, however, this belief in the necessity of social conformity, strengthened by the aforementioned distrust of intellectual ability and the national resentment of academic success, which fuels the peculiarly Australian urge to `cut down the tall poppies'.

Feather (1989) presented to high school students in South Australia two hypothetical scenarios -- a high achieving student whose marks had dropped to average and an average student who had dropped to the foot of the class. Respondents had much more sympathy for the average than for the highly able student. Interviewed later about the study, Feather described the respondents as `in a sense, happier about the high achiever because now that person is no different from anyone else. It's as if they were saying. `It's all right as long as everyone is about average' (Clifford & Larsen, 1992, p.58). He continued by noting: `There is a link between tall poppy attitudes and self-esteem. If you have a record of failure, and a low opinion of yourself, you are more inclined to want to pull tall poppies down. People who are suspicious of high achievers also have a negative attitude to their country's achievements'.

Ward (1958), in his study, The Australian legend, views this levelling attitude in which Australians seem to have a need `to reduce everyone, in fact, to the same level as themselves' (p.75) as another aspect of Australian egalitarianism. Combined with the genuine Australian concern for the disadvantaged, and the desire to `equalise upwards' by assisting people affected by intellectual, physical or social handicaps, there is a strong impulse to `level down' by hindering the advancement of those who are seen as `unfairly' endowed with high intellectual or academic potential.

In an American study of social class, Fussell (1983) commented: `Pushed far enough, class envy results in revenge egalitarianism' (p.102). In Australia, the education of gifted children has always been seen as a social issue rather than an educational necessity. It was an awareness of this misconception that prompted a former Minister for Education, The Honourable Kim Beazley Snr., in his keynote address to Australia's first national conference on gifted education, to remind his audience that `elitism [is] a word properly applied to aristocratic and economic privilege, not to the recognition of special abilities, or the respect due to a child in school' (Beazley, 1984, p. 12). Perhaps the `revenge egalitarianism' that powers so much of the opposition to special programs for gifted students in Australia is an inevitable result of this confusion of issues. Beazley closed his presentation by discussing the potency of the term `elitism' as a deterrent to the establishment of programs for the intellectually gifted. `I fear the power of the word `elitism' may lead to a refusal to see that schools and classrooms need to adjust to meet the needs and special problems of all children ... Swift-learning, talented and highly creative children constitute a group whose needs must be met' (p. 14).

`Elitism', in Australia, is a strongly pejorative term, especially when used in connection with the fostering of intellectual talent. Interestingly, however, the terms `elite' and `elitist' have taken on quite different connotations when used in reference to the fostering of sporting talent.

Australia's performance at the Seoul Olympics, in 1988, disappointed many Australians, and a House of Representatives Committee was established to report on the status of sports funding and sports administration in Australia. Their report was published in March of the following year, under the title Going for gold. Within weeks the Federal Government responded by committing 51.7 million dollars to provide assistance and encouragement grants for `elite' athletes, with an additional 15.6 million to support the employment and training of first-class coaches to ensure that Australia could command a more favourable position in future international competitions (Bruer, 1989). Two months later, the Federal Government responded to the Senate Committee's report on the gifted and talented by stating that all that was necessary was already being done.

Going for gold (House of Representatives Standing Committee, 1989) used the terms `elite sport' and `elite athletes' throughout and the term is now in common use to describe exemplary performers in those two fields. In Australia, elitism in fostering the talents of our most able sportsmen and women is applauded and funded. Elitism in fostering the talents of our most academically able young people arouses vigorous protest from politicians and educators alike.

Equity and excellence

In Australia, over the last 30 years, many schools which might otherwise have developed provisions for their ablest students have been deterred by the concern that such provisions might be perceived as undemocratic. The extreme egalitarian ethos of the 1970s and 1980s has moderated to some extent, but its influence lingers on and has led to an ongoing confusion regarding what is meant by `equality of opportunity'. Equal opportunity requires that all students, regardless of their level of ability, should be encouraged and facilitated to develop their potential to the fullest. Unfortunately this is often misinterpreted as implying that no child should be given an educational `opportunity' that is not appropriate for his or her classmates.

In several states this misunderstanding has acted as a powerful barrier to the development of special programs for the gifted and talented. More frequently than is sometimes acknowledged, it has led to serious abuses of the educational rights of students.

`Ian', a 4th grade student in a state primary school, was identified as having exceptional mathematical ability; he scored considerably above the mean on a university entrance maths test which he was given, as part of a research study, to assess the full extent of his achievement. His teacher, however, insisted that he undertake Grade 4 maths with the other 9-year-olds, and the school principal was adamant that he should not receive any provision that was not offered to the other children in his grade. She told Ian's parents, candidly, that it would be `political suicide' for her to develop any special provisions for gifted students within her school (Gross, 1993).

`Margaret' entered school, aged 5, with the reading accuracy and comprehension of a 7-year-old, but her teacher insisted that she take reading readiness exercises with the other children, in case their self-esteem might be damaged if they realised that she could already read.

`Tanya' entered Grade 5 already knowing most of the maths work which would be taught that year. Discovering this, the teacher told her that she would serve as `maths assistant' for the year. Tanya has been taught no new material and spends maths periods assisting her teacher with marking, or tutoring children who are having difficulties. When her mother gently told the teacher that she did not mind Tanya assisting from time to time, but that to spend a year learning nothing new seemed to be rather counterproductive, the teacher replied that to assist Tanya to achieve still further, when there were other children in the class who might never reach her current level of achievement, would be a violation of the principles of social justice.

It is time we redesigned the type of equality we really need in Australian education, not the false equality achieved by levelling down of the pace and rigour of curriculum to the point where all can succeed, but equal opportunity to fulfil people's different educational potential. As Start (1986) phrased it in his submission to the Senate Standing Committee, all children have a right to develop maximally; the equal right to develop should not, however, be confused with the right to equal development. It is tragic that the principles of social justice, which should underpin what we do for all children in our schools, are being so seriously misunderstood, and misapplied. Equity should demand, rather than discourage, the attainment of individual excellence.

As discussed earlier, the education of gifted and talented children has too often been seen as a social, or socio-political issue, rather than an educational concern. The Honourable Joan Kirner, Minister for Education and later Premier of Victoria, asserted in the mid-1980s that gifted programs are the means by which a ruling class stays dominant both in education and in the shaping of Australia's political economy (Kirner, 1984). In 1990 the editor of Education, the journal of the New South Wales Teachers' Federation, described gifted children seeking entrance to a university program as `the sons and daughters of middle-class yuppies trying to steel (sic) more and more privileges under pretensions to greater abilities bestowed on them not by their class position but by God himself' (Poulos, 1990, p.8). In an earlier issue of Education, West (1984) had described the NSW Education Department's Opportunity Classes, full-time self-contained classes for academically gifted children in Years 5 and 6, as `set up to cater for a small elite ... to provide a last refuge for white Anglo-Saxons' (p.266). (West's claim was countered by angry letters from parents of children in Opportunity Classes, and from the children themselves, describing the multicultural and mixed socioeconomic compositions of the classes.)

Such assertions serve only to be socially divisive, and have no grounding in reality. Intellectual giftedness, like intellectual disability, is no respector of race, social class or gender. Current state policies on the education of gifted and talented students emphasise this. The South Australian policy, for example, notes that the abilities of gifted students may be `masked by special needs in other areas -- notably disability, poverty, isolation, gender, non-English-speaking background and Aboriginality' (Department for Education and Children's Services, 1995, p. 1). The first of the `modern policies', developed by the New South Wales Government (1991), emphasised the need to identify and assist gifted students from disadvantaged groups, including physically disabled students and students with learning disabilities or who are geographically isolated, and stated that the provision of both excellence and equity in gifted education required that each school in the state should devote a proportion of its resources to the development of effective programs of identification and curricular response. It is notable that many of the committees which developed their state's current gifted education policies have included teachers who have postgraduate training in gifted education, and who are working from a knowledge of the research literature in this field.

Giftedness and talent: Adopting appropriate definitions

The definition of giftedness and talent adopted by a school or an education system will influence both the procedures used to identify highly able students and the curricular and programmic responses developed to assist them.

Until some 15 years ago, definitions of giftedness and talent used in Australia tended to be performance-based; children were required to be visibly achieving before it could be acknowledged that they had high ability. Unfortunately these definitions, such as that of Renzulli (1978) tended to ignore underachieving gifted children who, through demotivation, the imposition of an inappropriate curriculum, or economic disadvantage, might not have been able to translate their abilities into achievement. The Renzulli model has come under stringent criticism from the research community (see, for example, Jarrell & Borland, 1990).

Gagne's differentiated model of giftedness and talent

By contrast the majority of definitions in current use focus on ability or aptitude rather than achievement. A model which has gained a high degree of acceptance throughout Australia is that of Gagne (1985, 1995). Gagne defines giftedness as the capacity to perform at a level significantly beyond what might be expected at one's age, in any domain of human ability. A child might be gifted in any one of the cognitive, creative, socio-affective or sensori-motor domains -- or in several, or in all. The key to Gagne's view of giftedness is that it defines outstanding potential rather than outstanding performance. This model recognises the existence, and the dilemma, of the underachieving gifted child.

By contrast, Gagne defines talent as achievement at a level significantly beyond what might be expected at one's age. Obviously, numerous fields of performance are associated with any ability domain and, again, a child may be talented in one or many fields of performance.

Within this model a child can be gifted (having unusually high potential) without being talented (displaying unusually high performance). To explain the relationship between the two, Gagne places, in the centre of his model, a cluster of catalytic variables which can either assist or hamper the translation of giftedness into talent.

Crucial to the process of talent development is the quality of a child's learning. Impacting on this process, however, are personality factors in the child. Motivation, while not a necessary ingredient of giftedness as in the Renzulli model, is essential if children are to develop as talented. They must have the motivation to get started, the motivation to apply themselves, and the motivation to persevere when the going gets rough! They must have confidence in their abilities and they must accept and value their own gifts. Too often we confuse conceit, which we naturally want children to avoid, with a healthy pride in one's abilities, which is an essential constituent of self-esteem. The gifted child must learn to feel good about being gifted.

Also impacting on the learning process are a number of environmental variables such as the quality of teaching and parenting the child receives, the provisions the school makes, or fails to make, to develop gifts into talents, and even the social ethos of the community, which can dictate which talents are valued and, therefore, which programs of talent development will be established, or funded. A supportive and facilitative environment can enhance not only the child's likelihood of academic success, but also the development of a strong and healthy personality.

Within the Gagne model, the community's responsibility is to seek out the children who are gifted but not yet talented and assist them to bring their gifts to fruition, as well as recognising and further assisting those talented students who are already performing at high levels.

The question of prevalence

The Australian wariness of gifted education is often intensified by the supposition that services will be offered only to a small and arbitrarily determined percentage of students. It is true that, in some branches of special education, definitions which set the number of students to be served may vary from time to time. Tannenbaum (1983), for example, notes that in many American states, the percentage of children defined as intellectually disabled varies from 2 to 5 per cent depending on the level of funding available.

In gifted education, services have been traditionally less tied to funding because funding is so very rarely available! The move away from gifted and talented children being viewed as comprising a small minority, towards the belief that a sizeable proportion of children can be viewed as gifted or talented, has arisen from a philosophical, rather than an economic, shift. Most educators working in gifted education in Australia adopt the Gagne definition of gifted children as approximately 15 to 16 per cent of students -- the 3 or 4 children in a mixed-ability class of 30 whose needs cannot readily be met by a curriculum necessarily established to respond to students of average ability.

The more we broaden the definition of any area of exceptionality, the more care we must take to acknowledge levels, or degrees, of the condition. Hearing impaired children, for example, are defined as having mild, moderate, severe or profound degrees of hearing loss, and the interventions which are prescribed arise from, and are directly responsive to, the severity of the condition. A child with a severe hearing loss, or a child with a severe level of intellectual disability, requires a different educational response from that which would be offered to a child with a mild or moderate level of the same condition. Similarly, highly or exceptionally gifted children require very different interventive responses from those which might be offered to moderately gifted children (Gross, 1993).

The Australian view of giftedness has broadened considerably over the last 15 years. Too much broadening, however, can be counter-productive.

The confusion between gifts and strengths

We no longer define a small minority of children when we use the terms `gifted' or `talented'. Neither, however, are we defining a majority. Whether we are examining intellectual giftedness, giftedness in sport or athletics, in the performing arts, or in community leadership, giftedness or talent refers to exceptionality; a level of potential or performance possessed or achieved by a minority of the population. The claim that all or most children are gifted, a claim frequently made by Australian educators and politicians opposed to special provisions for academically gifted children, is educationally and psychologically untenable. Often, it indicates a confusion between the concept of girls and the concept of relative strengths.

Strengths are measured ipsitively when we compare our performance in one field with our performance in another -- comparing one's cooking ability with one's maths ability and recognising that one is a better cook than a mathematician. Gifts and talents, however, are measured normatively; we compare our own ability or achievement in a certain field against the abilities or achievements of others in the same field and realise that while our cooking ability is adequate, it is not up to the standard of the next-door neighbour's and it certainly would not win us any prizes in a cookery contest!

This distinction becomes more immediate when we compare the difference between strengths and gifts with the difference between weaknesses and handicaps. Everyone has a relative weakness -- something we do less well than we do other things. My relative weakness is my hearing. Compared (ipsitively) with the other things I do, it is certainly my personal low point. However, when I compare my hearing normatively, I have to recognise that it is not only my own relative weakness; it is also so far below the level of hearing possessed by the majority of people that it is classed as a handicap.

Everyone has a relative weakness. However, for a minority of people, like myself, that weakness, assessed normatively, is acknowledged as a handicap or disability. Handicaps, however, while much more severe than weaknesses, are also much rarer, and comparatively few people are classed as handicapped. Those who are, require and receive special assistance. The cost of my hearing aids, for example, is subsidised by the state. If I was a child in school, I would receive special educational assistance from teachers trained to work with hearing impaired children.

If we apply this principle to the concepts of strengths and gifts, we can recognise that every child, regardless of his or her level of general ability, has at least one area of individual strength; ipsitively measured, this is something that stands out as a high point relative to his or her other abilities. Strengths, however, do not necessarily equate with gifts. For a child whose maths skills are several years below the chronological age, the capacity to read at the level of classmates may be a much valued strength; we would not, however, call it a talent. Only when the child's potential or performance, considered normatively, is significantly beyond the average of age-peers, do we recognise the child as gifted or talented.

Some years ago, in South Australia, I taught a Year 4 class of 30 students, which included `Jamie' (not his real name), a delightful but slow learning 10-year-old whose mathematics achievement was at the average level for Year 1 and whose reading and spelling skills were at the level one would generally expect in Year 2. Jamie's relative strengths lay in sport, but even here his development was somewhat delayed. His gross and small motor coordination were around the average for Year 3 children. Jamie was well liked by the other children in my class, and they made sure that he was included in team games at recess and lunchtime, and that he had his fair share of success. I do not think Jamie realised how deliberately, and affectionately, the play was oriented by his classmates so that the ball arrived near him rather more often than it might have. Jamie felt good about his performance in football. No one, however, including Jamie himself, would have suggested that he was `gifted' in sport. If I had tried to tell my colleagues in that most egalitarian of Adelaide primary schools that Jamie had a gift for sport, and had defended my claim by reminding them of their own assertions that every child has a gift or talent, this particular distortion of the concepts of gifts and strengths would have led to some pretty scathing criticism in the staffroom.

As discussed earlier, every child has individual strengths and weaknesses, and it is the teacher's responsibility to identify and foster the strengths, and identify and remediate the weaknesses. In a minority of children, their weaknesses are of such an order that they are defined as handicaps and the child receives specific and differentiated help within special education. However, we do not confuse the concepts of weaknesses and handicaps; we do not suggest that every child has areas of disability. Nor do we claim that special assistance should not be given to children with handicaps because every child has an area of weakness!

For some children, again a minority, their strengths are of such an order that we can justifiably call them gifts, but we should not suggest that all children are gifted. Nor should we refuse special assistance to gifted students on the grounds that every child has a gift or a talent.

Adoption of the principle that all children have gifts or talents can, however, be politically expedient. It leads naturally to a socio-political stance whereby any suggestion that a specific group of students needs extra assistance can be dismissed as not only irrelevant but doubly elitist. The claim that every child is gifted has been used with disturbing effectiveness, by Australian teachers, educational administrators and politicians, to deny gifted children access to appropriate education.

`Ian' described above, who scored above the mean on a university entrance mathematicss test while still in Year 4, was desperately unhappy in the mixed-ability classroom, and the school counsellor recommended that the school should consider establishing a small group of mathematically able students who would be withdrawn from the regular classroom for an hour each week for mathematics enrichment. The principal refused, saying that such a program would be elitist. When, some months later, in desperation, Ian's mother wrote to the Director-General of Education in her state asking if anything at all could be offered to relieve Ian's intellectual frustration and social isolation, his response stated that `all children have gifts and talents' and that `a policy which treats gifted and talented children as a discrete group is likely to be rigid and divisive in its application' (Gross, 1993). It would be difficult to imagine an educational administrator informing the parent of a hearing impaired or intellectually disabled child that all children have weaknesses and that nothing could, therefore, be offered to her child.

Ian's state has since revised its definition of giftedness and has established some excellent interventive programs. The claim that every child is gifted, however, is still in frequent use across Australia as a potent, and emotive, argument against the development of special provisions for highly able children.

Appropriate educational provision for gifted and talented students

I have been working in gifted education in Australia since 1974, and I have seen many changes. Now, in the latter years of the 1990s I can say, frankly, that the gifted education policies of most schools and education systems are both more equitable, and more clearly grounded in sound educational and psychological theory, than they have ever been, and the provisions and programs developed for gifted and talented students are more carefully planned and monitored.

There is still, however, considerable room for improvement. The intellectual rigour of material presented to academically gifted children should be dictated by their levels of ability; the curriculum of a program for gifted children should, therefore, be beyond the capacity of most of their classmates. An `enrichment program' which offers, to a limited number of children, an enrichment curriculum which could be enjoyed by all can be justifiably perceived as exclusive and elitist (Ronvik, 1993).

Identification programs could generally be improved. A school which attempts to identify gifted students on a single criterion, whether it be teacher nomination or IQ scores, ignores the primary requirement of identification which is that it should be multi-faceted (Richert, 1997). Indeed, teacher nomination used in isolation is the least effective method of identification; teachers who have not been trained or inserviced in gifted education tend to identify, as `gifted', moderately bright conformists (Betts & Neihart, 1988).

A principal who refuses to allow a highly gifted child access to one of the many forms of accelerated progression, because the moderately gifted children in the school have not required this, is ignoring the fundamental principle of special education -- that the level of a condition dictates the nature of the response.

None the less, as educators become more familiar with the principles and practices of gifted education, and the substantial international research base that underpins them, programs and provisions across Australia are becoming more effective.

This article is not the place, nor is there space available, to discuss specifics of identification and programming. I will simply say, at this time, that current Australian state policies and support documents on gifted education which have, in general, taken cognisance of international research and practice, outline a wide range of enrichment, grouping and acceleration practices and advise their use. Not every gifted child requires acceleration and not all require to be grouped with students of similar abilities but, for those who do, there exists a smorgasbord of research-supported grouping and accelerative procedures from which the school can choose those that meet the child's specific academic and socio-affective characteristics and needs.

If we deny gifted children the right to optimal development of their potential, we are not only violating the principles of equity by denying them what Beazley (1984) called `the courtesy and grace of an appropriate education', but we are failing to provide, for the generation following, the national resource of developed intellectual talent which is essential if our country is to survive, and grow.

Keywords

academically gifted
acceleration (education)
elitism
equal education
gifted
talent

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Dr Miraca Gross is Professor of Gifted Education, in the School of Education Studies, and Director of the Gifted Education Research, Resource and Information Centre, at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales 2052.