Mainstreaming the gifted: historical perspectives on excellence and equity.

In South Carolina, as in many other states, a major educational policy issue is how to identify and educate gifted students. Although South Carolina does not yet provide certification for teachers in gifted, that possibility is raised frequently by such groups as teacher education colleges and the South Carolina Consortium for Gifted Education. To date Converse College is the only institution of higher education to offer a Master's degree in education of the gifted, even in the absence of such special certification for teachers. The Education Improvement Act (1984) does, however, require that school districts serve the gifted and provide staff development for teachers. But how and where should gifted students be served?

Although Governor Carroll Campbell is a strong advocate of the new Governor's School for gifted high school students in math and science, most gifted students will continue to be educated in the regular school--in the "mainstream"--by the regular classroom teacher. This is not to say that resource rooms and other special classes and programs for gifted students will, or should, be curtailed. But our ultimate educational goal should be the integrated school. In a sense, gifted students may be the last frontier in the mainstreaming impetus so characteristic of this country's effort to provide excellence and equity in the public school. Indeed, much of our national history of education is the story of the widening mainstream.

The impetus to mainstream students whenever and however we can comes from the deeply-rooted commitment the United States has had to the democratic spirit and to the notion that the public school should be the instrument of democracy. Not that this commitment has ever been realized fully. Early educational leaders such as Thomas Jefferson, Horace Mann, and John Dewey and later leaders such as James Conant, Jerome Bruner, and the current "excellence reformers" have had to resolve the real, or apparent, dilemma between excellence and equity. Educational policy seems to have alternated between these two poles, sometimes (as during the heyday of Progressive education and later in the open school movement of the 1960s) focusing on education for equity and sometimes (as in the post-Sputnik era and the current era) focusing on education for excellence.

Lessons from History

The idea of mainstreaming is itself the answer educational policy makers have chosen as the primary concept for addressing the excellence-equity debate in public education. This is not the easiest solution nor the most efficient, but it satisfies the American imperative for an education that aims at excellence without elitism, equity without mediocrity. Our two hundred years of American educational history provides some important lessons for us as we look at the future of special education for the gifted in the public school system. Further, these lessons support the idea that we should, to the maximum degree possible, educate the gifted in the regular classroom.

In a democratic society education itself should be democratic.

This lesson has been difficult to learn. In the early days of the Republic the restrictions on education for women, and even more so blacks, were reflected in a less than democratic school system. Jefferson's ideal (which excluded slaves) for a free education of a few years duration has been extended gradually in length and scope to serve a diverse population in our time; but education itself often has suffered from authoritarianism and a rigid class system all its own. As Dewey and the Romantic Critics of the 1960s have argued, an aristocratic and bureaucratic factory-model school provides meager nourishment for the democratic spirit. When we isolate gifted and talented children from the mainstream--by separate schools, tracks, courses, grouping--we run the risk of contributing to an elitism that does not reflect a true democracy.

In the United States educators must respond to the political and economic needs of the nation.

Sometimes this lesson points out both the faith we have in the power of education to serve society and the failure we assign to that function of public schools. In the Jeffersonian era, the country needed talented leaders to govern and intelligent citizens to exercise their vote. Mann, too, saw education as the way to produce a more moral and enlightened citizenry. He also saw the need to make education practical so as to produce well-trained workers for the industrializing society and to nurture industrial leaders. Dewey emphasized the social goals of education to heal the industrial revolution's fragmented democracy, but he was convinced that his "new education" would be able to solve all manner of scientific and social problems while contributing to the goal of vocation. For Conant and the Excellence Reformers of the 1980s, America's production of highly trained specialists would keep us competitive in the international arena. At their best, all of these shapers of educational policy have seen the political and economic needs as a challenge to the total society. Gifted individuals are an important part of our society--but only a part. All citizens must be prepared to be productive workers and problem solvers in a heterogeneous work force. Excellence is a goal for all students.

Public education ultimately is responsible for meeting the needs of all students in our society.

This lesson often is buried under the political rhetoric calling for either excellence or equity. It is embodied in the nature of democracy, of course, but tends to be lost in the carping criticism that schools are antidemocratic or are anti-intellectual. In our country reformers will always find public education neglecting excellence or equity. This will happen, in part, because schools always lag behind social change. But from Jefferson to present, a strong conviction among shapers of educational policy is that public schools exist to help each student realize his or her full potential, whatever that might be. In many ways, this proposition serves as the ballast for the educational ship as it leans either toward excellence or equity. Schools can serve democratic purposes or political/economic purposes; but if they do not serve the purpose of talent development in all children, they will fall short of their promise. Education for the gifted in the last two decades has served an especially praiseworthy function in American education by emphasizing this sometimes forgotten lesson. In no other era has so much attention been paid to the vast array of gifts and talents individuals might possess--and must develop. Who is to say in whom the gift may be found and, indeed, what the girl may be?

Implications for Contemporary Policy

The rich and winding history of public education in the United States suggests that the three lessons above can work as parameters for educational policy: We neglect their import at great peril to the body politic. Each alone is incomplete as a guide for sound educational policy; in reasonable tension they will keep us from the shoals of educational extremism. In this respect, we should see our goal as meeting the social, political-economic, and individual needs of the gifted and the nation in a balanced and integrated fashion. Such an approach will provide maximum benefits for individuals and for our democracy. No easy task, but it is ours.

The task is difficult for many reasons. The "public" to be served by public education in the 1980s is far more diverse than the one envisioned by Jefferson, Mann, and Dewey. A heterogeneous classroom today may include Asian, Black, Hispanic, and other racial or cultural groups; learning disabled, mentally retarded, orthopedically impaired and other handicapped youngsters; and a wide variety of intellectual and achievement levels, including the gifted. The gifted students are not merely the brightest and the high achievers but include the underachieving gifted, artistically talented, and outstanding leaders.

Furthermore, the demands on the regular classroom teacher to be more accountable, more skilled, and more productive already create extraordinary expectations and pressures. For education of the gifted to succeed in the regular classroom much work must be done by teachers in the regular classroom and teachers of the gifted to improve the conditions for learning and teaching in the regular classroom. Such improvements are possible; indeed, they are imperative. Educators of the gifted must concentrate on helping other teachers organize and differentiate instruction, individualize the curriculum, and manage behavior and interactions in ways that improve education for gifted children within a diverse, heterogeneous, multicultural classroom. Educators today can respond successfully to this challenge by bringing the considerable resources, research, and experience of educators of the gifted to bear on the regular classroom. In the future, education of the gifted will concern itself more and more with educating regular teachers at all levels and with providing those teachers the kind of staff development, resources, and administrative services required to make instruction of the gifted truly effective in the regular classroom. This is a most important responsibility, and opportunity, for education of the gifted today.

Conclusion

Thus, I argue for a concept of programming for the gifted in which this educational enterprise is located firmly within the regular classroom--to the maximum degree possible. What is that degree? In what specific ways can schools provide for the needs of the gifted in regular classroom settings? How can the splendid accomplishments of educators of the gifted, and of the students themselves, be capitalized on for the benefit of the total school population? Questions like these deserve the most serious attention of policy makers and educators. Of course, there are many arguments against mainstreaming the gifted and many benefits for the gifted in classrooms designed to meet their special needs. However, for the reasons advanced above, I contend that the education of gifted students ought to be a primary concern of mainstream educators. Special educators of the gifted have no monopoly in this area; they do have an opportunity to lead.

Those involved in the education of the gifted will, I think, be increasingly concerned with pedagogy and curriculum design for educating the gifted in the mainstream of the regular classroom. In so doing, they will be providing specific solutions to one important dimension of the excellence-equity debate in public education. Ultimately, I hope, we will have classrooms where differentiated instruction really works.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bruner, J. S. (1959). The process of education. New York: Vintage Books.

Conant, J. B. (1959). The American high school today: A first report to interested citizens. New York: McGraw Hill Book Company.

Cremin, L. A. (1957), The republic and the school: Horace Mann on the education of free men. New York: Teachers College Press.

Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education. New York: Macmillan.

Friedenberg, E. Z. (1965). Coming of age in America. New York: Random House.

Kohl, H. R. (1969). The open classroom: A practical guide to a new way of teaching. New York: The New York Review.

Lee, G. C. (1961). Crusade against ignorance: Thomas Jefferson on education. New York: Teachers College Press.

Ravitch, D. (1984). The continuing crises: Fashions in education. The American Scholar, 53, 88.

Sewall, G. T. (1983). Necessary lessons: Decline and renewal in American schools. New York: The Free Press.

Tannenbaum, A. J. (1979). Pre-Sputnik to post-Watergate concern about the gifted. In H. A. Passow (Ed.), The gifted and the talented: Their education and development. The seventy-eighth yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education (pp. 5-27). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Guest Editors' Comments on Mainstreaming the Gifted: Historical Perspectives on Excellence and Equity

How and where should gifted students be served? This is a question that educators, teachers, parents, and students have struggled with for some time and continue to struggle with today. Over a decade ago, Thomas R. McDaniel anticipated one of the directions in which the fields of gifted education, special education, and general education were headed in response to the issues of equity and excellence. In the following article, he approaches the excellence and equity debate by providing a perspective on the topic of ability grouping that differs from that of many within the field of gifted education. He gives his readers an opportunity to consider mainstreaming as an alternative to ability grouping.

McDaniel suggests that the most fair and appropriate solution to this question is the inclusion of all students in a regular, heterogeneous classroom, declaring that schools are an instrument of democracy. He argues against separating and isolating gifted and talented students from the mainstream and reminds his readers that gifted students are only a fraction of the school population and that a nation embedded in democracy should provide equal educational opportunity for all its students. He claims that no matter what the political or economic agenda of the school may be, public schools exist to develop the talent of all students so all students can reach their full potential.

McDaniel argues that the inclusion of gifted students in a regular, heterogeneous classroom is something to consider seriously. It is, in fact, the situation for most gifted students most of the time, even if they are in part-time gifted programs. McDaniel recognized that this would continue to be the reality for gifted students and that teachers would need to be trained properly in order to organize and provide an appropriately differentiated instruction that can meet the needs of all students in a heterogeneous classroom. McDaniel also believed that in order to accomplish this, educators would need to share resources, research, and experiences with classroom teachers. In this respect, McDaniel seems to have anticipated the current interest in push-in, as opposed to traditional pull-out, models of gifted education, in which specialists with backgrounds in gifted education work with regular classroom teachers to differentiate curriculum and instruction for gifted and other students.

McDaniel's perspective differs from that of the authors of the other articles in this section, all of whom support ability grouping as a way of meeting the needs of gifted students. His article is a useful counterbalance to those points of view, and collectively, these articles remind us that it is critical to consider all options before deciding what is best for meeting the needs of the gifted child.

Originally published in Roeper Review, Volume 11, No. 3, March 1989, pp. 171-172.

At the time of this article's original publication, Thomas R. McDaniel (Ph.D.), was Charles A. Dana Professor of Education and Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Converse College, Spartanburg, South Carolina. He continues to teach at Converse, where he is currently Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost. His more than 150 publications include 6 books and 30 textbook chapters.