Philosophy and theory in the study of gifted children.

Introduction

What was Plato like as a child and, later, as an adolescent? Was he precociously brilliant and voluble, amazing everyone in Athens with his gifts for language and reasoned insight, of was he quiet, reserved, and only average in his studies, effectively concealing the greatness that was to come? There is no way to answer this question now, but it brings to mind the obvious point that even the most profound philosophers were once children, perhaps manifestly gifted, perhaps not. And this truism is set in opposition by another fact--that children, all children, have been virtually ignored by philosophers, at least as a subject for systematic study. The key word here is "systematic," for children have certainly appeared in the work of many philosophers. Thus Plato himself spends significant time and energy in the Republic laying down what he believes to be the appropriate educational system for those children, younger and through adolescence, who will eventually function in their maturity as the guardians of the just state. In the course of this discussion, the nature of children is either described or implicit. A number of other philosophers have discussed or referred to children in one context of another, although typically without making them the focal point of their concerns. On the whole, it is a fair generalization that philosophers in the West have tended to assume that the most compelling aspects of the human condition originate sometime after adolescence cools off and at the point when we have lurched, more of less prepared, into adulthood.

Nonetheless, substantive material is available for reflective inquiry, assuming the interested student of philosophical perspectives on childhood knows where to look. In fact, this quest has been markedly facilitated by a book of essays edited by Turner and Matthews--The Philosopher's Child: Critical Essays in the Western Tradition (1998). This work provides a review of positions on the nature of children as developed by some of the pivotal figures in Western philosophy--among them Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Hobbes, Locke, Kant, Rousseau, Mill, and Wittgenstein.

Of course, none of the accounts of philosophers' stances on the nature of children is specifically limited to gifted children. The reflections of these philosophers were intended to cover all children, regardless of any divisions or distinctions that may subsequently be applied to children understood collectively as a single class. The fact that this fundamental priority underlies classical and modern philosophical accounts of children is indirectly beneficial to reasoned inquiry concerning the gifted in two respects: first, if the accounts studied are even approximately correct in their claims about the nature of all children, then any derivation from these accounts for purposes of defining or clarifying traits distinctive to the gifted will reflect the universal base providing the foundational notions and principles in the formulation of these traits. Thus, any subsequent claim made about an aspect of the gifted will always be viewed against the backdrop of a theoretical position produced on the basis of deliberations about all children, not just a preselected group. Second, when sharply delimited classifications of what exactly constitutes "giftedness" (and subdivisions of this category) are in dispute--which seems to be inevitable, both as a matter of theory and in applied educational and social policy--then the fact that any such division has been derived from a theoretical position that has included all children will, or at least should, strengthen the reliability of such classifications. Finally, the more that is known about gifted children as derived from this theoretical base, the more it will be possible to apply that knowledge to such children, especially with respect to the broad diversity of their capacities and individual characteristics.

Preliminary Philosophical Survey

The following summaries recapitulate portions of two essays in The Philosopher's Child devoted to figures who reside at both ends of the historical spectrum--the Stoic philosophers in the Hellenistic and Roman eras and the contemporary moral and political philosopher John Rawls (1921-2002). It will become evident that the intersection of these two approaches to children produces theoretical differences that, in turn, will generate concepts and hypotheses with a timely relevance to several important issues in understanding giftedness.

John Rawls' theory of justice was one of the most discussed positions in ethics and political philosophy in the latter half of the twentieth century, and it continues to exercise the interest of contemporary philosophers. One of the pivotal concepts in that theory is the notion of stability. As the authors of the essay on Rawls, Brennan and Noggle, state, "[t]o be stable, a conception of justice must be capable of gaining our allegiance, of providing us with motivation to support the institutions which it endorses" (1998, p. 214). Thus, for Rawls it is not sufficient simply to develop a coherent and compelling theory of justice; he must also show why that theory would be chosen as worthy against competing theories, thus ensuring stability in the polity governed by this theoretical--and, if chosen, applied--approach to justice.

In the course of explaining and justifying his notion of stability, Rawls applies the well-known account of moral development advanced by Jean Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg. According to this theory, moral development occurs in three stages. The authors outline Rawls's version of the theory as follows. The first stage is the morality of authority--the authors assert that the counterpart Piaget stage is called the morality of heteronomy--when the child is "utterly helpless and completely dependent on the parent" (p. 214). The second stage Rawls refers to as the morality of association; what Piaget calls the morality of cooperation. Here associations and the cooperative activities in which children participate "spark the development of the child's sense of justice: the skills the child learns as she cooperates are the building blocks of the morality of association" (p. 216). The playing of games is one of the principal means emphasized by Piaget for instilling a sense of justice; the authors summarize: "... as children see that the rules of games make cooperation possible, and as they develop the desire to cooperate with others, they come to respect the rules that make cooperation possible" (p. 217).

The third and final stage for Rawls is produced when the child comes to desire to comply with the principles of justice purely out of respect for them "as principles" (here the authors quote Rawls directly) rather than because of "ties of friendship and fellow feeling for others, and ... concern for the approbation of the wider society" (p. 217). But, according to Rawls, it is crucial to see the reason why we embrace this third stage of justice from the standpoint of principle (Brennan and Noggle again quote Rawls): "We develop a desire to apply and to act upon the principles of justice once we realize how social arrangements answering to them have promoted our good and that of those with whom we are affiliated" (p. 217). In other words, according to Rawls, the second stage of moral development fosters the sense of cooperation through the acceptance of rules and the third stage broadens this acceptance of the rules of justice as soon as we realize that these rules have satisfied our self-interest and the self-interests of those close to us in some way. Thus, the principle of justice is accorded respect precisely because of its benefits to ourselves and to others around us.

Compare this account of moral development with that described by Becker in his essay on Stoic Children (1998). Stoic philosophers--e.g., Epictetus, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius--exercised a leading influence in Hellenistic and Roman intellectual life during the period from about 300 B.C. until 200 A.D. As an essential component in their analysis of human nature, these philosophers presented a theory of moral development that reacted against the Epicurean belief that what motivated infants was the desire to seek pleasure and avoid pain. According to the Stoics, infants in the cradle are motivated by their attachment to and affection for themselves. This affection results in the attempt to satisfy all their primal impulses. Thus it was clear to the Stoics, says Becker, "that infants often subordinated pleasure-seeking to other pursuits such as efforts to move, to explore their environment, to observe, respond, mimic and learn" (p. 49). As a result, "the initial, conditional affection for the things as means to ends is converted ... into an affection that is quite independent of perceptions of a thing's instrumental worth" (p. 49). Becker illustrates the point as follows: "... it does not matter that the breast is dry, the brightly colored object is dulled, the blanket is no longer warm, the cradle is no longer big enough" (p. 50). As long as these phenomena have been appropriated into our range of active interests, "we have affection for them in themselves, for their own sakes" (p. 50). In short, they have "intrinsic value for us" (p. 50). In general then, true belief, correct conduct, and rule following for its own sake are recognized as important whether or not any of these activities are useful for our immediate interests. "Children come to value, for its own sake, doing things in the right way for the right reasons" (p. 51). Furthermore, on the Stoic account, "the infant's natural, initial focus on self-preservation and self-interest for its own sake is very quickly supplemented by an equally natural focus on the needs and interests of others, as ends in themselves" (p. 53). One essential way in which this focus on the needs and interests of others is informed revolves around the virtue of justice. Thus justice becomes a value to the child not primarily because it is a virtue that will contribute directly to his or her own personal well being, but also because it is a virtue that, if properly implemented, will contribute to everyone's well being.

The difference between these two accounts of moral development may appear initially to be slight, more a matter of emphasis than of substance. But upon closer examination certain developmental differences become stark and dramatic. For Rawls, justice emerges from the interaction of groups, principally (as Piaget emphasizes) when the members of these groups are at play in games. For the Stoics, a sense of justice develops as the result of the recognition that processes and people have an intrinsic value, quite apart from the immediate usefulness of those processes and people to the individual child.

If the Stoic account is correct, then the child has au inherent receptivity for disinterested value. But since the value is disinterested, the nature of the value must be defined and described in terms detailing how it is possible for the child to be receptive toward this kind of apprehension. Here is one possible account based on Stoic principles: The end valued is somehow attractive, an attraction that emerges apart from the gratification of interest in a directly physical or emotional sense. The child recognizes not only that acting for an end will produce a good of beneficial result in this particular case and in these particular circumstances, but also that the very relation itself of controlling an action in order to achieve an end is good and beneficial.

This recognition has two phases that are distinguishable developmentally. First comes the realization that this relation exists, abstractly, in the sense that its implementation can be effected in a wide variety of ways and for a wide variety of human agents. Thus the child senses that it is not only good that justice is done to me--it is also good, indeed it is even better, that justice is done to everybody. As a result, it is the comprehensive relation between justice as such and all individuals affected by justice that comprises part of the truly valuable aspect of justice--a virtue that, when duly applied, has an obvious importance for an individual's self-interest.

Second, the Stoic account suggests that the child then senses and appreciates this fundamental relation by focusing on the fact that justice itself grounds that relation through its own unique value. To understand and to appreciate an end as intrinsically valuable, as valuable in itself apart from its immediate benefit to the observer, is to recognize a kind of reality that is abstract, divorced from the realm of the immediate self-interest of the observer. And the attraction, the lure that beckons even the young child, is the fulfillment the mind experiences when it comes into contact with something characterized by a certain specified abstract content and that the mind explicitly recognizes as abstract. Exactly how this transition is accomplished in the mind of the child is, of course, a process that must be described more fully and with appropriate psychological experimentation and data. The relevant point for present purposes is only that the Stoic position offers this transition as a possibility worthy of consideration in the formation of a child's sense of value.

It has been mentioned above that the Stoic account is intended for all children, not just for those children who are gifted. However, what in the Stoic account defines the developmental process of acquiring receptivity to and appreciation of values such as justice at an early age can, with appropriate expansion, also contribute toward an explanation of two characteristics of the gifted once they have developed this kind of recognition: (a) the tendency toward increased sensitivity to justice and its opposite, injustice, and (b) the drive to attain perfection.

Justice as Fairness

It has often been observed that the gifted tend to be acutely sensitive to justice as fairness, a trait manifested primarily toward instances of injustice since these instances flagrantly violate the respect that the virtue of justice itself so rightly deserves. Note then that this phenomenon is not readily explainable on the Rawls/Piaget model of moral development. For if all children learn their sense of justice primarily by participating in cooperative ventures such as games and if it is assumed that equal numbers of gifted and nongifted children participate in playing games, then there would be no reason for the gifted to be more developmentally sensitive to injustice than the nongifted.

By contrast, the Stoic model of moral development affords suitable grounds for an explanation. The Stoic account allows for the possibility that gifted children are more sensitive to infringements against justice because they can more clearly recognize justice as a principle rather than merely as a practical, immediately sensed guideline defining or characterizing events in which people interact in certain mutually beneficial ways. Thus when the gifted child observes what is perceived to be an injustice perpetrated against other individuals, he or she acutely feels the wrongness of such actions, not because these actions damage his or her own self-interest as such, because of course such harm is not suffered by the observer. Rather, the unjust action is experienced as a violation against the principle of justice. As we have seen, although the Rawls/Piaget account of moral development also would have justice recognized as a principle, this recognition is characterized more in terms of the benefits conferred by justice rather than on the apprehension of the principle of justice by itself, with its own inherent value.

Since, however, the gifted are capable of perceiving and understanding the importance of this principle as being equal to, if not greater than, particular concrete instances of actions or behavior considered just or unjust, it will follow that violations of the principle are reacted to with the same, perhaps even greater, intensity and fervor than if a particular person--either themselves or a friend--had been treated unjustly. The Stoic account suggests that the gifted have appropriated and internalized the principle of justice as fairness to a degree that exceeds the counterpart sensitivity of their nongifted peers, and they reflect this greater apprehension by their broader, more sensitive, and more intense response to those violations of justice that are experienced in their environment, whether that environment is contoured by immediate or remote personal boundaries.

The Pursuit of Excellence

The recognition that a given end is valuable for its own sake, apart from any dimension of immediate self-interest, whether subtle or crass, locates the affective and intellectual nature of the gifted child on a level of reality that allows a ready transfer to other objectives that share characteristics with this kind of reality. The inherently valuable end described above is justice understood as a principle. But when the child grows and develops, this apprehension radiates in similar ways into diverse realms of experience. Thus one of the most common--and, for teachers of the gifted, often exasperating--characteristics of gifted children is the intense desire for perfection. Dissatisfaction with their work because it is deemed to be less than perfect is frequently recognized as a characteristic of this group. These individuals seem to be striving to attain a degree of excellence in their endeavors that always remains a measure beyond the limits of realistic actualization.

The student appraises his or her own work. It is good, thinks the student, indeed it is perhaps deemed to be very good. But it could be better. There mayor may not be time and opportunity for additional labor on the project. But even if time and opportunity are available and the project is improved, it remains less than perfect, less worthy than it might have been with the student fully, perhaps even painfully, aware of this gap between the reality at hand, however good it may be, and the possibility of a level of achievement that is in some sense visible but remains distant from the realm of practical realization. This cycle of unrequited labor has no end, to the painful distress of the individual attempting to circumnavigate it. In practice, the cycle will conclude either when the project must be submitted in order to fulfill a stated deadline or, if the project is self-initiated, when the student simply and perhaps grudgingly decides that life and time must be allowed to march on. It becomes evident then that this student is seeking a level of perfection that exists only in the mind's eye--that is, perfection as an abstraction, as a sort of ideal goal that is not and, importantly, may never be achievable.

The desire to pursue excellence is, according to this hypothesis, a recognition of the abstract nature of excellence as a value existing for its own sake. The gifted child does not aspire to excellence to appease or impress others, whether friend, student, or teacher, because only one so gifted is aware, as a dimension of self-knowledge, of this ideal level of achievement. Thus the often all-too-real motive of self-aggrandizement is lacking. The gifted child is not actually in competition with others; he of she is competing with a standard that exists in a realm of reality accessible only to the mind of the individual beset by this kind of competition. In a very real sense, the child is striving to be excellent just for the sake of being as good as possible. The child has won an awareness of excellence as a principle existing in its own right, apart from the public validation of awards or the articulated compliments of others, whether peers, teachers, or judges. This awareness is of a principle commanding respect and beckoning to the gifted child to be approached and, if possible, appropriated. But even if excellence cannot be appropriated fully, the drive to approximate it as closely as possible remains no less intense and demanding to the individual caught in the subtle apprehension of this state of ideal perfection.

Conclusion

The two examples of giftedness illuminated by the Stoic account of moral development should not be logically linked. The point is not to claim, or even to intimate, that a gifted child who is sensitive to injustice will also, and inevitably, be driven by perfectionism (or vice versa). The suggestion is only that the recognition of the possible relevance of a theory of moral development observed and described by Stoic philosophers can provide a basis for explaining these two different characteristics of the gifted.

It is essential to emphasize that these explanations, as presented here, are viable only at the theoretical level. If they are judged worthy of consideration by educators and professional students of the gifted, then empirical instruments will determine whether or not, or the extent to which, these explanations cohere with observable data and thus become eligible to serve as guiding principles for additional research and educational policy.

In a more fundamental sense, however, the value of the lines of thought pursued above is independent of empirical validation or disconfirmation in these particular cases. It was, after all, the observation of the differences in approach toward explaining moral development taken by Stoic philosophers and John Rawls that provided the impetus for the explorations of aspects of the theory of giftedness illustrated above. And it was the close juxtaposition of these two positions in The Philosopher's Child that established a narrative setting greatly facilitating the generation of these ideas. The primary point then is not to insist on the truth, or even necessarily the relevance, of the hypotheses offered here in explaining increased sensitivity to justice and the seeking of perfection. The point is that these philosophers have afforded us sufficient breadth of thought to present a wide horizon of theoretical possibilities for study and reflection, and for practical application to the areas of giftedness and gifted education.

In conclusion, it is worth keeping in mind that the fact that major figures in Western philosophy have not directly reflected on and analyzed children in general, much less gifted children, should not deter the contemporary student of giftedness from investigating what philosophy may have to offer in this area. The history of philosophy, especially those moments when philosophers have thought about children, provides a storehouse of concepts and reasoned positions that, with appropriate development, can offer theoretical insight into the many diverse phenomena that constitute giftedness at all age levels.

REFERENCES

Becker, L. C. (1998). Stoic children. In S. M. Turner & G. Matthews (Eds.) The philosopher's child: Critical essays in the western tradition (pp. 45-61). Rochester: University of Rochester Press.

Brennan, S., & Noggle, R. (1998). John Rawls's children. In S. M. Turner & G. Matthews (Eds.) The philosopher's child: Critical essays in the western tradition (pp. 203-204). Rochester: University of Rochester Press.

Turner, S. M., & Matthews, G. (Eds.). (1998). The philosopher's child: Critical essays in the western tradition. Rochester: University of Rochester Press.

David A. White (Ph.D., Toronto) teaches philosophy in the American Studies program for DePaul University. Since 1992, he has taught philosophy for the gifted programs of the Chicago Public Schools and for Northwestern University's Center for Talent Development. He is the author of 7 books and 50 articles in ancient philosophy, continental philosophy, aesthetics, and the philosophy of education. His most recent publication is Philosophy for Kids (Prufrock, 2001).

Manuscript submitted September 14, 2000. Revision accepted March 10, 2003.