From Gifted Education to Programming for Talent Development.

We need programming for talent development that will necessarily take forms that are different from those of the "gifted education" tradition out of which it is emerging, Mr. Treffinger maintains. The challenges facing public education today are at least as formidable as they have ever been, and the expectations we hold for educators may be even higher. Moreover, the stakes are probably higher as well, because the consequences of failure in our education system are likely to be not just personal and local, but national and even global. As knowledge and technology continue to expand explosively in quantity and complexity and as our children and youths face ever more difficult personal, career, and social challenges, the burden we expect education to bear only continues to increase. We must recognize the importance of knowledge and competence as well as the need to nurture talent, imagination, judgment, and ethical conduct among all our young people. Our need for accomplishment across many different talent domains is too great for us to permit any student's strengths to be overlooked, disregarded, or squelched. We recognize the need for talented accomplishments in many areas that will be essential to human progress, to the quality of life and the enjoyment of leisure, and perhaps even to survival itself. Educators must play a very important role in nurturing the many and varied talents of our youths in such areas as: * science, medicine, technology, and engineering so that we may solve the problems of hunger, disease, and the destruction of our environment; * leadership, social and behavioral sciences, and organizations so that we may pursue justice and equality for all people; * arts, culture, and entertainment so that we may enhance and celebrate the creative expressions that add joy and meaning to life; * ethical and moral principles and philosophical analysis so that individuals and groups may understand and deal effectively with the complex challenges of human existence; and * personal fulfillment so that people may be enabled to live mentally, emotionally, and physically healthy lives and to celebrate their own talents as well as those of others. At the same time, we should not be too sanguine about our ability to select those young people who display the greatest potential for accomplishments in these areas or in any other specific talent dimensions. In truth, such accomplishments often unfold over an entire life span, and they are the products of many complex factors beyond specific experiences in school. Nonetheless, we must make every effort possible to discern students' special needs, interests, and potentials and to provide educational opportunities that nurture their talents. Herein lies an essential paradox facing educators: we acknowledge the need for and critical nature of talent and the contributions of talented individuals, but at the same time, many educators and members of the public are apprehensive or even hostile to "gifted education" or gifted/talented programs in the schools. We wish to have a cure, but we are not certain at all about the medicine. As a result, interest in and support for gifted programs have experienced cycles of growth and decline in American education. (1) Let us consider an alternative construction of the challenge. What if the primary challenge lies not in the interplay of or the relationship between gifted education, as it has typically been practiced, and the rest of the educational setting, but rather in the task of formulating a new and more constructive approach to identifying and developing talent? Perhaps, in order to meet the needs and expectations of today's complex educational realities, we need programming for talent development that will take forms different from those of the "gifted education" tradition out of which it is emerging. These emerging reconstructions address three fundamental themes or issues: 1) new views of talents and abilities, 2) more complex and varied approaches to programming, and 3) more powerful alternative views of the nature and role of identification. …