Identifying Gifted Children

Abstract

Suppose a teacher is casually observing the children passing by the hallway on their way to their classrooms. Approximately one out of ten of the children passing before his gaze has sufficient mental ability to be designated as and need of special educational opportunities to develop his ability; another one out of ten has artistic ability that warrants the provision of special educational programs; still another one out of ten has unusual musical ability; and similar ratios of the children have dramatic talent, creative writing ability, mechanical skills. Many children have two or three talents that place them the upper 10 per cent of their age group. By the time five hundred children have passed by the teacher, he will have looked at approximately one hundred who can be considered gifted at least one important way. The teacher would not be able, by casual observation only, to distinguish the gifted pupils from the others. The gifted are not staggering under a towering load of books. Neither are they blundering along the fringes of the group trying unsuccessfully to get in with other children, as is sometimes supposed to be true of them. On the contrary, they are quite as carefree and as well adjusted as any children the hallway; hence the need for inaugurating methods of identifying them.