Purposes and plans for gifted education in Kappan 

In October 1940, Kappan published an issue on the “Education of exceptional children.” At the time, school attendance was growing quickly, and schools were having to figure out how to educate children with an ever-widening range of abilities. Most articles in the issue focused on students with disabilities, but Ernest Newland noted in his Editorial Comment introducing the issue that “only about one-third of our mentally superior children are able to push themselves through the educational undergrowth of mass instruction to any point near the achievement of which they are capable” (p. 33). 

Whether they are called mentally superior, highly intelligent, gifted, talented, or advanced, the most capable students in schools have presented a dual conundrum for educators. How do we identify them, and how can we develop their abilities? The question William Connor asks in the October 1940 Kappan has remained relevant across the decades, right up to today: 

According to Connor, programs for these children were not just intended to help them develop their superior abilities further, but also to help them surmount problems perceived as common among gifted and talented children, such as boredom, social isolation, a sense of inferiority, a tendency to correct others, worry over the state of the world and their place in it, and “bafflement” in social situations.