Published in the Summer, 1999,  Journal for the Education of the Gifted, 22, 4, pp. 324-353.  In a special issue focusing on the conceptual foundations that underlie practice and research in education of the gifted and talented, edited by Larry Coleman, Don Ambrose, and Nora Cohen.

Back

Abstract

Postmodern curriculum theory provides a framework for educators of the gifted and talented to critique the assumptions of the field from within the field. Five overarching themes derived from postmodern literature are discussed. These are presence, origin, unity, denial of transcendence, and constitutive otherness. Five issues are subsumed beneath the themes. These are issues of (1) discourse; (2) the body; (3) the canon; (4) gender; (5) power and class.

"Modern visions of education as characterized by the Tylerian rationale, behavioral lesson plans, context-free objectives, competitive and external evaluation, dualistic models that separate teacher and student, meaning and context, subjective persons and objective knowledge, body and spirit, learning and environment, and models of linear progress through value-neutral information transmission are no longer acceptable in the postmodern era."

— Patrick Slattery (1995b, p. 612)

and militarism. Constructive postmodern thought provides support for the ecology, peace, feminist, and other emancipatory movements of our time, while stressing that the inclusive emancipation must be from modernity itself." -David Ray Griffin (1993, pp. viii-ix )

Introduction

In 1994 Margolin and Sapon-Shevin, in two books critical of the field of gifted education, wondered about the reality of a giftedness construct. Margolin, a social worker, and Sapon-Shevin,a special educator, critics from outside the field, believe that gifted and talented education benefits the privileged classes. Along with many others within the field, they also believe that giftedness is not absolute, the results of a test score, but that giftedness is a socially constructed phenomenon.

In 1996 in a special issue of the Journal for the Education of the gifted, Borland asked the field to criticize itself in these areas:

(1) Is there such a thing as a gifted child?

(2) Is gifted education racist, sexist, and classist?

(3) Is there a need for ability grouping?

(4) Does gifted education interfere with community?

(5) Is the field irrelevant?

(For other self-critical comments see Callahan, 1996; Gallagher, 1996; Howley, Howley, & Pendarvis, 1995; Pendarvis & Howley, 1996.) These thinkers from within our field rightfully ask us to look hard at ourselves, but let me attempt to put these critiques into a theoretical framework.

In recent years, a group of educational foundations thinkers known as the curriculum reconceptualization movement (cf. Pinar, Reynolds, Slattery, and Taubman, 1995) called for a rejection of the modernist conception of curriculum as a list of objectives, books, and concepts to be mastered according to the plan set down (and essentially unmodified since he set it down), by Ralph Tyler in 1949. Tyler’s four goals for curriculum are essentially unchanged:

1. What educational purposes should the school seek to attain? (objectives) ;

2. What educational experiences can be provided that are likely to attain these purposes? (design);

3. How can these educational experiences be effectively organized? (scope and sequence);

4. How can we determine that these purposes are being attained? (evaluation).

The 1960s civil rights movement, the opposition to the Vietnam War, and the development of the counter culture contributed to a rejection of curriculum as behaviorism, with its "observable" goals and objectives. The rejection of positivism and structuralism led to a crisis of meaning. Experiments in the "open classroom," and neo-progressivist calls to treasure childhood for its own sake resulted in an emphasis on humanistic education with an emphasis on the affective and on the personal rather than the corporate and the patriotic.

Since the 1970s, the reconceptualization of curriculum has focused on the dangers of curriculum engineering, emphasizing a focus on freedom and aesthetics, with a call to tie curriculum not to technique but to the human spirit. The reconceptualists have urged educators not to conceive values as goals or objectives, to design an educational environment that values educational activity, to pursue a wider view of what educational activity is, and to foster creativity. They have urged us to value the arts and humanities as well as the sciences and mathematics.

Parallel to the writing by the curriculum reconceptualists, in the 1980s, a move back to the political right focused curriculum on psychological stage theories of development, with an emphasis on what learning was appropriate during various stages. In the 1990s curriculum theorists, including the reconceptualists, showed a fascination for the socialist theory of Vygotsky and with the assessment emphasis of Gardner. Higher-order thinking became the emphasis at the same time as a call for going back to the basics. Recent studies such as the TIMSS study, comparing U.S. science and mathematics curriculum (Peak, et al., 1996) with Japanese and German curriculum have noted that the U.S. curriculum is "a mile wide and an inch deep" (p. 3). The recent proficiency testing movement in many states has influenced what is taught as well. Again, these trends would seem to herald a more conservative trend in curriculum development.

The reconceptualists call for a move from a consideration of curriculum as a set of behavioral goals and objectives; that is, a consideration of curriculum development as a field of "design," to a consideration of curriculum development from the point of view of understanding on a deep level what our in- school, out-of-school, conscious- and unconscious-curriculum choices and predispositions mean (Slattery, 1995; Piirto, 1998b). As well-meaning educators of talented students, we need to continue to engage head-on the critiques of our field, our attitudes toward curriculum, and our ingrown biases, defensiveness, and prejudices. Postmodern curriculum reconceptualists and theorists provide a framework for doing so without resorting to personal attacks or finger-pointing.

Perhaps the questions this movement raises have been inadequately addressed by the field of the education of the talented. Perhaps we have been so engaged in an effort to establish a foothold for special academic, critical, and creative thinking curriculum and enrichment activities guided by the deficit model of special education that we have focused on the trees and not on the forest. A historical look at curriculum for talented students must take into account the work of Virgil Ward (1961/1980), James and Sheila Gallagher (1995), C. June Maker (1982a, b; Maker & Nielson, 1996 a, b), Joseph Renzulli and Sally Reis (1985), Abraham Tannenbaum (1983; 1986), Joyce VanTassel-Baska (1988; 1994a; 1994b); James Borland (1989); Sandra Kaplan (1986) and others.

All of these have had influence on development of thought about curriculum for the talented. All say that the main reason for the education of talented students is to provide a differentiated curriculum because the academically talented students learn differently, especially in rate and in ability to think abstractly. All emphasize that curriculum for the academically talented should be different in kind, and in emphasis, and not specifically in type. They call for a "defensible" curriculum that is differentiated. To my knowledge, they deal little, if at all, with the reconceptualist view of curriculum theory as described by Pinar, et al., though mentions of progressive educators such as Bruner (Maker and Neilson, 1996a) and of teaching for creativity (Piirto, 1998) are common.

Elliot Eisner in The Educational Imagination (1979, 1985, 1994) delineated five different orientations to curriculum. Most descriptions of curriculum orientations in gifted education speak of the content, process/product and concept orientations ( Maker, 1982a; Maker and Neilson, 1996b; Van Tassel-Baska, 1988, 1994a; 1994b). Eisner's orientations provide a convenient and comprehensive approach to thinking about curriculum for the talented. These are the five orientations according to Eisner:

(1) Curriculum as personal relevance;

(2) Curriculum as technology;

(3) Curriculum as academic rationalism;

(4) Curriculum as social adaptation and social reconstruction;

(5) Curriculum as the development of cognitive processes. One's belief system informs what one thinks should be taught.

One’s belief system informs what one thinks should be taught. Elsewhere I added two other orientations to curriculum that should be considered by curriculum theorists in the field of gifted education/talent development. These are

(6) teaching for insight; and

(7) postmodernist (Piirto, 1994; 1997; 1999).

(One could argue that teaching for insight is subsumed under Eisner’s "curriculum as the development of cognitive processes," but given the recent push in schools for a multiple intelligences approach to curriculum brought on by the Project Zero research, I have made it a separate category.) Curriculum should be considered within the explicit context of one’s (usually implicitly believed and unexamined) curriculum orientations. Table 1 indicates how curriculum thinkers in the field of the education of the gifted and talented might be categorized according to the seven delineations (Eisner’s five, Project Zero’s teaching for insight, and the postmodernist).

Place Table 1 about here

What are modernism and postmodernism?

Before discussing the issues that are the subject of this paper, let us frame the argument historically (Cahoone, 1996; Greene, 1986). What modernism is depends on the domain one is talking about and the shift that one is discussing. In religion, some say that modernism began with the Protestant reformation in the sixteenth century, which signaled a repudiation of the traditional authority of the Roman Catholic church and the cultivation of incredulity by such thinkers as Montaigne or Erasmus. Some say that modernism began in the seventeenth century with the scientific reformation signaled by the works of Galileo, Descartes, and Newton. Some say that modernism began in the eighteenth century with the republican rebellions in France and the United States. Some say it began with the industrial revolution in Europe in the nineteenth century. Whatever the preference for its beginning, the age of modernity denoted a sea change in the way humans lived their lives.

Likewise, the arts from 1850 to 1950 showed extraordinary inquiry into form and structure that reflected the changes in religion, politics, science, and technology. While one could go on and on with examples, a few may suffice to give the flavor of the changes wrought during that century: in visual arts, Klimt’s art nouveau and the Vienna Secession, Cassatt’s impressionism, Van Gogh’s expressionism, Picasso’s cubism, de Kooning’s abstract expressionism; in fiction, the stream of consciousness narration of James Joyce and Virginia Woolf, the idealized masculinity of Ernest Hemingway and Jack London, the exploration of the dark side of the self by Conrad and Melville, and the muck-raking of Upton Sinclair; in poetry, the solipsistic existentialism of T. S. Eliot, the nonreferential musing of Wallace Stevens, and the breath lines of William Carlos Williams; in music, with the twelve-tone scale of Schönberg, the restless experimentation of Mahler, the crowd-shocking chord structures of Stravinsky, and the eerie Nordic calm of Sibelius; in architecture, with the Bauhaus’ group led by Walter Gropius who invented the International Style, and the Arts and Craft style of unornamented buildings based on the premise that modern art and architecture must be responsive to the needs and influences of the modern industrial world and that good designs must pass the test of both aesthetic standards and sound engineering; in theater with the agonizing and searing plays of Tennessee Williams, the socialist thought of Brecht, and the probing family confessions of Eugene O’Neill; and in film, with the incorporation of ever more sophisticated voice, music, and technology to the simple, flickering images of the "movie."

Postmodern was a term first used in 1917 by Rudolf Pannwitz, a German philosopher, who was speaking of the nihilism of twentieth-century culture when he used the word (Cahoone, 1996). The word does not appear in either the 1971 Oxford English Dictionary or the 1982 American Heritage Dictionary. Used in 1934 by a Spanish literary critic, Federico de Onis, in 1939 by theologian Bernard Iddings Bell, who used it to signal a return to traditional religion; and by historian Arnold Toynbee to describe the rise of mass society after World War I, the term postmodern was widely used in the 1950s and 1960s in literary criticism to describe the backlash to artistic modernism. Architectural critics began to use the term in the 1970s.

In the 1980s, the term was widely used to refer to poststructuralist philosophy, especially to the work of French thinkers Foucault (1972; 1980), Derrida (1974), Deleuze and Guattari (1977), and Lyotard (1992). These young philosophers, influenced by the linguist structuralist de Saussure (1966) and by the anthropologist Levi-Strauss (1972), rejected the existentialism of Sartre (1943; 1960), the focus on the self of Freud (1938), and the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty (1962), and embraced new versions of Marxism after the Stalinist horrors were revealed by writers such as Solzhenitzyn. These new versions of Marxism were propounded by themselves and after the Frankfurt School, an institute for social research in Germany which exported such midcentury thinkers, exiles from Nazi Germany, as Erich Fromm (1941), Hannah Arendt (1958) and Herbert Marcuse (1964). J. Habermas (1972) in his analysis of the forms of knowledge was also influential. They had a great influence on postmodern thought.

These young thinkers, who took part in the worldwide student riots of the late 1960s, rejected the idea that the self is knowable, or even central to existence. They also rejected the idea that the social sciences should focus on studying supra-individual structures such as discourse, ceremony, and familial and tribal attachments, because they believed that to find such a transcendent concept as empirical truth through such study of structures was scientifically impossible. They were thus called poststructuralists, meaning that they rejected the idea that truth is universal, and that innate in the mind is a common structure called a self. In fact, they questioned whether the methods of so-called "objective" science (or positivism) could avoid being self-referential and thus falsely self-reflexive. They rejected essentialism, the belief that there is a fundamental human or racial nature determined by biology, in favor of more paradoxical and complex explanations. Their thought was considered radical as they questioned whether there could be such a thing as rational inquiry, detached truth, a single self, an objective meaning. The term postmodern has been more widely used than poststructural, and that is the term I choose to use here, replicating its usage by the U.S. curriculum theorists (cf. Pinar & Reynolds, 1992; Pinar, Reynolds, Slattery, and Taubman, 1995; Slattery, 1995).

Postmodern curriculum theorists would seem to fall into the category of what Eisner (1979;1985;1994) called the "Social Reconstruction" orientation to curriculum. Postmodernism in education typically criticizes grand narratives as explanations for the way things are (Leistyna, Woodrum, & Sherblom, 1996). Grand narratives are explanations that have been accepted unconsciously by most people. Grand narratives in the field of gifted education would have to do with such commonly held beliefs by educators as giftedness exists and can be identified by a test score, that giftedness is good, that education of the gifted and talented should be the training of intellectuals, that gifted students should have a chance to go to colleges which will help them change their social class, that certain curricular practices such as grouping or cooperative learning are or are not effective with gifted students, and that the school system is resistant, unfriendly or discriminatory against gifted students. These and other grand narrative-related beliefs are seldom questioned by practitioners in the field.

Postmodernism has been shown to have five overarching themes (Cahoone, 1996). These take the form of the types of critiques offered. (See Table 2.) Elsewhere, I have spoken about twelve issues that seem obvious to me after my reading and thinking about what the postmodern critique offers the field of gifted education (Piirto, 1997b; 1998c; 1998d; 1998e; 1998f; 1999; www.ashland.edu/~jpiirto). These were issues of (1) issues of time; (2) issues of power and class; (3) issues of the body; (4) issues of the spirit; (5) issues of the canon; (6) issues of justice; (7) issues of diversity; (8) issues of language; (9) issues of discourse; (10) issues of desire and passion; (11) issues of gender; and (12) issues of imagination. These are not inclusive, and are perhaps idiosyncratic. Due to space limitations, only five of these will be discussed in this paper: issues of discourse, of the body, of the canon, of gender, and of power and class.

Place Table 2 about here

The first theme is that postmodernism criticizes presence; that is, the idea that anything is really there, or really exists or can be directly apprehended if it does exist. Cahoone (1996) said, "Postmodernism . . . denies that anything is "immediately present," hence independent of signs, language, interpretation, disagreement" (p. 14). This relates to the question posed by Margolin (1994): Is there such a thing as a gifted child? Is giftedness a social construction or an absolute? The issue of (1) discourse would be subsumed under this overarching theme.

The second overarching theme among postmodern thinkers is the critique of origin. Cahoone (1996) said, "Inquiry into origin is an attempt to see behind or beyond phenomena to their ultimate foundation" (p. 14). Postmodernists often deny that there is a inherent truth behind phenomena: this theme will be discussed with the issue of (2) the body.

The third overarching theme is the critique of unity. Postmodern thought attempts to argue that what has been thought of as one, a unity, will ultimately be shown to be many. Cahoone (1996) said, "For example, a text can be read in an indefinitely large number of ways, none of which provides the complete or true meaning" (p. 15). This theme reflects the structuralist origins of some postmodern thought; the structuralist philosophers argued that since culture is made of relations, the existence of the self must be plural: the selves. Issues of the (3) canon, and of (4) gender subsume themselves beneath this theme.

A fourth overarching theme found in most postmodern thought is a denial of transcendence. Cahoone (1996) said, "Where most philosophers might use the idea of justice to judge a social order, postmodernism regards that idea as itself the product of the social relations that it serves to judge; that is, the idea was created at a certain time and place, to serve certain interests, and is dependent on a certain intellectual and social context" (p. 15). Norms do not exist. For example, exactly what is truth, what is goodness, what is beauty, what is love? This theme brings forth from the critics of postmodernism accusations of relativism and of nihilism. Issues of (5) issues of power and class are collected under this theme.

An application of these four themes of postmodernism is constitutive otherness (Cahoone, 1996). What contains also excludes. Cahoone (1996) said, "What appear to be cultural units—human beings, words, meanings, ideas, philosophical systems, social organizations—are maintained in their apparent unity only through an active process of exclusion, opposition, and hierarchization" (p. 16). If someone is in a group, he is also out of other groups. Postmodern educational scholars examine social systems by attention to the margins, to the borderland, to the outsiders (Giroux, 1992; 1997; McLaren, 1995). They examine privilege with reference to lack of privilege. The existence of the other, she who is not me, becomes a subject for conjecture. The idea is that we maintain our societal groups through repression of the other.

The following will be a brief indication of each of the four themes and the five issues mentioned above. Space does not permit a fuller explanation; however, each of the themes and the issues is related in this discussion, to specific practices and beliefs in the field of gifted education. So as not to indict the field, no names of educators in the field of gifted education are used, but the issues themselves are described in the spirit of engaging in scholarly discourse and not in imputation.

1. Issues of discourse

The levels of discussion, or the focus of discussion of educational reform in our field has been defensive at worst, and conciliatory at best. One common argument in the field of the education of the gifted and talented says that the nation is at risk and that properly educating our bright students will save the nation. This argument has been used since the publication of the Marland report in 1972, where national interests were invoked to argue for the special education of the gifted. Bright students have even been called "national resources" by educators of the gifted. One wonders what people whose children aren’t so bright think about such talk. Are their children not national resources also? Educational discourse is much more complicated than the latest model or strategy with lines and diagrams within a bound curriculum guide, whether the curriculum is interdisciplinary, thematic, or whatever.

That we think we pose or solve a problem when we discuss it, and when we think that problems have solutions, is naive. Luke (1995, in Apple, 1995) in a discussion of the new research in educational discourse in and out of the classroom noted that every time we make a judgment about a textbook, about the truth of an argument, about the validity of information in a text, we are making a context-bound analysis of discourse. "Critical discourse analysis is, ultimately, a normative enterprise in which one pays one’s metaphoric money and takes one’s political chances" (p. 8).

Several curriculum models in the field of the education of the gifted and talented emphasize problem solving and others emphasize problem-finding. In thinking about problems to solve or to find, perhaps we as teachers of the talented could pose questions in this vein: What about this problem or curriculum model have we unconsciously accepted? What have we unconsciously rejected? What are the hidden features in the models we adopt, what are the ways we are compliant, complicit, or blind? All discourse has its hidden, implicit assumptions. Problems "solved" are few. The analysis of the process might reveal where unconscious processes take over, if only for a moment, and where they direct the assumptions that the problem is "solved."

Many of the conversations held between the students and the text, are seen in their faces, bodies, and questions, at home and outside of school, and not as seen in their test scores and products judged according to a rubric. Does this matter even though we cannot measure it? Yes. Selection of curriculum materials, modes of encountering the material, value of the material necessarily involves decisions that entail a knowledge of consequences, implied and spoken. Perhaps too many of the curriculum developers and practitioners in the field of the education of the gifted and talented seek quick fixes, a lesson to do on Monday morning, without engagement in the two critical issues of curriculum: (a) What shall we teach the talented and gifted? (b) For what purpose? Much of the discourse analysis literature concerns children who have trouble in school because of their cultural difference from what the school expects. Researchers in the field of the education of the talented could also conduct discourse analysis research of the "good" kids, as Margolin (1994) called them. This research could shed light on cultural likeness and on resiliency.

Other matters of discourse in the field of the education of the gifted and talented have to do with talent development and gifted education (terminology), the development of expertise (process), historical definitions of giftedness (Marland definitions, IQ definitions, domain definitions), assessment (authentic, test-driven identification) and such.

2. Issues of the body.

In our field we call for the life of the mind. Yet cultural critics, multiple intelligencists, and special educators have begun to emphasize that there are many more ways of learning than intellectual ways — that learning gets into the "intellect" through bodily means. As Madeleine Grumet (1996) said, "Identity is lived before it is taught" (p. 17). Magda (Lewis & Macedo, 1996) noted, "The body of knowledge that is the curriculum and the body experience of being schooled—learning to be still and be quiet—are not separate from each other in the process of education" (p. 33). On another bodily level, the students on whom we focus are known as "good" (Margolin, 1994). They obey; they are curious and witty and have good memories; they are crowned with haloes by adults; they sit politely in classes, helping the slower students without making a fuss, and as such, they may not receive the attention they deserve as frazzled teachers wrestle with the "troublemakers," the physically active students. Some bright young students are branded with labels of Attention Deficit Disorder and subsequently drugged for their bodily, physical activity while learning.

On still another level, current pedagogical wisdom advocate that teachers subsume their essential teaching selves from "teacher as interpreter" to "teacher as manager." In my state (Ohio) and in others (e.g. Georgia), the model of intervention specialist/ facilitation / inclusion that is beginning to dominate how the gifted and talented are taught may mitigate against a close, human relationship between teacher and student. Teaching as "performance" is a bodily act, an act of love and spontaneity. Teachers as "facilitators" may not be able to create the relationships with each individual student that make teaching a theatrical reaching out and coming back. The facilitation model may de-humanize the teacher of the talented such that the teacher becomes a function and not a person. Teaching is an act of passion and engagement with certain, specific, children — "my kids," "my class." On the other hand, the model may encourage such relationships as well.

The picture of teacher that gains emotional validation in our popular movies, is of the teacher leaping on the desk in Dead Poets Society, (1989) or the socially engaged and innovative inner city teacher in Dangerous Minds. This is the teacher who grabs our minds and emotions. That is the teacher we seek to be. Yet we teacher educators seem to be wanting to train teachers who resemble the character of "Ditto" in the movie Teachers. When we teach as performers, we bewitch our students, and they bewitch us. I as a teacher am an artist, a dancer; I can change focus from moment to moment; I can read the temperature and mood of my class; I can speak up and say something to make that sleeping student in the back sit up and participate; I can "cover" the material or not, as the moment suits me; every moment of every day in my classroom I am tripping the light fantastic. I am not a "facilitator," a "guide on the side." I am a partner in my students’ learning.

bell hooks (1995) noted that the more intellectual the teacher, the more he/she is permitted to deny the body, to be just a mind up there immobile behind the desk or podium in front of the class or lecture hall, proclaiming and personifying the "body" of knowledge he/she holds in the "mind." hooks thinks that part of the separation of social classes has to do with how little or how much one uses the body. "When the teacher walks out from behind the desk or podium the body becomes engaged with the student body" (p. 139). hooks made the provocative statement that "The person who is most powerful has the privilege of denying their body." However, such denial may also be true for those who are least powerful as well. On a recent evening, in a course called "Counseling and Creativity for the Talented" 1/3, or 8, of the 24 female teachers of the talented revealed, after reading Mary Pipher’s Reviving Ophelia (1994), that they or their daughters had or are wrestling with eating disorders. If the experience of these professional, well-dressed, caring, and perfectionistic female teachers of the talented is any indication, we still have not resolved the bodily issues raised by the visions of women in the mass media, and by the consequences of being silenced and made to conform in our school days (Pipher, 1994).

3. Issues of the canon.

American critic Harold Bloom (1994) discussed the books he believes should be included in the canon. Canon is a religious term which has come to mean the inviolable course of study that students should read and discuss in order to become "educated." Mortimer Adler, Robert Hutchins, William Bennett, Diane Ravitch, and others have argued that some books have more value than others as materials to be studied in our classes. Postmodernists argue that popular culture should also be an academic concern. "Who reads must choose," Bloom said.

While these observations have been made by feminist and minority theorists, feminist critic Toril Moi (1988) noted that even feminist critics, who don’t believe the curriculum should include all DWM’s (Dead White Males) have a canon, and that is usually novels and poems by women writers of the nineteenth century. The underlying belief is that if students read "great works" by "great authors" they will become better and finer humans. The definition of "greatness" is that the version of life that has been conveyed in the work is authentic, real, and true. The reader views the work with respect and awe. The danger of using more recent works is that they may present experience that is less respectable for school purposes. Moi called them "those deviant, unrepresentative experiences discoverable in much female, ethnic and working class writing" (p. 78). What is human is necessarily censored by one’s choice of material to include in the canon. The history that is conveyed through these works is most often a "whitewashed" history. This is convincingly demonstrated in books such as Lies My Teacher Told (Loewen, 1995), a book which deconstructs current history textbooks and the stories they tell.

Questions of what is the canon must particularly engage educators of the talented as they must take the tests that credential them for moving out of their towns, communities, and cultures to join the technocratic information producers. The question arises, What are the basics? Grumet said, "In the name of the basics, relation, feeling, fantasy, anxiety, aggression, memory, irony are all banished." Texture and wonder is missing from many of these books; then, when students enter high school and college, they are relegated to "ancestry worship, oblivious to the world students actually live in and care about" (p. 17). She said we have focused on ends rather than means.

The engagement of bright students in social criticism is not encouraged. Yet the very basis of the democratic ideal is that all people must participate in criticism and thought in order to make the decisions of the people. In history classes, students learn from textbooks and get into their minds the timelines and dates so that they can pass proficiency tests. Seldom are they taught critical history; that is, a historical view that critiques what the power structure has done, what decisions it has made. The 1990 Gulf War is never portrayed as "evil phallic posturing of insane men who have learned the lessons of their unexamined privilege well: the ritualized game of exclusion, violation and obliteration of the many for the narcissistic pleasure of their own power to destroy," as (Lewis & Macedo, 1996, p, 39) said.

Joanne (Pagano & Miller, 1996), a highly educated social and educational foundationist, agreed. She said she has studied the canon: "The literary canon so jealously defended as source and sustenance of our highest and most noble aspirations is featured prominently in my educational history." She appreciates and interacts with music, art, science, and mathematics, and she had high scores on both her SAT and her GRE. "And yet these seem not to have made me a better person." She wonders whether the current education debates will focus on "the sort of person education should produce. They are moral issues and not simply matters of skill and content. Our education ought to help us to be better persons" (p. 142). In many states, the outcomes that stated such were vehementally opposed by parents, who thought that the schools should not teach morals; the children’s parents and churches should. Of course, a postmodern position would be that one cannot teach without unconsciously infusing one’s character into what is being taught.

These are old arguments, and by now, many of us in the field of the education of the gifted and talented have made our own internal answers to these arguments. We may go along with Hirsch (1996) who argued that we must be able to talk with our grandparents, that educational theory has failed, that "skills" divorced from engaging content are useless skills, that the romantic principles on which these theories are based have been just that — well-taken, but too romantic — and that a democracy fails if there is not a shared body of knowledge that is conveyed to our students. But yet there remains a nagging doubt in the mind of this working class girl.

Many critics of the canon are themselves privileged and conversant. Then they stipulate that the poor, the disenfranchised, the despairing do not have to be conversant in the canon. On the other hand, to deny a student’s worth by ignoring that student’s heritage in the name of the canon is also arrogant. As a child of the working class with all four of my degrees obtained at low tuition state universities, I have, true to my calling as a teacher of literature, advocated a "core knowledge" curriculum. My reading in critical theory made me wonder how much have I de-valued my own experiences as a child of a miner from a Finnish American culture in doing so? Why is my culture, its literature, and its regionality marginalized? Why did I aspire to be Holden Caulfield in the 1951 novel Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, seeing the "phoniness" of the bourgeoisie, and not Daisy Miller, a naive and feckless American social climbing character in a 1915 novel of the same name, by Henry James?

4. Issues of gender.

The studies of the American Association of University Women (1995) and of Sadker and Sadker (1995) led to the conclusion that the academically talented female is at risk. Such statements as this by Magda Lewis (Lewis & Macedo, 1996): "In the seventeen years of formal education that preceded my graduate studies I had not studied the history, culture, and political realities of women, of the labouring classes, of racial and ethnic minorities, of gays and lesbians" (p. 43) are common. Pagano (Pagano & Miller, 1996) said, "As a student, I was exposed to all sorts of studies and ‘-ologies’ that taught me, objectively and disinterestedly, against my own experience, that women are, in more ways than I can count, inferior" (p. 145)

Yet the issue of gender among the gifted and talented is more than this. The personality characteristic of androgyny is known to be present in talented creative producers. Androgyny is characterized by a flexibility whereby the genders take on similar personality characteristics: women can be aggressive and men can be sensitive. The presence of androgyny as a personality attribute common to creative people is sometimes acknowledged (Barron 1968; Csikszentmihalyi, Rathunde, and Whalen 1993; Piirto, 1998g; 1999; Piirto and Fraas, 1995).

Another gender issue has to do with same-sex attraction. Yet the presence of gay academically talented and creative students has received no attention in the literature of the field of the education of the talented, but the needs of these students for role models, approval, and humanness may not be being addressed by educators in our field. We are only now beginning to acknowledge our shame in how we have ignored our talented gays, lesbians, and bisexuals (GLB). The 1997 World Conference and the 1997 National Association for Gifted Children conference posed a beginning as there were several sessions given by parents of gays and lesbians as well as by gay and lesbian teachers of the gifted and talented.

On another note, the push to engage girls in science and math has not been followed by a complementary push to engage boys in the arts and literature. This has led to a gender-bias that favors scientific and mathematical discourse over aesthetic discourse. One could even say that there is a revulsion toward encouraging male participation in the arts, especially dance.

On still another note, let us look at the make up of our field itself. The overwhelming number of teachers of the gifted and talented are white women. The overwhelming number of coordinators of programs for the gifted and talented are white women. The lack of presence of men and of minorities must have an unforeseen and unconscious influence on the development and direction of this field. Are there solutions to this latter situation? Probably not, as recruitment of men and minorities seems to fail whenever we try. One fact is that when we do attract men and minorities, they often shoot to the top of the field as we white women clamor to elect them to offices to indicate how equitable we are.

IV. Denial of TRANSCENDENCE

5. Issues of power and class.

The critiques of our field, that we are educating students in the positivist paradigm to duly and without protest assume their roles in society, must be considered. As Kincheloe, McLaren, and Steinberg said, "In a culture of positivism education becomes a form of social regulation that guides humans toward destinies that preserve the status quo" (Giroux, 1997, p. x). How is power viewed in certain school settings by men, women, children? Are our teachers aware of their complicity with the power structure, their docilility in training students toward outcomes that may preclude self-examination? Giroux asked, "How can public school classroom teachers orient themselves to curriculum in a way that acknowledges the underlying ethical and normative dimensions that structure classroom decisions and experiences?" (Giroux, p. 3).

The illusion of the rationality of the technocratic society pervades our field. While our goal as teachers and professors is to teach students that all beliefs are relative (that is, to bring students to an appreciation of each other’s beliefs and views of the world), the postmodern theorists insist that truth is not relative but relational (that is, what is considered true depends on who is in power, on what is the student’s and teacher’s relation to that power, and on the Zeitgeist). In the past year, we have seen the Lutheran and Catholic churches of Europe apologize to the Jewish people for their silence during World War II. The churches had thought that if they kept quiet, the Jewish problem would go away. And it did — straight to the ovens. If we stay neutral we support the power structure.

What do these comments have to do with the education of the gifted and talented? There is no such thing as neutrality, say the liberation theorists such as Macedo (Lewis and Macedo, 1996) and Freire (1996). This critique needs to be examined by those of us who educate academically talented students. Much of the rhetoric justifying the existence of an effort for special education for intellectually talented students is so that they can "save the world" as "natural resources." Essentially, we are educating the students to assume roles of power and privilege. If someone has power, someone does not, and when the subordinates accept their status as natural, inherent, destined, or random, oppression and power are securely entrenched.

National Excellence (1993) argues that international comparisons of test scores should drive the education of the outstandingly talented; that is, their "quiet crisis" is that they do not score as high on tests as bright students in other countries. The federal government wrote this report and drives policy toward the achievement of domination by capitalist interests through manipulation of the education of the brightest students in the U.S. toward achievement on international tests (e.g. TIMSS (Peak, et al., 1996); U.S. silence about Chinese policy toward Tibet). The justification for these practices is that the U.S. is "good"; that our capitalist free enterprise system is good for the world, and that bright students should be educated to carry out its intrusions into other cultures. A one-sided, hegemonic view of power may influence bright students who may not be taught to see U.S. policy in differing lights. For example, bright U.S. students may not be encouraged to read editorials in the foreign press. The power issue implicit in the 1998 bombing of Iraq was looked at quite differently by Indian editorial writers. One editorial stated,

The United States is one country that is not only not accustomed to speaking softly but takes pride in carrying the big stick with impunity. Turn to its record from World War II days and you will know what we mean. Dropping two lethal atomic boms on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing 105,000 persons. The massacre of 1,000,000 North and South Vietnamese civilians from 1955 to 1975 as part of the titanic struggle against communism. The support extended to innumerable feudal and military dictatorships in West Asia and elsewhere. The embargo imposed on Cuba, the coup against the popularly-elected Marxist government of Allende in Chile; the invastion of the Caribbean nation of Grenada on October 21, 1983; the seizure of Panama in December 1989 and the conspiracy against the leftist Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. And finally the continuing attacks on Iraq by a president whose own private and public conduct is not above reproach. (Husan, 1999, p. 10).

On the power issue of social class, bell hooks (1994) noted that when she, as a child of the working class, entered Stanford, she never encountered a professor who was from the working class. Her professors espoused class-less values, but were themselves members of the privileged classes. Most, or many teachers in public schools are from the working classes — many fathers, like mine, were staunch members of trade unions who sent us to college to fulfill a dream they themselves had . We still behave along lines where class counts. We may admire the intellectuals of the elite private colleges more than those of the state universities many of us attended. So it is no surprise that educators of the gifted and talented have complied with one of the implicit goals of the field —to move bright poor students into a higher social class.

When asked what is the purpose of a special education for the academically talented, many would say the purpose is to get them into a good college and help them to move social classes. They will rise above their parents, their culture, and their teachers from the working classes. This goal is seldom even questioned. What is left behind when one leaves one’s geographical place, one’s social class, one’s roots, to join the technocratic elite? Is what is left behind a sense of family, continuity, closeness, belongingness? What is the cost of what is left behind, and is it worth leaving in order to make more money and gain more intellectual respect?

Another issue of power may be, perhaps, how have certain educators of the gifted and talented been silenced, in an attempt to "fit in" to the goals of this field.? For example, many teachers and coordinators in the field of the education of the gifted and talented are practicing artist-educators who have difficulty with the limitations of the linear positivistic models presented by differently trained educationors and psychologists in this field, yet we find ourselves stifling our own intuitive ways of knowing, fearing censure and ridicule if we seem disingenuous.

Of course, another issue of power is who decides? Who decides what learners will learn and what teachers will teach? Does the Advanced Placement Company decide? Does the International Baccalaureate Company decide? Does the college English department decide? Teachers of advanced and honors classes often feel they have so much material to "cover" they cannot breathe, teach, or be free. They feel relegated to positions of "curriculum delivery woman" much as the "milk man" of yore. What is the power of the committees who choose what texts to teach and read?

Still another issue of power is that of the small, test-driven field of the education of the gifted and talented within the huge education establishment. The field has served as bellwether; and has pioneered many teaching strategies and philosophies over the years. They have not received validation nor recognition for this, and have pulled back into their shells, licked their wounds, and whimpered as they were accused of racism, classism, elitism, and test scorism by critics such as Margolin (1994) and Sapon-Shevin (1994).

Some professors of the education of the gifted and talented slink in a cowardly manner down the halls of colleges of education. Yet they know they represent a field that has no money, no prestigious following, no government cachet, but which strives toward educating and serving the needs of students who do have learning needs that are different from those of other children. They feel powerless against the onslaught of the criticisms leveled against them. What is their recourse? Perhaps to just continue as they have been, to be the pioneers of innovative educational practice that may begin as education for the talented, but will soon be adopted as education for all. Or maybe the pedagogy of the powerless is not so powerless at all, given the clientele, who can take a gem, a germ, a smidgeon and expand, magnify and extend.

V. CONSTITUTIVE OTHERNESS

Constitutive otherness engages many of the issues mentioned above, especially the issues of power, of discourse, of gender, of the body, and of the canon. Accusations and comments about the cognitive meritocracy that has been created by the sorting mechanisms in the school system have been propounded by Lasch (1995) and Herrnstein and Murray (1994). Kaplan and Kaplan (1997) wondered whether

we, in a world increasingly structured by technology and increasingly directed by the interests of the new elite, can create an order that respectfully includes people, whatever race they turn out to be, who are average or below average in intelligence." (p. 427)

Educators of the top 5% or 10% of students (the "cognitive elite") seldom portray the world as a world where those who are capable of being "symbolic analysts" (Herrnstein and Murray, 1994) are separated from their communities (the others) by frequent job relocation and by the walls of the gated communities in which they live, communicating with each other by email, fax, and private carrier, traveling on airplanes. Perhaps such separation of the brightest from the "others" will create a population unable to criticize government and commerce. Perhaps, as Kaplan and Kaplan (1997) say, "America is no longer a country that provides a lively democratic alternative to rule by an aristocracy. It is merely a country in which entry into the aristocracy is based on merit, rather than heredity" (p. 430).

Of course, many educators and parents of highly intelligent students would assert that these students are themselves treated like the "other" in their elementary and secondary schools; that they are discriminated against in both the classroom and in the curriculum. The postmodern conception of constitutive otherness can be a two-way street as can the other issues discussed above. However, here at least, perhaps the discussion has been framed and the taboos against talking about them can be mentioned and found perhaps to be straw.

Conclusion

The field of the education of the gifted and talented has embraced curriculum models such as Creative Problem-Solving, Future Problem-Solving, and Problem-Based Learning. We were teaching critical thinking, higher-order thinking, and creative thinking processes before they became part of the regular curricula. Educators in the field advocated for Advanced Placement courses, the International Baccalaureate, Junior Great Books, brain-based thinking, thematic curriculum, interdisciplinary curriculum, and the like, before regular education did. The innovations pioneered are seldom recognized. Now the postmodern curriculum theorists also go beyond the development and elaboration of curriculum models. They ask educators to engage in understanding what they are doing, why they are doing it, and whether they should continue to do it. This paper has briefly indicated some areas for thought that may be pertinent to the field of the education of the gifted and talented.

Perhaps this essay has been illuminating, and will provoke discussion, debate, and more discourse. The postmodern curriculum theorists help us to look beneath the rug, to cut the pages stuck together, and to peek into the dark places, in order to question our grand narratives, our essentialist beliefs, and our taken-for-granted conditioned convictions. The Indian philosopher Krishnamurti (1974) in his discourses on education urged teachers and students not to rely on their predispositions but to consider everything with fresh eyes. He differentiated between knowledge and intelligence, knowledge being what one acquires in order to get a degree and a job, and intelligence being the ability to see without prejudice. He asked: "Now that you are aware that you are conditioned, what next?" (p. 34). What next, indeed?

Back

References

American Association of University Women. (1995). How schools shortchange girls: The AAUW report. New York: Marlowe & Company.

Apple, M. (Ed.). (1995-1996). Review of research in education. Vol. 21. Washington, DC: American Educational Research Association.

Arendt, H. (1958). The human condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Barron, F. (1968). Creativity and personal freedom. New York: Van Nostrand.

Bloom, H. (1994). The western canon: The books and school of the ages. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company.

Borland, J. H. (1989). Planning and implementing programs for the gifted. New York: Teachers College Press.

Borland, J.H. (1996). Gifted education and the threat of irrelevance. Journal for the Education of the Gifted, 29 (2), 129-147.

Cahoone, L. (Ed.). (1996). From modernism to postmodernism: An anthology. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers.

Callahan, C.M. (1996). A critical self-study of gifted education: Healthy practice, necessary evil, or sedition? Journal for the Education of the Gifted, 19 (2), 148-163.

Csikszentmihalyi, M., Rathunde, K., & Whalen, C. (1993). Talented teenagers: The roots of success and failure. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1977). Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. Trans. H. Lane, M. Seem, and R. Hurley. New York: Viking Penguin. (Original work published 1976.)

Derrida, J. (1974). Of grammatology. Trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. (Original work published 1967.)

de Saussure, F. (1966). Course in general linguistics. Trans. W. Baskin. New York: McGraw Hill. (Original work published 1928)

Eisner, E. (1979; 1985; 1994). The educational imagination. 3^rd Ed. New York: Prentice Hall.

Foucault, M. (1972). The archaeology of knowledge. New York: Pantheon Books. (R. Swyer, Trans.) (Original work published 1971).

Foucault, M. (1980). Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings, 1972-1977. (Ed. Colin Gordon). New York: Random House. (C. Gordon, L. Marshall, J Mepham, K. Soper, Trans.). (Original works published 1972 to 1977).

Freire, P. (Ed.). (1996) Mentoring the mentor: A critical dialogue with Paolo Freire. New York: Peter Lang.

Freud, S. (1938). The basic writings of Sigmud Freud. New York: Modern Library. (A.A. Brill, Tr.) (Original works published 1870 to 1938.)

Fromm, E. (1941). Escape from freedom. New York: Farrar & Rinehart, Inc.

Gallagher, J.J. (1996). A critique of critiques of gifted education. Journal for the Education of the Gifted, 19 (2), 234-239.

Gallagher, J. J. , & Gallagher, S. (1995). Teaching the gifted child. (5 th Ed.) Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Gardner, H. (1991). The unschooled mind. New York: Basic Books.

Gardner, H. (1993). Multiple intelligences: The theory in practice. New York: Basic Books.

Greene, M. (1986). In search of a critical pedagogy. Harvard Educational Review, 56 (4), 427-441.

Giroux, H. A. (1992). Border crossings: Cultural workers and the politics of education. New York: Routledge.

Giroux, H.A. (1997). Pedagogy and the politics of hope: Theory, culture and schooling. New York: Westview Press.

Griffin, D.R. (1993), in Griffin, D.R., Cobb, J.B., Ford, M.B., Gunter, P.A.Y., & Ochs, P. (1993). Founders of constructive postmodern philosophy: Peirce, James, Bergson, Whitehead, and Hartshorne (pp. i to xvii). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

Grumet, M., & Macedo, E. (1995). Power and education: Who decides the forms schools have taken, and who should decide? In J. Kincheloe and S. Steinberg (Eds.), Thirteen questions: Reframing education’s conversation, pp. 33-57. New York: Peter Lang.

Habermas, J. (1972). Knowledge and human interests. (J. Shapiro, Trans.). Boston: Beacon.

Herrnstein, R., & Murray, C. (1994). The Bell Curve: Intelligence and class structure in American life. New York: The Free Press.

Hirsch, E.D. (1993, October). Esprit de core. Core Knowledge Foundation Newsletter, p. 1.

Hirsch, E. D. (1996). The schools we need. New York: Doubleday.

hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. New York: Routledge.

Howley, C., Howley, A., & Pendarvis, E. (1995). Out of our minds: Anti-intellectualism and talent development in American schooling. New York: Teachers College Press.

Husan, M. (January 2, 1999). The unipolar fantasy. The New Indian Express, p. 10.

Kaplan, S. (1986). Curriculum atrix model. In J. Renzulli (Ed.), Systems and models for developing programs for the gifted and talented (pp. 332-346). Mansfield Center, Conn: Creative Learning Press.

Kaplan, L.D., & Kaplan, C. (1997). Democracy, meritocracy, and the cognitive elite: The real thesis of The Bell Curve. Educational Theory, 47 (3), 425-431.

Kemnitz, T.M., Martin, E.G., Hegeman, K.T., Hickey, J.G. (1982). Management systems for gifted and special educational programs. New York: Trillium Press.

Kincheloe, J.L., & Steinberg, S.R. (Eds.). (1996). Thirteen questions: Reframing education’s conversation. New York: Peter Lang.

Krishnamurti, J. (1974). Krishnamurti on education. Chennai, India: Krishnamurti Foundation India.

Lasch, C. (1995). The revolt of the elites and the betrayal of democracy. New York: W. W. Norton.

Leistyna, P., Woodrum, A., & Sherblom, S. (Eds.). (1996). Breaking free: The transformative power of critical pedagogy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Educational Review.

Levi-Strauss, C. (1972). Structural anthropology (C. Jacobson & B. Grundefest Schoepf, Trans.). Hammondsworth, England: Penguin. (Original work published 1958).

Lewis, M., & Macedo, D. (1996). Power and education: Who decides the forms schools have taken, and who should decide? In J.L. Kincheloe, and S.R. Steinberg, S.R. (Eds.). (1996). Thirteen questions: Reframing education’s conversation, pp. 31-58. New York: Peter Lang.

Loewen, J.W. (1995). Lies my teacher told me: Everything your American history textbook got wrong. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Luke, A. (1995-96). Text and discourse in education: An introduction to critical discourse analysis. Review of Research in Education, Vol. 21, pp. 3-48. Washington, DC: American Educational Research Association.

Lyotard, J. (1992). The postmodern explained. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

Maker, C. J. (1982a). Curriculum development for the gifted. Rockville, MD: Aspen.

Maker, C. J. (1982b). Teaching models for the education of the gifted. Rockville, MD: Aspen.

Maker, C.J., & Nielson, A.B. (1996a). Teaching models in the education of the gifted, 2^nd Ed. Austin, TX: Pro-Ed.

Maker, C.J., & Nielson, A.B. (1996b). Curriculum development and teaching strategies for gifted learners, 2^nd Ed. Austin, TX: Pro-Ed.

Marcuse, H. (1964). One dimensional man; studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. Boston: Beacon Press

Margolin, L.M. (1994). Goodness personified: The emergence of gifted children. Hawthorne, N Y: Aldine de Gryuter.

McLaren, P. (1995). Critical pedagogy and predatory culture: Oppositional politics in a postmodern era. New York: Routledge.

Merleau-Ponty, M. (1962). Phenomenology of perception. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Miller, H. (1915). Daisy Miller. London: Martin Secker.

Moi, T. (1985). Sexual/textual politics: Feminist literary theory. New York: Routledge.

National Excellence. (1993). U.S. Department of Education Office of Research and Evaluation. Author. P. O. Ross.

Pagano, J. , & Miller, J. (1996). Women and education: In what ways does gender affect the educational process? In In J.L. Kincheloe, and S.R. Steinberg, S.R. (Eds.). (1996). Thirteen questions: Reframing education’s conversation, pp. 139-156. New York: Peter Lang

Peak, L. et al. (1996). Pursuing Excellence: A Study of U.S. Eighth-Grade Mathematics and Science Teaching, Learning, Curriculum, and Achievement in International Context. Initial Findings from the Third International Mathematics and Science Study. U.S. Department of Education. Office of Research and Improvement.

Pendarvis, E., D., & Howley, A. (1996). Playing fair: The possibilities of gifted education. Journal for the Education of the Gifted, 19 (2), 215-233.

Piirto, J. (1994). Talented children and adults: Their development and education, 1^st Ed. New York: Macmillan.

Piirto, J. (1997a). Precepts for curriculum for the talented. The Journal Portfolio, 13, 10-17.

Piirto, J. (1997b). Twelve issues: Postmodern curriculum thought and the education of the gifted. Speech presented at National Association for Gifted Children meeting, November, 1997, Little Rock, Arkansas.

Piirto, J. (1998a). Understanding those who create. .2nd Ed. Tempe, AZ: Gifted Psychology Press.

Piirto, J. (1998b). Review of Slattery, P. (1995). Curriculum development in the postmodern era. New York: Peter Lang. Gifted Child Quarterly, 42, 2, 130-133.

Piirto, J. (1998c) Twelve issues. Speech and video at Iowa Research Symposium, University of Iowa, May, 1998.

Piirto, J. (1998d). Twelve issues. Speech and video at European Council for High Ability meeting, Oxford, England, September, 1998.

Piirto, J. (1998e). Twelve issues. Speech and video at Ohio Association for Gifted Children meeting, Columbus, Ohio, October, 1998.

Piirto, J. (1998f). Twelve issues. Speech and video at National Association for Gifted Children meeting, Louisville, Kentucky, November, 1998.

Piirto, J. (1998g). Understanding those who create (2^nd ed.), Tempe, AZ: Gifted Psychology Press.

Piirto, J. (1999). Talented children and adults: Their development and education. 2^nd Edition. Columbus, OH: Prentice Hall/Merrill.

Piirto, J., & Fraas, J. (1995). Androgyny in the personalities of talented teenagers. Journal of Secondary Gifted Education, (2), 93-102.

Pinar, W., & Reynolds, W. (Eds.) (1992). Understanding curriculum as phenomenological and deconstructed text. New York: Teachers College Press.

Pinar, W., Reynolds, W., Slattery, P., & Taubman, P. (1995). Understanding curriculum: An introduction to the study of historical and contemporary curriculum discourses. New York: Peter Lang.

Pipher, M. (1994). Reviving Ophelia: Saving the lives of adolescent girls. New York: Ballantine.

Renzulli, J. S., & Reis, S. J. (1985). The schoolwide enrichment model. Mansfield Center, CT: Creative Learning Press.

Sadker, M., & Sadker, D. (1995). Failing at fairness: How America’s schools shortchange girls. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.

Salinger, J.P. (1951). Catcher in the rye. Boston: Little, Brown.

Sapon-Shevin, M. (1994). Playing favorites: Gifted education and the disruption of community. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

Sartre, J. P. (1956). Being and nothingness: An essay on phenomenological ontology. . New York: Philosophical Library. (Trans. H. E. Barnes. Original work published 1943.)

Sartre, J. P. (1991). Critique of dialectical reason.. New York : Verso. (Q. Hoare, Trans.) (Original work published 1960).

Slattery, P. (1995a). A postmodern vision of time and learning: A response to the National Education Commission Report Prisoners of Time. Harvard Educational Review, 65 (4), 612-633.

Slattery, P. (1995b). Curriculum development in the postmodern era. New York: Garland.

Tannenbaum, A. (1983). Gifted children: Psychological and educational perspectives. New York: Macmillan Co.

Tannenbaum, A. (1986). The enrichment matrix model. In J. Renzulli (Ed.), Systems and models for developing programs for the gifted and talented (pp. 391-429). Mansfield Center, Conn: Creative Learning Press.

Tyler, R. (1949). Basic principles of curriculum and instruction. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

VanTassel-Baska, J. (Ed.). (1988). Comprehensive curriculum for gifted learners. Needham Hts., MASS.: Allyn & Bacon.

VanTassel-Baska, J. (Ed.). (1994a). Comprehensive curriculum for gifted learners. Needham Hts., MASS.: Allyn & Bacon.

VanTassel-Baska, J. (1994b). Planning and implementing curriculum for the gifted. Denver, CO: Love.

Ward, V. (1961/1980). Differential education for the gifted. Ventura, Ca: Ventura County Superintendent of Schools.

Table 2: Overarching Themes With Their Subsumed Issues