Negative Societal Stereotypes About the Gifted Are Not the Only Problem: A Greater Problem is a Transactional Notion of Giftedness

Stereotypes of the gifted are nothing new. Lewis Terman hoped to combat them with his longitudinal research showing that gifted students are not just identified as gifted in school and then go on to fade. But his study, and others like it, failed adequately to take into account the nonindependence of predictors and criteria—that is, the children who were assessed and given the label of “gifted” would receive opportunities that other, unassessed young people would not have. Those not labeled by society as “gifted” then may turn against those who are so labeled and see the success of the labeled not as a reason to uphold the system of labeling, but rather to overturn it. An alternative is to develop a more constructive, universally beneficial definition of giftedness–one that is transformational in nature and directs people toward a common good, not just their own good and the good of others like them.