Some may say the article does not show how the unique needs of gifted children would be best served in an inclusive classroom, but rather values equal outcomes for all.
A high point of the article, because it shows a rare glimmer of understanding of gifted, may be:
"A frequent reason that gifted students are removed from typical classrooms is that they need a more supportive environment. Gifted students often report isolation and lack of acceptance in typical heterogeneous classrooms (Deslisle 1984). Gifted students, like all students, need to be in classrooms in which their skills and talents are appreciated and their struggles and challenges are supported.
However, the article seems to not give these thoughts due consideration: note that the name Delisle was misspelled as De
slisle in the article, and his premise was quickly dismissed, not with fact or research, but with a question:
But why should we assume that this kind of classroom atmosphere is best achieved (or only achieved) by segregating gifted students...
Posing this question does not explain "why gifted students belong in inclusive schools", as the title of the article suggests.
At several points in the article, the work of Mara Sapon-Shevin is referenced. We can read a bit about her from the Amazon bio, and the list of her works including
Playing Favorites: Gifted Education and the Disruption of Community... interested readers may wish to use the look-inside feature to glimpse the flavor of this book, read the perspectives offered in the rating comments, and skim a brief bio of one of the co-authors of the book's foreword,
Jeannie Oakes. These individuals have been described as critics of gifted education, which they have evidently termed "elitist" and regard as being incompatible with "equitable schooling".
Some may say that "socially just schools" may be those which acknowledge the different needs of various students and seek to meet them, rather than treating students as one-size-fits-all. Gifted pupils have a right to learn new material each day, just as their age-peers do. When gifted pupils may already know the material which is being taught to their age-peers, the gifted pupils ought to be learning something else. For this not to be distracting or disruptive, a separate learning space makes sense.
Research has shown that both gifted pupils and mainsteam kids learn better when they are among intellectual peers, rather than in a mixed ability classroom. This thread on
Ability Grouping Research discusses that; Especially valuable may be the links to research, posted by Tigerle.
There is a difference between acknowledging one is "
better at..." and supposing one has an attitude of being "
better than...".
