Gifted and Talented Education

When most practitioners and researchers who focus on the education of Latino immigrant children talk about gifted education, it is often as an afterthought or as part of a general concern about issues of equity and inclusion. Interaction with individuals working in the field of gifted and talented education is infrequent, and frequently giftedness is discussed exclusively with reference to White flight. GATE (gifted and talented education) programs are often seen by minority researchers and practitioners as an elitist strategy used by administrators and parents to provide "quality" educational experiences for nonminority children who are enrolled in schools with high concentrations of immigrant children or as disruptive arrangements that have a negative social impact on Latino children, their parents, and their communities.

Many members of the gifted and talented educational community agree strongly with D. M. Harris and Weismantel (1991), who stated that: "There are gifted students among every population. In societies with increasing diversity, the need to identify and educated gifted and talented students from all backgrounds is pressing. The blending of cultural groups, under the leadership of these students, is important to the future of the nation".

More important perhaps, the field of gifted and talented education must embrace Maker and Schiever's conclusion that bilingualism is a strength, the development of which needs to be established as a focus of programs designed to meet the needs of our increasingly multilingual student population. As long as definitions of giftedness do not incorporate bilingual performance such as that manifested by the young interpreters that we studied, the special kinds of potential giftedness exhibited by such youngsters will not be valued, fostered in instruction, or positively evaluated in formal education. Additionally, and most important for us, Latino students will not have the opportunity to develop the type of positive self-awareness that derives from the incontestable positive evaluation of abilities by those who matter. They also will not have the opportunity to receive instruction designed to extend the special gifts and talents that we identified, such as memory, speed in processing messages, expressional fluency, ideational fluency, abstract thinking, and concentration. Many scholars are convinced that with appropriate instruction, these youngsters will be able to apply these abilities to academic tasks and perform at remarkably high levels of academic accomplishment as well.