ABSTRACT
According to gifted child scholarship's rhetoric of inclusion, the gifted are not more special or unique than anyone else. Gifted education does not foster and support social hierarchies. Gifted child scholar's deny that gifted-child discourse assumes a two-tiered caste system with the gifted representing the good and deserving, and the "not-gifted" representing the negative. Programs for the gifted provide them with opportunities to exercise their potential that are lacking in classrooms for ordinary children. Dewey Cornell did a study on gifted children's family experiences. Using a sample of 42 families with children ages 6 to 11, 22 of whom have children attending gifted programs, Cornell found that having a gifted child is associated with greater feelings of pride and closeness by parents. Cornell describes the nongifted siblings of gifted children as less outgoing, more easily upset, and more shy and restrained. They also were more excitable and impatient and more tense and frustrated.
