ABSTRACT
Discussion about giftedness tends to embody both conceptual inadequacy and the errors of thinking. This chapter represents a case study of an educational issue that is an embarrassing muddle because people have not worked out what they mean by gifted', because they think in terms of it involving generic skill, and because they are inconsistent and confused about whether judgements of quality are relative or absolute, and subjective or objective. The current preoccupation with giftedness is instructive in that it betrays a number of features that are common to debates about many educational issues. Concern for giftedness presumably arises out of a sense that there are in schools many particularly able students who are not being engaged or stretched enough in intellectual and other respects. Furthermore, giftedness, for most people, is a concept that goes beyond the vocational and technological bias of our age, being partially identified with concepts such as imagination and creativity, as well as intelligence.
