ABSTRACT

Gifted education is assuredly a nascent fi eld. Although the classical Greeks have been credited with divine explanations of genius (Grinder, 1985) and Platonic visions of differential preparation for varying social roles (Tannenbaum, 2000), and examples of eighteenth-century child assessment practices and policies for educational opportunity appear in reviews (Shi & Zha, 2000), the modern, scientifi c beginnings of interest in the constructs of eminence, giftedness, precocity, and talent initially appear most visibly in concert with the nineteenth-century rise of psychology as a distinct discipline. In particular, the 103 years bookended by the appearance of Sir Francis Galton’s Hereditary Genius in 1869 and U.S. Commissioner of Education Sidney P. Marland’s Report to the United States Congress in 1972 provide a rich array of ideas about talent development and the people who initiated, applied, or popularized those ideas. The time period covered by Illuminating Lives is peopled by fascinating fi gures and offers the reader often surprising analyses of their contributions to gifted education. This text provides the fi rst book-length examination of selected key fi gures in gifted education and of their conceptual and practical contributions to the fi eld during a productive and prescient 100-year period. Although the book begins with the appearance of a British publication four years after the end of the American Civil War and concludes with a report to the U.S. Congress that coincides with a period of political

and educational activism on behalf of gifted learners in the United States, the key fi gures in this book represent multiple countries and cultures. The book is overtly Western in its orientation, but in both the key fi gures and in the authors invited to investigate them, we have included individuals outside the United States. This international perspective is an important part of a broader understanding of gifted education.