ABSTRACT
This chapter provides the opportunity to contextualize the present state of the field: historical analysis is a viable area of inquiry that can inform current practice. It begins with the history of modern gifted education as a twentieth-century phenomenon although our intellectual roots reach much further back into antiquity—both Eastern and Western. The history of the last two centuries of gifted education is substantially North American and European, reflecting the European roots of scientific psychology in Austria, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Many historical reviews identify Sir Francis Galton as the grandfather of gifted education. His fascination with eminence influenced the work of Catharine Cox Miles in the second volume of Terman's Genetic Studies of Genius and even reappears as a goal in recent formulations of talent development models. The 1970s proved to be particularly notable in terms of federal policy and subsequent institutional initiatives in gifted education.
