Create a 5 pages page paper that discusses gifted education programs. Thus, it was believed that brains should be identified and promoted early. However, the impact of such a move has never been clear

Create a 5 pages page paper that discusses gifted education programs. Thus, it was believed that brains should be identified and promoted early. However, the impact of such a move has never been clear. Though studies have been conducted sporadically, none has been conclusive enough to say whether it is wise to continue with gifted education programs or not.

The first point that is put forward by people like Southern, Jones, and Fiscus (1989) is the socio-emotional consequences of such a separation from their mediocre counterparts. It is argued that when such students are separated, they are subjected to practices like grade skipping, gifted classes, and gifted schools as a way of acceleration. According to the writers, there are both isolation and development of self-misconception.

The most important social and personality issue that can arise out of such programs is elitism against the common American concept of egalitarianism. The students who just manage to enter the gifted category get access to special privileges and high esteem. This situation gives birth to the development of elitism in this group of elite students as they start believing that they are special categories of people who deserve special attention.

Admittedly, all these pains are worth taking if there is a significant improvement in the academic and social performance of the selected talents. A survey that was conducted recently (cited in Garfunkel & Mumford, 2011), revealed that American students stand 25th in mathematical ability out of the total 34 countries that are compared. Here, the serious question arises: is it worth spending this much money, time, and effort on something that apparently fails to make any considerable improvement in the students of both the gifted and the ‘cattle classes’?

There is a large number of studies that show that the effects of gifted education on cognitive performance, social performance, and socio-emotional characteristics are either marginal or negative. The literature review done by Hoogeveen looks into the various studies that deal with the social and emotional consequences of gifted education programs. Hoogeveen’s (2008) study adopted a method in which the effect of various gifted education programs is measured on a scale in which 0.80 indicates a large effect, 0.50 indicates medium effect, and 0.20 indicates an insignificant effect.