In a recent opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, Charles Murray voices his opinion about intelligence. He postulates that the intellectually gifted can be defined as those with IQs over 120, which is the top 10% of intelligence and that this group of people has a huge influence on our economy, culture, and institutions. In spite of the importance of this group to society, in 2006, the Department of Education spent only one–hundredth of 1% of its budget on gifted education and in 2007, President Bush zeroed it out.

 

Despite the lack of federal funding for gifted education, most students of this ability find their way to college. What they lack from the absence of gifted education support is training as citizens. Murray feels that because it is considered elitist to talk about inequality of ability, children who know they are smarter tend to think of themselves as superior to others. Instead, he states, children should be taught that their intellectual talent is a gift, that they are not superior beings, and that their gifts bring obligations, including the obligation to be wise.

 

To be wise, one must have humility, which is attained through recognition of one’s own limits and fallibilities. In an era of education where many high-IQ students go through school never taking a course that they feel they can’t handle, they are not given the opportunity to hit an intellectual wall. Gifted students need to have some classes together so that “their feet can be held to the fire” intellectually. They need to master analytical building blocks and be steeped in the study of ethics. Gifted children need to learn more than to be nice; they need to learn what it means to be good. They also need an advanced knowledge of history. This all adds up to a revival of the classical definition of a liberal arts education to prepare these students to contribute to society in worthwhile ways.