Giftedness and Talent in the 21st Century

the Life Trajectories of the Gifted and Talented
children will be pushed forward into the dingy, dangerous, oppressive region under
the macroproblems on the underside of the globalization wave. Here, their lives will
be poor, nasty, brutish, and short while they are being crushed inexorably by those
macroproblems.
In the Hobbes trap they will suffer from unrelenting insecurity and severe
economic deprivation deriving from reliance on increasingly rare and far more
expensive natural resources as well as the destitution that comes from exploitation
of the vast majority by a few extremely powerful, selfish, unethical plutocrats who
monopolize the levers of an increasingly distorted form of hegemonic, globalized
capitalism. They will suffer from human-rights abuses that ensue from the erosion of
democracy, the aforementioned economic exploitation, and the escalations of mass
conflict that occur when populations face severe, unprecedented environmental
stressors. In addition, they likely will face as yet unimagined difficulties that will
come from the unpredictable negative effects of runaway technology.
Should they escape the Hobbes trap and make the quantum leap, today’s children,
tomorrow’s adults, will have opportunities to sample a profusion of enormously
appealing prospects heretofore undreamt. This especially will be the case for the
gifted and creative. They will be able to contribute to, and benefit from, numerous,
rapid leaps forward in scientific innovation and knowledge, which will emerge from
the meshing of micro-expertise through networked, interdisciplinary science. They
will find creative, ethical new ways to make the powerful, innovative capacities
of globalized capitalism work for the good of the vast majority instead of for the
benefit of a selfish, vainglorious, hyper-materialistic, well-positioned few. They will
come up with ways to solve our current resource shortages while creating a new
era of environmentally friendly abundance. Most importantly, they will diminish
violence and greed by capitalizing on cognitive diversity, developing their creative
intelligence, and dismantling the dogmatism that plagues so many in so many ways.
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS, AND DISPOSITIONS
The high-impact globalization wave shown in the catch a wave model in
Figure 2 requires more than rote learning of easily measured knowledge and skills.
Such an education may have sufficed in the early to mid-20th century, as shown by
the linear life trajectory arrow in that region of the model. But the quantum leap
to the crest of the wave will require an extensive range of other abilities, which
are outlined in the list to follow. We could argue that only the gifted few with
leadership potential need to master the daunting list of proficiencies in this list.
Moreover, we could claim that these gifted individuals need not address the entire
range of proficiencies. Instead, they could specialize and count on widespread
collaboration among specialists to solve macroproblems and capitalize on macroopportunities.
Such an argument makes some sense because it would be extremely
difficult for anyone to master all of the proficiencies. However, the majority of
citizens, designated gifted or not, will need to develop some understanding of
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