High Cognitive Minds

Linda Silverman, whose website, Gifted Development Center, is focused primarily on gifted children, is also responsible for Advanced Development, a series of journals about gifted adults.  Out of curiosity, I recently took a look at the two issues I own, and the list of issues to date. The titles of the ten issues which have been published so far are:

Volume 1 - Positive Disintegration
Volume 2 - Models of Integration
Volume 3 - The Possible Human
Volume 4 - The Self
Volume 5 - Valuing the Feminine
Volume 6 - Becoming Authentic
1995 Special Edition on Gifted Adults
Volume 7 - A Kaleidoscope of Creativity
Volume 8 - Counseling Gifted Adults
Volume 9 - Spirituality and Giftedness
Volume 10 - Exploring Intuition

What is remarkable is that in 17 years, (the first journal was published in 1989), there has not been a single issue devoted to intellectual giftedness. Is it possible that this subject has been addressed in issue 7, on creativity? The table of contents lists three poems, a soliloquy, a short story, and seven articles. Two of the articles, "Nuance and Omnivalence in the Creative Mind," and "Intellect as Prelude: The Potential for Higher Level in the Gifted,"  sound as if they might touch on intellectual giftedness, but I suspect it's no more than a touch.

I've been exploring this issues for several years, and my frustration is now mixed with a sense of irony. Over and over, gifted children are held up as a resource, the potential solvers of problems that baffle humanity. Yet there is virtually no interest in their intellectual development or concern about the effect of that lack on the adults that gifted children eventually become.