Equality of Opportunity and the Education of the Talented

It is contested whether talented students should receive special educational attention. Opposition to programs of talented or gifted education is often motivated by the notion that these programs undermine equality of opportunity. This chapter addresses the issue of education for the talented from the perspective of (educational) justice. After discussing the notion of talent, different distributive principles are laid out, so as to examine whether, or to what extent, they legitimize the special promotion of talented students. The discussion proceeds from a meritocratic conception to luck-egalitarian principles, and ideas related to Rawls’s difference principle. It then turns to the demand for strict equality of educational outcomes, and principles of adequacy.