[citation needed] Twice exceptional students are identified as being gifted/talented ("G&T") and diagnosed with specific learning challenges, such as ADHD, dyslexia and other language-based learning disabilities, anxiety, high functioning autism, social communication disorder, or sensory processing challenges.

[2] These students are often unable to master curriculum to their potential in a traditional classroom; they are often labelled "lazy" and misunderstood by teachers, administrators, and peers.

Lang was a suburban Maryland public school teacher who, in 1979, taught what the local Board of Education deemed overly challenging material to his "ungifted" students, engaging them in Socratic debates about Machiavelli’s The Prince and Plato’s Republic, texts normally limited to 12th-grade Advanced Placement classes.

Although the school where he was working threatened to fire him if he did not teach what was commonly considered 10th-grade material in more traditional ways, he persisted.

“I made a premeditated, intellectual decision to continue teaching the way I had,” he said at the time.