She makes some good points, but my take is that we in the 21st century are more bound to the success of our weakest links. Our world has become so complicated, one small mistake can have dire consequences. So, it's the state's priority to spend its limited resources helping those struggling to tread water. Gifted children will get the stimulus they need at home via independent study or from their family. I know since I gave myself an almost complete college education in computer science before I graduated from high school. Splitting gifted kids apart can warp them socially for life too.

> we in the 21st century are more bound to the success of our weakest links

only because they can vote

> Gifted children will get the stimulus they need at home via independent study or from their family

This is definitely not true for poorer gifted students:

- whose parents may not even know anything about the field that the student is interested in

- whose parents may see higher education as a waste of time or have other anti-intellectual views like a sizeable chunk of the US

- who may have ADHD (pretty likely actually) and need some kind of external structure to pursue something to the student's maximum potential

> Splitting gifted kids apart can warp them socially for life too

Gathering gifted kids together, instead of bunching them with lowest common denominators, can result in lifelong friendships. Out of 5 friends from high school that I'm still close with, 4 are in big tech and 1 is in a prestigious PhD program, we still try to gather a few times a year even though we've been out of high school for 10 years.

> Gifted children will get the stimulus they need at home via independent study or from their family.

Or by disrupting the rest of the class.

> Splitting gifted kids apart can warp them socially for life too.

Single streaming gifted kids can also warp them socially. Gifted kids in a single stream classroom need to learn to play dumb or become a social pariah. My school district had tracked 1-6, and semi-tracked 7-12. It was a real adjustment leaving the core group where learning and knowledge was appreciated and developed, even if most of the kids in the 'honors/advanced' sections were people I knew from the tracked grade school experience. My child had pullout 'branches' in his current school district 2-4, and AFAIK, it seemed pretty useless; my spouse had a similar pullout program growing up and also reports not getting much out of it, other than a target on their back, socially. Not having a core group supportive of learning gave my kid a lot of trouble in grade 7; although 7-8 is generally a hard time for kids; we're having a lot better experience in 8 at a small private school where the kids all want to learn.

OTOH, I have a cousin who absolutely hated her experience in a tracked system, so I get that too.

There's a bunch of different things all clamoring for more resources in education, and prioritizing is hard, but I think a lot of the conversation in the past few years has been about "why do they get this nice thing? they shouldn't have it" as opposed to "why can't we all have this nice thing" or "how do we make sure selection criteria is not discriminatory".

But I'm pragmatic. Gifted kids can often work more self-directed, so let their class sizes float upwards, and have the other classes float downward.

>Gifted children will get the stimulus they need at home via independent study or from their family.

That's extremely optimistic.

What is the purpose of government? Maybe its some sort of collective action/game theory thing, i.e., handle problems that is in no individual's best interest to solve.

But if that's the case, then government should probably be serving the greatest number, instead of a relatively small amount.

> but my take is that we in the 21st century are more bound to the success of our weakest links.

Bound in what way? Gated by? Morally obligated to?

You can help the weakest links without tearing down the most gifted.