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My unpopular take is that people, and definitely the government, would take gifted options more seriously if there weren’t so many kids who did nothing more than learn the multiplication table early being classified as gifted. You limit enrollment to only the extreme outliers and at that point there would be national security benefits to identifying these children. (Heck, I'd bet the federal government might even try to step in and take over the education of gifted children for its own benefit.)

As it stands, it’s just a bunch of kids who mostly land on boringly normal tracks to public flagships. There’s not much upside in even identifying them, because "gifted" has been reduced to mean, well, pretty much anyone who can get a good grade.

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bluefirebrand 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> My unpopular take is that people, and definitely the government, would take gifted options more seriously if there weren’t so many kids who did nothing more than learn the multiplication table early being classified as gifted.

It isn't that unreasonable to ask for an education system that pushes kids as fast as the kid keeps up with and eases them back if they regress to the mean at some point

Learning the multiplication table early isn't necessarily a sign that someone is a genius, but it does mean they are ahead of their class. There is no benefit to holding them back to the level of other kids their age "just in case they might not actually be gifted" or whatever it is you are proposing

If they wind up graduating high school early but then not really doing anything exceptional in their lives that's actually fine

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bilbo0s 11 hours ago | parent [-]

It isn't that unreasonable to ask for an education system that pushes kids as fast as the kid keeps up with and eases them back if they regress

Surely you can see the damage this would do to the majority of children currently being told they are "gifted"?

Being "gifted" until the 6th, 7th, or 8th grade would psychologically cripple a lot of these kids through high school. It's better to not allow that "advanced but not gifted" demographic in from the outset, than it is to unceremoniously boot them at some arbitrary time in the future if they fail to keep up with those at the extremes.

The better ideas are the remediation, normal, advanced and then gifted classifications. And you don't get the gifted label unless you are on the extreme of exceptional.

	▲	bluefirebrand 10 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> Surely you can see the damage this would do to the majority of children currently being told they are "gifted"? We don't have to call it "gifted", we can call it "accelerated" or "ahead of their age" or whatever else you want The point is that while they may not become exceptional adults, if they are exceptional for an 8 year old it is doing them a disservice to keep them at the same level as all of the other kids their age > Being "gifted" until the 6th, 7th, or 8th grade would psychologically cripple a lot of these kids through high school I don't think you can claim this without evidence. And no, people whine-blogging online about being a former gifted kid and now a depressed and anxious failure is not evidence

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spamizbad 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This is my view as well. You can see the effects of this policy from the 80s and 90s with the sheer number of "former gifted kid" adults who feel like they were destined for greatness but ended up with pretty standard knowledge worker jobs. There's a difference between being a bright, contentious hard-working student and being genuinely intellectually gifted - today we lump these kids together, which not only balloons the cost of the program but gives both students and parents a false sense of what it actually means.

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corpMaverick 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Perhaps you need several program levels? remedial, normal, advanced and gifted.

My naive take is that there is a need for each. remedial helps kids to catch up. Normal is where you have perhaps 70% of the students, advanced where you have kids with more natural ambition in some subjects and gifted is where you send the top 5%?

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jessepasley 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Is that how gifted students are identified these days? When I went through the gifted program as a kid/teen, we had to take what was considered to be an IQ test at the time. Being far ahead in some skills in schools might be have been indicator but not sufficient to being admitted.

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Der_Einzige 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

"GATE" as a CIA/FBI Psyop is already a common schizo opinion on 4chan. Don't make it reality please.

(for those who don't know: https://www.reddit.com/r/HighStrangeness/comments/1fdg8io/wh...)