My personal opinion especially now is that gifted programs are a waste of time for the following reasons:
1) All students should be learning the fundamentals.
2) If you are gifted, being able to work with, communicate with, and help people less gifted than you is going to be a valuable life skill.
3) Finding new intellectually challenging things to do even in boring circumstances is a useful skill to learn. Even Einstein had to sit through boring faculty meetings.
4) In a gifted class, the child is probably substantially smarter than the teachers. Highly gifted people aren't going into elementary education in large enough numbers for their to be enough gifted teachers for the number of gifted students.
5) With the Internet and widespread knowledge, the truly gifted can learn so much on their own. Once a child knows how to read, curiosity, ability, and time are the only limits. With a truly gifted child, the less challenging the schoolwork is, the more time and energy they can dedicate to other things.
6) A stable, nurturing family that values and encourages intellectual achievement is probably far more important than what kind of school you go to as long as the school is competent.
With regards to number 5, how many of you that learned programming as a kid, leaned it in school vs learned it on your own by reading books or via the Internet?
As a society we should strive to make school something that teaches to basics well for all children and stimulates curiosity and gives children the necessary tools to learn on their own.
1) All students should be learning the fundamentals.
2) If you are gifted, being able to work with, communicate with, and help people less gifted than you is going to be a valuable life skill.
3) Finding new intellectually challenging things to do even in boring circumstances is a useful skill to learn. Even Einstein had to sit through boring faculty meetings.
4) In a gifted class, the child is probably substantially smarter than the teachers. Highly gifted people aren't going into elementary education in large enough numbers for their to be enough gifted teachers for the number of gifted students.
5) With the Internet and widespread knowledge, the truly gifted can learn so much on their own. Once a child knows how to read, curiosity, ability, and time are the only limits. With a truly gifted child, the less challenging the schoolwork is, the more time and energy they can dedicate to other things.
6) A stable, nurturing family that values and encourages intellectual achievement is probably far more important than what kind of school you go to as long as the school is competent.
With regards to number 5, how many of you that learned programming as a kid, leaned it in school vs learned it on your own by reading books or via the Internet?
As a society we should strive to make school something that teaches to basics well for all children and stimulates curiosity and gives children the necessary tools to learn on their own.
* As an example of a gifted child, Von Neumann https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann is a much better example than Einstein.