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RE 1., your analogy to food is both misapplied and unhelpful. The choice here is between "better education" and "standard education", not between "better education" and "no education at all". You can't test the logic of that argument by applying it to the food case and expect a sensible result.

Unless you can disprove GP's three arguments, we're talking about a trade-off. Trade-offs should not solved by rhetorics and ideology but by a careful cost-benefit analysis.

I think you're applying a very ungenerous reading to the parent.

The parent's argument is exactly the same if we change "giving people food" to "giving people who have food that isn't suitable for them food that's more suitable for them".

Maybe you think that the parent's argument is flawed because you think that all people have the same basic educational needs. That's what TFA is arguing is not true, but maybe it's wrong; you could make that case. But quibbling over the exact formulation of an analogy is not the kind of concrete thinking that you're asking for.

This point needs to get more attention, anyone who is boiling this down to a simple black/white situation is oversimplifying the issue.

Determining the value in integrating "gifted" kids with "non-gifted" kids is in effect the same argument that is held with regard to determining the affect that charter schools have on our school system, simply change the modifier from gifted/non-gifted to interested/uninterested in school and we are having the same debate.

There are pros and cons to both models and people have to admit to both sides of it, otherwise they are being disingenuous with their analysis.

I never said 'better' vs 'none'. I said should you give some resource to someone who could benefit from it when there are other people who also would benefit that you will fail to identify.

Presumably even in my analogy the people not given food had some food, since they were merely weak and not starved to death.

But that ignores my argument anyway! My point is that you should do what you can do, even if it's imperfect. The food analogy was to show that the argument 'don't help some people because it's unfair to the people you don't help' is extremely stupid.

More light, less heat. Where're your facts or evidence?

Facts? The argument against me was 'you shouldn't help people because you might not help some people that you could also help'.

That's a moral argument, and my reply was a moral argument.

Point 1 presents a false dichotomy. We can absolutely let kids move at different speeds while keeping them within the same school. And we can ensure that there are still shared classes and opportunities for students with different skills and abilities to interact.

Frankly the tone of your comment troubles me. None of these students are more or less "deserving"; the goal is to help every student reach their potential.

Not if the teachers aren't adequately able to teach the gifted children. All you then end up with is a child with a lot of wasted potential and a teacher losing patience with a bored child.

As for me, programming since the age of about 10, when I went into secondary school (age 13), the level of IT (in)competency amazed me. I was reprimanded for finishing assigned work quickly and studying independently. I was kicked off the network for writing code because it wasn't understood. Nothing got better, yet I was forced to waste 5 years of my ~81.5 years on Earth (~6.13%) of my ALE, getting a pointless state education that from that day on has not once helped me.

Further education wasn't any better. I joined a course at a local vocational college, one with certificates of excellency, with the prospectus stating it would teach the fundamentals of computing; data structures, networking, algorithms, through to applied computing including ASM, C, C++, et al. In my three weeks there, they taught (very poorly) VB.NET and had students design flyers in Publisher. I was refused entry to the one-year pre-university course as I didn't have the correct number of education goody points. The response I got to quitting was that you can't always have everything you want in life.

This is why education in the UK sucks.

I think if you see a child who has potential, let them explore that potential. There are hundreds of other children who will go through the standard educational system, get their GCSEs and A Levels and useless degrees, before getting ordinary jobs. Let the ones with potential do something different.

Reminds me of the kid recently whose school refused to let them take the time out to work on an acting opportunity, due to the loss of education that a week would present. I'm sure the child would have learnt a lot more about their most likely future career in that week than they did in the classroom.

Anyway, rant over. Standardised education sucks.

Why is it the goal to help every student reach their potential? Who decided this, and what authority did they have to decide for us what the goal of all schools everywhere automatically must be?

Also, you absolutely can't 'let' kids move at different speeds in the same school. You can let kids move at speeds where you enough kids at that speed. For a 90th percentile kid that is fine, there are roughly 10% of the students that share their speed (or nearly do) so you can form a class of them. For the top 1% or top .1% you just can't, and the 99.9th percentile kid can learn much, much, much faster than the 90th percentile kid, and can immediately understand concepts that the 90th percentile kid won't be able to grasp until they are years older (if ever). Putting those kids in the same class means one will be impossibly behind or the other will be incredibly bored.

I attended a public school in a Minneapolis / St. Paul suburb. Nothing particularly special about the school that I can recall today, although it was in a school district that included grad student housing for University of Minnesota so maybe the student body, as a whole, was more motivated than you may have found elsewhere.

Classes were tiered into ability, even at this age (I do not remember what the rubric was for deciding your tier) and for math classes I was pulled in to a self-study course along with 2 or 3 other students. There was no 'formal' class and instead the teacher would spend varying amounts of time with each student as they worked through the material on their own. Each student would work at his or her own pace.

I think this sort of system would do wonders for those both at the very top and at the very bottom. In college, I found office hours were somewhat similar in that students both behind and in front could get focused time with a professor to either catch up or advance even further ahead.

This is ignoring any budget and teacher constraints, but this seems like a real issue for both the 'top' and 'bottom' students.

> The very gifted kids are going to isolate themselves from the dumb people as quickly as they can as soon as they can no matter what you do.

This is quite an anecdote you've got there ... cause in my experience (gifted, and in gifted classes with many much brighter than me), all of us kept a pretty diverse (academically) social group.

But that's _my_ anecdote ... surely people will exist on the entire spectrum between self-seclusion to social butterfly.

My anecdote matches yours. In highschool I was one of the higher-ranked people in my class, but I got along better with guys on the lower-end of the scale. Despite getting terrible grades, they often had a surprisingly quick wit that made them a pleasure to be around. Probably because they cared more about being funny than getting good grades. I sometimes wonder if it was motivation more than actual capacity that made the difference.

My anecdote conflicts. I found that being in an institution, following a learning path, designed for the average child, meant I progressed less than I could and had my potential wasted. Poorly behaved children or those who aren't academically minded will have one teacher each, trying to force them to climb that academic tree, while high-potential children will be left to rot and told off for wanting to do more.

A whole raft of opinions that have no backing, in fact, I can provide a lot of evidence that counterargues your points.

> Dumb kids don't benefit from being around very gifted kids. Let's not use the words dumb but lets say, "less smart". If this were the case, why would parents fight to get their kids into magnet and charter schools? Also special needs kids benefit from mainstreaming. Evidence > Unsubstantiated opinion.

> The very gifted kids are going to isolate themselves from the dumb people as quickly as they can [cite needed]

> They do see the very gifted kids and feel bad. [cite needed] - in fact, as a "gifted" kid, I often felt ostracized because of being selected (nerd).

> I think you'll find that parents are very uninterested in your theories of social engineering [cite needed]

>> I think you'll find that parents are very uninterested in your theories of social engineering [cite needed]

How can I find a citation for a my own statement that I believe something?

Are you under the impression that the comments section of HN is a scholarly journal where all claims are documented? I notice that you don't ask for citations for any of the claims in this thread that you agree with, so your demands for citations are really just an obnoxious lack of argument.

A belief is not an argument.

Can you back that up with some data?

[cite needed]

RE 1. It has already been mentioned that food analogy is not a good one, since we are not talking of not providing education to smarter kids. And, this is not a binary issue, there is a whole spectrum of intelligence.

RE 2. The previous post does not say "every kind of diversity is automatically good". But I certainly agree that social and intellectual diversity has benefits for all parties.

RE 3. "Smart people do well and often have smart children", well it is not genetic though. While often "smart" parents have "smart" kids because they value education and know what to push. It is an oversimplification to say that education is equal to "smart". And sending a smart kid in the worst school would not affect his smartness. Especially now with Internet, if he is that smart and gets bored, then he can learn what he wants on Internet. Being a free country does not mean necessarily you can act freely against the collective good. I believe that the whole intellectual spectrum of kids can learn from each other and together. I believe that smarter kids should be able to learn more if they want to, but I strongly believe in the benefits of having all kids together in the same school, from kindergarten to university. Some kids might need more time, some could learn more and/or go faster, but they will still benefit from each other.

> And sending a smart kid in the worst school would not affect his smartness. Especially now with Internet, if he is that smart and gets bored, then he can learn what he wants on Internet

Have you been around children? While there are few exceptions that shine no matter the environment, there are far more who excel with a better peer group. This idea that "smart kids are always going to be intrinsically motivated" is just as bogus as "smart people do well and have smart children". What happens in those situations is that the smarter children usually wind up coasting through, simply because they find it so easy to stay ahead of the mean.

> Being a free country does not mean necessarily you can act freely against the collective good.

And yet people do every minute, "smart" or not. Being a free country does allow people the freedom to search for the best possible opportunity given their resources, and not be forced into regressing into the mean.

What happens in those situations is that the smarter children usually wind up coasting through, simply because they find it so easy to stay ahead of the mean.

For the early part of my life, that was me.

Working 10 years of jobs that I hated were my big motivator to resume my education with a renewed vigor. It has worked out well for me since but I would have been much better off if I had not been in that sea of mediocrity during my formative years.

> Being a free country does not mean necessarily you can act freely against the collective good.

Yes, that is exactly what it means. It means that I can ignore your theory about what is 'collective good' because it is stupid and will do me and my family irreparable harm, and I can substitute my own theory of what is actually going to move us towards more 'collective good' and act according to that. That is what being free means.

Being a free country does not mean necessarily you can act freely against the collective good.

Yes. That's precisely what it means.

Serving the collective good is a fine ideal but for me to pursue my own interests before yours (and for you to pursue yours before mine) is a mandate.

Once you mandate the good of the state over the good of your own children, you are no longer a free society.