As someone who was put in a reading class five grades above my actual grade, I disagree with the idea that acceleration should be the primary benefit of gifted education.

What I needed was not just higher level reading, but content catered to someone 5 years younger than the usual age group for that reading. I needed help writing fast enough to keep up.

Because grade school curriculum came easily and I could ‘figure out’ everything, I hit a wall when stuff got genuinely difficult or required significant work. What I needed was to learn how to put forth effort to do things that were hard or required work for desired output. I needed help socializing because I didn’t relate to people my age and was too inexperienced to engage people who were on my intellectual level as peers.

I needed help creating because the standards for myself were so high. Not exceeding those standards always felt like failure