Gifted children are special needs children
mleverything.substack.com
mleverything.substack.com
This is not a fair assumption and is what leads to kids in remedial classes not getting a decent education.
Kids can be genuinely disruptive or not care, or they can care but struggle with the material, those are orthogonal traits.
I don’t disagree that the lesson goes at the pace of the slowest students, but those slow students deserve a disruption-free classroom too, even if it moves slower than the advanced class.
Disrupting the class is something that can be proven
But I’m not sure about them not wanting to learn - maybe they end up not learning but how can you attribute it to a want ?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twice_exceptional
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In response to OP's link, my suggestion to primary schools would be to scrap the G/T programs, and instead focus on reducing class-sizes. You should also remove any students from classrooms whom routinely distract from others' learning. Give those timesinks a broom, instead.
There are only like 4 actual accelerated learning programs out of the hundreds in NYC's "G&T".
I was a student of public Texas ISDs, and briefly taught in Tennessee, so "public school" is an entirely different definition/beast than NYC's [probably better] education systems.
src: attended public schools in G/T programs (IMHO: "normal" and "G/T" kids benefit from being taught together, in smaller classrooms)
src2: attended college on a full teaching scholarship (am no longer teaching) — "taught"[1] the classes with behavior problems
[1] Babysat; I was made the bad kids teacher because I was a tall footballer that didn't take shit from physically abusive bullies. I never beat a kid up (although many friends have, deservedly) but definitely restrained a few.
A good idea but not practically possible in any district, unfortunately.
I'm obviously exaggerating, but it's not purely good to remove "distracting elements".
Might very well be the bored gifted ones...
src: I was a bored gifted one; only swept the floors long enough to want to change my behavior(s). I was also once a teacher for children with behavior issues.
Generally this is a response to a massive teacher shortage in the US, which is likely caused by low pay relative to the sheer amount of work and angst that teachers have to put up with (from both parents and students).
If the US were truly a society that valued education, teachers would be some of the highest paid professionals in the country... but teacher salaries have actually been declining relative to the average, and like many positions haven't been keeping up with the rate of inflation either. This is in addition to the long-known fact that many teachers end up buying their own supplies.
You can't do this without getting sued (at least in Massachusetts). Source: my wife is a long-time elementary school teacher and my daughter works as a one-on-one aide while she is getting her teaching degree.
I don't want to start of flamewar but the current "push in" model created by educational bureaucrats creates a classroom environment that caters to the "timesinks". When you have a good chunk of the class on IEPs (individual education plans) that must be followed by law the "high flyers" (gifted kids) mostly get ignored due to time pressure.
Add socialization problems caused by COVID and reduced attention spans due to devices and chaos is always eminent. The stories I hear about daily classroom behavior would have blown my mind as a kid growing up in the 70s/80s.
I just wish that gifted kids could get the same access to IEPs that the other tail of the curve gets. However, when you base your educational outcomes on high stakes testing it is just natural to ignore the outliers above the mean and focus on the ones below it.
Again, I don't want to start a flamewar. Everyone has the right to an education.
It wasn't until I was flunking out of medical school that I realized the truth to your statement. I never learned how to learn (my 90's public school's version of G/T was to let a small group of higher-IQ children do whatever they want, including nothing).
I feel that smaller class sizes would encourage smart-but-bored students to behave better (i.e. not be the class clown I was), out of fear of social isolation. In larger classes, it becomes more difficult for a single teacher (+aides) to impart learning habits upon ALL students.
We found that all the "best in the nation" schools here, with the possible exception of Boston Latin, aren't really all that great. The reason they're measured "best" is because all the parents hire tutors and private instructors on top of the regular school day. Russian math, science tutors, English, music instruction... you name it.
Systemically, this means the educators don't know how to teach. There are standout teachers, but by and large, the expectation from the "good" schools is that the kids are getting all the actual education outside the school system already. We found this to be true in Lexington, in Wellesley, pretty much all of the top schools in Mass. Boston Latin even has this problem, on top of the additional requirement to live within the city limits of Boston proper and hope you fit into one of their quota slots and your kid gets accepted.
Private schools are a little different, but their costs, and the small percentage of acceptance even if you bear the cost, will take your breath away.
All of this, and a host of other unpleasant features of public education, are why we chose homeschooling. It's been a huge sacrifice, but worth it.
> You can't do this without getting sued (at least in Massachusetts).
Yes you can. Group students by entrance exam results. Discussed here:
I think social ostracism is an effective tool to deal with anti-social behaviors (at any age).
1. the teachers have much more freedom in developing the curriculum which I assume is because their incoming students have a fairly high baseline proficiency in all of the required subjects.
2. bad teachers often get assigned to the G/T classes under the assumption that they can't do as much damage (which I can guarantee you is not the case.)
This is all relative (of course) but I feel the worst teachers for G/T are the ones that WON'T call certain shithead brainiacs out on our bullshit.
...at least that's how most of mine failed entire demographics.
¢¢
We both went to university, but he barely got accepted and nearly dropped out. I think I did a lot better at university because I was already accustomed to needing to study.
Many years later I learned that there have been studies about this "praise for effort versus praise for intelligence" dynamic.
Here in Spain one of the far-left politicians was found to be sending both of his children to private school while preaching this enforced equality for the rest of us.
Really? Why is everything called "radical" nowadays? The "radical left" who want healthcare for everybody, the "radical right" who oppose immigration. Radical egalitarianism? Really? Because they don't want to fund programs for gifted kids? You may not like it (I myself am ambivalent and the best solution is likely in the middle), but it's not "radical".
It's radical because goes against all evidence, experience, and common sense - it is ideology taken to a puritanical extreme. There is no more extreme position one can take.
And even if that was the argument, the term was used in the context of "radical egalitarianism". So, the argument doesn't automatically transfer to such a radical variety of "egalitarianism" in society as a whole if it focuses on a single aspect.
There are two levels of quite extreme exaggeration here, calling the end of a particular school program "radical egalitarianism". Which words should we use if an actual radical proposal comes along?
Given that, there's nothing else to save the word for. This is the limit; the max. So if radical refers to anything at all, it refers to this.
There are many things I can imagine that are much more radical than this. Everybody has to live the same, wear the same, eat the same, think the same. That's pretty insanely dystopian for sure, but much more egalitarian than barely mixing kids of different ability in the same classroom.
Because the benefit of one is the disadvantage of somebody else. Same coin, different side.
(That's not my argument, but I believe it is the argument on which this is based.)
> This is one of the few mainstream policies I can’t understand from the other side
A more even society may be a goal. Scandinavia in the 80s did a lot of that, left high performers in school hanging. For good or worse.
https://www.amazon.com/Twice-Exceptional-Supporting-Educatin...
> I’ve never seen a satisfying explanation for why a supposedly unjust system, one assumed to disadvantage certain groups, would “accidentally” advantage Asians, often above native-born white students.
Many immigrant groups have, on average, a higher socioeconomic status than native-born Americans. Even Black African immigrants tend to be more affluent than the mean of the white American population, because immigrating is expensive and it selects for wealth. My family are middle-class in North American, but they immigrated from South America, where were distinctly better-off than the average.
Affluence has much more explanatory power than merit, especially in the absence of any mechanism for the supposed racial merit which the author of this newsletter seems to be ascribing to the Asian population.
That's a foolish statement on its face. "Merit" quantifies whether someone deserves something, and it depends both on the deserved thing and the rubric for judgment. Some forms of merit are fairly heritable (basketball skill) and others aren't (trivia knowledge).
My grandparents didn't make money by passing admission exams for the grade 1 gifted program.
That's one definition of the term, but this subthread is talking about the other ones.
> Superior quality or worth; excellence > Demonstrated ability or achievement
These are highly hereditable.
> My grandparents didn't make money by passing admission exams for the grade 1 gifted program.
It does not matter for the discussion. The point being discussed is whether skills or wealth came first, and heritability of skills indicate the first option. There's no data, including your grandparents, that would indicate the second one.
Aptitudes may be heritable, but an aptitude is very different from a skill. Potential is only useful once it's been actualized, and doing that takes resources.
> whether skills or wealth came first
Wealth comes first. The son's education is paid for with his father's money. We aren't born with skills.
False
> The word "demonstrated" should make that obvious.
No, it should not. Try to explain why you believe that.
> If I learn to play guitar and then have a kid, that kid will not know how to play guitar.
You full well know this is not how this works. If you try to learn guitar and fail, there's a good chance your kid will also fail if tries. And if you try and become exceptional there's a good chance if your kid would try they would also play way above average. That's what hereditability means.
> Wealth comes first. The son's education is paid for with his father's money.
Here's a good obvious point as to why wealth does not come first (that unlike yours is undeniable): how did the first person obtain the skill? There was neither anyone to teach it, nor wealth to pay for it.
> We aren't born with skills.
We most certainly are born with skills. Speed of learning is a skill.
Uh, okay. Let's do a thought experiment: Suppose I take some violin lessons and acquire an as-yet-undemonstrated ability to play the instrument. Later, I perform at a violin recital; after this demonstration, my violin abilities have become demonstrated.
Then I have a kid: 1. Can that infant child play violin? No. Thus they have not inherited my ability to play violin. 2. Has that infant child ever had a violin recital which demonstrated their ability to play violin? No. Thus they DEFINITELY do not possess a demonstrated ability to play violin.
Again, this should be obvious. I feel like you must be misunderstanding what the words "ability" and "demonstrated" mean.
> If you try to learn guitar and fail, there's a good chance your kid will also fail if tries.
You are no longer talking about "demonstrated ability." You are describing a lack of aptitude for guitar, which (as I said in my last post) is a different thing. Besides, pretty much anyone with working hands can learn to play guitar. It's not really a question of aptitude, it's a question of investing time and money into learning. Most skills are like that.
> We most certainly are born with skills. Speed of learning is a skill.
Well, no. It's an aptitude.
aptitude /ăp′tĭ-too͞d″, -tyoo͞d″/
noun
An inherent ability, as for learning; a talent.
skill /skĭl/
noun
Proficiency, facility, or dexterity that is acquired or developed through training or experience.
What "first person"? I'm not talking about cavemen, I'm talking about our society and the impact that the socioeconomic status of a person's family has on their career relative to the impact of their innate intelligence. If you want to tell me that those factors are closely linked, you're flatly wrong: Many rich people are stupid, and many poor people are intelligent.
You are talking about everything else except the subject: "heritability".
> which is a different thing
Statistically unrelated different thing? Most certainly no. Causally unrelated? Very probably no.
> Many rich people are stupid, and many poor people are intelligent.
That doesn't matter. What matters is exact statistic. And I didn't even need to look it up to know which way it goes.
Did you miss the part where the kid does not inherit my having performed a violin recital? "Demonstrated abilities" are not heritable, because they presuppose achievements and you cannot inherit someone's achievements.
I'm starting to think you have some real reading comprehension problems. You're not really even responding to my post—just ctrl-F-ing for the word "heritability" and sneering when it doesn't show up.
> Statistically unrelated different thing?
A different thing. You can't treat concepts interchangeably just because you think there's a relationship between them. The unimportance of aptitude in this scenario was made clear in my next sentence, which I will repeat here because you were not paying attention last time: "Besides, pretty much anyone with working hands can learn to play guitar. It's not really a question of aptitude, it's a question of investing time and money into learning. Most skills are like that."
> What matters is exact statistic.
I'm not going to bother lecturing you on correlation and causation. You wouldn't read what I wrote anyway.
You seriously need to look up the word "heritability". Here's one from M-W: the proportion of observed variation in a particular trait (such as height) that can be attributed to inherited genetic factors in contrast to environmental ones.
> I'm not going to bother lecturing you on correlation and causation. You wouldn't read what I wrote anyway.
It's a good thing heritability does not require causation then. Because it sounds like you figured out my understanding of causation vs correlation on the incorrect premise that the former is required.
heritable
/'hɛrɪtəbəl/
adjective
capable of being inherited
Of course, heritability is a population statistic. In order to talk about whether having performed a violin recital is heritable, we'd need to select a sample population. Even then, it might not tell us much. Whether a person wears earrings can be attributed primarily to genetic factors (XX vs XY), but it's still ultimately cultural.
> It's a good thing heritability does not require causation then.
And? What point are you making? Again, you're not really reading my posts—just finding details to nitpick, and wasting my time in doing so.
Gifted programs seek to screen for childhood intelligence, which is distinct both from being an immigrant and from having a good career. And, as I pointed out, being a smart kid is (in my experience) less of a factor in terms of being admitted to a gifted program than having attentive parents with free time and money.
Mamdani says he would phase out NYC gifted program for early grades
It's not like such situations never occur in adult life. I often find myself in work meetings where colleague A explains something to a group of 10 people to get everybody on the same page, and there are often one or two folks who already know this stuff and are obviously uncomfortable for those 10 min of intro. Clearly, they never learned how to deal with such a situation.
since some parts of class they were then bored.
Well, you learn to deal with it
I'm highly doubtful that forcing young kids to be bored (by making them progress/learn slowly, when they could be learning more) is the best way to do it.
Was there no reading because it was academically poor or was it kind of an "alternative" learning environment ala Montessori?
(I don't know Montessori's specific ways of teaching reading)
I'd say let kids be kids and have them explore the world through curiosity, not through a planned curiculum from age 3.
montessori teaches reading, writing and math far beyond what an average kindergarten does.
But if reading is part of the curriculum (which it generally is for K and certainly for the years after) then it’s just the reality that there will be big differences in ability and trying to have everyone go at the same pace doesn’t serve either early or late readers.
If this is really about equality then we would be strengthening these programs because gifted kids from wealthy families will continue to have access to accelerated education. It’s the poor and middle class who are losing out.
Given the extreme levels of segregation in certain parts of the country (NYC for example has fewer than 5 percent of Black and Latino kindergartners in G&T programs, but higher enrollment for Black and Latino students in third grade) school systems like that one should seriously consider pivoting to prioritizing equality over G&T funding.
Why does it happen?
Sure, but shouldn't those kids be in an environment where they can practice reading instead of being painstakingly re-taught the alphabet? As you said, it's not all rare.
I was one of those kids, and I was extremely disruptive in class because I couldn't bear to be made to sit and trace the letter "A" for 45 minutes when I was already reading novels at home. When they stuck me in a different class, things got much better for me, and it's not like doing that cost the school board any extra money.
Until the 90s, they'd base G&T admission based on IQ. Now it's based on whether your family can afford a quality Pre-K. They thought my little brother was a savant as he could read on the first day of kindergarten -- my little sister taught him to read. (He is a very smart dude!)
I was in a well-regarded gifted program in the 80s in a NYC public school. The main distinction was that I was essentially trained to interpret short narratives with time incentives in a standardized test setting. It worked out for me through high school, as that skill allows me to coast through tests and blow off most of the work. Reality bit in college, where you were expected to actually read the book. :)
Forcing children who aren't normal to be normal is child abuse, and your comment is an attempt to perpetuate the kind of abuse that I was subjected to.
White is I imagine somewhat distributed across the board. Now Asian, does that imply broad distribution or is it mostly Chinese?
This reminds me of conversations between the two ends of the Dunning-Kruger spectrum. In DK low performing people tend to vastly over-estimate their capabilities because their frame of reference is exceedingly narrow. High performers tend to under estimate their capabilities because in their vast experience they have forgotten a great many things that are either unnecessary or things that have become like muscle memory.
The conversations are interesting because the high performers tend to be more humble, more confident, and less arrogant while the low performers tend to be the opposite. That is extremely interesting because of what is not said in the conversation. For the low performers everything tends to be literal to the spoken word and everything else becomes an assumption localized to their personal perspective. For the high performers the negative space in a conversation is just words in a different form that the low performers actively broadcast in complete ignorance. This remains true for both children and adults.
Where is that take even coming from? Communication styles are very cultural. Japanese is very subtext-heavy while German is very direct. Are Japanese people more intelligent than German people?
Furthermore it depends on how your brain is wired. Autistic people prefer direct communication while allistic (that means non-autistic) people rely more on context.
Personally, I prefer people that are more direct. People that read crap into stuff that was never said grind my gears so much. It creates so much unnecessary drama.
The claim that one form of communication is same sign of being a "high performer" is completely insane.
When your social intelligence is high enough you realize everybody is always direct because communication is multidimensional. Honest only occurs when the words, vocalization, and body language are all in unison. Even then honesty only matters so much if the substance of content is inaccurate or invalid. Since you brought up autism, most people attempt to mask their emotions in times of discomfort. Masking is a form of dishonesty and people who are good a communication see it as such.
As a counter example watch North Korea ambassadors speak at the UN. They are emotionless in their answers and its extremely unnatural. They do that intentionally, because no answer is ultimately safe and the greatest threat to their security comes from defiance to their own nation.
As to your last statement high performance generally describes some utility, like a test score or job skill. Strong communication skills are generally described as an aptitude as opposed to a utility.
Masking is autistic people adjusting their communication style so they are more acceptable to allistic people while neglecting their own needs.
For example many autistic people show emotions differently. They can default to a flatter tone of voice or show less microexpressions in the face i.e a flatter affect. (Just to be clear, it does not mean they have less emotions. Just because someone expresses emotions differently does not mean they have more or less. Again, they could be for example extremely happy but you would read them as withdrawn and disinterested.)
Much of autistic masking can be micromanaging these things. Tone of voice, face expressions, body language.
,And here comes the kicker: High-Masking autistic people are read as MORE honest and authentic by allistic people. Yes more honest no less. Because they show behavior that is you would say is more "in unison" from the point of view of an allistic person.
It is the same effect when people think they are good at spotting a liar. There are studies that show they are worse or close to random chance. Flipping a coin is as reliable as "listening to your gut".
People that think they are good at communication are the worst because they don't realize how full of shit they are. You can't know how another person feels, they can only tell you. I guess we are back to dunning kruger. Oh, the irony.
> It is the same effect when people think they are good at spotting a liar.
That is another Dunning-Kruger moment. The only way to be excellent at detecting liars is to be good at convincing liars to expose their own deception either through a confession or through conflicting testimony, and some people are really good at that. Perceptions without evidence are just bias.
> People that think they are good at communication
Again, self perception does not matter. What matters is the result and this is measurable, as proven by Paul Ekman.
Your knowledge of psychology seems to be outdated by... several decades.
I recommend reading "How Emotions Are Made" by Lisa Feldman Barret.
If you don't recognize the name Lisa Feldman Barret, please google her. She is very acclaimed in the scientific world.
I also highly recommend watching anything by Ember Green, especially this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nnd74yyf4nQ
Realistically, I know what I am writing is not going to change your mind. It might cause you to get defensive if anything else. But the fact that you have an autistic child and are operating on very outdated scientific ideas make me wish I could somehow.
I mean it is not surprising. Those ideas by Paul Ekman are still extremely popular. There are many fraudsters that use them to this day to get government founding and the like. So note that I am not calling you a bad person for falling for this. I am just saying you could be a damn good parent if you updated your views with a bit of more modern psychology.
That is a pattern I have seen before. Nothing you wrote is incorrect, but there is a familiar pattern to it.
Still, there are a lot of things that can go unsaid when people have a shared, high, expertise level.
For example, if I'm onboarding a junior engineer, I'm going to have to literally explain a lot of things. From basic compsci concepts to setting up a text editor and local development environment to getting them up to speed on the language we use.
These are things that largely would not need to be communicated to a more senior developer.
This talk about high performers and low performers needing
focused environments to perform gets me thinking about the
scenario of putting them together.
But to my knowledge in America most gifted programs are not some kind of total segregation and I don't see a lot of people arguing for that either. In my experience in US public schools the "gifted" classes were like maybe 1/4 of our total classroom time.
Likewise with developmentally-challenged kids. Most programs have an emphasis on varying levels of integration with the other kids. In some schools, the special-ed kids are in "regular" classrooms but have their own semi-dedicated assistants.
(Example: 1 teacher, 20 kids, plus 1 special-ed assistant and 3-4 special ed kids)
Super high achieving students, likewise, have special needs. They don't necessary require as much assistance as the students at the low end of the spectrum but they do require more dedicated resources. This is part because they move fast enough academically to consume educational material faster than general education can fill their needs. It isn't that the education material needs to be more challenging, but that it must also be replenished at a much faster rate.
I have noticed these same sorts of trends during my software career as well. The low performers are bored because they have trouble with the standard tasks. If they are recoverable through coaching then its not a problem, but otherwise they can become a huge drag on the team. This is also true of high performers. High performers tend to get bored and distracted and have higher availability than there peers. Many of these high performers tend to do things they aren't supposed to, like contributing to competing open source or taking outside jobs, just to stay occupied.
it solves both problems: integrating a diversity of children and allowing children to learn according their capacity and interest.
because each child gets to learn at their own pace, from the gifted all the way to intellectually disabled, all in the same class. (the term disabled feels wrong, but i am not sure what the correct term here is, i picked this one from wikipedia)
ironically, but in line with the title, maria montessori developed that curriculum specifically for disabled/special needs children. turns out what is good for special needs children also works for normal children.
and it would not be expensive. training a montessori kindergarten teacher takes one year. you don't even need a full degree, or it could easily be included in a degree curriculum.
The right wing thinks browns are stealing jobs from whites by simply existing. The left wing thinks whites are stealing jobs from browns by getting a better education, and want to abolish that opportunity. So both sides have decided on a remedy that actually makes everybody worse off, but in different ways.
Can't wait to pick that poison
This is true but doesn't answer the fundamental question of whether meritocracy results in a fair, healthy society. I think this is a nuanced issue with reasonable arguments on both sides, but the author simply assumes the answer is yes without actually addressing the question.
People focus on the second part of the phrase, but the first part explicitly states we should strive to work up our individual ability and potential. Denying that is an entirely new concept that likely never existed prior to the last 50 years or so.
You may be confusing it with "equality of outcomes"?
The actual question is whether smart people should receive a disproportionate amount of a finite resource, like education. This imbalance creates a potential runaway effect in which one group grows ever more successful at the expense of other groups.
Source: Am a parent of a G&T student and I see the intensity with which parents push their kids into the program.
Do you have any sources that these things happen and/or that they negatively impact students outside of those programs?
The argument I've heard previously is that G&T programs remove peer role models from classrooms, which lowers the class's average behavior and achievement.
I was a G&T student for 5 years (2nd through 6th) and have close relationships with people who were educators then administrators in a G&T program.
Incompetentocracy?
Randomocracy?
Celebritocracy?
Nepotocracy?
We're not going back to aristocracy (which essentially was nepotocracy). So what do you have that's better than meritocracy? What's wrong with letting the more talented be the ones who run things?
If you’ve availed yourself to educating yourself about nutrition AND you have adjusted your priorities so that healthier food takes the place of other expenditures and you still can’t afford healthy options, then let’s talk. If you buy soda instead of drinking water that comes free from a tap and you’re complaining about lack of healthy food accessibility, you’re not taking sufficient responsibility to improve your and your family’s health.
Also a lot of kids on the other end of "special needs" don't get the support they "need" and just get pushed through the system. 35% of high school seniors are reading at or above proficiency levels.
But even in that case, the argument isn't that "let's not add more G&T programs, those kids are doing fine", it's "let's remove G&T programs because we don't like the demographic makeup of the class".
I'll also add that we don't think that way about other groups. People in wheelchairs don't "need" to go to a concert, but most people still believe things like Americans with Disabilities Act is important. So I don't know why gifted children are different. We know what to do with them. Let them flourish, they will be better off, happier and more productive members of society.
https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Living/us-students-reading-math-s...
The novelty of applying the label differently, is refreshing to me.
> Gifted kids don't need special attention to get through school and life the same way the intellectually impaired do.
Need is being used subjectively here, but this is effectively a repeated sentiment.
As a gifted child, I was stunted by both public school and family (my father has literally apologized to me). It took me until my 20s to start my career, which was delayed by at least a half-decade. I am willing to consider that a different approach is worth trying, to achieve a different result. Maybe this will result in a better system and I think it's worth the benefit of the doubt.
It is certainly an alternative to other approaches that are popular in some areas, like banning books that mention trans individuals.
Gifted kids don't need special attention to get
through school and life the same way the intellectually
impaired do.
I sometimes struggled in regular classes as a young kid, because it was so painfully boring to move at the same, slower speed as the other kids. It was like trying to watch a movie at 0.25x speed. I wasn't just "not reaching my potential", I was missing out on chunks of learning. I almost don't know what the counterargument is: we... shouldn't match education to a child's learning speed and other needs?
(And for the record, I wasn't crazy gifted in terms of IQ. More like top X%, not top 0.X%)
The ability to thrive and work with others who don't know as much about $FIELD as you do is, of course, an incredibly valuable life skill. Both socially and professionally. Whether you're a plumber or doctor or cashier then you by definition know more about your job than others. But I absolutely don't think forcing young kids to sit through learning at 0.25x or 0.5x or 0.75x their "natural" speed is the way to do it.
That's why I'm drilling down on the definition of "need"
1. To raise all childrens' education to some sort of minimally acceptable bar? (like the equivalent of a GED here in the USA)
2. To get as many kids as possible as close to their individual educational potential as possible, for humanistic and/or societal reasons?
3. Something else?
If it's the first option, then gifted children probably do not have a "need" as urgent as developmentally-challenged kids. If it's the second option, I think that gifted children do have an equally urgent need.
The second option is admittedly loftier, and to be frank, the first option aligns more closely with the way most laws function. But god damn, I think we really should be aiming for the second option.
Isn't the Wozniak anecdote a counter argument? If a gifted kid is so bored they drop out or adopt anti-social behaviors, that's a problem.
Personal anecdote... when I was in 7th grade, the school trialed a math program where some of the GT students and some of the slow learners were placed in the same class. The class had an aide. But, at the end of the year, the GT students had effectively learned nothing - the teacher and aide spent 100% of their time getting the failing students closer to par, at the expense of everybody else.
Point being, there are ways to support GT students without completing disbanding GT programs. When I was in elementary school, that was a few hours per week of enrichment (pull us out of the main class periodically for extra instruction). Maybe there are reasons that doesn't work, but certainly my memory of that time is positive. It wasn't until middle school that we had fully separate "honors" classes (and then high school had AP).