Separating gifted children hasn't led to better achievement

I was not allowed into the gifted and talented program in my school because I had a lot of trouble with reading when I was young. However, I was probably the most gifted person in mathematics. But the G&T program was only for people who scored high on both.

So what happened? I was stuck in the average kids where I excelled but was bored. Anytime math was being worked, I was sent to the computer lab to play on the Apple IIes.

I eventually caught up from a reading perspective but the damage was already done. The american school systems aren't prepped to manage anything out of the ordinary. So since I wasn't in the gifted program, I didn't have the accelerated math during elementary school. Therefore, I couldn't start algebra as early. That means through out high school I was bored stupid. All because of what happened when I was 7 years old.

They made a decision on a 7 year olds ability.

Did it change my life for the worse? Probably not. Unintended consequences and all. I got super interested in computers since I was stuck in a computer lab all the time. I excelled in math in college. Majored in Computer Science with a minor in Mathematics.

BUT just because it worked out doesn't mean they didn't fuck up.

Now I have children. My oldest son ALSO did not qualify for G&T program. Can you guess why? He struggled with reading in early elementary school(we tried to help but sorry, people develop at different rates). Oh my gosh but he is good in math. The difference now is there is no escape for him like I had. He is stuck being bored in class.

My youngest son is adopted so we don't have much insight on family history from an academic standpoint but he is killing it in all aspects of school. He likely will be in the G&T program. Yet, I don't believe he is superior in intellect compared to my oldest. They have different skillsets.

So yeah, I think doing G&T determination in elementary school is pretty dang stupid. That crap will all fall into place naturally in middle school.

It is a system based on laziness and testing to the tests.

Kids who 'love math and solving problems' might be considerably more likely to apply themselves, do the work, have the confidence/grit to push a little bit and get through it.

Frankly 'attitude' is one of the bigger determinants in so many things.

So if we can somehow get kids to 'love math' my gosh this is a materially good outcome.

Separating gifted kids into “magnet schools” sort of works, but they’re just getting the same teachers they’d get anywhere else—we don’t really know how to select for teachers that can teach gifted kids any better, so we just select for teachers with impressive resumes.

You know what works? Academies. Specifically, military academies, though technical academies sometimes do too. Places where the students and teachers are of a selected population, not by natural talent, but by their driven-ness to grow and succeed. Those tend to product functional, intelligent, mature and mentally-healthy adults. And the difference is simple: in an academy, bad grades are stigmatized by the students, while good grades (and hard work to achieve good grades) are not. Everyone wants to be “the smartest kid in the class”, and popularity generally correlates with how well you do in the classes (i.e. everyone wants to be friends with the most-competent kids.)

The one core flaw of the academy model is that this constant mutual pushing of one-another to succeed, leaves students little time to actually get to know one-another or indulge in any outside interests. Hobbies aren’t actively discouraged, but you can only have one to the degree that it doesn’t interfere with your pursuit of top grades; so nobody ends up pursuing heavy-time-investment hobbies, since few others would, so even if one can make time themselves, there’s nobody to share it with. Since academy students are so busy working their asses off, they also essentially treat their fellow students as “coworkers” (interfacing with them only to accelerate their own productivity), skipping right over the stage where they treat the children in their own classes like friends, bonding over shared interests and the like.

Not sure if there’s any in-between, though. Give kids the time and opportunity to create their own subcultures with their own definitions of success, and all the problems of regular schooling re-emerge.

Where do you think all of the funding and resources go when you do that?