What do you think? Are we developing some kind of tyranny of mediocrity that discourages, or shuts out, those who could contribute the most? Is our emphasis on "equal education for all" short-changing that small but significant minority of exceptional individuals who could potentially contribute the most to the welfare of all?
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Rich Turner (The Curmudgeon Himself)

I expressed my unhappiness to my parents who told me this was an opportunity for me to learn patience. Since they always encouraged all sorts of word games and other learning activities as part of our family interactions at the dinner table, while doing dishes, on shopping trips, while driving to vacation destinations, I didn't feel that put-upon at school. "Homeschooling" was my release. My parents also encouraged me to go the extra mile with school assignments and projects--not for extra credit, but "just because" and "for fun" and "to learn more". For instance, not only did I write the Ivanhoe book report, but I put together a yarn-bound, with spatter-painted-cover character booklet (after researching how to do that and creating prototypes) and turned that in too. Science class, as when we studied simple machines, gave me the chance to build them at home and experiment with them.

Gifted students drop out because they are bored. I don't think they necessarily need gifted education and teachers to keep them in school, but they certainly need parents and teachers who encourage them to work beyond the assignment.

During reading class, my teachers learned that when they called on me to take my turn reading alous, they needed to tell me where everyone else was in the story, because I had already read the whole story and was reading another story in the book.

In fourth grade, I got so bored in every class that I often slid out of my chair onto the floor next to the bookcases that held the room library. Once there, I'd pull out a book, sit on the floor, and read. And Sister Goretti never said a word about it! Not to me, not to my mother, not to the principal (Sister Mary George, who had taught me to read and write in first and second grades).

Our house was full of books. Childcraft, Book of Knowledge, many children's books -- what they now call "chapter books" -- like Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys, et al., the Big Golden Book of Natural History, Harvard Classics (big sis taught me to understand the English of the ballads in the Chaucer to Pope volume when I was 9 or 10), and lots, lots more.

To operate on the assumption that the gifted are also self-motivated is fallacious. The gifted frequently need as much motivation and guidance to develop their gifts as the less gifted need to reach "normal" levels. To ignore the gifted and to focus primarily on bringing "learning challenged" or retarded children up to normal or functioning levels is a waste of potential talent.