[mnsc]

Curious to how a school wold work on not wasting talent without putting pressure the talented kid.

"Oh, we have prepared a special curriculum for you because you are gifted and hired these teacher to give you room to fulfill your potential and not waste it. No pressure though, if you want to waste your potential and become medioker, just say the word and we will throw away the investment we have made in you!"

[douche]

I don't think you have to go so far as big investments in extra teachers and curriculum to serve gifted children. Just get out of the way and let them work ahead, or get their busy-work done fast and read on their own. Don't waste their time, and turn school into a prison that they have to shuffle through for eight hours a day, bored to tears.

[mnsc]

The original comment was

"The school system in most of the US works under an attitude that the smart kids will do okay, and don't need anything extra. Even gifted and talented programs are fading fast."

If they need something extra, like programs for talented and gifted children, that's an investment. A child that is assigned to a "Program for Talented and Gifted Children" will feel pressure to not let that talent/gift go to waste.

Your solution is to do nothing extra for them, just let them idle away in the library reading random books. Not a guarantee that they wont waste their time/talent by their own doing. While cheap, I don't think it would be very effective.

[douche]

My argument is that most of the school systems work hard to retard and beat down students that are smarter than the average bear, or cripple their growth by forcing them to do unpaid labor as defacto teacher's aides. It would be nice to provide resources at a higher level, but that higher level material is beyond the capability of most of the people that are employed as teachers anyway, so the best, most economical result is to stop actively getting in the way of students that need to go faster than what the lowest-common-denominator can handle, and just let them.

[wolfgke]

> Just get out of the way and let them work ahead, or get their busy-work done fast and read on their own.

I would have loved that as a child. The problem was: All the interesting papers/books in the internet were behind paywalls (today we have SciHub and Library Genesis, which are nevertheless still illegal).

[AstralStorm]

The idea is to put the right amount of pressure. A sensitive teacher knows when their pupil is not keeping up, wants more, less or is bored.

It is the essence of individualised teaching.

Sadly, teachers are very overworked these days, don't see how the student approaches homework and have no insight into family or emotional issues.

[cpkpad]

Make the work meaningful, impactful, and rewarding, so the kid will want to do it.