[lagadu]

> you don't want to let the naturally gifted coast through.

As someone who isn't in the arts field at all, so please bear with my probable ignorance: why do you not want to let them coast through?

Each class has a set of requirements that need to be passed and the pupil's level of performance at it graded; if someone is gifted at it then they're already at a high performance level.

To put it in a way that's more related to me: I'm a software engineer and lets say that I decide to go take some first year software engineering classes again, particularly the ones related to learning how to program: I will blow through the classes in 1/5th of the time while playing a game on another monitor and still do very well. Shouldn't I get a high grade despite the fact that I put a lot more effort into my invasion of the Soviet Union while playing Japan on Hearts of Iron while I was also developing?

[TremendousJudge]

My guess is that kids are different than adults. You don't want kids sitting bored in class because it's easy for them. It's awful (speaking from experience here). They either turn inside and do nothing, or disturb the class. You don't want the smart kids to learn less, you want them to learn more

[charlesdm]

Making them work harder for the same grade doesn't mean they still won't be bored, though.