"Just as we have worked over the
past decade to make public buildings physically accessible to the disabled, we
must work to make our age-graded classrooms intellectually accessible to the
highly gifted" (Kearney, 1993, p. 16). More than 50 years ago,
Hollingworth noted that "In the ordinary elementary school situation,
children of 140 IQ waste half of their time. Those above 170 IQ waste practically
all of their time" (Hollingworth, 1942, p. 299). Research confirms
that this is still the case today (Silverman, 1991; Renzulli & Reis, 1991).
The vast majority of highly gifted children are caught in an "age-grade
lockstep,"(Stanley, 1978, p. 3) which routinely offers such children
academic work five, six, seven, or eight years or more below their intellectual
level (Gross, 1993; Stanley, 1978).
Such a situation is untenable. Not
only are talents lost and bad work habits reinforced, but compelling students
by law to attend school, and then limiting academic challenge for some students
while providing it for others, is unfair. To become intellectually accessible
to all students, public schools must provide access to the full range of
curriculum, preschool through college. This need not necessarily mean leaving
either the school or the classroom; courses over the Internet are now available
at all educational levels, preschool through graduate school. These include
homeschooling curricula, interactive college coursework, and specially
developed courses for young highly gifted students sponsored by Stanford
University and the Johns Hopkins University. Schools need to adopt policies
which permit continuous progress for individual students of all ability levels.
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