An anecdote: The gifted program at my school was genuinely fun and interesting. They spent the year on a theme, say astronomy, and explored that theme through

An anecdote: The gifted program at my school was genuinely fun and interesting. They spent the year on a theme, say astronomy, and explored that theme through a variety of projects. For example, they designed a game about space travel, they built a model of the solar system, etc. I was not in it until the 6th grade, the last year before "gifted" meant "do more homework" in my school system. I got in because the previous year I built a fairly impressive lego castle for my entry project and maybe they thought that because they were doing architecture as the theme that I would do well. I really did enjoy it and looked forward to it every week. But I was not, and am not, an exceptionally hard worker or particularly motivated to excel. I probably have an above average memory and was thus able to do well in school despite my laziness (I graduated high school with a 3.3 GPA). Even if I was "gifted", you wouldn't know it from my work. But given the opportunity to engage in something, I took that chance and looked forward to it. I'm not sure that this addresses the children in the article, but I feel it's sort of a pity that the weekly "explore your interests" classes are no longer part of the gifted program in my child's school district. Not because she's necessarily gifted, but because I think she'd find it fun.