I remember some of my best memories were being in a GT program at my middle school where about 30 kids in my grade took the same core classes together every yea

I remember some of my best memories were being in a GT program at my middle school where about 30 kids in my grade took the same core classes together every year for all 3 years. I didn’t appreciate it then, but in hind sight being separated from most 6th-8th graders who barely care about school and being mostly around kids that did, had a tremendous impact on driving me through high school and college. Most of the kids were way smarter than me and are doing incredible things now. Years later, when I studied in Sweden, I became great friends with a public school teacher there. I told her about AP classes, and GT and magnet programs and it was quite literally, a foreign concept. She said that in Sweden it would be discriminatory for children to be separated like that. I’m worried that the world is moving more and more in this direction, but I hope not! I felt extremely lucky to be put around peers that pushed me and had shared goals because most of the kids where I’m from don’t have that, and I could have easily ended up on a different path. In college, I realized I was in an entirely different league when all of my classmates were in the top couple of graduates from their huge high schools, and I could barely hang on. Around that time I met a couple of 14 year olds in my dorm that were dual majoring in computer sci and math, and then I realized that there are so many different levels of intelligence in the same age buckets, schools have been doing it wrong for so long! In an ideal world everyone could be grouped at the appropriate level regardless of age, but then again, there is a huge difference in 14 year olds vs 18 and 19 year olds, so there seems to be some merit to the age bucket system. All that being said, the only thing I know is that world is a complicated place :)