... nor should they be. I was learning calculus in elementary school and writing the Putnam in high school. No matter how hard they tried, there's no way the schools I was enrolled in could have given me those opportunities. What prodigies need it not opportunities in school, but rather schools which are flexible enough to let them access opportunities outside of school -- in my case, starting my days at Simon Fraser University and packing my high school courses into the afternoon.
Not to derail from the article's point too much, but there are schools / programs specifically for talented youth - although they are not everywhere (sounds like there were none wherever you grew up). I know of one high school where a large number of students write the Putnam. I think it is important to have these schools / programs because pursuing opportunities outside of school is not always possible / easy for disadvantaged youth.
there are schools / programs specifically for talented youth
Yes and no. There are schools and programs specifically for kids in the 99th percentile, sure. In a large city, there will be enough kids for that to be feasible (as long as the kids have parents who will drive them across town).
But I'm pretty sure there are no schools dedicated to students in the 99.99th percentile. Even in New York City there are only 10 students per year at that level.
True, the top 0.01% is not going to work, but Los Angeles has a public school program that explicitly focuses on the top 0.1% (although recently they have rounded out their admissions with those in the top 0.5%):
I attended this program in elementary school and it seems to have spoiled me socially, since the students in the program were so much more interesting to me than other kids.
I suspect the reason the school district chose to create the program is because of the notoriety of the Mirman School, a lauded K-8 private school which also has top-0.1% admissions requirements.
So at least in some areas, education tailored to the 99.9th percentile has a long track record. But sadly, I have no idea if the practices and knowledge of that experience are available to inform highly-gifted education in other parts of the world.
Yes, I think aiming for the 99.9th percentile is a good target -- for reasonable-sized cities, that gives you a large enough segment to ensure that students have age peers, while being selective enough that the kids in the 99.99th percentile are likely to have at least some intellectual challenge.
I don't consider that to be part of the school system, though -- rather, that's a scheme to allow students to escape from the school system, just like the one I used.
Well, you're right that it's not part of any school that is designed to handle the general population. But I was making the point that prodigies don't need to look outside of their schools if they attend schools designed for them.
But apart from a short transition program, they're not attending an institution designed for them -- they're being mixed in with the general UW population.
If you think about the needs of gifted youth, there's basically two broad categories - academic and social. From an academic perspective, they're fine and probably better off in college, where they can take undergraduate and graduate level courses, do research with professors, etc. From a social perspective, the program actually does fulfill that need too, by providing resources and social opportunities to Transition School alumni (it's on campus, so it's sort of just a place for them all to hang out with each other). By and large, I don't think the students feel like they are just abandoned after they graduate from the Transition School. Also, Transition School is a year long, so it's a decent chunk of time.
Could you elaborate on the level for programs like these? I am familiar with a kid who was writing proofs regarding tensors (this is how it was described to me, my own math skills are extremely minimal in comparison) in the 5th grade. His father is worried about his social life going forward while wanting to nurture his talent. The kid was sent to the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth for a summer which he apparently found really boring. I think he is actually being tutored by a professor at a local university now, but I wonder if he'd find peers of his own age group and ability level at these programs?
It sounds like his math skills might be slightly more advanced than the kids in these programs, but I would say that these programs are probably still worth a look for two reasons: (1) the kid may not similarly advanced in other subjects (it's not uncommon for kids to come in advanced in math but at the same level or lower for, say, English), and (2) even though the other kids are not as good at math, the kid you're familiar with may nevertheless get along with them better than they would with kids at a normal school.
What about democratic free schools like Sudbury Valley School? Where all the children, ages 4-19, are free to do what they want, whether playing video games or studying abstract algebra.
9 min video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awOAmTaZ4XI
Not to derail from the article's point too much, but there are schools / programs specifically for talented youth - although they are not everywhere (sounds like there were none wherever you grew up). I know of one high school where a large number of students write the Putnam. I think it is important to have these schools / programs because pursuing opportunities outside of school is not always possible / easy for disadvantaged youth.