Thomas Sowell on Smart Children and School

Dr. Thomas Sowell offers some interesting commentary on the challenges -- or, more properly, the lack thereof -- often faced by bright children at school.

We ran into one example of this kind of problem just last week, when we learned that our local public high school doesn't offer more than one academic course for advanced/gifted seniors during the last period of the day, on the assumption that most seniors don't care and will be leaving campus as early in the day as allowed. If you don't need that one course available, too bad. The curriculum is thus "dumbed down" to meet the needs of the lowest common denominator, rather than offering options to seniors who are serious about their education and desirous of learning more.

My daughter wanted to take six classes but couldn't do it because there was nothing "academic" whatsoever available she could take 6th period! Her counselor just shrugged when I commented that the school wasn't meeting its mission to serve all its students.