I had a discussion fairly recently with a man in Mensa and I asked this very question- how can we gifteds change society? One thing he brought up is that the only successful gifteds are the ones who know how to 'dumb-down'. Makes sense to me. He told me that mags and papers write stories in 5th-8th grade level. I was shocked! Another thing this made me remember is an article I once read. It discussed successful advertising and why it is successful- said that people do not want logical, they want appealing, either to their baser emotions or to their idea of celebrity. Trouble with us gifteds is that we like logical best and use logic predominantly. If the other 70-80% of the population does not, we have no 'connection' with them and therefore our thoughts are not their thoughts. They do not care about the things we think are vital.
The way I see it is- if we are to be successful in this effort we must figure out what IS important to them and slant our wishes in that direction. A problem I see many times is that it is all about one-upman-ship. 'My ___ is better than yours' mentality. I cannot stoop to those types of levels; I'm too moral for that.
I think starting out as a business is a great idea because business is their language. We need to get together and form a coalition or something and start our own charter schools, etc... If our profits exceed others we may get some attention.
Davidson Academy needs a duplicate in every major city, perhaps.
