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I have zero problem with kids that aren't PG, EG, or even garden variety GT being in an academic placement with my DD. What I have a problem with is that student raising a hand to complain about the pace, or to elbow my kid to 'hush' about a contradiction in the textbook, or an interesting gap in the historical record... discuss a definition, etc. Look, I know that this is technically out-of-level for the class as it perhaps currently exists. But still-- "Honors/AP" ought to mean something, and I think it not unreasonable that if some students find that pace/level inaccessible, that a different placement might be better for them, rather than telling my DD that she MUST conform, or insisting that the class be "made" to be accessible for those less able students so that the differences between them and the HG+ students in them is somehow less apparent to colleges, universities, and scholarship-awarding organizations.

What makes you so sure that the kid who is elbowing your kid to hush is lower in ability? What makes you so sure that the kid asking the interesting questions is higher in ability?

I think you may be conflating ability with personality and intellectualism. I went to an extremely competitive high school with a lot of very smart kids. I was smart, but not the smartest kid there by any means. However, I WAS the kid with her hand in the air asking the annoying/interesting questions. Meanwhile, some of the kids who were on paper brighter than me (especially in math) were the ones rolling their eyes at me and asking if this was on the test. Shall we discuss who had the grades and numbers to get into Stanford and succeed big time? (Hint: not me.) Don't tell me those kids weren't smart. They were. They simply had a different attitude towards education.

Past a certain ability level, which I think is probably around IQ 120, I believe these differences have more to do with family culture than almost anything else. I was raised by intellectuals who valued debate, learning, and knowledge above money, achievement, and status. My own kids are being raised the same way. Yet there are kids in my DD's class who are being raised to value right answers and high achievement above all. Tiger cubs, shall we say. Are they less intelligent than she is? They are probably less creative and less divergent in their thinking, but this does not mean they are less intelligent. It's really another conversation altogether.

I think what a lot of us are really talking about here is the differences between kids (and adults) who care about learning, thinking, and ideas vs kids (and adults) who care about Achieving Paper Thingy and Shiny Object A. (Of course, school can suck that caring out of you.)