Take this with a grain of salt... but it's an idea I've played with on and off for quite a while:
Take a typical profile for a gifted kid who is a self-motivated learner, always looking for new experiences or diving deeper into old ones, is somewhat or very introspective. By age 6, they've been awake around 26,280 hours and probably are spending at least half their time learning. One definition of an expert is someone with over 10,000 hours of progressive experience. So, by age six our gifted kids are somewhat experts in their own learning.
A typical classroom teacher spending 180 days, 6 hours a day with 20 kids. Say a 5% gifted rate, will have spent about 54 hours a years directly dealing with gifted kids.
So the teacher is the new guy at work coming in telling our expert learners they are doing it all wrong.
