...I wonder how a teacher who must only encounter a hg+ child once in a long time (if at all), would be able to distinguish a bright well prepared kid from a gifted kid. natural to believe that he has just one more of the same.
I would tend to agree with this idea. Even starting at an LOG around 1 in 500 (IQ in the low 140s, I think), many years will likely pass before a teacher with an annual class of 25-30 kids will meet a child at this ability level. Perhaps the meeting would happen sooner with bigger classes (35-40 kids), but at that point, the teacher won't be noticing a whole lot of detail about each student.
Plus, even if the teacher has taught one HG kid, that's only one kid, which isn't much of a sample size. In the absence of education about giftedness, I suspect that many teachers wouldn't start to get it until they've taught several gifties. Which, given the numbers, is unlikely to happen in most schools.
I think that conventional ideas about giftedness lump into two categories:
truly gifted = kids who learn calculus when they're 3 (derives from sensationalized media stories about
THE NEXT EINSTEIN!!!) and
GATE-program-level gifted = high achiever who doesn't make waves. A quirky kid who won't sit still or go along with the program doesn't fit either of these definitions.
These two ideas, combined with "my many years in the classroom" can add up to "Sorry, your kid isn't gifted."
