Below is a link to an article that is in the CNN.com headlines this morning.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/family/08/27/gifted.kids/index.htmlThe vast majority of children are not gifted. Only 2 to 5 percent of kids fit the bill, by various estimates. Of those, only one in 100 is considered highly gifted. Prodigies (those wunderkinds who read at 2 and go to college at 10) are rarer still -- like one to two in a million. And despite the boom in infant-stimulation techniques, educational DVDs, learning toys, and enrichment classes, those numbers haven't been increasing. You can't build giftedness; it's mostly built in.
I love that they go back to the old stats of one in a million and the sources they pull from such as Parents.com.
Also clearly setting the stage for educators to claim pushy parents and no need for gifted programs in the early years because clearly there is not really many 'gifted' kids.
I do have to agree, however, with the playbase learning and not using flashcards to drill. But overall the typical crap we see in the mainstream and yet another sign that things are not changing anytime soon.
By the way, the article is linked to a video of a 6 year old boy with an IQ in the 170s.
