After spending much of the past 6 years advocating for our gifted kids needs (3 boys, 10, 8 and 6) we have slowly come to a viewpoint that is not too far from what this teacher is (hopefully) trying to say. Our boys were born with an intellectual gift. It will never leave them. They can choose to tap into, exploit it, enjoy it, do whatever with it, anytime they choose. They may want to go down the academic path, but at the moment one wants to rescue wildlife, one wants to be a fireman and one wants to gets married and stay at home and look after the babies while his wife works (his words not ours!). These are all kids with 140 + IQ.
However, other life skills are learnt skills, including how to catch a ball and how to get along with people. Two of my kids have dyspraxia and one has borderline aspergers. The priority for us has been, in these younger years, to help them develop friendships and to help them develop motor skills so they can at least join in during lunchtime ball games with the other kids. This isn't to say that we ignore the academics, but we are now taking the approach that this isn't a race, and just because their intellectual gifts are not extended daily, doesn't mean that they will lose these gifts or lose interest in learning. We see the pain on their faces when they don't feel confident enough to join in a conversation with other kids, don't understand the subtle cues of "kid conversation" and become anxious about recess and lunchtime because they are excluded from joining in ball games. Their school results are just fine, they are working at their grade level with extension in subject (such as spelling and maths, as an example, DS who is 8 has a spelling age of 16 so has a different spelling list to other students). Sometimes they refuse to do their assignments because they are bored, and yes, my default response was to run to the school and say "this is an unfair expectation, he needs different work, of course he won't do this, it is far beneath his ability level". And then, after many years of the teacher rolling her eyes at me, I began to change my viewpoint. I now say to the kids "you know what, life can be boring and sometimes you have to do stuff that you don't particularly want to do but the trick is to just get it over with and move on." I also point out that many of the tasks that I have to do at work are really boring (like marking first year essays) but I will lose my job if I don't do it. Accepting that you will be bored sometimes is a lifeskill.
To be fair though, I think we live in a fair less pressured academic environment in Australia. We don't have private universities / colleges, they are all state run and 99% of students go to their local university. To comment on the PhD thing. Both my husband and I were labelled as gifted, we both went to very socio-economically disadvantaged schools, never had any extension but the innate ability was always there and we excelled at year 12 exams (which are used to gain entrance to university). We both gained PhDs without too much trouble and now have have very enjoyable academic careers.
