Well, I've struggled with understanding this gifted PG lark and what to do about it. My son is more the creative, visual spatial, divergent thinker than the orderly, linear, auditory sequential student. He's also not motivated externally, which poses another set of challenges.
I think if you have a child who is more motivated from external sources and learns in a more traditional classroom way, then Anderson and some of the programs you've mentioned would work. But if you've got another type of child, like my son, then they are not necessarily going to work. Believe me, I know. I placed my son in one gifted school, only to remove him within 3 months and place him in another due to his learning style and rapid acceleration. At the end of the day, you cannot put a square peg in a round hole no matter how hard you try.
One part of learning is exposure but that's only one part. There's so much more to learning than stuffing kids with facts and details, which we can get obsessed with. I actually think it's more important to get kids engaged and motivated internally with learning and being able to share their thoughts and ideas.
It's fine and dandy to have the fancy degrees, but I wonder if it's not more important in life to be able to relate to people, have confidence, take chances, and trust your imagination and big picture thinking. I mean where's the joy in some people's lives if we're constantly chasing degrees, money, and material objects? Are we not losing sight of what makes us human in the first place?
To be fair, NYC can provide a host of opportunities that are not available (or so readily available) elsewhere. Still, there's a limit to what you can do within a day, week, month, or year.
I'm not even thinking about high school yet (grin). I'm just trying to get through the end of this academic year. My head spun enough with NYC and moving to MA, switching gifted schools within a 4 months, etc.
