They would learn co-operation, team building, and social awareness by working with kids at a similar ability level.
My kids have all been in schools where social awareness, being a good citizen, team building and cooperation are emphasized and I really appreciate it (and I've seen it impact them *very* positively). While I think that learning (academics) benefit highly gifted kids by pooling them together with other peers, I think it's also important (for at least my kids) to have the social experiences, team building, cooperation, etc - through working with and playing with kids of *all* ability levels. Our community, our world, is not a homogeneous society made up of high-IQ folks. There is also a lot to be learned from children who are naturally leaders when it comes to social skills - and those kids aren't always going to be automatically high-IQ kids.
So - no, I don't mind my children being asked to help other children with their schoolwork in the classroom.
OTOH, I also think that it's important to add that it's not fair to *always* ask a child to help their classmates as a way of filling up the extra time that child has in class because they finished their work early and already understand it in place of giving the child more challenging work. That happened in a big way to my youngest dd in her first grade class and she was miserable. It probably had the opposite effect of improving her social skills and empathy - she became very mad and resentful over it. What I've seen work well for my kids when they were in mixed-ability classrooms are teachers who switch seats for all the kids frequently - this allows the teachers to specifically pair students for strong/weak in whatever area, but doesn't keep the children in the same place with the same child more than a few weeks at a time, plus it forced socialization among some of the children who wouldn't otherwise have ever chosen to sit next to each other.
polarbear
