aeh, what benefit does a really high VS have in school?
While waiting for the official answer, I will throw in: makes conceptual math REALLY easy. DS can picture the problem in his head and see the solution. Alas, there's not a whole lot of conceptual math in elementary school. And it makes "show your work" that much harder. However, the benefit of extreme VS is really clear to me when we do AoPS (I'm not VS at all, and he is way faster than me on any problem he can visualize).
In real life, the equally extreme VS adults around him can do stuff like run models in their heads, manipulate variables until the lines come out where they want them, and then inform clients, "you ought to do x". They easily see patterns and discrepancies in data. 3D design is as easy as breathing. Protein folding is a piece of cake.
I sometimes wonder if the extreme VS streak amongst these family members may be related to the significant writing challenges they also share, a la Silverman: trouble changing visual all-at-once-thoughts into a linear sequence of words. Don't know how this could be tested, though - Silverman's a bit skimpy on that part!
ETA: I agree with aeh. In our experience, VS has a lot of use in higher level studies and real life, but little value - and maybe even disadvantage - in lower levels of school.
