That is a wonderful idea, EastnWest.
It would be a tremendous help to all of us. I tend to scour books on gifted education and the emotional needs of gifted kids for just such information. The book that I recommended by Miraca Gross has just that kind of information, except that it is taken from a limited number of kids from Australia. It would be wonderful to have a current database of hundreds of kids in the U.S.
Unfortunately, I'm not too terribly web savvy. I can only imagine the data being gathered in a quick and dirty fashion by a detailed questionnaire-type survey, in order to compile it easily. I don't know enough about web design to be able to envision data mining from a testimonial format. It sounds fascinating though. Anyone have ideas on how to do this?
For the quick and dirty approach: If you had very specific questions, then you could glean such information and tabulate it into the necessary statistics. It would be a fun questionnaire to write!!
"How many hours a week is your child bored senseless in school?"
1-2 hours/3-4 hours/ 5-9 hours/10-20 hours
"How many times a week do you get a phone call from exasperated teachers?"
1-2 times/3-4 times/ 5-9 times/10-20 times per week
"Is there a correlation for your child between boredom and teacher's phone calls?" yes/no
"Does your child enjoy school?" yes/no
Maybe you could calculate a compatibility score between your child's experiences and other kid's experiences, and then compile a list of testimonials to read that are similar to yours? Although I'm sure that there is a much better way to do this! What an interesting thought!!
