I certainly didn't come to be disputatious -- but as the result of a chance Google search (sorry). What touched a nerve for me is the realization that I may soon have to deal with this issue, and some of the assumptions that I'm seeing were a bit alarming.
I read through the Hoagies guide -- and although I am normally a big fan of quantifying, classifying, and systematizing things -- I make a BIG exception when it comes to people. We have a natural tendency (biologically-based, likely) to divide people into our tribe and others, and make generalizations about the superiority of our tribe (i.e. we're in the top 3%, and we share this identity). A large component of cultural progress has involved overcoming these tendencies and seeing people more and more as individuals.
Therein lies the conflict I see here. Advocating for the unique needs of children by grouping them under the label of 'gifted.' It's a common strategy for many identity politics movements, and in my view this is a very Faustian bargain.
The reason I am unmoved by many of the guides and descriptions is that it seems like the very elaborate world of diamond grading -- the four "Cs.' There is an entire industry devoted to developing rigorous, quantitative tests of diamond quality and then assigning values to the results. Very systematic. Very organized. Experts and authorities to rely on. The whole deal. It's a nice system, designed to obscure the fact that what is really important is how the stone looks on your finger. Simply because tests are real and reliable doesn't mean we should use them, or that they are valid.
The other big issue is that it's not clear to me that early, rapid learning necessarily implies what people seem to be arguing that it implies. Simply going faster doesn't necessarily imply going farther. If this were the case, then we would now all likely be working for Asian companies, where students progress very rapidly along regimented, academic curricula. My own experience is that products of these educational systems think differently, yes, but there are costs as well.
Development is not a simple, linear race but a number of interacting processes that proceed at their own rates in different people. Trying to force a "gifted" identity onto this, it seems to me, is not true to the process and could actually limit, instead of expand, the possibilities for the individual children.
