Schooling for Gifted Students

At 5 our son, Alex, demanded to be taught about percentages so he could better understand the Times Business section. Due to stories such as the ones presented in “Struggling to Teach the Very Brightest” (Oct. 17), we avoided L.A. Unified and used a private school. We quickly learned that for Alex, school was for day care, social interaction and play. Academics for our son happened in the evenings and on weekends.

After the birth of our daughter, Melissa (who is also unusually bright), we had to explore less-expensive options. With a great deal of fear we took advantage of LAUSD’s open-enrollment policy and enrolled Alex in second grade at Lanai Elementary. His teacher recognized his talents and provided him with advanced material. She was also very good at finding group projects that allowed for significant contributions from students of all skill levels. His principal arranged for Alex to be formally tested. Alex qualified for the highly gifted program. He started third grade at the San Jose Highly Gifted Magnet last month.

Alex used to describe school as easy and boring. He now describes it as hard and fun. The problems described in the article are real. Still, your readers need to know that sometimes the system works.

STEPHEN D. SCARBOROUGH

ALLISON L. SCARBOROUGH

Van Nuys

* You mention the difficulty parents have making the case for spending public funds on highly gifted children. One of the problems is the term “gifted,” and the scarcity of resources for education. All children, and all people, are indeed gifted. Too few are recognized and nurtured.

We should be wary of being pitted against each other, gifted against handicapped or old against young. Those are false alternatives.

The real policy question is, are we spending money to enhance life or to destroy it? We are spending way more on weapons, mines, plutonium-powered rockets and toxic products than we are on people’s minds, bodies and hearts.

JANE HIRSCH

Pacific Palisades

* As a product of LAUSD’s gifted programs, I would like to tell the angry parents of gifted children to be cautious about what they are demanding. I was at Carpenter Elementary, Reed Junior High and North Hollywood High throughout the 1970s. What should not have occurred was the expectation that as gifted children we intuitively knew the basics and therefore had no need to learn them.

But the worst part of being a gifted child is to have agents of the government drill into your head, for 10 years, that you are a better and more valuable person than everyone else. Imagine what kind of psychological preparation this provides a young adult when it is time to rejoin a society from which you have been segregated.

I can only hope that in the last 17 years this has been rectified, because for myself and many old classmates, our potential was stripped bare by the so-called educators with good intentions.

MARTIN KORN

Valley Glen