Schools Should Focus on Gifted

* I read with interest your article about the Mirman School (“Where Bright Minds Can Shine,” Nov. 22). About the same time that school was started, a similar one in Orange County, the El Dorado School for the Gifted Child, was started in Fullerton (it later moved to Orange). This too catered to gifted children with a real education, where the children were allowed to learn (rather than being “taught”). I did some part-time teaching there and that was among the most interesting and rewarding experiences of my life.

My children attended the school for a while until it got to the point that I couldn’t afford to keep them all there. Taking them out of that school was a big mistake. They lost both intellectually and socially.

What we need is more attention to gifted students in the public schools, as well as more special schools.

When I went to public school in New York the grades were subdivided into the “fast,” “average” and “slow” grades. But today that is considered elitist and “undemocratic.” As a result, our schools have deteriorated to where the bright students are frustrated and the slow students are overwhelmed, and nobody learns well.

DAVID FEIGN

Santa Ana