Submission + - Shortchanging the Nation
mark0978 writes: In the Wall Street Journal Opinion column for the last 3 days, there has been a discussion about the education of the gifted. Some statistics in the last article http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110009541 are kind of shocking.
- Combine these groups, and the top 10% of the intelligence distribution has a huge influence on whether our economy is vital or stagnant, our culture healthy or sick, our institutions secure or endangered. Of the simple truths about intelligence and its relationship to education, this is the most important and least acknowledged: Our future depends crucially on how we educate the next generation of people gifted with unusually high intelligence.
- How assiduously does our federal government work to see that this precious raw material is properly developed? In 2006, the Department of Education spent about $84 billion. The only program to improve the education of the gifted got $9.6 million, one-hundredth of 1% of expenditures. In the 2007 budget, President Bush zeroed it out.