Educational opportunities for gifted children are—at best—hard to
find, uninviting, or boring. Atworst, they are poorly organized or
even disastrous. Extremely precocious children who are highly sen-
sitive, curious, and mature far beyond their ages may be easily mis-
understood and poorly educated by the schools they attend.

Our society bears a subtle but real anti-intellectual bias against ex-
tremely bright children, labeling them “intense,” “demanding,”
“misfits,” “nerds,” and “eggheads.” The sad result is that gifted chil-
dren are not encouraged to develop a unique self-awareness or to
further their special potential in mathematics, science, writing, mu-
sic, technology,orart.
Strange as it may seem, many parents of gifted children are un-
aware of or indifferent to the importance of utilizing and advanc-

ing their child’s gift.