Quotes from Jan Davidson

We receive an e-mail from a mother who describes how her son, at age two, learned all the state capitals as an afternoon diversion and later solved three-digit arithmetic problems when he was bored in his stroller.

This book is about whether schools and communities choose to squelch or nurture the flame of intelligence in their young people, and what happens when they choose to deny or embrace this national resource.

Learning becomes a joy when children have what we call "aha!" moments.

Over the years, we have discovered that when it comes to leaving no child behind, highly gifted students are the most likely to fall through the cracks in American classrooms.

Genius" means extraordinary intellectual ability, and people use the word in two different but related ways. In one sense, genius means high intellectual potential; in the other sense, genius means "creative ability of exceptionally high order as demonstrated by total achievement." This book uses both meanings.

We do not believe that most educators or schools or communities are hostile to the needs of gifted learners. Rather, most people are simply indifferent.

With all the other educational crises plaguing American schools these days, why, people ask, should we focus on children who seem better able than other students to fend for themselves? People believe these children have it easy.

All kids—low-achievers, high-achievers, and those in the middle—deserve to have their educational needs met.

Yet in a country with one hundred types of toothpaste on supermarket shelves, schools still follow a one-size-fits-all educational model.

Children march in lockstep through grades with their age peers, regardless of their capabilities.

We first answer these questions by saying that schools should not discriminate against gifted kids.

We also know that children learn best when surrounded by their intellectual peers.

They soon learned how difficult and hostile school can be for a child who is different.

Her parents asked for special courses or distance-learning opportunities, but the school refused. It had never been done before, administrators said.

She asked for an exception to choose from the course catalogue. The school refused to grant it. It had never been done before, they said. The local college refused to help without her high school's permission. Those were the rules, they said, and there was nothing anyone could do.

What did classes matter when she knew everything taught in them? Not learning made her miserable. She decided that she was the crazy one, that she was too different. It was better to stop trying. She started getting C's on her report cards.

As part of it, some teachers created a behavioral checklist for her in tenth grade. It was a prescription for how to fit in: Don't talk so much in class; keep it to a sound bite. Don't be so aggressive. Don't answer all the questions. Don't discuss things so much. Tone it down. Don't challenge the classroom status quo.

There it was, written down for her to follow: how to take that precocious mind and learn to be like everyone else.