California's most neglected group of students: the gifted ones

The push at the state level for policies that focus on equality of outcomes over equality of opportunities will not end well for the gifted and talented communities.

Whenever I hear these people talk about their policies, I can’t help but recall Harrison Bergeron.

Focusing on equality of outcomes in a society that structurally does not afford equality of opportunities is a fool’s game that ends with Bergeron-esque levels of absurdity.

Imho, the only viable/main solution is to acknowledge that we all aren’t equal, we don’t all have access to the same opportunities, but as a country we can implement policies that lessen the imbalance.

Head Start is a good example.

Well-run gifted and talented programs in schools are also good examples.

Killing truly progressive programs for the purpose of virtue signaling is a loss for society.

It's not just a loss for society. It's society-killing.

Taking resources away from those who move society forward and spending them on those who are unlikely to "pay it back" is a way your culture dies. Conquerers in the past used this strategy to win massive empires for themselves. It's a ridiculous self-own.

This is perhaps the sole political topic I will die on a hill for.

What does this even mean?

To me, the measure of a healthy society is how that society treats those that are "unlikely to pay it back". The most unhealthy societies treat unwanted humans as disposable refuse. For example, I don't think we'd call the culture/society of the 1900s US particularly healthy. Yet that was probably the peak of the US keeping resources in the hands of "those who move society forward" the robber barons and monopolists. We didn't think anything of working to death unwanted 5 year olds that were unlikely to make a positive impact on society.

As for "dying culture" that to me is a very different thing from society. Societies can have multiple cultures present and healthy societies tolerate multiple cultures.

> Conquerers in the past used this strategy to win massive empires for themselves.

Which conquerers? I can think of no historical example where a conquerer somehow convinced a target to take care of their needy so they could conquer.

> This is perhaps the sole political topic I will die on a hill for.

I'm really interested in the foundation of these beliefs. What are the specific historical examples you are thinking of when you make these statements? Or is it mostly current events that you consider?

The inventor of a vaccine or a microchip or a sculpture doesn't hoard the invention for themself.

Meanwhile, societies like USSR and Communist China, that persecuted their geniuses, collapsed their previously great societies.

The built-in assumption is that those outlier high achievers & inventors were gifted students. Is there any evidence for this prior?

As a devil's advocate, my counterpoint is that "grit" was more important than raw intelligence, if so, should society then prioritize grittiness over giftedness?

A few months ago, there was a rebroadcast of an interview about the physician who developed roughly half the vaccines given to children in the US to this day. He seemed to be an unremarkable student, and persistence seems to have been the key quality that led to his successes, not a sequence of brilliant revelations.