I'm pretty sure most if not all gifted learners really like to learn - that's what makes them gifted. Really the most important thing is to give gifted learners opportunity and make sure they know what's available.
I think a good way to provide "gifted" education is through optional extra-curriculars like math clubs which teach higher-level concepts and function as ways to place-out of lower-level classes. Most students who aren't that smart won't even want to go to these clubs, and the ones that do shouldn't cause any issues, and the gifted students will want to go at minimum it's less work for them to place out of the "boring" classes.
If a particular student or small group is much more gifted than their peers, they should have access to a regional or state or even national club or classes. That way they don't feel like an outcast, in this day and age their are plenty of very talented people in all fields.
Agree fully. I was in G&T in elementary and middle school and the primary benefit imo was that I went into highschool with a circle of friends that were mostly high-achievers. Unless you plan on being a horrible overbearing helicopter parent, peer pressure is going to determine a lot more than you're expecting about what your kids like, do, strive for, etc. Despite being at a school that sent zero students to Stanford or Harvard or Cambridge, we had a pretty high upper bound on what you _could_ do if you were motivated. Competitive academic teams were the norm in many subjects (math, languages, history, civics...)
Some of my middleschool friends split off to go to local magnet schools instead and looking at the spread, they didn't actually fair any better than the rest of us. Meanwhile, they mostly describe highschool as a miserable experience that made them vomit with stress instead of the excellent time that I had in public school with access to all the "public school stuff" like marching band, large theatre program involvement from the local community, etc. Maybe some of those things have since died, but I'd be surprised if the difference was enough to justify it.
I think a good way to provide "gifted" education is through optional extra-curriculars like math clubs which teach higher-level concepts and function as ways to place-out of lower-level classes. Most students who aren't that smart won't even want to go to these clubs, and the ones that do shouldn't cause any issues, and the gifted students will want to go at minimum it's less work for them to place out of the "boring" classes.
If a particular student or small group is much more gifted than their peers, they should have access to a regional or state or even national club or classes. That way they don't feel like an outcast, in this day and age their are plenty of very talented people in all fields.