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It might be worth considering the possibility that there are multiple types of intelligences. Most people don't fall into the extremes of an intelligence, but those who do often experience deficits in other intelligences (as far as I can tell).

According to Howard Gardner, there are 8 types of intelligences:

• Visual/Spatial
• Verbal/Linguistic
• Logical/Mathematical
• Bodily/Kinesthetic
• Musical
• Interpersonal
• Intrapersonal
• Naturalist

Source: http://www.cse.emory.edu/sciencenet/mismeasure/genius/research02.html

Existential intelligence has been considered for inclusion on this list, but Howard Gardner says "I find the phenomenon perplexing enough and the distance from the other intelligences vast enough to dictate prudence - at least for now" (http://www.infed.org/thinkers/gardner.htm).

So true. And it's sad your post got modded down as Troll, since you are 100% right on, and whoever did that is probably caught up in the ideology behind monstrosity that is modern schooling (of course, most private schools are little better). Escalante failed to make large changes and was taken down by the institution because, ultimately, he was doing what should not be done in schools -- get poor people to think and climb out of their assigned class in life. More supportive links:

Gatto:
    "Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling"
    http://www.amazon.com/Dumbing-Down-Curriculum-Compulsory-Schooling/dp/086571231X
    http://www.newciv.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt
    http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/16a.htm
"""
Before you can reach a point of effectiveness in defending your own children or your principles against the assault of blind social machinery, you have to stop conspiring against yourself by attempting to negotiate with a set of abstract principles and rules which, by its nature, cannot respond. Under all its disguises, that is what institutional schooling is, an abstraction which has escaped its handlers. Nobody can reform it. First you have to realize that human values are the stuff of madness to a system; in systems-logic the schools we have are already the schools the system needs; the only way they could be much improved is to have kids eat, sleep, live, and die there.
"""

Illich:
    http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-illic.htm
    http://reactor-core.org/deschooling.html

John Holt:
    http://www.holtgws.com/

Collections of links by me on this:
    http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-October/005379.html
    http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/005584.html
    http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/006005.html

Why not just give the school money directly to the parents as they see fit to take care of their children? One proposal (by me):
    http://www.pdfernhout.net/towards-a-post-scarcity-new-york-state-of-mind.html

What about when consumers can buy nanotech 3D printers? :-)
http://www.reprap.org/wiki/Main_Page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3d_printing

And then print their own solar cells, 3D printers, and matter extractors and recyclers? :-)

Mainstream economics, if it ever made any sense, is on its way out...

That said, totally free global markets might not be that bad if there was a global basic income as a human right for every person to regularly claim some part of the fruits of the industrial commons:
http://www.basicincome.org/bien/aboutbasicincome.html
http://www.basicincome.org/bien/papers.html

And of course some way to account for externalities:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality

And a way to limit the concentration of wealth and power that can destroy the free market by regulatory capture (as happens all too often in the USA...)

Note that Friedrich Hayek said he was not against government intervention if it was based on "a clear set of principles", and a basic income as a human right (which also might smooth out business cycles), as well as concerns about externalities and concentration of wealth and power, might fit that definition:
"The road to serfdom: text and documents"
http://books.google.com/books?id=qg61T_I1mwsC&pg=PA20
"... he repeatedly emphasized in his talks before business groups that he was not against government intervention per se: "I think what is needed is a clear set of principles which enables us to distinguish between the legitimate fields of government activities and the illegitimate fields of government activity.""

Otherwise, without a human right to make a claim on the fruits of the industrial commons, what are you going to do if robots, AI, better design, and saturated demand take your job? Marshall Brain painted that picture, and it is not pretty:
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

And Frances Moore Lappé has already pointed out how starvation is quite possible around plenty:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Moore_Lapp%C3%A9
"Throughout her works Lappé has argued that world hunger is caused not by the lack of food but rather by the inability of hungry people to gain access to the abundant amount of food that exists in the world and/or food-producing resources because they are simply too poor. She has posited that our current "thin democracy" creates a maldistribution of power and resources that inevitably creates waste and an artificial scarcity of the essentials for sustainable living."

Some other ideas about freedom, if you are interested:
"Ivan Illich: deschooling, conviviality and the possibilities for informal education and lifelong learning"
http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-illic.htm

And from Ivan Illich's deschooling society, that echoes some of Hayek's points:
http://reactor-core.org/deschooling.html
"""
The choice is between two radically opposed institutional types, both of which are exemplified in certain existing institutions, although one type so characterizes the contemporary period. as to almost define it. This dominant type I would propose to call the manipulative institution. The other type also exists, but only precariously. The institutions which

Thanks for the reply, and it's an interesting analogy with the human body and cancer. Still, the human body is about 90% bacterial cells by number, and about 10% bacteria by weight, so it that sense the human immune system is in that sense mostly a legal constitution about getting some bacteria to work well together. :-)

Also, note that populations of living things tend to change over time, so some dissenting cells (mutations) may lead to a very different next generation (though that is rare).

Also, note that classically entropy is about a "closed system". In an "open system" with an energy flux, like the Earth getting thousands of times what our industry uses from solar energy, and with an infinite cosmos for material expansion, different laws or different perspectives may apply, since the energy flux and endless matter can be used to rebuild systems (or duplicate systems, or spread duplicates).
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=entropy+closed+system
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=entropy+open+system

Anyway, the most fundamental issue, as told to me by the late professor Larry Slobodkin (very wise guy) in a course on Philosophy and Ecology, is that even if every organism in the universe behaved a certain way, human still have moral choices to make, and could decide to do things differently. I think the same is true for physics. Whatever we see when we look at the physics of the world, people still make moral choices. Although another way to look at that, as a variant on Einstein's point, is to look at the idea of Memetics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memetics

But, even with that idea, ultimately human reason still rests on emotion (or religion) as Einstein suggest.
http://www.sacred-texts.com/aor/einstein/einsci.htm
Or, George Lakoff saying that:
http://blog.buzzflash.com/contributors/3014
Or, Antonio R. Damasio saying that:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descartes'_Error
Or, E.F. Schumacher saying that:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Guide_for_the_Perplexed

Again, science can tell you what is, what was, and even the theoretical limits of what might be possible, but it can't tell you what should be. Only emotion (or some sort of religion) can tell you that. Or, taken to another level, politics.

Although, as is pointed out here:
http://www.disciplined-minds.com/
it seems the biggest political issue is often that professions (including science) usually deny they have politics built in to them, so, stating they actually do have politics of various sorts is a political issue... :-) So, what we have now is a poverty crisis in the USA related to jobs, but people claim it has nothing to do with politics (or religion, or emotion), it is just "economics". Or we have an illness crisis in the US, but people claim it has nothing to do with politics (or religion, or emotion), but again, it is just about professional choices, economics, health science, and so on.

Also related:
"ivan illich: deschooling, conviviality and the possibilities for informal education and lifelong learning"
http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-illic.htm
"Known for his critique of modernization and the corrupting impact of institutions, Ivan Illich's concern with deschooling, learning webs and the disabling effect of professions has struck a chord among m

Consider what Gatto writes here:
http://www.newciv.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt
"The first lesson I teach is confusion."
"The second lesson I teach is your class position."
"The third lesson I teach kids is indifference."
"The fourth lesson I teach is emotional dependency."
"The fifth lesson I teach is intellectual dependency."
"The sixth lesson I teach is provisional self-esteem."
"The seventh lesson I teach is that you can't hide."
"After an adult lifetime spent teaching school I believe the method
of mass-schooling is the only real content it has, don't be fooled into
thinking that good curriculum or good equipment or good teachers are the
critical determinants of your son and daughter's schooltime. All the
pathologies we've considered come about in large measure because the
lessons of school prevent children from keeping important appointments
with themselves and with their families, to learn lessons in self-
motivation, perseverance, self-reliance, courage, dignity and love and
lessons in service to others, which are among the key lessons of home
life."

It may be a long journey before you are willing to admit you have been bamboozled by the very people who proclaimed to be your salvation. It was for me. :-)

As I said in the title, the Gifted label is used to control. If you are a standard product of school, even of a "gifted program", you have been controlled -- neutralized -- domesticated. You have been shaped to fit into a 19th century Brave New World industrial model of how society should be. OK, so you were tracked as an Alpha, so what? You were still controlled -- and limited -- against your wishes. Those very wishes were shaped to fit the perceived needs of that industrial order.

It does not matter if many or most teachers are caring individuals -- they remain the agents and prison wardens of this system; their range of behavior is limited by the system they are embedded in. That is one reason so many of the most caring ones burn out early.

I have no doubt that people vary in interests, experiences, or potential. Consider Howard Gardener's work Frames of Mind. The theory of multiple intelligences: __
http://www.infed.org/thinkers/gardner.htm
"In the heyday of the psychometric and behaviorist eras, it was generally believed that intelligence was a single entity that was inherited; and that human beings - initially a blank slate - could be trained to learn anything, provided that it was presented in an appropriate way. Nowadays an increasing number of researchers believe precisely the opposite; that there exists a multitude of intelligences, quite independent of each other; that each intelligence has its own strengths and constraints; that the mind is far from unencumbered at birth; and that it is unexpectedly difficult to teach things that go against early 'naive' theories or that challenge the natural lines of force within an intelligence and its matching domains. (Gardner 1993: xxiii)"

There may well be people who excel at everything. You may be one of them. But so what? How does that justify "compulsory schooling" of anyone? Except to control them. To neutralize any potential benefit of that intelligence on social structure. Even if kids need to be in day prisons because their parents are forced to work to survive (even in this age of abundance):
http://www.whywork.org/
why not "Free schools"?
http://www.albanyfreeschool.com/overview.shtml

On conspiracy, if you read the rest of that online book, you will see that Gatto does not believe in "conspiracy" in a large sense. As he says here:
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/

Friedrich Froebel's enduring significance was through his formulation of the 'kindergarten system' with its emphasis on play and its use of 'gifts' (play materials) and 'occupations (activities).

Friedrich Froebel believed that humans are essentially productive and creative - and fulfilment comes through developing these in harmony with God and the world. As a result, Froebel sought to encourage the creation of educational environments that involved practical work and the direct use of materials. Through engaging with the world, understanding unfolds. Hence the significance of play - it is both a creative activity and through it children become aware of their place in the world. He went on to develop special materials (such as shaped wooden bricks and balls - gifts), a series of recommended activities (occupations) and movement activities, and an linking set of theories. His original concern was the teaching of young children through educational games in the family. In the later years of his life this became linked with a demand for the provision of special centres for the care and development of children outside the home.

Reader Bastian responds to that, writing ... If we want to fix up our schools, we should start by reviewing our crufty old educational plan that hasn't been revised for decades and basically ignores all major research on how people learn. Once we have a new plan, we can go about figuring out how to implement it. I'm sure that computers will be the best way to implement some details of the plan, but they should be used only for those things, and if it turns out that there's a better way to do something else (lectures, for example, are almost guaranteed to suck if PowerPoint is involved), then they should be avoided.

I know there are many claims to who is the inventor of the Telephone. There are similar claims about the TV.
The link to the "inventor" of the tv fails to completely mention John Logie Baird.
This very eccentric scotsman was a pioneer in TV development. There is still to this day a great debate amongst historians about who was first.

http://www.infed.org/walking/wa-baird.htm

The first TV pictures he sent were down a phone line!
At least the place where the worlds first TV station broadcast from is still standing and is a great monument to those involved.

Some excellent points you have made. I especially like how you correctly state that people in general do not have or show any respect for the thoughts of others who do not think like they do or who have not been trained in their discipline.

Howard Gardner (one of my personal heroes) destroys the concepts of elitism in any one way of thinking with his multiple intelligences theory. After I met him while I was in grad school I strongly considered switching programs, but I was already well into my program in physics and was itching to get the hell out of Boston :) No offense to Bostonians, but I just can't do city life.

I am lucky in that I was always smart in a bookish way that appealed to the kind of people who admit you to college and graduate school. It took a long time to convince my wife, for example, that she is a highly intelligent person even though she sucks at traditional academics and tests. Her artistic mind, however, is truly stunning, and that is why I was attracted to her.

Scientists do have a well thought out, internally consistent, rationale for evolutionary pressure that may answer the questions you raised in the first part of your comment. I would strongly suggest reading Darwin's Origin of Species. Your issues are very carefully discussed within that book, but only from the point of view of a scientist, of course.

I am also certain that creationists have a well thought out and internally consistent rationale for motivations behind changes in species. That is part of why I asked for ID references. I do not understand the rationales from that point of view, but I would like to.

I got mid 170s in an IQ test that the school/state put me in for - at the time I didn't even know I was doing an IQ test. I was just doing fun and fairly easy spatial and verbal puzzles for an afternoon - some part of which was talking to an entertaining and interesting person (an educational psychologist).

If I had realised the implications of what I was doing I would have flunked it. Twenty-two years later I can look back at a lot of bad-times and finger that test as a cause.

It is usually best that most people do not think of you as belonging to a privileged group.

Schools are awful - merely open prisons for children, ways of keeping them of the streets while their parents work society's treadmills, while preparing them for the same life of indentured servitude. :-)

Read some Ivan Illich . He frames his arguments better than I do.

"Many students, especially those who are poor, intuitively know what the schools do for them. They school them to confuse process and substance. Once these become blurred, a new logic is assumed: the more treatment there is, the better are the results; or, escalation leads to success. The pupil is thereby "schooled" to confuse teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fluency with the ability to say something new. His imagination is "schooled" to accept service in place of value. Medical treatment is mistaken for health care, social work for the improvement of community life, police protection for safety, military poise for national security, the rat race for productive work. Health, learning, dignity, independence, and creative endeavour are defined as little more than the performance of the institutions which claim to serve these ends, and their improvement is made to depend on allocating more resources to the management of hospitals, schools, and other agencies in question." Ivan Illich Deschooling Society (1973)