(idea) by ScottMGS Tue Mar 27 2001 at 6:10:50

The Mentally Gifted Minors (MGM) program in California, U.S.A., was, in my experience, a money-maker for the schools. The school received an extra chunk of money to give me a better education. I don't know what it was spent on but I don't think it was spent on me. Nor do I know what good it would have done if they had spent it on me.

Here is what I remember getting because I was in this program:

  1. When I tested into the program in fourth grade I was allowed to join the school band a whole year early. That's it. It was irrelevant that I had no musical talent other than the ability to distinguish two notes with a little as one hertz difference between them. I quit band after three years.
  2. After seventh grade I was allowed to take a summer class in photography. The teacher helped us make one of those silly stop-action movies where you look like you're scooting along on your butt in an invisible car. I never saw the resulting film.
  3. I was harassed by goons in eighth grade partly because I was an introverted, underachieving nerd. Contrary to stereotype, two jocks (one of them was the richest kid in school and an MGM student) threatened the goons to keep them from pestering me. Because of my standing as an MGM student, I was allowed to take my ninth grade year at the local high school instead of at the junior high school.
  4. In high school, I declined the option to stay after school and play war games with the other MGM students.

These benefits surely did not cost the school as much as they received for providing them. If I received anything else I never heard about it. On the whole, I believe that the people in my state would have been better off if they had, instead, directed that money to inner-city or rural schools.

The existence of this type of program means that either:

  1. school officials don't know that "gifted" students would learn more regardless of the environment.

    2. OR
  2. school officials know that the education provided at their schools is detrimental to learning ability and they don't want to subject "gifted" students to it (but it's okay for everyone else).

Either way, it's an indictment of U.S. public school policy.

The MGM program was replaced in 1980 by GATE ("Gifted And Talented Education") according to California Education Codes 52200-52212. The amount per student at that time was $250 and the code allows for a six or seven percent annual increase. At that rate, the current per-seat value of GATE students would be approximately $850 per year.

I like it!