To the editor:

Rarely can one find ideas so misguided as the ones expressed in the letter “Gifted spending.” The writer claims that the state unnecessarily lavishes resources educating gifted children. Her solution is to employ these children to “help” others who can’t learn as well, send them to KU or pay for private education. There might be educational benefits to the former two, although the second cannot be implemented until high school. It also costs parents tuition money, so it is akin to private schooling, which brings us to the third solution.

If I suggested that a child with a learning disability deserves no special educational services or that his/her parents can pay for them themselves, I would be called heartless – and rightly so. Why is the same treatment acceptable for gifted children? Gifted children have special needs – well beyond boredom – that cannot be addressed as simplistically as the letter suggests. Why aren’t they entitled to equitable education? If education is a public good and the goal is to create an educated public, is the public served best by ignoring the needs of its brightest? Is the goal of education to make the most of each student’s (young citizen’s) intellectual potential? Or is it to serve only the middle and put the gifted to work to punish them for their audacity to be bright?

It is my sincere hope that Ms. Kieffer’s position is not widely held in our community and society at large. If so, our future is bleak.

Marta Pirnat-Greenberg,

Lawrence