Edutopia, a large circulation (more than 100,000 readers) magazine published by the George Lucas Education Foundation, just ran a two-page spread titled "Sage Advice" in its March 2006 issue. This is a standing column in which readers respond to a prompt. This month the prompt was "How do you challenge and motivate gifted students?"

Initially, I was excited to see a large education publication giving attention to the topic. Many of the responses offer some good ideas--encourage projects that target a child's area of talent and passion, develop mentorship programs, have students prepare creative projects for real-world audiences, etc.

However, the editors of the magazine chose to publish such "sage advice" as "[have] them help us teach," "all kids need this ... then we would see that they all have gifts," and "keeping a talent-varied classroom under control is one of the most important concerns a teacher should have. Silence ... is of utmost significance"

I was disappointed that the editors of the magazine chose to run these latter suggestions. I believe it supports some misconceptions about teaching gifted children.

Sometimes, I start thinking that the kind of conversations I am having with teachers at gifted education conferences and the like are representative of the views of the general education population. Then, I run across something like this, and I realize that those of us in gifted child education have got to redouble our efforts to educate others about gifted children.