Alissa Quart: Educating and Parenting Gifted Children

Recorded Live:

Sunday, September 10, 2006, 9:30 am PST

G U E S T :

• Alissa Quart,
  writer for the New York Times

Moderated by : The Very Rev. Alan Jones,
Dean of Grace Cathedral

Please note: there were difficulties with the host's microphone during the first 10 minutes of the program.

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About the Program:

From Baby Sign Language classes to IQ testing for toddlers, the current craze to nurture or "produce" gifted children and prodigies has reached an all-time frenzy. While more and more studies show that gifted children benefit from enrichment classes and early education programs, the intensely competitive lives and jam-packed schedules of America’s gifted kids can lead to long-term negative consequences throughout adulthood, including debilitating perfectionism, performance anxiety, and lifelong feelings of failure.

Where should parents and teachers draw the line? How much of this enrichment is too much or too little? And most importantly, are we doing more harm than good to gifted children with all this enrichment? GATE (gifted and talented) identified herself, Alyssa Quart offers an insightful critique on this professionalization of children's play while supporting expert studies on the vital role of unstructured play-time in child development.

 
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