Aztecs vs. Greeks: all intelligence is cultivated locally

Here's a good article (the third and final part of a series that started Tuesday) about where America needs to send the 120-or-above IQ'ers, and it gets a bit into how unfashionable it is these days to talk about the smart youths vs. the morons (or about the "elites" vs. the "non-elites"). Adults are vey subtle about telling a high IQ kid that they are a high IQ kid because, so the argument goes, it creates a superiority complex. Therefore, Greek wisdom is essential. In Chuck Murray's words,

...the most important and most difficult is to aim not just at academic accomplishment, but at wisdom. The encouragement of wisdom requires a special kind of education. It requires first of all recognition of one's own intellectual limits and fallibilities -- in a word, humility. This is perhaps the most conspicuously missing part of today's education of the gifted. Many high-IQ students, especially those who avoid serious science and math, go from kindergarten through an advanced degree without ever having a teacher who is dissatisfied with their best work and without ever taking a course that forces them to say to themselves, "I can't do this." Humility requires that the gifted learn what it feels like to hit an intellectual wall, just as all of their less talented peers do, and that can come only from a curriculum and pedagogy designed especially for them. That level of demand cannot fairly be imposed on a classroom that includes children who do not have the ability to respond. The gifted need to have some classes with each other not to be coddled, but because that is the only setting in which their feet can be held to the fire.

In JJ-Speak, essentially we gotta get the intellectual parasites (eg, "kids") together, away from the morons. And here's another little excerpt, and I plug it not just because it mentions a discipline I'm particularly fond of:

The encouragement of wisdom requires being steeped in the study of ethics, starting with Aristotle and Confucius. It is not enough that gifted children learn to be nice. They must know what it means to be good.

The encouragement of wisdom requires an advanced knowledge of history. Never has the aphorism about the fate of those who ignore history been more true.... The gifted should not be taught to be nonjudgmental; they need to learn how to make accurate judgments. They should not be taught to be equally respectful of Aztecs and Greeks; they should focus on the best that has come before them, which will mean a light dose of Aztecs and a heavy one of Greeks.

Sounds good to me. For the peasants out there who don't have a subscription to the WSJ but want to read the article, let me know and I'll e-mail you a copy. Otherwise find a hard-copy of 01/18/2007's paper. You could probably dig one out of an Elite's dumpster.