In Their Own Voice: Educational Perspectives From Intellectually Precocious Youth as Adults

IQ Research
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One of the most basic facts about intelligence is that smarter people learn faster than average (and less intelligent people learn more slowly). This has an obvious implication for the education system: high-IQ students are going to master the curriculum more quickly.

Consequentially, if bright children are going to keep learning, they eventually need courses designed for their learning speed (called “ability grouping”) and often a grade skip or other type of academic acceleration later. A brand new article in the Gifted Child Quarterly journal examines the opinions regarding ability grouping and academic acceleration of adults in the top 0.01% to top 1% of mental ability.

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The article reports 2 studies. In the first one, the participants were explicitly asked about ability grouping. A whopping 79.9% thought that schools should engage in ability grouping. Most stated it was an important technique for avoiding boredom and for challenging bright students. Support was consistent across gender, career outcomes, and other characteristics.

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In the second study, the question was more open-ended: a different group of participants were asked their favorite and least favorite things about high school. Even though they were not prompted to talk about ability grouping or acceleration, almost half (48.7%) gave responses related to those themes anyway. These participants often stated that their favorite aspects of high school were honors or AP courses and academic challenges–and their least favorite things were boredom in regular classes, teasing for their intelligence, and other things that are less common in an academically challenging environment. Some responses are seen in the image below.

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This article is part of a larger study called the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth. For over 40 years, SMPY has taught education and psychology much about the nature and consequences of high intelligence. It’s one of the most important study related to intelligence ever, and it keeps giving the world interesting findings like these.

Reposted from X: https://x.com/RiotIQ/status/1939691141542342797?s=20

Link to article: https://doi.org/10.1177/00169862251339670

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The nearly 80% support for ability grouping among gifted adults is pretty striking, especially since this contradicts current educational trends toward full inclusion and mixed-ability classrooms. What stands out is how consistently they mention boredom as a major issue when you’re learning material you already understand, school becomes torture rather than education. The qualitative responses really drive this home: gifted kids who got acceleration loved it, and those stuck in regular classes felt stifled and socially isolated. This isn’t about elitism; it’s about matching instruction to learning speed, which benefits everyone when done right.

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The fact that almost half spontaneously mentioned ability grouping/acceleration without being prompted shows how deeply it affected their educational experience either positively or negatively. The contrast between those who got challenge (“small classes, bright faculty, okay to be smart”) versus those who didn’t (“peer disdain, having to be with people who didn’t want to learn”) is stark. This aligns with what we know about aptitude-treatment interactions: kids thrive when instruction matches their readiness level. Forcing gifted kids into one-size-fits-all classrooms doesn’t promote equity; it just ensures everyone is equally miserable at different speeds.