It seems that being gifted visibly correlates with some kinds of psychological problems. If the school would only increase the workload, some children could not pay attention, and some might commit suicide.
In my opinion it would be better to separate psychologically healthy gifted children from giften children with psychological problems. Unfortunately, the idea of "elite education" is so politically incorrect that it is already a great success that there is one such school in Slovakia. So this school contains both kinds of giften children, and officially decides to err on the side of caution. Which means that children can choose the increased workload voluntarily, per subject (during some subjects, the class is split into "standard" and "advanced" parts, there are also additional elective subjects). Some children choose these advanced lessons, many don't. And you can't even press the volunteers too hard, otherwise you lose them.
In addition, the whole school system in Slovakia is failing, there is a grade inflation and a political pressure to give everyone university education regadless of their skills (result of intra-EU signalling competition: which nation will have higher % of population university-educated; it also helps to hide some unemployment), so there is like no external motivation to study hard. And the intrinsic motivation only work for some children, and even there only for selected subjects.
Failures of the school systems could be a whole separate topic. I already gave up hope, so I'm trying to think about solutions that work outside of the system. For people who don't have teaching experience, here is a great no-nonsense blog by a British teacher, some parts are relevant for other countries too.
If the school would only increase the workload, some children could not pay attention, and some might commit suicide.
Increased difficulty is not the same thing as increased workload. I always found that I learned best in classes which had difficult material but did not necessarily place huge demands on your time. That way I could always pick one or two things that really interested me and put a lot of extra effort into them, because I would have time and energy to spare.
For example, in a computer architecture class in college, we were supposed to design...
I'm friends with an incredibly smart kid. He's 14, but has been put up three grades in school at one point. He does all the obvious enrichment things which are available in the relatively small Australian city he lives in.
His life experience has been pretty unusual. He doesn't really know what it's like to be challenged in school. All his friends are way older than he is. (Once, I asked him how being constantly around people older than him made him feel. He replied, "Concerned for my future.")
He doesn't know anyone like him, which I think is a shame: he'd probably get along very well with them.
Does anyone know any similar kid geniuses? If so, can I give them my friend's details?
Thanks.