From Our Readers: Not in the Garden of Eden

Abstract

Beginning with the Tree of Knowledge, growing in the Garden of Eden bearing its dangerous fruit, the Bible is filled with one agricultural metaphor after another. Borrowing this device can illuminate some of our current challenges in providing programming for talented and gifted students. The “school of hard knocks,” is wild and uncultivated. By contrast, formal schooling needs to be as well-planned and carried out as a modern day truck farm of multiple produce. Meeting the needs of talented and gifted students in the regular classroom in the 1980's cannot be left to the happenstances of nature. The competent truck farmer produces blue-ribbon strawberries, tomatoes, carrots, and other fruits and vegetables. But that farmer recognizes both the similarities and differences in the needs of each of these very distinct (and sometimes delicate) flora. In climate, some need cool shade while others need warm sunlight. In nutrition, some need alkaline soil while others need acidic. Some need fertilizer while blooming; others need to be left alone.