There are plenty of gifted children in Taiwan - and all over the world, for that matter. It was once thought elitist to separate them from average or less-promising students, but that view is changing. Mixed-ability classes are torturous for the specially talented, delegates said at this week's 9th Asia-Pacific Conference on Giftedness in Taipei. And teaching the bright ones separately is not elitist, they say, for the simple reason that so many children have gifts - in such a wide variety of areas.
There are at least eight different kinds of intelligence, the celebrated US educational psychologist Howard Gardner said at the conference: musical, mathematical, linguistic, artistic and so on. These categories are as distinct as different sports, he said, noting that few people were good at both javelin-throwing and table-tennis, or both swimming and marathon running.
Separating bright students was once considered backward-looking and socially divisive, but it now represents the educational avant-garde. Apart from separate training, creativity in the classroom - so remote from Asian traditions - is seen as the way to release this human potential. Such thinking was put into practice at a 'creativity camp' for 285 children, in association with the conference. 'The important thing in life is to find something you're good at, that you like to do, and that, if you're lucky, someone will pay you to do,' said Dr Gardner. 'But if you really like doing something, then you should do it anyway. Somebody might pay you to do it in the future.'
Some fortunate youngsters attend an academy for the very talented, taking university honours courses from as young as age 13 - at the University of West Georgia, in the United States. It's run by professor Donald Wagner, who told me about one astonishing student, a 14-year-old boy from mainland China. The youngster scored 790 out of a possible 800 on a standardised American college entrance test - far higher than any 18- or 19-year-olds have scored. If anyone requires special treatment, it is young people like this, he said.
The Taiwanese government might consider applying such thinking close to home. Young Taiwanese musicians make up an astonishingly high proportion of the Asian Youth Orchestra members this year - 27 out of some 100 players. Yet the Taiwanese government doesn't contribute a cent to its expenses, says orchestra co-director Richard Pontzious.
In Dubai, meanwhile, talented children take part in mixed weekend classes at the Gifted Centre, run by Arif Essa. 'Boys and girls together?' I asked. 'Yes, and the girls are better than the boys, of course,' he responded. 'At what?' I asked. 'At everything,' he replied coolly.