When I was 9, I was in the 4th grade. While in the 2nd grade, I had scored appropriately on an IQ test and I was place in Gifted Enrichment classes from grades 3-5.
This meant that once or twice a week, for 2 or 3 hours, I was taken out of regular class and with a few peers- maybe 6- we were allowed to "let our intelligence flourish".
We never learned any advanced subjects, like higher levels of what the other students were learning.
We made movies. We made paper planes and tracked their trajectories.
And the one activity that makes me think the most, was our Christmas store.
They taught us, at this young age, about how companies work. We had a partner that we ran our store with, and we were a company. We were told to approach our friends and family and sell stock. We issued a ceritifacate to these people, and used the money we raised to buy supplies.
We then created our crafts. The school announced to the general populace that we would be selling Christmas Crafts and for all of them to bring money in. And they did. We sold our products, paid back our Investors, and pocketed the rest of the money. I bought a race car.
It wasn't a fund raiser. It was to teach a chosen few how to get money out of the masses. The school acted as the media (advertising), telling the masses (the rest of the students) they needed to bring their money. We were the Corporations, our friends and family were Stock Holders, and we, as 9 year olds, walked away with more money in our pockets than we ever earned through sidewalk shoveling and chores in our lives.
What was I being groomed to do...