Thank you for this. People pay lip service to teachers, but the truth is shown by the value that society places upon the job, which is next to nothing. I can’t tell you how many times my own students asked, “Mr. Johnson, why are you here? You could be anywhere doing anything. Why are you here?”
Since we’re talking specifically about gifted students, there are a couple of things you have to take into consideration. Typically, gifted students have an over-developed sense of fairness, and they tend to favor service-oriented careers, such as medicine, teaching, counseling, social work, etc. The way that this often plays out with gifted minority students is anger at the lack of opportunity and discrimination in many career fields, and a desire to make a difference in their community. You are swimming against two strong psychological currents that steer potential scientists in other directions.
Then, you have the problem of academic achievement vs. social acceptance. We all remember middle school and high school. I don’t have to cite statistics that high intelligence is not the route to popularity at that age. Gifted students often hide their “giftedness” to fit in. This is especially true of minority students, where standard English is “talking white” and being a traitor to the “hood,” where being called “friendly” is an insult, and where being “hard” is a much more useful survival skill than being smart.
I pulled this out of another thread because it illustrates one source of the problem in science education at the university level. This isn’t a criticism of you specifically, but of the system. As you point out, teaching at the highest levels is really a system of apprenticeship. The “best and brightest” are singled out and mentored, while the rest must fend for themselves.
This sounds fine on paper, but it causes two problems for minority students from disadvantaged backgrounds. First, it recognizes present achievement, not future potential. Many minority students come from schools that did not prepare them for the academic rigors of university, and even when they do get “up to speed” with everyone else, they still take years to become confident in that environment. Second, in choosing whom to “mentor,” professors will tend to pick those like themselves. This is not overt racism, but it is a fact of life. As long as this is the method used to train our top research scientists, you probably won’t see a lot of change in the make-up of “the academy” anytime soon.