Why I pulled my son out of a school for 'gifted' kids

http://mashable.com/2015/11/03/gifted-school-drawbacks/?utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Mashable+%28Mashable%29&utm_cid=Mash-Prod-RSS-Feedburner-All-Partial&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed#Au5I_utD3PqI

by gexos • 11 years ago

76 99 11 years ago

mashable.com

cuckcuckspruce2• 11 years ago

I will never forget the day I mentioned to another mother my concern about lack of empathy and kindness among the students, and she told me: “That’s not the school’s job.”

Is there nothing left that parents are meant to teach? Or is it all now the school's job? If so, why don't we go full Spartan and take the kids away from the parents right after they're born and have schools teach everything.

janesvilleseo• 11 years ago

It takes a village

baldfat3• 11 years ago

why don't we go full Spartan and take the kids away from the parents right after they're born and have schools teach everything.

I feel like that was the reason we had boarding school for the rich and apprenticeships in the early modern period. Children didn't stay with you in the city at around 12 you shipped them off to be an apprentices and live with the master or you went to a boarding school or college by 12 or 13.

jahewson• 11 years ago

The Victorians took this one step further, creating boarding schools for the middle classes to remove the children from "the noxious influence of home" (Nathaniel Woodard); an idea which had its roots in Presbyterian preechings.

cgearhart2• 11 years ago

This isn't about adding to the burden of what schools teach or provide - it's about acknowledging that schools are fundamentally a place to educate _humans_ - so some things that are fundamental to the human experience ought to be considered. I don't think a generation or two raised on "your score must improve" is going to be the hallmark of social progress. I'd much rather have a population that understands empathy.

So I'll meet you half way and settle for schools that don't forcibly grind out any spark of individuality, creativity, curiosity, and empathy from their students as part of the hunt for ever higher test scores.

JackFr2• 11 years ago

I mentioned to another mother my concern about lack of empathy and kindness among the students

As I read this, it does not imply she thinks it's necessarily the schools job, but rather reflects her concern that she's leaving her child for 7 hours a day to fend for himself in environment of hyper-competitive sociopaths.

detaro• 11 years ago

False dichotomy in my book. Schools/Teachers totally have an influence on how students act around each other. Parents do too. Parents wanting the school to care about it's influence doesn't mean they don't want to do anything about it.

setpatchaddress2• 11 years ago

You have a group of 19-36 students at home, and the skills to teach positive group dynamics? Lucky you.

"That's not the school's job" -- so no one does it. Empathy is a learned skill, and like all such skills, requires practice.

hugh44• 11 years ago

Most people outside New York have multiple children by the time their oldest goes to school, so there's opportunities to learn these things at home by playing with your siblings.

I'm guessing that only children are a lot more common in NYC than elsewhere, though, thanks to the impossibility of affording the kind of living space that people elsewhere take for granted. Perhaps the bitchiness of the kids is attributable to the high prevalence of spoiled only children?

cuckcuckspruce2• 11 years ago

You have a group of 19-36 students at home, and the skills to teach positive group dynamics?

No, but I had friends and social interaction when I was a child, and this social interaction also taught me empathy. It helped to have good, empathetic role models at home too.

bachmeier• 11 years ago

So if one of the kids walks around and wipes boogers on the other kids, the teacher should say nothing, because it's up to the parents to teach them not to do it?

Yes, it is the job of the school to require empathy and kindness of students. Whether or not that is what they learn at home, the kids have to act properly in school, and it's up to the school to make sure that happens.

Lawtonfogle2• 11 years ago

Or for core social ideals, which I would hope basic empathy and kindness are considered, we should teach both at school and at home.

hugh44• 11 years ago

Couldn't cut it, dropped out, parents wrote sour-grapes article, the system works.

coldtea2• 11 years ago

Summary that misses the whole point of the article, meant to make author feel superior.

hugh44• 11 years ago

The situation is one that you would expect to lead to sour grapes. The criticism of the school is rather nebulous. Can we at least say that sour grapes does appear to be a strong factor?

savanaly2• 11 years ago

It seems like the optimal learning environment is one where you are

a) being taught at the speed and level that is at least in the ballpark of your potential. The reason this is needed is obvious: if you are being taught way beyond your capability you won't learn anything, and it's a disservice to be taught way below your capability as well.

b) in the top 50% of your local group of students, for self esteem reasons and also because you'll start to feel like studying and working hard pays off if you seem to be successful in school relative to your peers.

There's a real tradeoff between these two sometimes. Given two identical kids, if you send one to the school that is not up to his "gifted" potential but he is the smartest kid in his class he may well do better in the end than the one you send to a gifted school but he is obviously at the bottom of his class. The first will certainly be happier and perhaps learn the life lessons and habits that will make him super successful in high school, college and beyond.

We can at least start to address a) with these gifted programs and special education for the exceptionally challenged and so on. But addressing b) is also important and the laws of statistics sort of prevent us dividing kids into groups where everyone is above average for their group. In theoretical terms I can envision some sort of frequent rotation system where you're constantly shuffled from class to class so that one week you're top of your class and another you're bottom. Perhaps that would even help illustrate to kids the extremely hard to learn lesson that judging yourself against others is fruitless and destructive.

mordae• 11 years ago

Actually, it's enough to be at approximately same level as your peers. Varying interests will balance things out. You might feel that some of your peers are stronger in math, but that biology is your thing and so on.

Skill-based splitting is also a good thing for at least one subject: foreign languages. Practicing with peers on a very different level will not work out at all.

And by the way, if your kid ends up being the best in the class for virtually everything, you need to move him somewhere where they will challenge him more. If you don't, then good luck later on.

powertower3• 11 years ago

being taught at the speed and level that is at least in the ballpark of your potential.

There is usually 30 students to a class, and 1 teacher. So it would have to be in the ballpark of the group's potential.

cgearhart2• 11 years ago

in the top 50% of your local group of students

This is why I feel strongly that one of the major problems in education has to do with stratifying students. Even the students who are great at _everything_ among their peers are mediocre in the right crowd. "Gifted" folks are among most susceptible to "big fish in a small pond" effects that tie them down later on. It would be better to learn early that the world is more nuanced than your rank order in a classroom.

jimbokun• 11 years ago

"b) in the top 50% of your local group of students, for self esteem reasons and also because you'll start to feel like studying and working hard pays off if you seem to be successful in school relative to your peers."

So you want to grow up in Lake Wobegone.

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/g/garrisonke137097....

savanaly2• 11 years ago

Hah, Lake Wobegone was my old soc teacher's favorite thing to reference when we were learning about middle income parents' attitudes to education. Anyways, I'm very aware of it and that's why I mentioned it is a statistical impossiblity to achieve b) with totally static classes.

baldfat3• 11 years ago

I was a "gifted" kid AKA they took my IQ score and put me in the program. (Horrible way to figure that out). I got to go to special things on Saturdays and take harder math classes in school. I totally sucked at spelling and still do and this is a known issue with people with a "mathematical brain" AKA can't spell to save my life but read at a high school level in 3rd grade and was doing calculus in 9th grade.

My son (5 years ago) was tested to be "gifted" and after looking at the program we said no.

1) They would move him to a totally different school in our district.

2) They used a different curriculum and class strategies.

3) Being an "4.0 Student" in undergrad I knew the pressure to stand out besides the perfect scores. Kids would be worse.

4) We live in a dirty poor urban school district and I figured the "gift program" was going to get cut. It did the next year and he would have been right where he was anyways.

5) He had cancer and I kind of was mad that they would tell him these were his options without talking to us first, because there were medical needs that a local school afforded us (AKA we could run to school and give him his pain meds if necessary)

Gifted doesn't mean separate because the one thing that people with different brain strategies needs is the ability to figure out how to work with others. If there is no others they are bound to have trouble later on.

Kluny• 11 years ago

I hope your son beat cancer since then.

baldfat3• 11 years ago

Sadly he passed away from bone cancer (osteosarcoma) 2 years ago.

PS I usually say this so I can plead with people to help fund Pediatric Cancer Research. Only 4% of US Federal Grants go to Peds Research. American Cancer Society gives less than $0.02 per dollar for Peds Cancer Research. Adult research has little to no impact for the kids. I 100% support St Baldricks and Children’s Cancer Research Fund. We finally have our first Chemo in over 20 years this year for children because of St Baldrick's funded research!

Someone1234• 11 years ago

You tell a kid they're smart: You've immediately set them up for long term failure.

"Smart" is a quantifiable hard limit. The problem with smart people is that as soon as they run up against a challenge/concept/issue they cannot immediately overcome, they get frustrated, because they "should be smarter than this!" Which often results in avoidable frustration/anxiety/depression.

You see this a lot. "Gifted" "smart" kids who coast through school for years, until one day they finally run up against something they cannot do and run away from it screaming. Simply because they're not "smart enough."

Where is the school program that let's the bullshit pseudo concept of "smarts" fall by the wayside and instead replaces it with an atmosphere where failure IS acceptable, and that you just have to work through the hard parts?

I have a kid. My wife's side is second generation "gifted." These people are absolutely obsessed with how smart they are/sound/come across, and get incredibly upset/frustrated/annoyed when they feel "dumb" (i.e. things are hard, they don't get it right away, or they make a mistake).

Unfortunately when I raise the issue of "hey, focusing on an intangible level of intelligence could be damaging [here look at this child research]" I just get eye rolls, because they're so deeply into the concept of how innately intelligent they are, they cannot see a less damaging way of living one's life.

DanBC2• 11 years ago

There are some English schools that have "failure" weeks. Here's one example from 2012.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-16879336

Other thing schools are doing is stopping children putting their hand up to answer a question. They just ask a child at random to try to answer. (In theory) wrong answers are fine, they're looking for the child to try to explain the answer they have.

Praise effort, not achievement is useful and is something that parents should be doing.

RyanZAG• 11 years ago

Got to say I've seen this practice done a lot, but never found it beneficial as a class exercise. Nobody really learns anything through this. The person being asked tends to panic and muddles through. The people in the class who don't understand try to follow and end up more confused. This can go through a few rounds with more wrong answers. Eventually the lecturer or a student will give the right answer but half the people have tuned out already or lost their train of thought.

I think it's a very bad way to learn anything. The actual method is sound when used outside of a lecture in one-on-one or small groups where everyone is involved, but fails terribly with large groups.

gmarx3• 11 years ago

When I was kid people told me I was smart. I don't think I experienced any of this.

jimktrains25• 11 years ago

When I was a kid people told me I was smart. I'm almost 30 and _still_ struggle with _exactly_ what GP posted.

trhway• 11 years ago

You tell a kid they're smart: You've immediately set them up for long term failure.

this is why you put the kid into a school with other "smart" kids so the kid gets the chance to experience that s/he isn't the smartest one, that there are much more smart kids out there.

Speaking from personal experience - without much special effort 8th grade city's first place in physics, mathematics and chemistry, regional second in physics, yet once i got into the high school for advanced studies of math and physics (where students were collected from multiple regions of the USSR (45-y anybody ?:)) i was just an average, and any time getting above it took significant effort and on many occasions i was just trounced by other students, the really smart ones.

sdegutis• 11 years ago

this is why you put the kid into a school with other "smart" kids so the kid gets the chance to experience that s/he isn't the smartest one, that there are much more smart kids out there.

Or you could homeschool them.

We don't say one way or another how "well" our kids are doing, or how "smart" they are. We just teach them. When they learn one thing, we teach them the next. There's no "scores", there's no comparing them with other kids. There's just learning. If they need more time or practice to learn something, we give them more time or practice.

The goal of education is to get them to know as much as we know and then some. (And there's the learning social skills aspect. But we take care of that in a different way.) It's not a competition. We're all in this together.

And yes, some people will be better at some things, and worse at others. That shouldn't affect self-esteem. If everyone was good at the same things, the world wouldn't be able to function. And nobody's good at everything.

macNchz• 11 years ago

I went from a public kindergarten-8th grade school where I was in a gifted program–a few hours a week of special classes, but mostly in normal classes which I found quite easy–to an old-school, elite private high school with tons of smart and very competitive kids from around the world.

Like the author's kid, I was put off by the competitiveness of my fellow students and sometimes afraid of trying at all when faced with the idea of failing publicly. It was stressful at times, and I definitely didn't do as well as I could have because of it (though I still enjoyed high school overall).

Now that I look back on it, however, I think that my experience in high school was formative. Being among all of those high achieving, highly motivated people raised my subconscious bar for success, and while I didn't outright fail, I grew quite a lot by having my limits pushed and persevering through some near failures along the way.

JackFr2• 11 years ago

You tell a kid they're smart: You've immediately set them up for long term failure.

Especially b/c the really smart ones know without being told.

setpatchaddress2• 11 years ago

Yes, narcissism can manifest early.

jordigh• 11 years ago

I was told I was smart a lot. I think it just made me lazy and cocky, thinking I could do anything easily without trying, so I didn't try at a lot of things. It didn't make me run away from hard problems, though. I still like those, and I enjoy the frustration of a difficult problem.[1]

It probably also didn't help that I lived a very sheltered life as an upper-class Mexican and everything that I wanted I could get by just asking. That has been another obstacle that has been difficult to overcome: learning how to do hard work and fend for myself.

[1] As long as the problem doesn't involve people, though, since people are not really a problem to be solved

Retra2• 11 years ago

I was told I was gifted at a very young age, and people expected a lot out of me. But by the time I hit 9 years old, I had already convinced myself that school was too easy -- I didn't value my grades at all. I would fail regularly and say "I don't care about a mark on a paper." I barely graduated high school.

But the problem here wasn't that I thought I was gifted, it was that I didn't compare myself to my peers at all. Getting an A was easy, so it meant nothing to me. The other students who did well were not people I aspired to be like. I spent all my time working on things I enjoyed for myself, and those challenged me to work independently. I failed Algebra because I spent the whole semester reading a statistics book. I failed an English class because I spent the whole time programming on my calculator. (I had run out of classes to fail, and had to take classes at college to make up the credits.) But once I started studying physics, math, and computers, I've been happily over-performing ever since.

I remember moments where I turned away from challenges, but I always turned toward something that mattered more to me. And there are challenges there, too. You will be challenged no matter what you choose to do, so long as you aren't doing only what has already been done.

So I can't say I'd agree with you. People are often just awful at measuring success.

aidenn0• 11 years ago

You are wrong. There is compelling evidence that emphasizing the importance of intelligence (including praising it) versus emphasizing the importance of hard work, causes children to do worse at a variety of tasks.

volaski3• 11 years ago

I'm sure you're doing well right now, but are you sure it's a good decision to rely your entire life on a judgment made by your 9 year old self? I mean, what have we learned by when we're 9 year old? Maybe you learned some arithmetics and concluded that you've mastered the entire field of mathematics? Again, I'm not saying you made a mistake in your life, it may have worked out for you but it may not work for 99% of the population. Maybe you were lucky.

volaski3• 11 years ago

There's a big difference between calling your child "Smart" and calling "Gifted". Sounds like wordplay but it's really not. I agree with your main point that "gifted" children end up failing way more than just ordinary smart children. But I've also seen a lot of children who grew up a confident person because their parents praised them a lot. They just shouldn't call them "gifted" because it implies that the kid already "has" the gift, whereas being "smart" just means greater potential.

kamaal2• 11 years ago

>But I've also seen a lot of children who grew up a confident person because their parents praised them a lot.

As long as things are going your way, confidence is good. When they are not, fake confidence leaves you completely blind to your own problems. And it kind of amplifies a negative feed back loop.

Almost every person I meet this days talks of 'optimism', 'hope' and 'confidence', often confusing that with laziness and inaction.

Reality doesn't care about our feelings. Taking a true stock of the situation and performing per it, will help us a lot more than textbook contextless confidence lessons personality development books teach us.

daxfohl2• 11 years ago

A kid is essentially as smart as a kid is. You can't push them to be smarter. You can push them to be better trained. You can push them to be more interested in academics. You can push them in many directions and as a parent you have to decide what's important.

But you can't push them to be smarter. If that's the goal then something bad is going to come out of it. Recognizing this as fairly obvious would be a good first step.

somesmartkid• 11 years ago

Nobody told me I was smart. Nobody had to.

Class was boring, but I got straight As. It was excruciating listening to other kids try to ask and answer questions because every goddamned thing they struggled with was so fucking easy. It was fucking horrible. It didn't change, all the way through high school.

Then I went to university, and I had a lifetime first: kids who knew things I didn't. Kids who corrected me on mistakes... and they were right. Kids who were as smart, or smarter than me.

For the first time in my life, getting graded on a curve meant I had to fucking work instead of just doing nothing and then blowing the curve for everyone else.

I desperately wish I'd had that experience at a younger age. It would've been awesome. But I didn't.

Gifted classes would've been great, but my school didn't have much of that.

The thing you're failing to understand is that the problem isn't that the kids are told they're smart. It's that they're actually smart. Not telling them doesn't change shit.

amalag• 11 years ago

I had a similar experience. I won't go into details but the second year of college hit me hard. I had no study skills because of breezing through everything before that.

gozo• 11 years ago

That's kind of part of the point. Kids who understand that they are relatively smart become content with just being better than the other kids. Instead of realizing that they also have to do other things that further learning like more work by themselves or explaining things to their classmates etc.

drdeadringer• 11 years ago

Would it have been helpful to have a "you are not as smart as you think" or a "you are comparatively stupid" or a "you know nothing, Jon Snow" experience sooner?

superuser2• 11 years ago

an atmosphere where failure IS acceptable

Ultimately, education is about competing for progressively smaller numbers of seats in progressively better lives. High school has nothing to do with "learning" - it's a test, a very long one, to find out who belongs in selective colleges and who doesn't. Colleges are, in turn, a test to find out who gets to stay in the middle class. School before HS is about learning the discipline and technique for approaching that test. But the content of both is entirely irrelevant. Its only purpose is to be difficult, so that some people can hack and and others can't, because there isn't room for everyone at the next stage. Some kids have to be weeded out. If you think this is a strange attitude, ask yourself why people complain so much about grade inflation.

There cannot be a situation where "failure is acceptable." If you give a rational high school student an assignment that they can fail without consequences, they'll spend their limited budget of energy and attention on one that gatekeepers care about. The only way around this in a world where comfortable livings are a scarce resource is to allocate them on some axis other than intellectual merit. For a long time we did more or less that: as long as you were white, male, and born to a "good family" you didn't have to work too hard in school. Well, those days are ending, and the world is a more just place for it.

In a non-grade-inflated environment, "failure" is okay as long as you fail less than your peers. This is perhaps a better environment for the cultivation of resilience - you're used to tests you can only make a 30% on. But then the operative kind of failure is performing worse than your peers. A lot of people on HN complain that kids these days can't deal with being average. But I've never seen someone say "we hire the middle 50% of developers." No. We hire the top 5.

techdragon• 11 years ago

To be both somewhat insightful I provide a small correction...

Ultimately, the predominant educational system and it's preeminent methodology, have become about competing for progressively smaller numbers of seats in progressively better lives...

One of many reasons I have put off having a child, the financial burden of giving a child a 'good' education, is considerable. From the purely academic component of quality teachers, to the social component of creating an environment where their interaction with other children is beneficial, neither of these comes cheap.

I'm not after much, just well paid teachers who stay passionate while they teach, a class size where they can give each student enough attention, curriculum that allows the child to 'surge forward' when driven by curiosity and be rewarded for their work not punished for not doing 'this weeks assignment', and enough other children to interact with so they can develop social skills. The last one is the tough bit, all the others can be provided by home school with or without using private tutors or paying for a 'personal teacher'.

Kalium• 11 years ago

Where is the school program that let's the bullshit pseudo concept of "smarts" fall by the wayside and instead replaces it with an atmosphere where failure IS acceptable, and that you just have to work through the hard parts?

This isn't as much better as you might think. For a lot of people, this just leaves them with "It's OK to fail". Full stop.

daxfohl2• 11 years ago

Good for the OP. I, like many here, am an old child prodigy. Starting fatherhood 2.5 years ago, I wanted "prodigy" status for my kids too. Lots of ABC's and 123's in the last two years. Yet I'm already sensing that this is the wrong direction.

Kids need fun and excitement to grow. They'll all eventually learn their ABC's and far beyond. How far beyond, though, is unrelated to how early they learn their ABC's. Rather how confident and interested they are in what they're doing. That, and genetics, which no amount of training will change. This seems obvious when you let yourself step outside the education rat race for a second.

And then going back to the "far beyond" ... How far beyond do we need to get? I personally got to graduate level math and did well enough. Yet I'm still mostly (and happily) writing web software that I could have done with a high-school education or less. And working for (excellent) managers that were not even close to being child prodigies.

We adults are the ones with the experience to know what is important, so why do we warp this knowledge when we apply it to our kids?

contingencies3• 11 years ago

Same but 1.5 years fatherhood here. My wife and I chose earlier this year to stay in China instead of migrating to Europe or Australia/New Zealand for our daughter's early education. There seem to be a decent number of concerned parents living here and we are collectively considering starting an independent school to avoid the currently poor options (extreme creationist Christian international school, Chinese primary schools) in a few years' time. There is some interest in established alternative models (Montessori, etc.). What struck me about the article was that they broke children in to groups even within the high potential performance group, and that was dumb. Thinking back to my own gifted/talented schooling experience in Australia, that never happened... we were all exposed to exactly the same challenges and often worked to overcome them as a group, which on the face of it seems a more realistic/adult approach to learning and work.

powertower3• 11 years ago

There is something very narcissistic about all that.

Basically, among gifted students, their child's position was in the middle of the bell-curve. That is a natural thing when there are smarter kids around, that are a better scoring group then your previous one.

The parents then go on to blame society and the school for not dedicating significantly more resources towards their child, at the expense of the other students.

The schools are not their to raise the child, that is the parents' job.

astazangasta• 11 years ago

The schools are not their to raise the child, that is the parents' job.

If primary education isn't child rearing, nothing is. Schools are absolutely there to raise the child.

powertower3• 11 years ago

If primary education isn't child rearing, nothing is. Schools are absolutely there to raise the child.

By that logic, what exactly is the parents job then?

rsync• 11 years ago

">The schools are not their to raise the child, that is the parents' job. If primary education isn't child rearing, nothing is. Schools are absolutely there to raise the child."

The schools are not their to raise the child, that is the parents' job.

ryanhuff2• 11 years ago

A large part of the value to primary school is socialization with a peer group.

antod2• 11 years ago

Did you read the same article I did? Or at least did you get to the bottom? IMO they seem to be saying something very different to that - eg:

Before you enter the rat race, I urge parents to question what and against whom you and your kids are racing. It doesn’t freaking matter where your neighbor’s kid went to school. It just doesn’t. Please stop comparing, judging and drawing conclusions. The kids feel it. They know it’s happening, and it is hurting them very deeply.

They aren't complaining about the school - they are passing on their lessons of their mistakes to other hyper competitive parents.

ThomPete• 11 years ago

A lot of the failure is actually on the parents here.

It's not that hard to get your child into schools for gifted children without your child being especially gifted. Not saying it's easy but it's not really about how gifted they are.

Here in NY a lot of parents push their kids and focus primarily on the skills thats needed to get into these schools without the kids having a natural urge to want to get into it. Lots of tutoring to get them to they point where they can do it.

And so a lot of children have "read the book" but don't understand it so to speak. And thats where the problem start.

antod2• 11 years ago

A lot of the failure is actually on the parents here.

That's the point they make in the article. Urging other parents not to fall into the same mistakes they made, and how much better things are now having corrected them.

brudgers• 11 years ago

Forty years ago, I was bused across Fairfax County. Apart from a few kids in the same swath of suburbs, my classmates were bused in from other parts. I keep in touch with some of them via Facebook. They were amazing kids and are for the most part amazing middle aged adults.

The striking difference between my experience and that described in the article is that the educational structure of The Center was not competitive. They were just normal elementary school classrooms other than the level of the content. There are only two plausible reasons that I didn't experience the idea that some kids were dumber than others, either it didn't happen or I was the dumbest and the other kids were compassionate and kind.

Five year olds don't feel pressure to get into the best kindergarden. It's some adult's bright idea to sanction eight year olds competing on spelling day in and out. Once a year for the Scripps National Spelling Bee is plenty enough if not too much. My son goes to school with children who don't get dinner if they get a B on a math test and others whose parents have picked their majors before middle school...in STEM of course.

Yet I think the the most awesome of my classmates from all those years ago are an historian and a public school teacher.

Ducunt volentem fata nolentem trahunt. Seneca.

contingencies3• 11 years ago

For others curious, Latin Ducunt volentem fata nolentem trahunt. means "Fate leads the willing, and drags the unwilling".

morgante3• 11 years ago

Honestly, this sounds like a terribly selfish move. The OP consciously took her son out of a bigger pond to put him into a smaller pool where he could shine again.

This completely ignores the fact that probably the best way to learn is to be surrounded by people more intelligent than yourself.

Speaking as someone who spent most of my childhood as "valedictorian" I would have craved a competitive peer group much sooner, despite the blow to my self-esteem which confrontation of my own fallibility created.

panglott2• 11 years ago

Moving their child to an environment where they develop a healthy, positive attitude toward learning and outgrow a crippingly low self-esteem is "terribly selfish"?

morgante3• 11 years ago

Moving their child to an environment where they develop a healthy, positive attitude toward learning and outgrow a crippingly low self-esteem is "terribly selfish"?

Speaking as someone who spent years in a "normal" environment where I was consistently at the top of the curve, I don't think it's necessarily the healthiest learning position even if it benefits self-esteem. When you never have to try to beat everyone else, you don't develop a lot of essential skills and instead just have a growing ego.

beedyg• 11 years ago

This completely ignores the fact that probably the best way to learn is to be surrounded by people more intelligent than yourself.

It might feel great interacting with your intellectual peers, but being among your actual peers will train in you in the kind of interactions which will form the majority of your life.

morgante3• 11 years ago

In what way are other intelligent students your age not your "actual peers?"

DanBC2• 11 years ago

This completely ignores the fact that probably the best way to learn is to be surrounded by people more intelligent than yourself.

Isn't the best way to teach other people? You soon find out what you don't know when you teach other people and they ask you questions.

rm_-rf_slash• 11 years ago

When I was in college I dated a girl whose parents were from Hong Kong and whose father was by far the most overbearing human being I have ever met. His determination that every one of his four children be successful drove them into an insane flurry of work that has lasted for each of their 25 years - until they each had their masters degree in biomedical engineering, as he demanded.

I, on the other hand, grew up in a family of academics and was able to express myself and make mistakes from time to time. Sometimes I wish I had been pushed harder as a kid, but I think I turned out all right.

When I met the father he remarked at how well-spoken I was and lamented that none of his children communicated as well as I did - the kind of skill that cannot arise when your childhood and adolescence is confined to an intellectually rigid model.

Creativity cannot be dictated.

progressive_dad• 11 years ago

My son has been attending a progressive school based on the lab school in Chicago for the past two years. Its great in all the ways and for the reasons listed in this article, but there is one major issue we've run into.

Progressive schools also attract a large number of children with behavioral problems that have been forced out of all other schools. Most progressive schools are tolerant to a fault and don't have the budget or people-power to plan and prepare for these students. They need their own IEPs and in many cases a para-professional in the classroom with them but their parents are often LOATHE to cover the cost.

TL;DR progressive schools can be tolerant to a fault. Your kid will get hit and screamed at and if they are more academic they will complain to you constantly that their classroom is chaos.

noamyoungerm• 11 years ago

Gifted people always end up turning out average. Because they aren't special. Nearly every school catering to the middle class and up has a 'gifted' program. How many kids is that? Millions per grade. Everyone who passes through that filter gets to think of themselves as a 'smart person'. In a given K-12 grade, there are 60000 students in the 99th percentile (whatever that means) per criterion.

But that's not enough - parents want to make sure their kid is special. The kind that wins Nobel Prizes. We have to find some way to filter these million above-average kids into a few hundred people who truly make a difference. So maybe your next filter could be some competition. Being accepted to [0] means you are in the top 1500 at doing a hobby science project. We have a long series of K-12 filters (olympiads, languages, music, early university, chess, etc.) and each one ends up with its own few (100-10000) best.

We want to set up our kid for success, but the only way we can have any sort of prediction is by putting the kid through filter after filter after filter and hoping they pass all of them. And if they pass the first three and not the fourth? Then now you have to deal with the fact that our prediction says that they will spend the rest of their life with a regular family and a regular job rather than being something spectacular. And if they pass every test they meet? Well there are 50 other people who matched the same set of tests as they did. How do we select which 49 will end up being normal adults? And what if the next Linus Torvalds ends up being someone who passed some of the filters, but not all of them?

There is no predictor for success. Kids should be encouraged to try and prove themselves, but only so long as they enjoy it so much they continue to choose to pursue this during their own free time.

[0] https://student.societyforscience.org/intel-isef

contingencies3• 11 years ago

We have to find some way to filter these million above-average kids into a few hundred people who truly make a difference. ... or perhaps we need to simply admit that aspects of life outside of formal education including blind luck and chance may contribute overwhelmingly to these types of transformation later in life. Success and life goals are relative, subjective, and frankly optional anyway. There is an argument to be made for the notion that parents and especially the state have no business over-defining these things for young people, particularly given the rapidly changing nature of the global social and technological landscape.

studentrob• 11 years ago

the state have no business over-defining these things for young people

Agreed. Hope you don't mind if I shoot the shit a little. You got me thinking.

The state sets a goal for us to make as much money as we can. It educates towards that. Banks incentivize saving, and the system promises more money if you make more money. When a country makes more money it can provide more for its citizens. Military protection and domestic luxuries. It's up to us as individuals to decide when we have done enough work, learned enough, or have enough money. The state will never say you've done "enough". Banks won't, and your parents won't either. They can't make that decision for you because everyone's potential varies based on environmental factors. You must make that decision yourself. And as individuals I believe none of us ever want to underperform. Yet we also don't want to be super stressed. So we try some stuff and see what sticks. What level of work and money allows us to move forward and experience new things? It's a lifelong effort to find out. We don't know for sure what we can or can't do tomorrow. Every day we have a different set of variables and opportunities.

I'm not sure this is anything new

SZJX• 11 years ago

I've always hated this notion of being "gifted" and "successful". What does that ever mean? Everybody should have his/her own life to live and experience in full. Trying to force such an shallow and meaningless mainstream value on everybody is a totally terrible thing to do. Not to mention your view seems to indicate that being "special" means something innate, something "determined at birth", which is a horrible model to begin with.

marincounty• 11 years ago

"As it turns out, gifted kids, defined as "high potential learners," can have heightened awareness and anxiety, according to the National Association for Gifted Children. Our son fit the bill. (He has worried about the meaning of life since he was two years old. Seriously."

I was far from a gifted child. My first day of kindergarten, my mom dressed me up in a like a minature businessman, equipped with a small brief case, thermos, lunch box, and a rain coat. (Mom, I love you to pieces, and look back with loving memories. Sorry guys had to say this.)

Back to kindergarten. I walked into that class room, looked at Miss Palmer. Looked at the other children running around, and made a beehive to the little wooden play house on the back of the room. I looked out of 6" X 6" window, and my body tensed up, and I didn't want to leave that playhouse. I opened my lunch case and started to drink my milk. My mother loving put ice cubes in an cleaned, recycled peanut butter jar. I drank my milk, and came out of that playhouse, with the iron fist of Miss Palmer. "Get out of there, or I'll pull you out by your arm!"

I went to my seat, and hated the whole thing. I enjoyed the other kids, but the adults at that school terrified me. I'm still leary of adults, and I'm an adult. Crazy?

I remember being a nervous child. My school just made my anxieties worse.

My biggest fear was twice a month, the children would have to go up to a big wooden calender, and put the date place card in the right spot. When it was my turn, I knew the date, but when I was up on that counter, and everyone was looking at me--I froze, and couldn't remember anything. I would take that placard and move it around the board, like it was a Ouigi board. Even the kids would take pity on me. They would yell, "To the right. Over there. Down. Up.". After thirty one tries, I would finally complete the task. In order to help me, Miss Palmer decided I would put the date up 2-3 times a week--so I would get better. Well, I never got better.

I was so terrified of public speaking, or anyone watching me do anything, I literally would ask my college professors, "Do you require any public speaking in your class?". I got through college with only one sweaty, public speach. It's possible, with a lot of planning.

As a child, I had a hard time learning. I can still see the concern on my father's face when he was trying to teach me the numbers on the big black rotary phone. I had some kind of learning disability? I just couldn't learn the things the adults wanted me to learn. I just wanted to be outside playing, and running around.

Even-though, I was not gifted, I do remember the worst day of my life. I was five, or six? My parents were out, and I was alone in the house. (Just for a little while. I could go to Donna's house if I needed anything.). I was jumping on my parents bed. I got tired. I layed down. At that moment, I realized my parents might die one day. I cried, and cried. I cried for hours, or at least it seemed like hours. That was the beginning of my fear of death. It went from my parents, to my own eventually demise.

My parents arrived, and I never took them for granted again. I hugged them more. I grew up fearing for their safety. In Boy Scouts, I didn't want them to go to the Jamboree; afraid they might get hurt. After all, these log contraptions were put together by crazy adults, and stupid kids.

Back to my learning disability. I finally overcame it in second grade. I just started to learn? I did really well up until high school. With every pore on my face, and back clogged; the only thing I really cared about was girls, sports, (actually nothing formal. Just knock down basketball games), and socializing. It wasen't until my last year I got serious about school, but it was too late. I did make up eveverything I missed in high school in two semesters at a community college, and went on to get a four year degree, and a year of graduate school.

So if you have a kid who's doing terrible in school, things do get better. If you have a nervous, anxious kid, especially if that kid is the first born; I was just about to give advise, but realized there's no advice. You don't want to coddle them? You don't want to fix all their anxieties? In my case, I just got better.

I became a high functioning, educated adult. I felt like I could do anything, and was pretty successful.

I then had a nervous breakdown over--life? I really don't know what made me bust a gasket. I got better from the breakdown, but I'm not a good as before. I am still hanging on though, and not depressed. I just need to make more money. The breakdown had no affect on my learning abilities, or interests. I'm just not the same dude. I sometimes wonder if I would want to go back to my old self. I honestly don't know.

Good luck with your kids, and hug them. Hug, or call your parents. I need to get in touch with my brother, and sister, but we had a huge falling out over a family matter. Yes, it was money, and it was ugly. I just can't forgive them yet.

(Brother--if you are listening--I understand what you did. You needed the money, and you had a kid on the way. I kinda get what you did. As to my sister--you alwready had a multi million dollar shoe business. Two houses. Vacation home in the desert, with a yurt in the backyard. New cars. Health insurance. Good wine. Restaurant meals. I will never understand why you took all the money. I have thought about it over the years, and I just don't get it. You know your mother needed the money? I'm still helping out mom because she can't afford anything. And, you knew I needed the money? You took that expensive sports car, and let your oldest boy drive it around town, like it was a commuter car? I kills me on so many levels, and it will be stolen. Yea, dad was an angry man, but you didn't need to capitalize on a bad situation? Maybe, one day, I can forgive?"

Sorry people--this went to therapy too quick. I know this is not the place. Won't do it again.

kamaal2• 11 years ago

Make no mistakes this whole smart people/student/kid/employees kind of an elite club makes a mediocre person out of many people.

If you are thinking this is limited to schools alone, you are wrong. What do you think happens to all those employees at Google after they are made to go through all that algorithm acrobatics. You may be listed as someone who aced all interviews, has big grades on your mark sheet. But you will go there only find your self to be another face in the crowd. Your promotions/growth/rewards will come in a trickle. No matter how good you might actually be, you are no special snowflake in a crowd like that. The net result is you will end up demotivated, if not feeling bad about yourself.

Even a performance evaluation in situations like that will make you feel like crap.

And it always happens that the 'low performers' in the group are always given fewer of those plum opportunities. No matter how good you individually might be, you will end up getting labelled as mediocre. And worse, you will be made to believe that you are.

simplyluke• 11 years ago

I've seen a lot of pushback against gifted/talented programs over the past year or two, and much of it is very valid. A gifted program starting in 6th grade is the only reason I finished school. Having teachers that knew how to teach to my personality type and learning style helped me discover a love for math, computers, and education.

My district's gifted program was the single best thing that happened to my education.

DoctorBit• 11 years ago

So enjoying life is more important than "winning". Who knew?

elgenie• 11 years ago

I guess the Peter Principle extends to elementary school too.

If schools are set up to underserve the bottom 1/3 to 1/2 of each class (be it via pacing or competition), it doesn't make sense to work really hard to place your kid in better-and-better schools until they're in that bottom third.

ntrepid8• 11 years ago

I got to go to a "gifted school" in 6th and 7th grade. The biggest difference was that I didn't have to worry about my physical safety there. It's a lot easier to focus on spelling when you aren't worried about getting punched in the face.

lazyant• 11 years ago

This reads as another instance of the "curse of the gifted" that many readers here are familiar with and the standard advice is to praise effort not intelligence.

The ideal condition for learning is when you are challenged and things are a bit difficult; not too easy (you get bored) and not too hard (you get discouraged).

Why I pulled my son out of a school for 'gifted' kids

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