I'm embroiled in parts of this debate with myself. By most measures, I'd be identified as a smart person. Perhaps even "really, really" smart. But back in the 4th or 5th grade, I wasn't selected as "gifted".
The practical upshot is that instead of going to a different school and being surrounded by teachers who were in tune with my needs, I stumbled through a public suburban high school replete with all the drama that Judd Apatow can fit onto the screen.
I consider this a very lucky occurence.
Why? Because it forced me to keep myself occupied rather than expecting anyone else to do so. It freed me from a mindset of educational entitlement.
By spending this years in a regular school, I was able to learn take on a host of other activities that I found interesting at my own pace and at my own behest. My intellectual development and curiosity drove me forward.
And it forced me to learn how to navigate elements of the "real world" that end up being speedbumps along the way. Isolation from that is a mistake. I've many friends who've learned that the hard way.
Now I'm a happy adult with a precocious son. I'm getting worried about his teachers in kindergarten are going to deal with a child who happily decides if numbers are primes and points out square roots.
How do I teach him to learn for himself. To realize that his school gives him a starting point for his education, and not the entireity. To help him end become a ferociously curious individual who gets stuff done, not in some isolation chamber gifted bubble, but in the real world -- omplete with alliances and politics and emotions and conflicts.
It's hard. It was hard to live through as the student, and I expect it to be hard for me to live through as his guide.
Compare a bright kid with an excellent education to one with a poor or absent education - the difference is profound. I agree that any bright kid can figure it out on his own eventually if the desire to learn isn't killed, but think of all that wasted time. I would much prefer to have my PhD at 20 than at 30 (note: I do not have a PhD - just an example). I think I wasted at least a decade learning what I should have been taught at school.
I agree that it's very important to learn how to navigate the real world, but I really think there's a comfortable compromise between destroying the egos of a significant fraction of gifted kids and sending them to some exclusive school with an artificial environment. I stopped doing homework in the third grade, and scraped by for the rest of my time in the school system. I somehow managed to get admitted to university, but was kicked out after two tortuous years for failing too many classes. I pretty much had 11 unhappy years, from third grade until I got kicked out.
I always enjoyed learning interesting things, but school had nothing to do with learning. School was a place you went to maximize your GPA by doing rote busy work, and any learning done was just an accidental side-effect while pursing grades.
I never considered myself smart while in school; I saw myself as a worthless slacker with an unhealthy programming obsession. This was the image instilled in me from my teachers, school administrators, and parents constantly chiding me to do my homework. I didn't have the perspective nor the self-image to seek out the kind of help I needed. I also don't think an 8 year old should be expected to come up with theories of why he's failing in school.
The theories that the school administration came up with were just based on one observation: Jey doesn't do his homework. Solution: make Jey do his homework. There was no thought given to root causes, nor any experimentation with different strategies. It always just came down to keeping a notebook of homework assignments and making sure I did them that evening. All this bullshit just made me consciously give up on the educational system and write it off as worthless and ineffective.
I still don't know how exactly I should have been helped, but a huge problem is that the educators themselves are not aware of the pattern I was exhibiting. It's well documented that many "gifted" kids exhibit the same symptoms: extreme abrasive cynicism, defiance and hatred of authority, lackluster school performance, and depression. Part of the problem is that these kids will be pretty rare; gifted kids are rare to begin with, and these kids form a fraction of the gifted population. There should be some effort to educate educators of this pattern, and research on what kind of help works for this population. I think any solution that would have worked for me would've had to capitalize on my high level of curiosity and harnessed it in some way. Assigning more bullshit busy work (a la AP and Honors classes) wasn't the solution. If I had a teacher who engaged me in the material, and presented material as interesting and challenging rather than as work, I think I could've done better. AP and Honors classes seem to make the classes harder mostly by increasing the volume of work. On the other hand, this could just be wishful thinking and maybe there is no strategy that could've made me get through formal education. I don't know, but I think it's worth doing the studies to find out, as I'm not a one-off oddball case.
Getting kicked out of university was the first step to recovery for me, and it's the best 'disaster' that has ever happened to me. I'm now a happy person, and really enjoy who I am and what I do. I just wish there had been a less painful way to get here. Going to public school and suffering through the crap did help me develop socially and form healthy friendships, something that I would've completely missed out on if I had been homeschooled.
"How do I teach him to learn for himself. To realize that his school gives him a starting point for his education, and not the entireity. To help him end become a ferociously curious individual who gets stuff done, not in some isolation chamber gifted bubble, but in the real world -- omplete [sic] with alliances and politics and emotions and conflicts."
Engage his natural curiosity in the learning process. Make learning fun and a process of discovery, not a process by which a bunch of facts are memorized to appease some authority figure. My dad did this by using the socratic method, and encouraging me to ask questions. Feynman tells a similar story about his experiences with his dad in the first chapter of "The Pleasure of Finding Things Out". http://www.amazon.com/Pleasure-Finding-Things-Out-Richard/dp...
I have made a pact with myself about my son. I answer his questions (as appropriate for a 5 year old) until I just can't. And then I say "I don't know." So far, he believes me.
The only time I ran into a hitch was when, while having to turn off a portable DVD player because the aircraft was landing, he loudly asked:
"But Daddy, why does the movie interfere with the nabigational [sic] equipment?"
It didn't seem like a good time to talk about that particular topic.
In 4th grade my teachers decided there was something wrong with me, but they couldnt figure out exactly what. They put me in both the gifted class and the special ed class at the same time to see what would happen. I donXt remember exactly what happened, but I eventually ended up getting kicked out of both.
The practical upshot is that instead of going to a different school and being surrounded by teachers who were in tune with my needs, I stumbled through a public suburban high school replete with all the drama that Judd Apatow can fit onto the screen.
I consider this a very lucky occurence.
Why? Because it forced me to keep myself occupied rather than expecting anyone else to do so. It freed me from a mindset of educational entitlement.
By spending this years in a regular school, I was able to learn take on a host of other activities that I found interesting at my own pace and at my own behest. My intellectual development and curiosity drove me forward.
And it forced me to learn how to navigate elements of the "real world" that end up being speedbumps along the way. Isolation from that is a mistake. I've many friends who've learned that the hard way.
Now I'm a happy adult with a precocious son. I'm getting worried about his teachers in kindergarten are going to deal with a child who happily decides if numbers are primes and points out square roots.
How do I teach him to learn for himself. To realize that his school gives him a starting point for his education, and not the entireity. To help him end become a ferociously curious individual who gets stuff done, not in some isolation chamber gifted bubble, but in the real world -- omplete with alliances and politics and emotions and conflicts.
It's hard. It was hard to live through as the student, and I expect it to be hard for me to live through as his guide.
But it is absolutely the right place to end up.