I’m in favor of asking kids what they want to do about their education and, as much as is practical and possible, facilitating their desires, being careful to reevaluate at regular intervals to see if changes should be made to the original plan.
I come at it from a homeschooling perspective. By age 12, I am very comfortable letting kids make education choices for themselves. Sometimes they may make a mistake. But parents frequently do as well. Mistakes are rarely irreversible and at least the student owns it.
@alh, I agree. Furthermore they need to be allowed to make those mistakes while making own education choices, so that they will become better decision makers for the remainder of their lives.
As the practice goes, they tend to make less mistakes and mistakes of less consequence. Sometimes, what I thought was a mistake turns out to be the right choice and I was the wrong one, and fortunately it wasn’t my call.
@al2simon - thanks for the Doogie Howser vs Mozart dichotomy. That somewhat captures my Peter Principle point I was trying to make earlier about advancing them until they’re average. It seems like a real risk of that approach is that their intellect gets shoe-horned into the same place that other very smart people live. And you end up with people who are say “normal” tenured professors. Which is great - but it’s not Mozart.
It seems like not advancing them is a risk. They will be bored and unchallenged. Some of them will learn the wrong lessons - to hide their intellect, to not try hard, etc. The outcome might be worse than the “baseline”. Though you can imagine that some bored kids might continue to expand their minds, and might profitably explore areas that others would say don’t make sense. And to me that’s how you’d get more Mozarts.
Anyway, I’m not trying to tell any parent what to do. I don’t face any issues like this with any of my kids…
Terri Gross on NPR had a great interview with Meryl Streep about the upcoming film in which Streep plays Florence Foster Jenkins. There is a hysterical segment with the recording of Streep singing the Queen of the Night’s aria from The Magic Flute, a la Jenkins.
I think that Florence Foster Jenkins would probably have been a perfectly fine elementary piano teacher for most young students (guessing that she already played the piano). She loved music, she had a wide ranging familiarity with it, and although she lacked vocal technique and pitch stability, she tried hard.
I am certain, however, that one way you would not get more Mozarts is to compel everyone to take piano lessons with Florence.
In a neighborhood, where most kids take piano lessons with Florence Foster Jenkins, and most of those young students aren’t disadvantaged by taking lessons with Florence Foster Jenkins, is it worth being outside the norm to seek lessons outside the neighborhood for a child who has more musical talent than will be realized by taking lessons in the neighborhood? Will the child end up in the same place as an adult without appropriate lessons as a child? Can one catch up with music? Will the child be interested in catching up or lose interest entirely? Does society care about losing potential Mozarts? Does it really matter? Do we think Mozarts come into being without outside enrichment of any kind? Maybe we have no responsibility to nurture talent because if it is true genius it needs no nourishment.
If the child is interested in music, I’m providing appropriate instruction to the best of my ability.
In every instance with which I am familiar from my reading, the extremely talented person had initial direction from someone who ranged somewhere from knowledgable to gifted, and then at some point, the young person moved rapidly ahead, usually beyond the teacher. But usually the initial teachers were extremely good themselves.
I think Leopold Mozart may have exaggerated the spontaneity of his son’s gift somewhat. Mozart certainly grew up in a very musical household, and his father taught him minuets on the piano when he was three. There is no mistaking the genius, but there is also no mistaking that it did not spring “from nowhere.”
I think there are social nuances where not showing everyone how smart you are, and not trying your hardest (and your talent making everyone else look inept) is a positive thing.
Kind of like in the movie The Incredibles, where Jack had to carefully pace himself to come in second for the sprint. I think there’s a lot of value to that lesson. You do not have to be Mr. Incredible all the time, even if it’s easy for you.
As long as he’s able to sometimes spread his wings. Remember how destructive and angry Dash was initially when he wasn’t allowed to use his speed? [Jack was the baby]
Some recruits were rare “scary smart” kids ranking in the top 1 in 10,000 in math or verbal reasoning skills. In a report last year, Vanderbilt postdoctoral researcher Harrison Kell, Lubinski, and Benbow checked up on 320 of these profoundly gifted people at age 38. About 44 percent had earned an M.D., Ph.D., or law degree, in contrast to the 2 percent of the U.S. population that holds a doctoral degree. Many had high-powered careers, ranging from doctors and software engineers to artists and leaders of Fortune 500 companies.
“In every comparison, in every cohort, a greater proportion of grade skippers earned doctoral degrees, STEM Ph.D.s, STEM publications, and patents” — and at an earlier age, the researchers write.
Gifted students who miss out on accelerated learning opportunities still do well above average, but don’t accomplish as much later in life, Lubinski said. That’s a “huge waste of talent,” he said.
@sculptordad I looked through the study. Thank you for pointing it out. The study groups had almost no minorities in them. They also used only one criteria. They used how they did on SAT math test before the age of 13. Even today virtually no one takes the SAT before the age of 13. Additionally the study groups on average took the SAT test 40 years ago. The authors acknowledged that while there may be a correlation between skipping grades and getting a phd that doesn’t mean that it is a casual factor
The authors said
"While the sets of baseline covariates used in the current study rule out
some of the usual purported causal influences, this study cannot
definitely rule out other plausible influences that reasonable investigators
could posit; indeed, it is possible that unobserved variables are
entirely responsible for the observed effects. Therefore, our findings
are best thought of as highly suggestive "
I would say that I agree with the following from the authors
“Our positive findings for grade skipping should not be interpreted as if
grade skipping is essential for the optimal development of mathematically
precocious youth. Indeed, over time, many interventions have developed
such that there are multiple ways to meet the needs of intellectually
precocious youth, and some intervention modalities may be functionally
equivalent (Wai et al., 2010). Just as educational efficacy of an intervention
may be compromised by not taking into account the individuality of the
student body (Benbow & Stanley, 1996; Bleske-Rechek et al., 2004;
Lubinski, 1996, 2010), innovative educational interventions may replace or
be used interchangeably with preexisting procedures. The important thing
is to treat all students as individuals, and tailor procedures with a keen
awareness of the multidimensionality found in each student’s individuality
(Achter, Lubinski, & Benbow, 1996).”
I agree with both of your points. My main points have been that profoundly gifted needs to be adequately challenged for their emotional well being and long term success, and sometimes grade skipping or radically early college maybe the best choice given specific child and his overall surrounding circumstance. Sometimes it might not need grade skipping.
In the many cases, given the access to such information, the parents are the better judges than spectators claiming that “kids needs to be kids” regardless of such individuality considerations.
Gosh, I think there are so many factors to consider when one is considering radical acceleration, or just even a grade or two grade skipping. This is a truly a complex issue.
My son is one who scored 700+ before age 13 on the SAT, but we found enough academic and non-academic stuff to keep him enjoying life. I had grade skipped him in elementary, but since we privately homeschooled, I undid the skip later in elementary.
My father, OTOH, was miserable. His intelligence kinda stuck out like a sore thumb, and he’s a pretty introverted nice guy. He got beat up in school. One day, his elem teachers just pulled him from the line of one grade and stuck him in the line two grades up. My dad graduated high school at 15; best thing that could have ever happened. I always knew my dad was really, really smart, but to be honest, it was kind of embarrassing when I was a kid since he was so different from most of the families I knew (he was an engineering physicist).
Only later, did I really learn to appreciate my dad’s quiet and humorous intellect. But I digress; for him, it was essential that he get the heck out of school and get on with his life. What was there for him in El Paso in the 1940s? Not much.
Again, I say, viva la difference. You really gotta know the details behind each case before making judgement, I guess.
A problem with grade skipping is that you cannot know whether the student who adapts well to being a year or two younger than classmates at age 7 or 8 will also adapt well at age 11 or 14 or 17.
Also, my personal experience suggests that skipping a single grade is only temporarily beneficial academically.
On the recommendation of the elementary school principal, my parents let me skip third grade because I was ahead of myself academically and I was bored and daydreaming in school. The skipping appeared successful to the adults around me because I was truly challenged in fourth grade – as you might expect since I had never been exposed to the third grade curriculum. But by the following year, I had caught up with my classmates academically and I was bored and daydreaming again – and I was also friendless because I couldn’t fit in with my year-older classmates socially (a situation that didn’t correct itself until college). So what exactly did the skipping accomplish?
I don’t think grade-skipping is really the answer, but I also don’t think that the young man’s going to college at age 12 is the same as grade-skipping.
In the case of the young man, he is prepared by background (as I understand it) for the college course work. So it’s not likely to be a case of artificial challenge followed by catching up and becoming bored again.
The instance that Marian describes illustrates some of the problems with grade-skipping in elementary school. For one, this appears to have been a simple move up, with no coverage of the intervening curriculum. That’s rough–and as Marian points out, it’s only adequate in the short term.
My mother was grade-skipped enough to arrive in college at 16, still wearing braces. Although she was able to fit in socially–and eventually became president of her sorority, for example–she was firmly opposed to grade-skipping for my brother and me.
One of the friends I met during a summer research program had been grade-skipped (7th grade) in Chicago, along with an entire class full of similarly talented students. That solves some of the problems.
From my observations, the social skills of the mainstream students matter, too. There is a fair amount of bullying that happens in middle school and into the high school years, that does not happen in college. So the highly accelerated student may encounter significantly less bullying if skipped.
Finally, I just wanted to throw in a word of “wisdom” from my daughter, at age four-and-a-half: “If my friends know I’m smart, they won’t like me.” . . . announced in the car on the way to pre-school, and I have no idea where it came from.
^^ So your observations tell you that you no longer need K-12 survival skills if you are going to skip the entire remaining K-12. (and hopefully if you can stay out of prison, since you need similar survival skills there)
It really is a matter of the individual student and what is available to them. Their personalities matter a lot, I think. My D tested into kindergarten early, so she started out a year younger-sometimes almost 18 months younger, than her classmates. Some kids teased her about it, others didn’t care. She’s always had friends of various ages, so she’s never been friendless and she’s always been very mature, and never had trouble fitting in.
But that alone wasn’t enough to keep her from being bored. In 4th grade she tested into our district’s highly gifted program, where the kids work both ahead of grade level and at the faster pace with more depth than in typical classrooms. Academically it was fine, but socially it was awful for her, because children of color are rare in that program and she was never comfortable or really accepted. Finally we found a niche middle/high school full of kids of color, many of them advanced, and a place that offered all the kids many opportunities to forge their own paths. It was a great success for D and many others. Even so she STILL wanted more, so took extra classes to graduate early and just started her freshman year of college at 16.
She’s having a great time, already has a cadre of friends. This would have never worked for my son, who IS one of those 700+ SAT scores before 7th grade. My ex wouldn’t have fared well either.
The boy in the OP clearly needs the advanced academics, and hopefully his parents will help him navigate the social issues well. But the next kid like him may need to stay in a more traditional program. There is no one right answer.
