I don’t get your comment, SculptorDad. In adult life, I have never needed the “survival skills” I learned in K-12 schooling. Perhaps in other environments, they are still valuable.
All I know is that my dad was double grade skipped in elem, and he’s so glad he got out of school a couple years early. He had a wonderful life after that, but his childhood years were tough.
“In adult life, I have never needed the “survival skills” I learned in K-12 schooling”
Exactly, that’s why you don’t need to worry about learning that skill if you are exiting the K-12 schooling, whether you are 12 or 18.
“Perhaps in other environments, they are still valuable.”
The only place I know is Prison. I dare hope that no early college kids ends up there because they may not have mastered the skill to survive there.
My son’s GC was the person who suggested he skip 12th grade. He would only have taken English in HS, and the rest of his classes at the local U. He turned 18 in the first month of college. He also had close friends that were both older and younger. His best friend decided to do the same, and went to the flagship Honors program. Another close friend, one grade behind, decided to do this too. He had the luxory of time to take exams, visit colleges, and not rush for LORs.
Skipping grades in elementary school is something I’ve never seen in my area.
Indeed. If anything, many folks who excelled at “mainstream US K-12 survival skills” find they had to unlearn much of them in college or post high-school/college adult.
Yes. Highly dysfunctional/toxic work/social environments lead/dominated by toxic folks who never outgrew their bullying/immature/playing favorites/negative behaviors during their time in mainstream US K-12 environments due to the fact those behaviors were condoned(including ignoring/not punishing such behaviors) and/or even encouraged by their K-12 teachers/admins, parents, and other adults in their locality.
The college classmate who graduated from my LAC with honors at 17 a few classes ahead of me was very fortunate to have had a happy childhood/adolescence precisely because his parents and local K-12 educational admins understood he was much better off skipping middle/high school and proceed straight on into college.
Ended up missing out on all the anti-intellectual bullying endemic in many mainstream US K-12 environments and even a critical mass of K-12 educators/adults in the larger local community.
This cultural aspect in many mainstream US K-12 systems is very unfortunate.
I was fortunate to have attended a high school where one didn’t have to hide their intelligence. If anything, it was the complete opposite as exhibiting high intelligence/academic ability got one more respect/kudos from one’s peers, not bullying or social isolation.
Likewise, my HS experience is also much closer to those experienced by international students or relatives who attended K-12 before immigrating here in the US.
Even those attending non-academic track high schools before coming to the US for undergrad. If anything, most found the idea of someone being bullied for exhibiting high intelligence/academic ability to be quite puzzling as the notion was completely alien to the K-12 experiences back in their home countries. It was also puzzling to older relatives who did K-12 back in their origin countries before immigrating to the US.
Kaczynski went to college (Harvard) at age 16, and is now in prison.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kaczynski
@ucbalumnus you nailed it. I yield.
“calculus, chemistry, mechanics, electricity and magnetism, statistics, microeconomics and macroeconomics”. Great. But not Bio, English, Latin, US history, World history, CS, etc. Music? Art? Athletics?
It’s not that uncommon these days for advanced high school students to take post high school coursework online, at cc’s, self studied, or with tutors. Based on stats from another school, I would guess that 5-10% of the kids in his program at Cornell have already taken multivariable calculus, which he has not. So what’s the rush? If I were the parents of this boy, I would have put him in high school for at least 2 years and handled his math schooling out of school. While his accomplishments at such an early age are indeed impressive, it doesn’t seem that he has nearly exhausted what a good high school would offer. And I feel he would get a lot more out of his college experience starting at 14-15 than 12.
^Those were the AP’s he took at 10. It sounds like he’s spent the last 2 years preparing for college.
Chance is, he might have more calculus and physics than majority of 18yo Cornell freshmen. I have seen a few who completed most of the long engineering Calculus and Physics chain by 12. He seems is certainly capable. He might have taken a lot of the genEd courses too.
Mine couldn’t write at college level until she turned 13. So simply prolonged those until she was 13. At 13, she was suddenly a good writer like a switch was turned on. So she took English 1A and US History together, wrote more than a dozen essays in that semester, and aced them both. For highly gifted kids with good reading ability, writing is often just matter of time waiting for the brain to turn on the switch. I was expecting that to happen based on other parents’ experiences. And it did happen. I only had to protect daughter from my wife’s push on writings. I thought that pushing her before her brain was ready would only be detrimental - making her hate writing for no gain. And it worked.
Sorry so many of you had a bad high school experience. There is a lot to be said for playing soccer or baseball with your friends, going to junior and senior proms, learning to drive to high school, participating in acadeca, running for student office, going to high school football games, and just having friends who you can hang out with. Going to college is not all about academics. There are parties and trips with friends. There are ECs that the OPs kid will miss out on. What 12 yo is going to go door to door for the candidate of his choice or work on phone banks? The list goes on and on. Does anyone here think that a 12 year old has the slightest chance of getting a summer internship with Google, Facebook or Apple?
“calculus, chemistry, mechanics, electricity and magnetism, statistics, microeconomics and macroeconomics”. Great. But not Bio, English, Latin, US history, World history, CS, etc. Music? Art? Athletics?"
You didn’t get the memo? Those things aren’t important (/sarcasm)
Why are so many treating learning like a race?
I think if any of those corporations thought he/she could make meaningful contributions especially in the area of product development, that they would find a way to hire and compensate that individual regardless of age. Perhaps the minor would work from home or be brought in house under the auspices of being mentored.
There is also Moshe Kai Cavalin who I think was 16 when he was hired by NASA. Believe he is from California and helped NASA develop surveillance technology for airplanes and drones.
“a 12 year old has the slightest chance of getting a summer internship with Google, Facebook or Apple?”
Yes, especially if he is recommended by his professor with industry connections. It may be worth for the company with the diversity that he can bring, and they could top it with possible positive publicity.
I really don’t think you get it. You should read the article that @SculptorDad linked to (repeated below):
https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/04/25/what-do-we-risk-losing-by-not-challenging-gifted-kids/
The comments after the article are very telling. Here are excerpts from 3 comments:
This one did (me), but I wasn’t in college, I was in middle school and I might have been 14. Door to door, worked election day but was too young to drive people to the polls. I agree there are going to be things he just can’t do because he isn’t old enough, but working a phone bank or going door to door campaigning aren’t two of them.
But the OP isn’t trying to blend in, he knows he’s 12, his parents know he’s 12. They aren’t sending him alone, aren’t having him live in a dorm. I do think, from the stories I’ve read about the situation, that this is just an outlier and his parents made a choice and adjusted their lives to assist him.
“What 12 yo is going to go door to door for the candidate of his choice or work on phone banks?”
I know one, whom I will protect identity, did it and later even found a political club at his/her university.
@hebegebe I did read the article and I made my comments at post 214. One of my kids is profoundly gifted and having them graduate early from HS would have been a huge mistake.
I agree with mathyone and Pizzagirl. As I said before most of the Ivies don’t like to enroll younger kids. Too much is lost by turning this into a foot race.
From the Wikipedia article on Ted Kaczynski:
Ted Kaczynski was also subjected to psychological experimentation designed to break down the ego while at Harvard. I would hope that aside from the fact that such experiments are now recognize as unethical the parents of Jeremy Shuler will do a better job of looking out for his welfare than those around Ted Kaczynski did.