I don’t believe that there’s any empirical evidence to support this. The vast majority of celebrated mathematicians weren’t prodigies - they’re brilliant people who, on average, progressed through the stages of education at relatively normal ages.
For example, the ‘famous Indian’ from a lower caste managed to go to graduate school at one of the top universities in the world despite growing up poor and probably having few people who could tutor him - he did it on his own. Most graduate students in fields like pure mathematics come from middle to upper-middle class families and have a lot of
And was it Srinivasa Ramanujan? Because if so, he wasn’t average - he made many contributions to mathematics before his death.
The last four Fields Medal winners in 2014 were Maryam Mirzakhani, who achieved her PhD at age 27 (and also was the first woman to win the Medal); Martin Hairer, who got his PhD at age 26; and Manjul Bhargava, who was quite advanced - he completed all of his high school math and computer science courses by age 14 - but still graduated high school at 18 and finished his PhD at age 27. Only Artur Avila was pretty young - he was 22 when he finished his PhD, which is when most people are completing college. But he was still around the same age as the other three winners in his year when he won.
And the Fields Medal is specifically for people under the age of 40, so you’d think that math prodigies would be overrepresented. I looked a couple years back and almost all of the Fields Medal winners were pretty normal ages for finishing high school, college, and achieving PhDs.
Uh, I would say that’s even more reason to learn to get along with others. Even mathematical geniuses who go on to teach math at universities at age 19 or whatnot have to learn to work with the rest of the department - let alone their students! Everyone needs social and communication skills, but there are lots of different ways to develop them without holding students back. Still, I would say that some kids run the risk of feeling lonely or ostracized if not given the opportunity to socialize with some peers around the same age as them. There’s no reason a well-rounded kid can’t have both.
My kids had one girl in their class who was clearly ahead of the rest of the class in reading ability and everything humanities. However, she was very shy and would spend all her time reading if allowed, and if she’d moved ahead a grade or more, she would have been even more socially astranged from her classmates, so she stayed in the right grade for her age and as the OP suggested, she worked on social skills, athletics, art, music. She earned 750+ AR points (my daughter struggled to get to 40) and earned a ton of prizes - which she gave to her classmates without prompting. She was in girl scouts and on the basketball team with the other 8 year olds. The league was by grade, not age, so if she were in 5th grade, she would have played on the 5th grade team with kids who were a foot taller than her.
Toward the end of the basketball season, I mentioned to the dad/coach that the only kid who hadn’t scored a basket was Emily, so he had the team feeding to her the entire game. She was smiling ear to ear when she finally hit one. These were 8 year olds, not going for the state championship, so it didnt hurt anyone to play to her level when she had so often read at their level, or had her writing compared to theirs. When the aftercare group did a spelling bee, the leader gave her really hard words and my D more age appropriate ones. All the kids, from K to 8, could play together. She didn’t need to skip a grade to get an 8th grade word in the Aftercare Spelling Bee.
A friend was on a ‘gifted and talented’ soccer team. It’s not that they were good, it was just formed from a g&t classroom. They couldn’t accept that the refs knew the rules better than they did, or that you can’t argue with the refs or the coach or you don’t get another chance when you miss the ball. They’d been told so many times in their lives that they were special they believed they were the best at everything. They werent. They were no fun to play because there were tears and arguing and they were bad losers. Not special.
What makes you think that homeschooers don’t know how to get along with others? Education doesn’t have to be an either/or situation. Parents can make sure their children are academically challenged and provide opportunities for them to interact with other kids.
I wholeheartedly agree with the premise that kids need to blossom outward and not just upward, but your post is also full of stereotypes that I equally disagree with.
What makes you think that homeschoolers do not know how to get along with others? The vast majority of homeschoolers are actively engaged in numerous social programs and know how to engage and get along with others. Yes, there are socially inept homeschoolers, just like there are socially inept traditionally-schooled students.
I also disagree that being bored academically is a good deliberate educational option. In a controlled ps classroom environment, it might be the only realistic option, but when parents make advanced options available to our children, it definitely does not automatically mean we are racing our kids forward without encouraging our kids to expand their interests outward as well.
As a homeschooling parent of some pretty accelerated kids, I know it is possible to successfully offer our kids both accelerated academics and solid grounding in a broad range of subjects. Homeschooling’s flexibility also enables most students to remain challenged in high school without forcing the issue of early graduation. (We made the decision as parents not to graduate our children early. ) My kids have been able to dual enroll numerous 300 level math and science courses at our local universities as high school jrs and srs or work with private tutors on advanced level content and place into 300-400 level courses at their universities.
It isn’t an either/or conversation. Thankfully, parents can choose amg multiple legal educational options for their children.
Fwiw, since you are a principal, you might look into Beast Academy and AoPS courses for your advanced students. Their approach definitely fits with deep challenge going broad vs racing forward, though, in truth, most AoPS kids are both advanced and broad. https://artofproblemsolving.com/articles/calculus-trap (I have a student who followed the AoPS philosophy and still graduated from high school with credit for multivariable, diifEQ, and linear alg 1 and 2. I am so glad he didn’t have to sit around bored in 2nd grade bc someone thought he needed to learn to be social. He has always been the kindest kid around.)
OP, I don’t recognize your school’s (positive) process in what’s available here. If the school opps here had been like that, we wouldn’t have gone looking for alternatives. But I agree with your position.
You do need to ask yourself what your ultimate goals for your child are. A few who insist their gifted child be allowed to self determine (often with limited interests) are also on CC scoping out that child’s chances for colleges that do expect a level of social skills and interaction, not just heads-down academic drives and skills. Irony in that.
@snowfairy137 my daughter also started the HP series the summer after kindergarten. A teacher at her elementary school was appalled. I didn’t know what appropriate literature for an advanced reader should look like, but I did know what inappropriate censorship looked like.
If a kid strongly wants to read something, and someone forbids it, that kid will only go underground and and read it anyway. And then, when the kid has questions about disturbing material or just wants to talk about the book, she won’t feel safe going to her parents. I didn’t want to go there, so I just told my daughter whenever she picked up a book that seemed too advanced that if she had any questions, I was available.
I think you lost me with the Harry Potter comment too. ;))
My kids attended an extremely well funded public school. I tried hard during their grade school years not to push the teachers into advancing my kids. The teachers were amazing professionals who did what was needed to provide an appropriate education for my kids.
One of my favorite examples of branching out came mid-year of my oldest child’s Kindergarten year. His K teacher wanted him to be a part of the 1st grade’s advanced literature group. The group was run by the school’s librarian and had about 8 kids (out of two classes of 18 first graders, plus my kid.) Three to four parents were needed each week. The kids would read a book on their own (at home or during open reading time in class) and then we would guide the weekly discussion with questions designed to get them to think on broad or specific themes.
8 kids, one librarian and three to four volunteer parents each week. I can assure you that sort of branching requires lots of $$$ and parental involvement. It’s just not going to happen at every grade school around the country- not with declining educational $ and competing priorities.
I’m just guessing here- but that’s probably why kids are pushed up instead of branched out. It’s easier.
(And my kids were not harmed by taking algebra in 5th grade. Seriously there is no amount of branching that could satisfy their need for math acceleration. I’m happy to report that they are both happy, social, well adjusted college students capable of holding down jobs/careers and doing all sorts of adulting.)
When talking about gifted students and gifted education, it’s important to recognize that being gifted manifests itself in different sizes, shapes, and forms. I think OPs suggestions and approach are good for a student who is gifted or maybe highly gifted. But once you get into the realm of exceptionally gifted, profoundly gifted and prodigies, it doesn’t quite work the same. For some of these kids, sitting in a classroom listening to a teacher go over things they’ve known for years is sheer torture. They’re not really sitting in a classroom with their peers, they’re with their age-mates, and that agitation over being in the classroom can make it harder for them to get along with others.
When done right, homeschooling can provide the best education for a student - tailored to his/her individual needs and interests. It also releases child from the constraints of beingn with their age-mates, and allows them to socialize with intellectual peers. It can even be easier for some kids to learn to get along with others once the social and academic are separated, as they can be when homeschooling.
To me, it sounds like you are asking the kid to sit tight and be quiet, and eventually the whole grade of other kids will get to where this kid is academically. It is one big reason many families homeschool. But many families can’t make that work – maybe they are single parents working full time to support their families, for example.
I think we waste an inordinate amount of human talent in this country by teaching to the average and making all students take classwork at close to the same pace. There are a fair number of very bright kids who get disgusted and drop out/tune out. Others just twiddle their thumbs for years, waiting for their classmates.
What I find ironic is that the public school system would never dream of requiring students who are testing at more than 2 or 3 standard deviations in performance lower than their grade level to sit in average classes, but to do so to students at the other end of the spectrum is considered by school administrators to be completely acceptable.
One thing that often happens is that the more advanced student is asked to help their classmates along. Again – a little of this is okay. I want my kids to be helpful to others. But if they are in an English or Math class, most of the time I want them to be challenged and learning something, not doing the teacher’s job and covering no new ground themselves.
We did a ton of “outward” growth activities for our kids (Davidson THINK, music lessons, writing contests, insect collecting, academic ECs like Quiz Bowl & speech & Robotics, etc) – but that does not make up for tons of time wasted in the classroom for a kid who genuinely grasps a subject and wants more of it.
Schools need to figure out ways to be more flexible in scheduling so this works more seamlessly. Sometimes I think the one room schoolhouse had it right – you could work in a given subject with the students who matched your capability. We should be able to use technology to do the same with today’s students.
After many years, I finally instructed my child that she should demand to be paid if requested to teach the class or tutor classmates by the school. She is not a student teacher; her services are not free. It does not help her socially to be asked to instruct others and frankly I don’t think it is appropriate.
I think kids should wait until good age (7-10 depends on kids) to read Game of Thrones. All this fuss about Harry Potter, I don’t get it. Do you even let them read fairytale?
So many excellent comments in rebuttal to the OP’s premise! I’ll add some of my own- realizing some of the better ones are already taken.
Puberty- such a range that the ahead a grade or two kid probably won’t be behind all kids. Branching out- more of the same boring stuff? Socially- won’t fit in- see comment about maturity levels… Work together- great when the others “get it” and understand.
I am lower end gifted (not just high end bright on the continuum) and son mid range (he’s the one who started kindergarten early with his fall birthday and accelerated a grade). We had an excellent GT coordinator who had a parent committee that helped improve GT education in the district (talk about a tough job- handling gifted parents of gifted kids). So much was finally written while my son was growing up. I contributed by being one of four students from each HS grade who spent a day being tested at UW’s later defunct “guidance lab for superior students”- their research and so much elsewhere has helped school districts immensely.
The gifted ARE different. Most teachers are not gifted although many are very bright. It is hard for them to understand being more able to so easily grasp material and ideas. We were lucky to have teachers that could. Of course, there were some stumbles- and I let a teacher have kid tested (same school psychologist who had tested him for early entry to kindergarten as it happened) for attention deficit (not hyperactive) and literature was coming out with how to differentiate the traits of the two (or being both).
It may be different for those kids who are gifted in only some areas but not globally. Easier to hone weaknesses then. btw- we are talking about academically gifted, not athletically, musically or artistically et al. The GT coordinator had some great material at her disposal. One was a gifted pyramid. The bottom largest portion was for kids whose needs were met with the usual curriculum. The next needed some extras and the top smallest were those like my kid who needed a lot- such as grade acceleration. Note- needed.
Keep in mind the Bell curve. The largest portion fall in the middle- the slow and fast learners. The tail ends are the retarded (use whatever in vogue term you wish) and gifted. Fewer and fewer as the distance from the middle occurs. While in residency I saw those at the low end extremes- the ones educators won’t see even with today’s extreme expenditures. The ones at the extreme high end won’t have their needs met by the schools either. We’re talking the one hundredth percenters.
I guess I could continue but this is long enough. Educators get bombarded by well meaning parents who advocate for their top, say five percent, kids. However, there will be those rare kids who are one in a thousand and for whom things like grade acceleration are needed instead of lateral boring branching out (they already have done so and far above other age peers). Kids who will never be musicians, athletes or artists no matter how many hours are spent practicing. btw- my kid did well enough musically and running to do well with his grade peers in HS. And in college found those who were so much better in math although not globally gifted like he is. He needed to accelerate to find his peers before he was lost through boredom.
Socially- kid fit in with other introverts. Could double this post with anecdotes of his getting along, having friends. And his social maturity was not going to improve given that aspect of his parents.
The Montessori model can be very helpful bc students are allowed to chose their own activities, go at their own pace, and are in a classroom with a wider array of ages.
I live in an upper middle class area ( many college professors, doctors, Ivy grad parents) where the parents were often pushing to get their kids into the gifted classes. The school district was always pushing back and noting that “unlike on Prarie Home Companion not all the children are above average” So when my kids were about finished with the elementary school the school board hired outside experts to set more definite standards for gifted placement and ( in the words of a friend who worked in the district " shut those parents up").
It did not work out the way the district envisioned , the outside experts found that in fact the children of these above average people were in fact above average, that the district had been excluding way too many kids from the gifted program and needed to double the size of the gifted classes.
I do think part of the problem is that school administrators don’t necessarily understand the degree of competition at some universities. While OP may think it is enough the students are “accelerated” into algebra in 8th grade leading to a BC calculus placement in 12th grade, that placement, frankly, may not be sufficient for a potential math major at a leading Ivy or tech school, where the student’s classmates would have had multivariable, linear algebra, etc, in high school. Moreover, other countries’ math tracks are often significantly faster than ours, so yes, American students will face harder competition once they arrive in college from international students. There is a rational reason some parents push if their children are capable of handling the work; it preserves all options for the future.
I believe there are little Newtons, Einsteins, Mozarts out there and our school systems are definitely not suited to educate them, no school systems are. Public schools by definition should be focusing on giving most of the kids the best possible education, it is almost impossible to individualize the school instruction to fit every child’s needs. That’s why middle- and upper-middle class parents are so involved with their kids’ “individualized” teaching by using outside sources. It is funny that we are talking about this topic here where standardized testings RULE! If we could get rid of the standardized tests from our schools, the time/energy/resources saved could be used on each and every kids in the classroom, like what the Finns are doing in theirs.
Finally, Intelligence is overrated imho.
We tried things both ways in our family experience. I was asked to skip 2nd grade and in third grade, they had me read at my own speed. Being physically smaller was not great and I’m not sure I was less bored in third grade than I would have been in second. In neither case would I have had intellectual peers. When I reached 9th grade, they asked to skip me to 10th, which I did for two weeks and then went back to 9th because they put me in some classes with my sister (who was two years older than me). Seemed awkward. Again, I don’t know that it made much of a difference because the 10th graders weren’t my intellectual peers either and I wouldn’t have fit in socially there at 2 years younger. The school didn’t really do much to broaden me in any way (yea, the English classes read Beowulf, Shakespeare, etc.) but just tried to plug me through the (essentially trivial) curriculum. Per several posts, the school couldn’t or didn’t do anything to broaden me. They just wanted me to stay in lockstep with the curriculum. I got a job writing software in Bell Labs while I was in HS, which was pretty challenging. I did not find my intellectual peers until I got to college (I went to 3 of HYPMS and taught at one) and was elated – I remember thinking, “There are people like me here.” OP, just hanging out in school for an extra year did not help my social skills. As a college sophomore (or freshman), I realized that I would have to teach myself social skills, which I started doing as a major project and had girlfriends the last two years. I then embarked on more social skills training while in grad school, working with a guru of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy – some very funny stories there. So, from a person who was very shy, I have transformed into someone no one would think is shy. I also had the good fortune/judgment to marry a woman who is blessed with extraordinary social skills (as well as a great brain and lots of talent) and we have a very rich social life filled with many fascinating people. But, none of that came from staying an extra year in school.
My son is gifted (I see the IQ scores when they do the testing) though he was what some psychologist called “severely gifted” because he was also severely dyslexic and spoke with a speech delay. Like me, he was bored in school but had to figure out how to read and write – reading and writing were not just hard, they were physically painful. As a result, much of school was a challenge. He also inherited or acquired social skills, people-reading sensitivity, and artistic talent from my wife. So, per @SculptorDad’s comment, social skills wasn’t the primary deficit. Per the OP’s post, there certainly was an area on which he needed help (writing in any way and reading at a much faster speed). We read to him (and wish we could have owned stock in Audible) as he used to and still does listen to audiobooks constantly (remarkably, he can prove theorems while listening to and comprehending a sci-fi fantasy novel at the same time). Fourth and fifth grade were great (special 6 person class for boys with high IQs and language-related learning disabilities), middle school was challenging (and I had to teach him interesting math alongside what they were doing), and then we brought him from the private middle school to a public HS. We didn’t skip him but his HS realized that they couldn’t accommodate him well – he was bored to tears in math and not learning to write in English – and suggested we partially homeschool him. So, we hired a grad student from our local Ivy to work with him on math, a tutor and I worked with him on writing in different ways, and he pursued some of his own projects (designing games of strategy, co-authoring a coming of age fantasy novel, etc.). I suggested he not go to my alma mater or another Ivy because he really needed to go to a school where he could control his reading/writing load. He went to a top LAC and graduated summa but didn’t really find his people there. He did co-found his first startup there although he wasn’t a programmer. He went to grad school at another of my alma maters and that is where he found his people. He’s just finishing up there and has raised a several million dollar seed round from Silicon Valley VCs for his second company. He wisely picked a partner who is really great organizationally and socially; he happily
In our state, the budget for gifted education is $0, so whatever breadth or depth would have to come from us.