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The worst thing is the discouragement that public schooling gives gifted students when they do push themselves. I was always getting in trouble for reading ahe
by douche 11y ago
The worst thing is the discouragement that public schooling gives gifted students when they do push themselves. I was always getting in trouble for reading ahead in English class, or moving too quickly through the lessons in math. Creates too much work for the teachers grading, I suppose. They also don't like it when you point out that they are teaching falsehoods.
- dceddia 11y agoAnd then on top of that, there's the discouragement from your peers. It wasn't a particularly good thing to be the "smart kid". There's a lot of peer pressure to be average, and the outliers don't gain any popularity points.
- Lawtonfogle 11y agoMore the just not earning popularity points, being ahead of the curve can often make one the target of bullying and ostracism. Especially if one's social intellect lags behind their book smarts.
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoI went to school in Iowa. Just the opposite - I was encouraged to read ahead, to ask questions, to push myself. But Iowa is known for having some of the best schools in America, for about a century now. Maybe we don't need to go to the Netherlands for examples of good schools.
- ajmurmann 11y agoHaving gone to high school in Germany and gotten my Masters degree in the US I'm really surprised by this. All the teachers I had would have loved you for studying ahead. Teachers even enjoyed arguing with me when I thought they were wrong.
- danielweber 11y agoI still remember a student getting yelled at for working ahead in the book in 1st grade. I guess I learned my lesson because I never did it. He wasn't even a very good student, and my reaction (that I was wise enough to not vocalize) was "well, he's finally doing some work, this is a good thing, right?" There are a bunch of people in school administration who have as priority #1 "make the system as easy to run as possible." Priority #2 is to drive out anyone who questions priority #1.
- thesteamboat 11y agoOne thing to keep in mind in this kind of discussion is that the US is really big. It has 13,500 school districts. Its population is almost half that of all of Europe. Put another way, it has a population roughly the same size as Germany, France, the UK, Italy and Spain all put together. Among other factors that result from thus, there's a lot more variance in experience across US schools than there are in many European nations. In my experience at a (well-off) US public school, I had some teachers who were annoyed at my reading ahead/knowing things before they were taught, a select few who encouraged it, and a majority of teachers who mostly ignored me. Edit: It's -> Its
- wanderfowl 11y agoVery much this. My favorite teacher in Middle School was a Spanish teacher who would actually give me information and printouts about "things we haven't learned yet" when I asked about something we hadn't covered yet. So many language teachers, if I'd ask about some other part of the grammar after class, would tell me not to worry, and "That's next year." or "You don't need to know that.". So it was a revelation, and a moment I still remember clearly, when I asked something about the future tense, she said "Great question, here, let me make you a copy from next year's book". I've now completed a Ph.D in Linguistics, and I can't help but think that her finally fueling my interest to learn probably played a role in language being my field.