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Several times during my education, my teachers petitioned the school to promote me to more advanced grades. They felt my potential was being stunted. My mothe

by fnid2 17y ago

Several times during my education, my teachers petitioned the school to promote me to more advanced grades. They felt my potential was being stunted. My mother, and sometimes other teachers, thought it would be better to stay with kids my own age, so I never progressed. I didn't get anything out of interacting with my age group. I may have been worse off for it. I was constantly frustrated by my classmates who asked questions and held up the lesson. We went too slow. I was repeatedly asked to help other students with their homework and even test questions. I always won the math contests, spelling bees and the like to the chagrin of students and even teachers in higher level classes. It created resentment that I faced when I became their students in later years. When I went to college, I had APed out of almost every freshman class and went straight to sophomore level courses in Physics, Mathematics, and Computer Science. I was never treated differently by the older kids and felt more comfortable with them. They didn't mind asking me for help even. So I see little anecdotal evidence that stunting a child's potential to give them time to interact with kids their own age is beneficial. Really, what does age have to do with it? As a child, I had better conversations with adults than with children. As a kindergartner I had better conversations with the seniors in high school. I went to a school with K-12 in the same building, so it was easier to interact with older kids, which I much preferred and they seemed to be quite entertained by me as well, so in retrospect, I think everyone would have benefited had I been able to progress at my intellectual rate, rather than the rate at which the earth moves around the sun.

jedberg 17y ago
Just to clarify, I wasn't advocating holding the kid back. I was just saying it is important to have that social interaction with your age-peers, especially as a teen. As some anecdotal evidence, take some of my college classmates who also started early. Most of us went back to high school, but a few just went full time college. After two years, this one guy wanted to transfer to Cal Tech. He was more than smart enough, but after the interview, they told him he wasn't social enough. They suggested to him that he join some youth clubs and get some social interaction with his peers, and they would reconsider him. So he joined every club he could find, and it made a huge difference. He was much easier to talk to and just more fun to be around. And then he transferred to Cal Tech.
- fnid2 17y ago
  You can get social experience with students older than yourself. Keeping the child among age peers, but not conversational peers, or intellectual peers may be precisely the reason they are not more social. Like I said, I was always more social with older kids, so putting me with older kids would have improved my social abilities. I say we should be pragmatic and stop creating generalized rules for these students. It's the general rule is hurting some kids. Let the child go to college. If he can't hack it, kick him out just like you'd kick out any other college kid who can't make the grades, cheating, or breaking school other rules. I never could relate to kids my own age who didn't understand the world the way I did. They thought I was stupid. I thought they were stupid. The older kids knew I was smart and I thought they were smart and it was awesome to be around them. As soon as we get out of school, the age association ends. When I started working, I immediately progressed to positions well above the level where other people much older were working for years. I was admired, not hated. I appreciated it and people thanked me for helping them understand their own jobs better. I hate saying all this because it sounds conceited, but I think it is important for society that we allow the best and brightest to have a positive impact on the world as soon as they can and for as long as possible. People don't live forever, let them get the most out of life that they can and let society reap the rewards of their productivity. As we move forward, it's taking longer and longer to understand the world enough to make a positive contribution and we need to give these prodigies as long as they need to do it.
- jerf 17y ago
  "I was just saying it is important to have that social interaction with your age-peers, especially as a teen." Why? No, seriously, step back a moment. Why is it important that I socialize with high schoolers just because they share the same chronological age? Do you spend a lot of time interacting with people in a high-school fashion? I sure don't. High-school culture is a dead end; it's an artificial construct brought on by artificial constraints that don't exist in the real world. If high-school culture is anything, it's a trap; all of use who have been out of it for at least five years can probably name a group of people who are "still in high school", to their social and professional detriment. The only alternative worse than that is no acculturation at all, but that's not usually what's on the table, and that's a pathological outcome regardless of how you get there. School culture is just one step up from that, almost anything else will get you more real-world cultural skills than that.

by fnid2 17y ago

jedberg 17y ago

Just to clarify, I wasn't advocating holding the kid back. I was just saying it is important to have that social interaction with your age-peers, especially as a teen. As some anecdotal evidence, take some of my college classmates who also started early. Most of us went back to high school, but a few just went full time college. After two years, this one guy wanted to transfer to Cal Tech. He was more than smart enough, but after the interview, they told him he wasn't social enough. They suggested to him that he join some youth clubs and get some social interaction with his peers, and they would reconsider him. So he joined every club he could find, and it made a huge difference. He was much easier to talk to and just more fun to be around. And then he transferred to Cal Tech.

fnid2 17y ago
You can get social experience with students older than yourself. Keeping the child among age peers, but not conversational peers, or intellectual peers may be precisely the reason they are not more social. Like I said, I was always more social with older kids, so putting me with older kids would have improved my social abilities. I say we should be pragmatic and stop creating generalized rules for these students. It's the general rule is hurting some kids. Let the child go to college. If he can't hack it, kick him out just like you'd kick out any other college kid who can't make the grades, cheating, or breaking school other rules. I never could relate to kids my own age who didn't understand the world the way I did. They thought I was stupid. I thought they were stupid. The older kids knew I was smart and I thought they were smart and it was awesome to be around them. As soon as we get out of school, the age association ends. When I started working, I immediately progressed to positions well above the level where other people much older were working for years. I was admired, not hated. I appreciated it and people thanked me for helping them understand their own jobs better. I hate saying all this because it sounds conceited, but I think it is important for society that we allow the best and brightest to have a positive impact on the world as soon as they can and for as long as possible. People don't live forever, let them get the most out of life that they can and let society reap the rewards of their productivity. As we move forward, it's taking longer and longer to understand the world enough to make a positive contribution and we need to give these prodigies as long as they need to do it.
jerf 17y ago
"I was just saying it is important to have that social interaction with your age-peers, especially as a teen." Why? No, seriously, step back a moment. Why is it important that I socialize with high schoolers just because they share the same chronological age? Do you spend a lot of time interacting with people in a high-school fashion? I sure don't. High-school culture is a dead end; it's an artificial construct brought on by artificial constraints that don't exist in the real world. If high-school culture is anything, it's a trap; all of use who have been out of it for at least five years can probably name a group of people who are "still in high school", to their social and professional detriment. The only alternative worse than that is no acculturation at all, but that's not usually what's on the table, and that's a pathological outcome regardless of how you get there. School culture is just one step up from that, almost anything else will get you more real-world cultural skills than that.