5 ms·

I think more cases similar to this (ok, maybe not this young, but still) will, or should, happen more in the future. I'm sure there's many opportunities where a

I think more cases similar to this (ok, maybe not this young, but still) will, or should, happen more in the future. I'm sure there's many opportunities where a kid is actually interested in studies but can't or doesn't go on the "fast track" for various reasons. One reason, I think, is that kids are expected to play non-productive games all the time. Another is that there's this warped, prevalent perspective that work and play are opposites.

brentr 18y ago
At this child's age, it's up to the parents to decide what is best for the child. Sometimes the parents will not make the best decision. Personally I feel that if the child can state the want to study more complex or advanced topics, the child should be allowed to study those topics. I am a bit biased because I found most of my pre-university studies boring. I also didn't fit in with the other students while I was in middle school and high school.
- silencio 18y ago
  Except they aren't making the best decisions most of the time, and by the time the kid can study what they want easily on their own (think things like money for buying materials), they're stuffed with bullshit busywork from their normal classes that are intellectually boring and take forever to do, until they get to college (hopefully). Or at least that's what it was like for me. One of the things I loved to do was to code, and well, that sort of went out the window for the two years I was in high school because I'd be dead tired and in need of sleep every single night after the requisite extracurriculars and homework. My parents wouldn't let me drive to school in the morning because I'd get only a couple of hours of sleep a night sometimes and they didn't want me to fall asleep behind the wheel. Even on weekends I didn't have time because I had to study for the classes I hated and do lame group projects where at least one member didn't do their fair share of work.
  - pchristensen 18y ago
    Wow, silencio, I had to check the comment header to make sure this wasn't one of those comments I write in the middle of the night and forget about :). I think you might be my long lost twin.
    - silencio 18y ago
      sweet! I've come across a loot of people who thought the same too..
  - neodude 18y ago
    I similarly found pre-university studies rather boring, rarely did the 'busywork' and skirted "on intuition" across most of it. Got me into a fancy named university, but only then to realise my ignorance of what 'work' was. I'm just about half-way through college, and maybe now I begin to appreciate 'work' and unlearn the habits from before. It's surprisingly difficult. It's not necessarily a bad thing that HS trains (American) kids to work so well. Society runs on people doing (generally) repetitive work consistently. My early rejection of the system meant I got left out in the cold in terms of knowing how to do that. I did get a lot of 'soft' (i.e. cannot learn from books) computer/cs/systems knowledge out of what I did spent my HS years doing, though.
silencio 18y ago
I don't know about that. There are plenty of cases similar to this, and yes, even younger. I got pushed into a gifted program (the highly gifted magnet schools in LAUSD) by my parents. It was boring, and I wish they didn't - the people I met were fantastic but the program itself was the biggest waste of time. Another kid in my class made the papers like this one cause he finished his HS diploma and went on to college early, and his mom fought EVERYONE along the way to make it happen. Of course, I dropped out of HS early and went to a community college too (well, I took a whole bunch of classes there starting from 6th grade anyway), and I enjoyed the experience. A lot of my friends went from middle school to college. There are a fair number of programs like that around like at Cal State LA..a few more places..Simon's Rock is another one I can think of now. I don't think it's really the studying, but the attitude. The only time I liked the gifted program was where we almost had individualized studies (one kid might be doing basic math, another could be doing algebra) but were grouped together into one class (the social factor) and we were free to do whatever we want. I liked community college because I picked what I wanted to do, generally wasn't stuffed with useless busywork (I dropped most of those classes and took the same one with different profs), et cetera. Meanwhile, the equivalent AP classes at the HS were boring, nothing BUT busywork, and we HAD to stick with the schedule studying to the tests we had to take and there was no room for anything more because some people couldn't keep up. The forced-ness was what I hated. And yeah, that whole work and play are opposites thing is annoying too. I learn a lot from hands-on labs and things, and we didn't get to do a lot of those ever. Maybe it was because it was a cash-strapped public school? Finally, I think all of this needs to be customized to the student, because that's what makes it so good. The gifted program I was in was great for some, the early college stuff was great for others, and neither really worked for me.
- brentr 18y ago
  People who go on to discover great things don't learn from the professors. Let's take math as an example. One creates advances in mathematics by sitting with the literature, a pencil, and a pad. Every great idea comes only after thousands of failed starts.
  - silencio 18y ago

brentr 18y ago

At this child's age, it's up to the parents to decide what is best for the child. Sometimes the parents will not make the best decision. Personally I feel that if the child can state the want to study more complex or advanced topics, the child should be allowed to study those topics. I am a bit biased because I found most of my pre-university studies boring. I also didn't fit in with the other students while I was in middle school and high school.

silencio 18y ago
Except they aren't making the best decisions most of the time, and by the time the kid can study what they want easily on their own (think things like money for buying materials), they're stuffed with bullshit busywork from their normal classes that are intellectually boring and take forever to do, until they get to college (hopefully). Or at least that's what it was like for me. One of the things I loved to do was to code, and well, that sort of went out the window for the two years I was in high school because I'd be dead tired and in need of sleep every single night after the requisite extracurriculars and homework. My parents wouldn't let me drive to school in the morning because I'd get only a couple of hours of sleep a night sometimes and they didn't want me to fall asleep behind the wheel. Even on weekends I didn't have time because I had to study for the classes I hated and do lame group projects where at least one member didn't do their fair share of work.
- pchristensen 18y ago
  Wow, silencio, I had to check the comment header to make sure this wasn't one of those comments I write in the middle of the night and forget about :). I think you might be my long lost twin.
  - silencio 18y ago
    sweet! I've come across a loot of people who thought the same too..
- neodude 18y ago
  I similarly found pre-university studies rather boring, rarely did the 'busywork' and skirted "on intuition" across most of it. Got me into a fancy named university, but only then to realise my ignorance of what 'work' was. I'm just about half-way through college, and maybe now I begin to appreciate 'work' and unlearn the habits from before. It's surprisingly difficult. It's not necessarily a bad thing that HS trains (American) kids to work so well. Society runs on people doing (generally) repetitive work consistently. My early rejection of the system meant I got left out in the cold in terms of knowing how to do that. I did get a lot of 'soft' (i.e. cannot learn from books) computer/cs/systems knowledge out of what I did spent my HS years doing, though.

silencio 18y ago

I don't know about that. There are plenty of cases similar to this, and yes, even younger. I got pushed into a gifted program (the highly gifted magnet schools in LAUSD) by my parents. It was boring, and I wish they didn't - the people I met were fantastic but the program itself was the biggest waste of time. Another kid in my class made the papers like this one cause he finished his HS diploma and went on to college early, and his mom fought EVERYONE along the way to make it happen. Of course, I dropped out of HS early and went to a community college too (well, I took a whole bunch of classes there starting from 6th grade anyway), and I enjoyed the experience. A lot of my friends went from middle school to college. There are a fair number of programs like that around like at Cal State LA..a few more places..Simon's Rock is another one I can think of now. I don't think it's really the studying, but the attitude. The only time I liked the gifted program was where we almost had individualized studies (one kid might be doing basic math, another could be doing algebra) but were grouped together into one class (the social factor) and we were free to do whatever we want. I liked community college because I picked what I wanted to do, generally wasn't stuffed with useless busywork (I dropped most of those classes and took the same one with different profs), et cetera. Meanwhile, the equivalent AP classes at the HS were boring, nothing BUT busywork, and we HAD to stick with the schedule studying to the tests we had to take and there was no room for anything more because some people couldn't keep up. The forced-ness was what I hated. And yeah, that whole work and play are opposites thing is annoying too. I learn a lot from hands-on labs and things, and we didn't get to do a lot of those ever. Maybe it was because it was a cash-strapped public school? Finally, I think all of this needs to be customized to the student, because that's what makes it so good. The gifted program I was in was great for some, the early college stuff was great for others, and neither really worked for me.

brentr 18y ago
People who go on to discover great things don't learn from the professors. Let's take math as an example. One creates advances in mathematics by sitting with the literature, a pencil, and a pad. Every great idea comes only after thousands of failed starts.
- silencio 18y ago