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Academic acceleration in gifted youth: a 35-year longitudinal study

163 points by barry-cotter 6y ago

barry-cotter 6y ago
There is no argument against academic acceleration beyond that it increases inequality of achievement. If the school system was about education more than childcare acceleration would be the norm for bright children and we’d have 14 year olds starting their Bachelor’s level studies in every school and 20 year olds who already had doctorates in every city of any size. Instead we waste their time, to their detriment and ours. Theirs, because if you’re going to be in school you should be challenged, and ours because they’d be able to start their professional lives earlier or with substantially more education, and hopefully skills.
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago
  That's also why you practically never hear about anyone being left behind a grade. From the start of kindergarten to the end of high school, the everyone I knew who started in my grade finished in it. I can't remember a single exception. In what other areas do the fastest and slowest do 13 years of work at nearly the exact same pace? The only difference allowed seems to be in AP classes, which are pretty limited in availability. If you imagine AP classes and stuff like that making maybe 2 years of difference in what you're actually taught, that's still putting everyone within 15% of each other.
  - black_puppydog 6y ago
    > everyone I knew who started in my grade finished in it Couldn't be further from the truth in Germany at least. While in my school days (primary, middle, high) this carried a huge stigma, nowadays there are some regions (think "states") that have a system where primary school "takes as long as it takes" for every child. Basically, for i in range(3): school_year(kid) if kid.is_ready(): break
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - adrianN 6y ago
      I went to school in Germany met exactly one person who had to repeat a year. School in Germany is different in every state, you can't really generalize, but I don't think many children have to repeat a year
      - ido 6y ago
        I know several kids of friends of mine in Berlin and Vienna who repeat or have repeated classes. And these were not dumb kids, if anything I'd have guessed they are at or above average intelligence.
  - qppo 6y ago
    It's sort of a "least bad" option. As in harms the least number of people. Schools are already struggling to handle incoming class sizes, they don't have the bandwidth to increase any throughput by holding older students back. To do so would be to the detriment of those incoming students and the teachers. (There's a good short scene in the Wire that sums it up but I can't find it). The problem isn't really that students don't get held back, it's that there is no capacity in the system to handle cases where someone should be held back. Almost across the board. I went to an affluent public school in the suburbs of a major city, and their solution wasn't to hold kids back. It was to differentiate enough between accelerated and decelerated programs to where they could essentially shovel the poor performing kids into a bucket where they wouldn't bother too many teachers or other students. I don't know the ethics of that. A lot of those kids I knew wound up dead from opiates, in jail, or still at home.
  - Larrikin 6y ago
    Never hearing of a single person being let back sounds more like you grew up in a school district where the parents were wealthy or powerful enough to cause a big enough fuss that their kids were never left back. The practice seems less common but even if you're isolated in a gifted track of a school you'll still come across the kids who aren't in most programs.
  - Xelbair 6y ago
    I remember a single exception. My friend was left behind because he literally skipped 400-ish hours in half year... for a 3 semesters in row.
- enchiridion 6y ago
  I agree. How do we change it?
  - taneq 6y ago
    Fund education sufficiently that "No Child Left Behind" doesn't turn into "No Child Allowed Ahead".
    - DuskStar 6y ago
      And why do you assume that this is the sort of problem that can be solved with funding? Maybe we'd be better off with average classes of 60 plus putting students with others matching their skill levels, or some other orthogonal move. If I'm remembering correctly, school performance by state is basically uncorrelated with spending.
      - taneq 6y ago
        I'm pretty sure outcomes are inversely correlated with class size. That's why people pay for individual tuition. Smaller class sizes necessarily cost more per student. It's not a huge leap to conclude that more money per student spent on reducing class sizes will improve outcomes across the board. What happens, though, is that money is spent on small group or individual lessons for the special ed kids while any kid who's capable of doing so is left to fend for themselves.
    - barry-cotter 6y ago
      In the US spending per student on K-12 education has tripled since 1970. Achievement has been flat[1]. There’s no shortage of money. Practically unlimited education funding has limited effects on results[2]. It’s structural change that’s needed, like acceleration for all. [1] https://www.cato.org/blog/school-funding-system-not-broken-it-just-doesnt-work https://www.cato.org/blog/school-funding-system-not-broken-i... [2] https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/americas-most-costly-educational-failure https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/americas-most-c...
      - 6y ago
- HenryKissinger 6y ago
  Counterpoint: the general level of maturity of an individual, and in particular their emotional maturity and their social maturity, do not strongly correlate with their intellectual maturity. Someone may be advanced enough to graduate at 18 with a bachelor's degree in a technically challenging field, but lack enough self-discipline, sense of responsibilities, or basic social graces and knowledge of social codes to realize their full potential. They might also feel alienated from their older peers. By moving through the education system at the same speed as their normal peers, they have more time to construct their personalities and learn what they really want to do later in life.
  - apsec112 6y ago
    When I was a teenager, I felt much less alienated from adults than I did from high school students, who lived in a weird, artificial, often hostile social bubble with rules unlike anywhere else: http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html
  - georgeburdell 6y ago
    Does any of that matter if they move through the system faster if they ultimately, as the abstract suggests, don't suffer psychologically by age 50? Whether they're "socialized" seems unrelated to whether they find personal happiness.
  - njovin 6y ago
    One could also argue that emotionally mature(er) students have their emotional growth stunted by being forced to study and socialize with the less mature students.
  - pariahHN 6y ago
    It doesn't have to be done with accelerated individuals not experiencing that school environment - just expand existing dual-credit systems and make it possible to spend your four high school years doing dual credit for the entire common core curriculum in your normal high school environment. That alone would probably make a huge difference. Not sure what the equivalent for trades would look like, I don't know enough about the academic process for those. But my high school had an auto shop, so it would be doable in at least one place for at least one trade. Academic progression does not necessarily have to be tied in lockstep with social development.
- austinl 6y ago
  I wholeheartedly agree, and came out so disillusioned with the public education system that I'm struggling to decide what the right answer will be for my children. I understand that many kids are not this way, but I was the type that read physics textbooks while in elementary school. We had a mentorship program that paired kids with someone from two grades above (e.g. 1st graders with 3rd graders). My reading level was always higher than my mentors' and it made me furious (and probably insufferable). I feel like my entire time in school was spent getting it out of the way so I could study things that genuinely interested me. I would love for my children to not feel that same constraint, but instead feel free to go deeper at their own pace. I'd recommend this talk by Sir Ken Robinson on this topic generally: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U
  - bamboozled 6y ago
    Have you considered this is a problem that's pretty specific to you and what while your experience might suck. It also sucks for kids who can't read well, period. I think while schooling is far from ideal, most kids aren't reading physics books in elementary school. Many kids are struggling to cope on several different fronts.
    - TomMarius 6y ago
      Have you considered that the psychological effects on said children are not ignorable even if there is only a small minority of them?
      - bamboozled 6y ago
        Sure, I'm saying that it goes both ways.
        TomMarius 6y ago
        I think everyone in this discussion recognizes that and in no way has tried to suggest anything different. Here we are talking about the unusual children and their (different from most others AND each other) needs.
- avs733 6y ago
  another perspective would be the education is about more than just cognitive development...
- colechristensen 6y ago
  I experienced long term psychological effects from lack of proper education pacing. From the very beginning, I entered kindergarten as the only one in my class able to read. The teacher, doing her best, sent me off to read by myself in the corner as she taught the rest of the class. In the years where your brain is programmed to adapt itself to the environment it expects for the rest of life, I only ever had to do things which were to me trivially easy. There was this constant social distance and having to put on a sort of mask in order to interact with my "peers". At the same time everyone around me was always telling me how smart I was. Everything was easy until it wasn't and my subconscious was simply unprepared to cope with not everything being trivial and socially making it very hard to actually be myself around people because of this very strongly built in assumption that nobody cares about what I think in conversation (amongst other things) so that I simply couldn't think of anything to say. The struggle is real and never really has gone away.
  - MaximumYComb 6y ago
    I was identified in middle primary school and had to change school to attend another school that had a class for gifted children. I proceeded to take the top grades at that class. I finished primary school close to my 12th birthday, years ahead in basically every category. There was no option to continue in any program for high school so I was sent to the local high school, an impoverished school where the majority of the effort goes to controlling poor behaviour as opposed to education. The solution of the school was to just let me stay in a normal class doing not a great deal of learning for a few years. I spent some very unhappy years between ~15 and 24. I wish I'd had the chance for a different youth. EDIT: unhappy, not happy
    - dhshahsndeisjwn 6y ago
      > n impoverished school where the majority of the effort goes to controlling poor behaviour I think this is the real issue, irrespective of 'gifted' status. I failed the 11+ in the UK but spent my entire teenage years bored out of my mind and in fear for my physical safety. At 16 I switched to a school where classes were less chaotic and thrived. I graduated with a high 2:1 from Cambridge, so although I'm not 'gifted' in any precocious sense, and probably wouldn't have been picked up by these programmes, I was capable of some kind of academic achievement. The focus on one end of the bell curve who visibly suffer more than others in the middle obscures the real problem: public schools are underfunded and understaffed. There's a reason why private education provides class sizes of 10-15: At that level teachers are _able_ to respond to the individual needs of all children. Hiving off <5% into special classes for gifted might be good for those children, but it is socially regressive and ignores the problem for those who remain in sink schools.
- lordnacho 6y ago
  I've long wondered why education isn't just a bunch of different ladders that people can crawl at their own pace. For instance my kid is starting to read about stuff they normally only introduce in high school, but there's no way he will ever be examined on it until then (he's turning 8 in a few weeks). If someone wants to learn something, luckily these says we have the likes of Khan Academy and other internet resources. When I was a kid, you wouldn't even know that physics was a thing until quite late in your education, and you'd need quite the motivator to go to a library to see what exactly it was. Why not make it so that every kid who wanted to learn something could start crawling that ladder at their own pace? Kids who want to learn math can spend more time on that and advance, kids who want to write poetry can learn about that, and so on. What is the rationale for keeping everyone together, other than timetabling issues? I'm sure you can develop soft skills without having to do it with people who happen to be in the same ability level. Everyone knew a kid who was extraordinary at sports, but that didn't seem to stop them being friends with everyone. Likewise any other skill. I was quite fortunate to have a math teacher who gave me extra classes, out me on the math team, and pushed me up a year. Without that I might have gotten bored.
  - dgellow 6y ago
    > I've long wondered why education isn't just a bunch of different ladders that people can crawl at their own pace. Just a guess: as far as I understood US parents are very good at lobbying schools administration, and a lot of them would hate to see that some kids are smarter or more advanced than theirs. Now regarding your ladder idea, in some cantons in Switzerland and some Bundesländer in Germany the school system is split in 3 lanes: - a "gymnasium" lane that prepares you for university, mostly focused on theory and go further into technical topics - a "general" lane that prepares you for white collar apprenticeships, more general knowledge courses - a "labour" lane that prepares you for blue collar apprenticeships, provide more practical courses and learning support Lane names don't really matter as they are different from place to place, but that's the general idea. Also apprenticeships opportunities are not locked based on the lane you went to, that's just the general idea. And you have multiple ways to move from one lane to another at any point during your school life if you don't fit for some reasons, with some conditions (for example you need quite good grades to move from "general" to "gymnasium"). The difference I've seen between the Swiss and German approach is how early kids are split. In my swiss canton that was after our 6th grade, so roughly at around 13 year old. In Germany that's around 10 year old. PS: keep in mind that both Switzerland and Germany have high level of autonomy for cantons/Bundesländers, so things can be drastically different from place to place.
- zozbot234 6y ago
  > There is no argument against academic acceleration beyond that it increases inequality "It's harder to manage" is an argument against it. The gold standard is mastery learning (everyone learning at their own pace, separately for every subject; and true mastery is expected before you move on to something that builds on previous learning), which includes acceleration as a special case but also allows proper "deceleration" for those who need some thorough catch up.
- jstewartmobile 6y ago
  be careful what you wish for. per GBS: "all professions are conspiracies against the laity"
- mathattack 6y ago
  It’s an economics and policy issue. K-12 schools are measured on bringing kids up to grade level. They aren’t measured on getting kids ahead once they’ve met minimum standards. Based on how we measure and invent them, it’s more efficient to invest in pulling kids up from the bottom. (This isn’t an unworthy social goal, just adds work to parents of gifted kids)
- currymj 6y ago
  consider it from an alternative perspective — sending a 14 year old to grad school to get their PhD by 20 is putting them in a 60-hour-a-week high pressure job that causes mental breakdowns in many adults. i don’t doubt that academic acceleration has many advantages for smart kids but i do not think “getting” to give up your teenage years for a few extra years of high pressure work is one of them.
  - _archon_ 6y ago
    I propose that a 20 year old phd will have many options open to them, including taking an easy job and spending their own time on an interesting hobby. If a person can be educated with the information and methods to succeed, they should be better able to interact with the world. Slowing down a person with the potential to finish formal education so that they can spend more time being spoonfed isn't going to improve their chances. Also, if one chooses a grinding slog of a job, it's better to be a 20-year-old phd. Presumably, they're getting paid well, and they can start on their early retirement fund from better positions vis a vis a generic 20 year old. I am unconvinced by your argument.
- brightball 6y ago
  I’ve always felt like the answer to this is many smaller schools that are more peer oriented, rather than large community schools. Combined with large community wide after school / sports programs. This is actually similar to the home school model now where home school students can participate in sports. Home school groups are figuring this out too. I always assumed home schooling was just being taught by your parents but seeing how some of these groups work to form small schools of about 20 people is impressive.
deleted 6y ago
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pl0x 6y ago
This study is clearly wrong. When I was 16 I completed my CS degree, finished university by 22, and joined an early tech company by 25. It changed my life forever.
- s5300 6y ago
  Are you just trying to troll or do you really live in that big of a bubble? Forgive my snarkiness... but you're in the 99.5%+ of opportunities given to public school students. A good question is - did you go to a public school? Many questions could be had after this... but it's a great place to start.
- kranner 6y ago
  Are you sure you understood the abstract/title correctly? The study says there seem to be no negative social/emotional effects of academic acceleration.
- ryan93 6y ago
  What do you mean you finished your degree at 16 and at 22?
brianberns 6y ago
Here's my data point to the contrary: I entered college a few weeks short of my 17th birthday in the early 1980's. I was about 1.5 years younger than others in my class, on average. I made many good friends, but my relative lack of maturity still had a huge impact on my emotional well-being (especially when it came to dating). I'm now in my 50's and still dealing with the psychological repercussions of my parents' decision to accelerate me.
- fatjokes 6y ago
  1.5 years isn't even that much? I mean you can probably find that variance within any cohort so I doubt it was the acceleration that caused any psychological repercussions.
  - stephen_cagle 6y ago
    True, though small differences when you are young can seem radically more important than they really are. tldr; Teenagers are very very insecure.
  - xzel 6y ago
    The development of 1.5 during those years is huge. The difference between interacting with a 16 and 18 year old are night and day in experience and maturity. But I agree with you this would be incredibly difficult to accurately measure differences with a lack of accelerated students and subjective questions/answers.
  - brianberns 6y ago
    I'll never know for sure, since I can't run the counterfactual. It's certainly possible that the outcome might have been similar if I hadn't been accelerated. That said, girls tend to mature faster than boys, and I can assure you that most 18 year old females are not very interested romantically in younger males (in that era and place, at least). A year makes a huge difference in that regard. I suspect the study in question didn't account for this.
  - kergonath 6y ago
    When you’re 15, 1.5 years is 10% of your whole life. I know I seriously struggled with being significantly younger than the others in my classes. Having gone through a PhD since then, there is no way I would have handled it well at 20. Besides, my experience is that if you’re so bright, there are plenty of opportunities everywhere to satisfy your curiosity (or at least work on it). It does not have to be at school.
themodelplumber 6y ago
I'm curious about the inter-relational impacts in e.g. families or peer groups. Has this aspect been studied?
dang 6y ago
I wonder if they lack good ways of measuring this. I skipped a few grades and started university at 15. It took years to catch up socially and in many ways I never did. I wouldn't recommend it. In retrospect, I'd say a better thing to do with a smart kid is to convince them that they should work on things they're not as good at. Nobody's good at everything. However, that would have required individual attention of a sort that wasn't available back then. There's a grass-is-greener effect though. It's easy to imagine that one would have done better if one had been / had not been accelerated. As a philosophy prof told me back in those early university years, "Life does not bear counterfactuals." She also said "I bet you tell that to all the girls" when I dropped her Hegel class.
- apsec112 6y ago
  I was forced to not skip grades, and it took me years to catch up socially afterwards, because everyone was so hostile and school was such an oppressive, totalitarian environment that it made me unable to trust anyone.
  - dang 6y ago
    I hear you. That's why I added the grass-is-greener skepticism. It may just be that it sucks either way—or that we simply needed different things. It's important not to overgeneralize from personal experiences with this stuff. When I look back on it, I think what I needed most was for some teacher, mentor, or older/wiser person to spend time with me. That's what would have made the biggest difference. But I was completely isolated.
    - Xelbair 6y ago
      Then maybe instead of accelerating children down the same horrible route.. we could create separate tracks? I know that 'negative' (special needs) tracks are basically a disaster, but maybe positive (group gifted children together) one would work?
  - pistachiopro 6y ago
    Looking back at my regular American public high school, I'm really impressed how they handled students who didn't fit the standard pace. One thing, they were very flexible about credit replacements, so if you didn't want to take an English class, you could work on the literary magazine, or you could replace social studies with working on the newspaper. Furthermore, the librarian "taught" a few periods a day where small groups of students could just quietly independently study a subject of their own choosing. Now that I think about it, there was also an option for students to take half their classes at the local community college, which a couple dozen people did. This way, even though we had a wide range of academic abilities amongst the students, we all got to move through school as a cohort, and no one had to truncate their adolescence just to avoid going insane with boredom.
alasdair_ 6y ago
> “elite science, technology, engineering, and mathematics graduate students (N = 478) identified in 1992. Their educational histories were assessed at age 25 and they were followed up at age 50 using the same psychological assessments.” One thing to consider is the fact that America during the period 1992 to 2020, has seen a vast societal shift from nerds being seen as social outcasts to being seen as the thing a huge portion of the people at the top of society claim to be. As a counterpoint, I wonder if the exact same study, when conducted in an anti-intellectual society (say Nazi Germany in the late 1930’s) would still return the same results, or if the people that were “held back” would end up better off psychologically. I strongly suspect the huge change in how cool it is to be nerdy today is a significant factor in today’s wellbeing.
- iorrus 6y ago
  Any evidence to back up that "nerds are cool"?
- paganel 6y ago
  > say Nazi Germany in the late 1930’s I'd say Nazi Germany in the late 1930s was more of an anti-Jewish intellectual society, more than an anti-intellectual society pure and simple, the reason being that them being mostly a technocratic State they highly needed those intellectuals, engineers and technicians. One of the many proofs is the work of von Braun, without which us as a species wouldn't have gotten to the Moon as fast as we did. The same discussion goes for Soviet Russia, with some exceptions (mostly genetics-related work, where the politruks intervened in a very harmful way for their scientists). IMO the only true anti-intellectual regime that I know of from the 20th century is represented by Mao's relatively short-lived Cultural Revolution in China, a policy which was pretty quickly reversed.
  - mmaurizi 6y ago
    Pol Pot.
    - paganel 6y ago
      Yeap, that too, had forgotten about his atrocities.
avalys 6y ago
Meh. I skipped 7th grade, after being in the youngest cohort in my class already (birthday in July). I've done fine I guess - went to MIT, did some startups, got paid plenty of money, and I'm pretty happy today (COVID transient aside). I thought it was cool at the time, and I was in a hurry to get out of high school, get to college, and get on with my life, so I certainly didn't object when my parents and teachers suggested it. But looking back, it was weird. I couldn't drive until almost the end of high school. Couldn't legally drink until I had already graduated college. And while the adults at the time thought I was emotionally mature for my age - one teacher memorably called me an "old soul" - the truth is I was just a smart kid who didn't cause trouble. In retrospect, I still had a lot of growing up to do, and I wish I had the time to do a little bit more of it before entering college and having to make decisions that really mattered.
- MaximumYComb 6y ago
  That extra year you gained actually saved you from something though. You didn't have to sit in a classroom being void of stimulation for that year or later years. You were given the chance to grow intellectually instead of sit around doing not much.
aaronchall 6y ago
As a self-motivated accelerator (I dual enrolled on-site with the local university my senior year of high school) I can't help but feel like everyone trying to hold me back (I was strongly discouraged) was motivated not just by trying to keep dollars in the school and GPAs they could get credit for up, but that they were also motivated by jealousy and a sense that what I was doing was somehow unfairly improving my life. The head guidance counselor mocked me. The secretary who was supposed to buy my books and oversee my registration made me go back and forth between the university and the high school way too many times, and had a bad attitude about it the whole way. Several of my friends who I had tried to get to follow me got talked out of it by the same people. If it's so bad for everyone else, of course they need to come up with excuses for why it's bad for the student. Nobody cares that these gifted students are sitting there bored. That to get an A requires them to do meaningless busywork. That the entire situation teaches them that success means showing up and demonstrating they're smart, instead of the hard work that real success requires. Staying in that high school one minute longer, with those who were vindictive, condescending idiots, would have destroyed my psychological well-being. My professors talked to me like I was an adult. It was very easy to respect them and my time with them. I greatly appreciated spending my time in the stacks instead of being made to run between classes all day, taking a pass to go to the restroom, and getting berated by thoughtless busybodies on my way to the library. Our schools are first and foremost a kind of daycare that allows the adults in all of the children's lives to go to work. Only after meeting this first goal are they educational. Some schools are fortunate enough to not have discipline problems. Others are not so fortunate, and the rules and instruction is targeted to the worst performers. This greatly shortchanges those students who need challenges - challenging books, instructions, math, performance, exams, etc... If anything, it is psychologically destructive to purposefully hold them back.
olliej 6y ago
I didn’t know that this was in question. Most of the questions I’m aware of are reinforcement of systemic bias (equivalently capable white and Asian kids being selected over other races), and the diversion of funds from teaching the less “advanced” to teaching those kids who aren’t struggling with no evidence that the acceleration actually accomplishes anything in the long term
- barry-cotter 6y ago
  > and the diversion of funds from teaching the less “advanced” to teaching those kids who aren’t struggling This doesn’t happen. In the US gifted education gets at most 1% of all education spending, almost certainly less. Special education gets over 20% of all spending, probably closer to 25%. The average high school has no explicit accommodation for gifted students and a dedicated special ed teacher. > with no evidence that the acceleration actually accomplishes anything in the long term Strong positive effects exist. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ746290.pdf https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ746290.pdf > Exceptionally Gifted Children: Long-Term Outcomes of Academic Acceleration and Nonacceleration > a 20-year longitudinal study has traced the academic, social, and emotional devel- opment of 60 young australians with iQs of 160 and above. Significant differences have been noted in the young people’s educational status and direction, life satisfac- tion, social relationships, and self-esteem as a function of the degree of academic accel- eration their schools permitted them in childhood and adolescence. the considerable majority of young people who have been radically accelerated, or who accelerated by 2 years, report high degrees of life satisfaction, have taken research degrees at leading universities, have professional careers, and report facilitative social and love relation- ships. Young people of equal abilities who accelerated by only 1 year or who have not been permitted acceleration have tended to enter less academically rigorous college courses, report lower levels of life satisfaction, and in many cases, experience significant difficulties with socialization. Several did not graduate from college or high school. Without exception, these young people possess multiple talents; however, for some, the extent and direction of talent development has been dictated by their schools’ academic priorities or their teachers’ willingness or unwillingness to assist in the development of particular talent areas.
sverona 6y ago
Disclaimer: it's late and I don't feel like SciHubbing it so I haven't read past the abstract. My N=1 opinion is that being "highly gifted" may not cause social and emotional trauma, but it can certainly complicate unrelated trauma. I skipped so many grades when I was a kid that they started holding me back so I wouldn't get too "out of sync" (I did junior high twice.) I got along socially with relatively little bullying. But I still have a lot of school-related trauma, especially concerning emotional regulation. My working theory is that none of my teachers had any idea how to teach a 7-year-old in the midst of kids twice their age, so they treated me like I was twice my age, which was fine intellectually but messed me up emotionally. The emotional impact of this has absolutely nothing to do with my giftedness; it would mess any child up. There are some postrationalists that tweet occasionally about how their educational experience messed them up similarly. Qiaochu/QC Yuan is my favorite. Also, I'm trans and there are more of us with this story than you'd think.
- gwern 6y ago
  Fulltext: https://www.gwern.net/docs/iq/smpy/2020-bernstein.pdf https://www.gwern.net/docs/iq/smpy/2020-bernstein.pdf I keep a fulltext bibliography of SMPY-related papers at https://www.gwern.net/SMPY https://www.gwern.net/SMPY - this is just one of many papers establishing that various kinds of enrichment and acceleration are just fine, do no emotional damage, and do save a lot of their life from formal schooling, which has been a major premise of SMPY since Stanley founded it in the 1960s.
  - sverona 6y ago
    Yeah, I'm agreed. My point, I suppose, is that the best "acceleration" available to me involved a good deal of emotional neglect and a pinch of actual abuse.
sinuhe69 6y ago
This study re-enforced the result of at least three prominent longitudinal studies about gifted education and acceleration: the study of Lewis Terman, the study of Julian Stanley and the Marburger study.
Reimersholme 6y ago
Yesterday, another link from the same source was removed from Hacker News, I guess after having been flagged too many times. Funny how that is. https://psycnet.apa.org/search/display?id=18e6c19c-931f-7f24-cf7f-355089158779&recordId=1&tab=PA&page=1&display=25&sort=PublicationYearMSSort%20desc,AuthorSort%20asc&sr=1 https://psycnet.apa.org/search/display?id=18e6c19c-931f-7f24...
carlob 6y ago
I wonder if there are any studies about the effects of removing highly gifted students from a class of otherwise average students. I'm aware of a few about the lack socioeconomic mixing: rich kids in classes with just rich kids seem to see almost no positive effect, but poor kids who experience a good social mix in their class fare far better than their peers who are in schools where everybody comes from a poor background. I would expect a similar effect here: gifted kids who are accelerated might show no long term negative psychological effects, and might do a little better academically, but what about the overall effect on everybody else? Is it really better to have classes with the 1% smartest removed? At least from a political and ethical perspective I would advocate for greater mixing, teaching more fortunate kids that they should put their advantages to fruit by pulling the rest of the class. In other words focus on collaboration rather than competition. However, I have no data to back this up.
- zozbot234 6y ago
  > ... what about the overall effect on everybody else? Is it really better to have classes with the 1% smartest removed? This is a function of the method of instruction. "Pulling up the rest of the class" ought to be the teacher's job in the first place but these sorts of "direct instruction" (DI) based workflows, which do help less fortunate kids a lot, have become extremely unpopular. Every teacher wants to be teaching the 1% of gifted kids and have them "learn everything on their own"; no one wants to actually do the hard work of teaching.
  - slantaclaus 6y ago
    The overall effect on everybody else is that they graduate higher ranked in their class, benefit from grading curves, there may be others. But regardless, saying that we have to sacrifice the smart kid so he/she can benefit the other students....its not the kid's job to do that.
RhysU 6y ago
If you have such a child, get them into an extracurricular where they can compete with others based on body mass. I got my ass kicked in varsity wrestling after a grade skip. Still, I competed as I had since late elementary school. I could start varsity because our high school was smallish and I fit into an open weight class. I had a strong peer group orthogonal to my classmates. I spent time in the weight room and otherwise working out. I learned how to handle myself for the rare occasions that conflicts became physical. These skills helped me immensely when I began university at 16.
esjeon 6y ago
From my own experiences, most "gifted" students are actually from middle or upper class families, and their parents are usually well-educated and very interested in the education of their own children. This will positively affect the "psychological well-being" of those kids, and likely also negate many negative impacts of academic acceleration. Plus, acceleration is really unnecessary these days. There's no shortage of information on the internet, so why bother rushing into universities? Just let kids find and follow their passion.
- slantaclaus 6y ago
  I once did a pretty broad GIS analysis looking at different kinds of data related to census block groups in conjunction with published standardized test scores and the correlation between income and education is practically a straight line. Money and Education are a chicken and egg problem in terms of causality.
tmaly 6y ago
I have a 6 year old daughter who has been taking lessons with the 3rd graders this past year. I just had a conference with her teachers and they are ok to jump her a grade. They thought two grades would have been too much socially. But they did agree to give her advanced lessons. She is in a Montessori where grades 1-3 are together. I really believe all children have the potential for genius. Its all in how they are raised and what they are taught at a young age. The Pygmalion effect has massive power over young developing minds.
- nouveaux 6y ago
  Would you care to elaborate on the Pygmalion effect? How did you raise your child?
  - tmaly 6y ago
    There is a positive to this effect that can really help the child grow and thrive. https://bigworldlittleom.com/the-pygmalion-effect-and-its-effect-on-your-child/ https://bigworldlittleom.com/the-pygmalion-effect-and-its-ef... But there is also a negative side to it that can destroy a child's self esteem. https://www.wisdomtimes.com/the-pygmalion-effect-at-home/ https://www.wisdomtimes.com/the-pygmalion-effect-at-home/
  - tmaly 6y ago
    My wife and I read to her a lot when she was young. We gave her lots of open ended play with lots of arts and crafts. My wife taught her to read right around when she turned 4. I was also applying some of the techniques from Glen Doman in his book How to teach your Baby to Read. I think learning to read is what really helped her excel. She was reading 2nd grade chapter books by the time she started kindergarten. Once you know how to read, you can learn about the other subjects. There is more that we did, but I think reading to her and teaching her to read where the biggest parts of it. The idea that any child has the potential for genius came from Glen's book. I really think its true. Even if you only spent 15-30 minutes a day, that is enough to have a profound influence on the child.
- gwern 6y ago
justinram11 6y ago
I consider myself pretty fortunate to have both: 1) Been accelerated after I had formed a pretty tight friend group with my same-aged peers (jumped 2 years of math in 7th-8th grade) 2) Been born in a time where the internet was modern enough that we could all hang out and game online I entered University at 16 (the PSEO program in MN that pays for tuition and books your junior and senior year of high school), but was able to keep in touch with my high-school friend group with multiplayer video games. Even today, a decade later, I'm still able to keep in touch with them almost daily even though I'm living in Taiwan (started the digital nomad thing soon after graduating University at 20). Academically I did _really_ well in a large University environment with a lot more autonomy, freedom, and responsibility (it's insane to me that we have 18 year olds still needing to ask permission to go to the bathroom during class). Socially, I'll admit that I struggled to make any college-aged friends, but I think that was more due to still living at home than anything else. Instead of being able to take people up on offers to hang out at night, I had to make the last bus out of Minneapolis to my small town by 6:30pm.
joelthelion 6y ago
> The accepted manuscript version of this article will be publicly available on 07/02/2021 Does anyone have access to the study?
pgcj_poster 6y ago
From the paper: Acceleration Composite = 1 × AP Courses + 1 × College Courses + 4 × Grades Skipped "The average age of high school graduation was for Cohort 1: M = 17.8 years (SD = 0.62); for Cohort 2: M = 17.7 years (SD = 0.76); and for Cohort 3: M = 17.2 years (SD = 1.02)" According to figure 2 (pg 5), only 52 of 1497 (= 3.5%) students graduated from high school at an age ≤ 16. So it seems like this study is measuring very modest levels of acceleration, most of which probably comes from AP courses. I don't think this study tells us much about 20 year-olds with PhDs, or what would happen if we put an 8-year-old in a high school literature class, or if we separated everyone into different tracks an a young age, or a lot of the other things people are discussing in this thread.
getpost 6y ago
I was a "mentally gifted minor" as of the 5th grade in California. This seemed mainly to be about the schools receiving additional funding for each such student. The high school I attended let us vote on how the funds were spent, and we voted to purchase musical instruments (which anyone in the school could use). We also hired a Mandarin tutor for one quarter, which was decades ahead. I don't remember any Mandarin except for one phrase, which translated to 'I am reading a book.'
tobmlt 6y ago
Total honesty time. This topic has bothered me for years. I went to public school and did every honors program / enrichment class / etc. that we had. Nothing that showed me how to think about learning, however. I'll get to that below. Furthermore, everything was easy enough that nobody ever found out I had severe issues focusing on the material because the pacing was so slow. I didn't think of these things as a problem at the time. I thought it was normal to daydream then learn math sort of looking in reverse, in review of what was covered "yesterday, while I was dreaming" or similar. More importantly though, given the ease of the curriculum, from an early age I thought of school as a game -- a type of intelligence test where the object was to do as well as possible with the minimum effort, using only the materials provided by the teacher, and the class lecture. This was reinforced by my peer group of course, but also parents and authority figures always telling me I was smart. With friends, the mantra, "You aren't smart if you have to work hard" was the sort of maxim we obeyed. This all proved to be an absolutely disastrous set of notions when I finally arrived at university. I daydreamed through calculus -- I didn't have the skill of focusing. I took misinformed and patchy notes and, still playing the intelligence game, used those notes as my only source of information. I played the game until undergrad was finished. I graduated... I'd gotten by on geometric intuition and educated guesswork. I made b's and c's. Even as I failed at my own game, I wondered what was wrong with me. Why was I not smart enough? Only at the end of my BS, after falling off the treadmill I assumed would simply spit me out in a professorship somewhere, did I realize what a mistake I'd made. The mistake, of course, in not taking every opportunity to maximize what I learned and to investigate what I was curious about -- indeed, what I loved. Only then, with no options, no academic structure before me, with every opportunity (seemingly) past, did my eyes open to see the world as it was, and not as the intelligence game. I type this now, 16 years later, in my home office; a shrine to self learning... At that time, I dug out my calculus books and started over. Soon I went to grad school for something easy -- something I could get into based on the existence of my engineering degree alone (a degree for which in and of itself, I was basically unemployable, or at least to which I did not trust myself to struggle onward and use in that way). Meanwhile I taught myself calculus over again from page 1, and began to resurrect my prospects in the most painful way possible. Piece by piece I scrapped my education together, getting my PhD in engineering (not physics like I wanted) years late. I've a very wide education now, but I am always wondering what could have been, and now I have a toddler, almost 2 years old. One thing about the above I know: I just want to make sure he never goes through such a process with wool over his eyes. I want him to know from the start how to direct his curiosity into learning what he wants, at his own pace.
paulgrant999 6y ago
I for one, lamented the (abysmally slow) pace at which schooling took place. When you are correcting your English teachers at 12 ("its a word; uh-huh, use a bigger dictionary"), arguing that the system of arithmetic/geometry/algebra/calculus being taught is wrong (no, no, that doesn't have to be so...here are some exceptions), and getting thrown out of art class for not "following the rules" of your art teacher... luckily... I used to hang out with adults (who at the time, surpassed my abilities++). and discovered the public library (libraries, I used to tear through them like a hurricane+++). ... I used to think that the "next level" of school, would be were I got to meet the people like me... except of course, it never materialized. it amuses me to think about it from time to time. and then, sometimes I regret, the waste. but thats life, eh? -- ++ if nothing else, in resources. +++ ... and later, the Internet was born... and a million phones rang out at once... ;)

163 points by barry-cotter 6y ago

There is no argument against academic acceleration beyond that it increases inequality of achievement. If the school system was about education more than childcare acceleration would be the norm for bright children and we’d have 14 year olds starting their Bachelor’s level studies in every school and 20 year olds who already had doctorates in every city of any size. Instead we waste their time, to their detriment and ours. Theirs, because if you’re going to be in school you should be challenged, and ours because they’d be able to start their professional lives earlier or with substantially more education, and hopefully skills.

6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago
That's also why you practically never hear about anyone being left behind a grade. From the start of kindergarten to the end of high school, the everyone I knew who started in my grade finished in it. I can't remember a single exception. In what other areas do the fastest and slowest do 13 years of work at nearly the exact same pace? The only difference allowed seems to be in AP classes, which are pretty limited in availability. If you imagine AP classes and stuff like that making maybe 2 years of difference in what you're actually taught, that's still putting everyone within 15% of each other.
- black_puppydog 6y ago
  > everyone I knew who started in my grade finished in it Couldn't be further from the truth in Germany at least. While in my school days (primary, middle, high) this carried a huge stigma, nowadays there are some regions (think "states") that have a system where primary school "takes as long as it takes" for every child. Basically, for i in range(3): school_year(kid) if kid.is_ready(): break
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - adrianN 6y ago
    I went to school in Germany met exactly one person who had to repeat a year. School in Germany is different in every state, you can't really generalize, but I don't think many children have to repeat a year
    - ido 6y ago
      I know several kids of friends of mine in Berlin and Vienna who repeat or have repeated classes. And these were not dumb kids, if anything I'd have guessed they are at or above average intelligence.
- qppo 6y ago
  It's sort of a "least bad" option. As in harms the least number of people. Schools are already struggling to handle incoming class sizes, they don't have the bandwidth to increase any throughput by holding older students back. To do so would be to the detriment of those incoming students and the teachers. (There's a good short scene in the Wire that sums it up but I can't find it). The problem isn't really that students don't get held back, it's that there is no capacity in the system to handle cases where someone should be held back. Almost across the board. I went to an affluent public school in the suburbs of a major city, and their solution wasn't to hold kids back. It was to differentiate enough between accelerated and decelerated programs to where they could essentially shovel the poor performing kids into a bucket where they wouldn't bother too many teachers or other students. I don't know the ethics of that. A lot of those kids I knew wound up dead from opiates, in jail, or still at home.
- Larrikin 6y ago
  Never hearing of a single person being let back sounds more like you grew up in a school district where the parents were wealthy or powerful enough to cause a big enough fuss that their kids were never left back. The practice seems less common but even if you're isolated in a gifted track of a school you'll still come across the kids who aren't in most programs.
- Xelbair 6y ago
  I remember a single exception. My friend was left behind because he literally skipped 400-ish hours in half year... for a 3 semesters in row.
enchiridion 6y ago
I agree. How do we change it?
- taneq 6y ago
  Fund education sufficiently that "No Child Left Behind" doesn't turn into "No Child Allowed Ahead".
  - DuskStar 6y ago
    And why do you assume that this is the sort of problem that can be solved with funding? Maybe we'd be better off with average classes of 60 plus putting students with others matching their skill levels, or some other orthogonal move. If I'm remembering correctly, school performance by state is basically uncorrelated with spending.
    - taneq 6y ago
      I'm pretty sure outcomes are inversely correlated with class size. That's why people pay for individual tuition. Smaller class sizes necessarily cost more per student. It's not a huge leap to conclude that more money per student spent on reducing class sizes will improve outcomes across the board. What happens, though, is that money is spent on small group or individual lessons for the special ed kids while any kid who's capable of doing so is left to fend for themselves.
  - barry-cotter 6y ago
    In the US spending per student on K-12 education has tripled since 1970. Achievement has been flat[1]. There’s no shortage of money. Practically unlimited education funding has limited effects on results[2]. It’s structural change that’s needed, like acceleration for all. [1] https://www.cato.org/blog/school-funding-system-not-broken-it-just-doesnt-work https://www.cato.org/blog/school-funding-system-not-broken-i... [2] https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/americas-most-costly-educational-failure https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/americas-most-c...
    - 6y ago
HenryKissinger 6y ago
Counterpoint: the general level of maturity of an individual, and in particular their emotional maturity and their social maturity, do not strongly correlate with their intellectual maturity. Someone may be advanced enough to graduate at 18 with a bachelor's degree in a technically challenging field, but lack enough self-discipline, sense of responsibilities, or basic social graces and knowledge of social codes to realize their full potential. They might also feel alienated from their older peers. By moving through the education system at the same speed as their normal peers, they have more time to construct their personalities and learn what they really want to do later in life.
- apsec112 6y ago
  When I was a teenager, I felt much less alienated from adults than I did from high school students, who lived in a weird, artificial, often hostile social bubble with rules unlike anywhere else: http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html
- georgeburdell 6y ago
  Does any of that matter if they move through the system faster if they ultimately, as the abstract suggests, don't suffer psychologically by age 50? Whether they're "socialized" seems unrelated to whether they find personal happiness.
- njovin 6y ago
  One could also argue that emotionally mature(er) students have their emotional growth stunted by being forced to study and socialize with the less mature students.
- pariahHN 6y ago
  It doesn't have to be done with accelerated individuals not experiencing that school environment - just expand existing dual-credit systems and make it possible to spend your four high school years doing dual credit for the entire common core curriculum in your normal high school environment. That alone would probably make a huge difference. Not sure what the equivalent for trades would look like, I don't know enough about the academic process for those. But my high school had an auto shop, so it would be doable in at least one place for at least one trade. Academic progression does not necessarily have to be tied in lockstep with social development.
austinl 6y ago
I wholeheartedly agree, and came out so disillusioned with the public education system that I'm struggling to decide what the right answer will be for my children. I understand that many kids are not this way, but I was the type that read physics textbooks while in elementary school. We had a mentorship program that paired kids with someone from two grades above (e.g. 1st graders with 3rd graders). My reading level was always higher than my mentors' and it made me furious (and probably insufferable). I feel like my entire time in school was spent getting it out of the way so I could study things that genuinely interested me. I would love for my children to not feel that same constraint, but instead feel free to go deeper at their own pace. I'd recommend this talk by Sir Ken Robinson on this topic generally: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U
- bamboozled 6y ago
  Have you considered this is a problem that's pretty specific to you and what while your experience might suck. It also sucks for kids who can't read well, period. I think while schooling is far from ideal, most kids aren't reading physics books in elementary school. Many kids are struggling to cope on several different fronts.
  - TomMarius 6y ago
    Have you considered that the psychological effects on said children are not ignorable even if there is only a small minority of them?
    - bamboozled 6y ago
      Sure, I'm saying that it goes both ways.
      - TomMarius 6y ago
        I think everyone in this discussion recognizes that and in no way has tried to suggest anything different. Here we are talking about the unusual children and their (different from most others AND each other) needs.
avs733 6y ago
another perspective would be the education is about more than just cognitive development...
colechristensen 6y ago
I experienced long term psychological effects from lack of proper education pacing. From the very beginning, I entered kindergarten as the only one in my class able to read. The teacher, doing her best, sent me off to read by myself in the corner as she taught the rest of the class. In the years where your brain is programmed to adapt itself to the environment it expects for the rest of life, I only ever had to do things which were to me trivially easy. There was this constant social distance and having to put on a sort of mask in order to interact with my "peers". At the same time everyone around me was always telling me how smart I was. Everything was easy until it wasn't and my subconscious was simply unprepared to cope with not everything being trivial and socially making it very hard to actually be myself around people because of this very strongly built in assumption that nobody cares about what I think in conversation (amongst other things) so that I simply couldn't think of anything to say. The struggle is real and never really has gone away.
- MaximumYComb 6y ago
  I was identified in middle primary school and had to change school to attend another school that had a class for gifted children. I proceeded to take the top grades at that class. I finished primary school close to my 12th birthday, years ahead in basically every category. There was no option to continue in any program for high school so I was sent to the local high school, an impoverished school where the majority of the effort goes to controlling poor behaviour as opposed to education. The solution of the school was to just let me stay in a normal class doing not a great deal of learning for a few years. I spent some very unhappy years between ~15 and 24. I wish I'd had the chance for a different youth. EDIT: unhappy, not happy
  - dhshahsndeisjwn 6y ago
    > n impoverished school where the majority of the effort goes to controlling poor behaviour I think this is the real issue, irrespective of 'gifted' status. I failed the 11+ in the UK but spent my entire teenage years bored out of my mind and in fear for my physical safety. At 16 I switched to a school where classes were less chaotic and thrived. I graduated with a high 2:1 from Cambridge, so although I'm not 'gifted' in any precocious sense, and probably wouldn't have been picked up by these programmes, I was capable of some kind of academic achievement. The focus on one end of the bell curve who visibly suffer more than others in the middle obscures the real problem: public schools are underfunded and understaffed. There's a reason why private education provides class sizes of 10-15: At that level teachers are _able_ to respond to the individual needs of all children. Hiving off <5% into special classes for gifted might be good for those children, but it is socially regressive and ignores the problem for those who remain in sink schools.
lordnacho 6y ago
I've long wondered why education isn't just a bunch of different ladders that people can crawl at their own pace. For instance my kid is starting to read about stuff they normally only introduce in high school, but there's no way he will ever be examined on it until then (he's turning 8 in a few weeks). If someone wants to learn something, luckily these says we have the likes of Khan Academy and other internet resources. When I was a kid, you wouldn't even know that physics was a thing until quite late in your education, and you'd need quite the motivator to go to a library to see what exactly it was. Why not make it so that every kid who wanted to learn something could start crawling that ladder at their own pace? Kids who want to learn math can spend more time on that and advance, kids who want to write poetry can learn about that, and so on. What is the rationale for keeping everyone together, other than timetabling issues? I'm sure you can develop soft skills without having to do it with people who happen to be in the same ability level. Everyone knew a kid who was extraordinary at sports, but that didn't seem to stop them being friends with everyone. Likewise any other skill. I was quite fortunate to have a math teacher who gave me extra classes, out me on the math team, and pushed me up a year. Without that I might have gotten bored.
- dgellow 6y ago
  > I've long wondered why education isn't just a bunch of different ladders that people can crawl at their own pace. Just a guess: as far as I understood US parents are very good at lobbying schools administration, and a lot of them would hate to see that some kids are smarter or more advanced than theirs. Now regarding your ladder idea, in some cantons in Switzerland and some Bundesländer in Germany the school system is split in 3 lanes: - a "gymnasium" lane that prepares you for university, mostly focused on theory and go further into technical topics - a "general" lane that prepares you for white collar apprenticeships, more general knowledge courses - a "labour" lane that prepares you for blue collar apprenticeships, provide more practical courses and learning support Lane names don't really matter as they are different from place to place, but that's the general idea. Also apprenticeships opportunities are not locked based on the lane you went to, that's just the general idea. And you have multiple ways to move from one lane to another at any point during your school life if you don't fit for some reasons, with some conditions (for example you need quite good grades to move from "general" to "gymnasium"). The difference I've seen between the Swiss and German approach is how early kids are split. In my swiss canton that was after our 6th grade, so roughly at around 13 year old. In Germany that's around 10 year old. PS: keep in mind that both Switzerland and Germany have high level of autonomy for cantons/Bundesländers, so things can be drastically different from place to place.
zozbot234 6y ago
> There is no argument against academic acceleration beyond that it increases inequality "It's harder to manage" is an argument against it. The gold standard is mastery learning (everyone learning at their own pace, separately for every subject; and true mastery is expected before you move on to something that builds on previous learning), which includes acceleration as a special case but also allows proper "deceleration" for those who need some thorough catch up.
jstewartmobile 6y ago
be careful what you wish for. per GBS: "all professions are conspiracies against the laity"
mathattack 6y ago
It’s an economics and policy issue. K-12 schools are measured on bringing kids up to grade level. They aren’t measured on getting kids ahead once they’ve met minimum standards. Based on how we measure and invent them, it’s more efficient to invest in pulling kids up from the bottom. (This isn’t an unworthy social goal, just adds work to parents of gifted kids)
currymj 6y ago
consider it from an alternative perspective — sending a 14 year old to grad school to get their PhD by 20 is putting them in a 60-hour-a-week high pressure job that causes mental breakdowns in many adults. i don’t doubt that academic acceleration has many advantages for smart kids but i do not think “getting” to give up your teenage years for a few extra years of high pressure work is one of them.
- _archon_ 6y ago
  I propose that a 20 year old phd will have many options open to them, including taking an easy job and spending their own time on an interesting hobby. If a person can be educated with the information and methods to succeed, they should be better able to interact with the world. Slowing down a person with the potential to finish formal education so that they can spend more time being spoonfed isn't going to improve their chances. Also, if one chooses a grinding slog of a job, it's better to be a 20-year-old phd. Presumably, they're getting paid well, and they can start on their early retirement fund from better positions vis a vis a generic 20 year old. I am unconvinced by your argument.
brightball 6y ago
I’ve always felt like the answer to this is many smaller schools that are more peer oriented, rather than large community schools. Combined with large community wide after school / sports programs. This is actually similar to the home school model now where home school students can participate in sports. Home school groups are figuring this out too. I always assumed home schooling was just being taught by your parents but seeing how some of these groups work to form small schools of about 20 people is impressive.

deleted 6y ago

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pl0x 6y ago

This study is clearly wrong. When I was 16 I completed my CS degree, finished university by 22, and joined an early tech company by 25. It changed my life forever.

s5300 6y ago
Are you just trying to troll or do you really live in that big of a bubble? Forgive my snarkiness... but you're in the 99.5%+ of opportunities given to public school students. A good question is - did you go to a public school? Many questions could be had after this... but it's a great place to start.
kranner 6y ago
Are you sure you understood the abstract/title correctly? The study says there seem to be no negative social/emotional effects of academic acceleration.
ryan93 6y ago
What do you mean you finished your degree at 16 and at 22?

brianberns 6y ago

Here's my data point to the contrary: I entered college a few weeks short of my 17th birthday in the early 1980's. I was about 1.5 years younger than others in my class, on average. I made many good friends, but my relative lack of maturity still had a huge impact on my emotional well-being (especially when it came to dating). I'm now in my 50's and still dealing with the psychological repercussions of my parents' decision to accelerate me.

fatjokes 6y ago
1.5 years isn't even that much? I mean you can probably find that variance within any cohort so I doubt it was the acceleration that caused any psychological repercussions.
- stephen_cagle 6y ago
  True, though small differences when you are young can seem radically more important than they really are. tldr; Teenagers are very very insecure.
- xzel 6y ago
  The development of 1.5 during those years is huge. The difference between interacting with a 16 and 18 year old are night and day in experience and maturity. But I agree with you this would be incredibly difficult to accurately measure differences with a lack of accelerated students and subjective questions/answers.
- brianberns 6y ago
  I'll never know for sure, since I can't run the counterfactual. It's certainly possible that the outcome might have been similar if I hadn't been accelerated. That said, girls tend to mature faster than boys, and I can assure you that most 18 year old females are not very interested romantically in younger males (in that era and place, at least). A year makes a huge difference in that regard. I suspect the study in question didn't account for this.
- kergonath 6y ago
  When you’re 15, 1.5 years is 10% of your whole life. I know I seriously struggled with being significantly younger than the others in my classes. Having gone through a PhD since then, there is no way I would have handled it well at 20. Besides, my experience is that if you’re so bright, there are plenty of opportunities everywhere to satisfy your curiosity (or at least work on it). It does not have to be at school.

themodelplumber 6y ago

I'm curious about the inter-relational impacts in e.g. families or peer groups. Has this aspect been studied?

dang 6y ago

I wonder if they lack good ways of measuring this. I skipped a few grades and started university at 15. It took years to catch up socially and in many ways I never did. I wouldn't recommend it. In retrospect, I'd say a better thing to do with a smart kid is to convince them that they should work on things they're not as good at. Nobody's good at everything. However, that would have required individual attention of a sort that wasn't available back then. There's a grass-is-greener effect though. It's easy to imagine that one would have done better if one had been / had not been accelerated. As a philosophy prof told me back in those early university years, "Life does not bear counterfactuals." She also said "I bet you tell that to all the girls" when I dropped her Hegel class.

apsec112 6y ago
I was forced to not skip grades, and it took me years to catch up socially afterwards, because everyone was so hostile and school was such an oppressive, totalitarian environment that it made me unable to trust anyone.
- dang 6y ago
  I hear you. That's why I added the grass-is-greener skepticism. It may just be that it sucks either way—or that we simply needed different things. It's important not to overgeneralize from personal experiences with this stuff. When I look back on it, I think what I needed most was for some teacher, mentor, or older/wiser person to spend time with me. That's what would have made the biggest difference. But I was completely isolated.
  - Xelbair 6y ago
    Then maybe instead of accelerating children down the same horrible route.. we could create separate tracks? I know that 'negative' (special needs) tracks are basically a disaster, but maybe positive (group gifted children together) one would work?
- pistachiopro 6y ago
  Looking back at my regular American public high school, I'm really impressed how they handled students who didn't fit the standard pace. One thing, they were very flexible about credit replacements, so if you didn't want to take an English class, you could work on the literary magazine, or you could replace social studies with working on the newspaper. Furthermore, the librarian "taught" a few periods a day where small groups of students could just quietly independently study a subject of their own choosing. Now that I think about it, there was also an option for students to take half their classes at the local community college, which a couple dozen people did. This way, even though we had a wide range of academic abilities amongst the students, we all got to move through school as a cohort, and no one had to truncate their adolescence just to avoid going insane with boredom.

alasdair_ 6y ago

> “elite science, technology, engineering, and mathematics graduate students (N = 478) identified in 1992. Their educational histories were assessed at age 25 and they were followed up at age 50 using the same psychological assessments.” One thing to consider is the fact that America during the period 1992 to 2020, has seen a vast societal shift from nerds being seen as social outcasts to being seen as the thing a huge portion of the people at the top of society claim to be. As a counterpoint, I wonder if the exact same study, when conducted in an anti-intellectual society (say Nazi Germany in the late 1930’s) would still return the same results, or if the people that were “held back” would end up better off psychologically. I strongly suspect the huge change in how cool it is to be nerdy today is a significant factor in today’s wellbeing.

iorrus 6y ago
Any evidence to back up that "nerds are cool"?
paganel 6y ago
> say Nazi Germany in the late 1930’s I'd say Nazi Germany in the late 1930s was more of an anti-Jewish intellectual society, more than an anti-intellectual society pure and simple, the reason being that them being mostly a technocratic State they highly needed those intellectuals, engineers and technicians. One of the many proofs is the work of von Braun, without which us as a species wouldn't have gotten to the Moon as fast as we did. The same discussion goes for Soviet Russia, with some exceptions (mostly genetics-related work, where the politruks intervened in a very harmful way for their scientists). IMO the only true anti-intellectual regime that I know of from the 20th century is represented by Mao's relatively short-lived Cultural Revolution in China, a policy which was pretty quickly reversed.
- mmaurizi 6y ago
  Pol Pot.
  - paganel 6y ago
    Yeap, that too, had forgotten about his atrocities.

avalys 6y ago

Meh. I skipped 7th grade, after being in the youngest cohort in my class already (birthday in July). I've done fine I guess - went to MIT, did some startups, got paid plenty of money, and I'm pretty happy today (COVID transient aside). I thought it was cool at the time, and I was in a hurry to get out of high school, get to college, and get on with my life, so I certainly didn't object when my parents and teachers suggested it. But looking back, it was weird. I couldn't drive until almost the end of high school. Couldn't legally drink until I had already graduated college. And while the adults at the time thought I was emotionally mature for my age - one teacher memorably called me an "old soul" - the truth is I was just a smart kid who didn't cause trouble. In retrospect, I still had a lot of growing up to do, and I wish I had the time to do a little bit more of it before entering college and having to make decisions that really mattered.

MaximumYComb 6y ago
That extra year you gained actually saved you from something though. You didn't have to sit in a classroom being void of stimulation for that year or later years. You were given the chance to grow intellectually instead of sit around doing not much.

aaronchall 6y ago

As a self-motivated accelerator (I dual enrolled on-site with the local university my senior year of high school) I can't help but feel like everyone trying to hold me back (I was strongly discouraged) was motivated not just by trying to keep dollars in the school and GPAs they could get credit for up, but that they were also motivated by jealousy and a sense that what I was doing was somehow unfairly improving my life. The head guidance counselor mocked me. The secretary who was supposed to buy my books and oversee my registration made me go back and forth between the university and the high school way too many times, and had a bad attitude about it the whole way. Several of my friends who I had tried to get to follow me got talked out of it by the same people. If it's so bad for everyone else, of course they need to come up with excuses for why it's bad for the student. Nobody cares that these gifted students are sitting there bored. That to get an A requires them to do meaningless busywork. That the entire situation teaches them that success means showing up and demonstrating they're smart, instead of the hard work that real success requires. Staying in that high school one minute longer, with those who were vindictive, condescending idiots, would have destroyed my psychological well-being. My professors talked to me like I was an adult. It was very easy to respect them and my time with them. I greatly appreciated spending my time in the stacks instead of being made to run between classes all day, taking a pass to go to the restroom, and getting berated by thoughtless busybodies on my way to the library. Our schools are first and foremost a kind of daycare that allows the adults in all of the children's lives to go to work. Only after meeting this first goal are they educational. Some schools are fortunate enough to not have discipline problems. Others are not so fortunate, and the rules and instruction is targeted to the worst performers. This greatly shortchanges those students who need challenges - challenging books, instructions, math, performance, exams, etc... If anything, it is psychologically destructive to purposefully hold them back.

olliej 6y ago

I didn’t know that this was in question. Most of the questions I’m aware of are reinforcement of systemic bias (equivalently capable white and Asian kids being selected over other races), and the diversion of funds from teaching the less “advanced” to teaching those kids who aren’t struggling with no evidence that the acceleration actually accomplishes anything in the long term

barry-cotter 6y ago
> and the diversion of funds from teaching the less “advanced” to teaching those kids who aren’t struggling This doesn’t happen. In the US gifted education gets at most 1% of all education spending, almost certainly less. Special education gets over 20% of all spending, probably closer to 25%. The average high school has no explicit accommodation for gifted students and a dedicated special ed teacher. > with no evidence that the acceleration actually accomplishes anything in the long term Strong positive effects exist. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ746290.pdf https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ746290.pdf > Exceptionally Gifted Children: Long-Term Outcomes of Academic Acceleration and Nonacceleration > a 20-year longitudinal study has traced the academic, social, and emotional devel- opment of 60 young australians with iQs of 160 and above. Significant differences have been noted in the young people’s educational status and direction, life satisfac- tion, social relationships, and self-esteem as a function of the degree of academic accel- eration their schools permitted them in childhood and adolescence. the considerable majority of young people who have been radically accelerated, or who accelerated by 2 years, report high degrees of life satisfaction, have taken research degrees at leading universities, have professional careers, and report facilitative social and love relation- ships. Young people of equal abilities who accelerated by only 1 year or who have not been permitted acceleration have tended to enter less academically rigorous college courses, report lower levels of life satisfaction, and in many cases, experience significant difficulties with socialization. Several did not graduate from college or high school. Without exception, these young people possess multiple talents; however, for some, the extent and direction of talent development has been dictated by their schools’ academic priorities or their teachers’ willingness or unwillingness to assist in the development of particular talent areas.

sverona 6y ago

Disclaimer: it's late and I don't feel like SciHubbing it so I haven't read past the abstract. My N=1 opinion is that being "highly gifted" may not cause social and emotional trauma, but it can certainly complicate unrelated trauma. I skipped so many grades when I was a kid that they started holding me back so I wouldn't get too "out of sync" (I did junior high twice.) I got along socially with relatively little bullying. But I still have a lot of school-related trauma, especially concerning emotional regulation. My working theory is that none of my teachers had any idea how to teach a 7-year-old in the midst of kids twice their age, so they treated me like I was twice my age, which was fine intellectually but messed me up emotionally. The emotional impact of this has absolutely nothing to do with my giftedness; it would mess any child up. There are some postrationalists that tweet occasionally about how their educational experience messed them up similarly. Qiaochu/QC Yuan is my favorite. Also, I'm trans and there are more of us with this story than you'd think.

gwern 6y ago
Fulltext: https://www.gwern.net/docs/iq/smpy/2020-bernstein.pdf https://www.gwern.net/docs/iq/smpy/2020-bernstein.pdf I keep a fulltext bibliography of SMPY-related papers at https://www.gwern.net/SMPY https://www.gwern.net/SMPY - this is just one of many papers establishing that various kinds of enrichment and acceleration are just fine, do no emotional damage, and do save a lot of their life from formal schooling, which has been a major premise of SMPY since Stanley founded it in the 1960s.
- sverona 6y ago
  Yeah, I'm agreed. My point, I suppose, is that the best "acceleration" available to me involved a good deal of emotional neglect and a pinch of actual abuse.

sinuhe69 6y ago

This study re-enforced the result of at least three prominent longitudinal studies about gifted education and acceleration: the study of Lewis Terman, the study of Julian Stanley and the Marburger study.

Reimersholme 6y ago

Yesterday, another link from the same source was removed from Hacker News, I guess after having been flagged too many times. Funny how that is. https://psycnet.apa.org/search/display?id=18e6c19c-931f-7f24-cf7f-355089158779&recordId=1&tab=PA&page=1&display=25&sort=PublicationYearMSSort%20desc,AuthorSort%20asc&sr=1 https://psycnet.apa.org/search/display?id=18e6c19c-931f-7f24...

carlob 6y ago

I wonder if there are any studies about the effects of removing highly gifted students from a class of otherwise average students. I'm aware of a few about the lack socioeconomic mixing: rich kids in classes with just rich kids seem to see almost no positive effect, but poor kids who experience a good social mix in their class fare far better than their peers who are in schools where everybody comes from a poor background. I would expect a similar effect here: gifted kids who are accelerated might show no long term negative psychological effects, and might do a little better academically, but what about the overall effect on everybody else? Is it really better to have classes with the 1% smartest removed? At least from a political and ethical perspective I would advocate for greater mixing, teaching more fortunate kids that they should put their advantages to fruit by pulling the rest of the class. In other words focus on collaboration rather than competition. However, I have no data to back this up.

zozbot234 6y ago
> ... what about the overall effect on everybody else? Is it really better to have classes with the 1% smartest removed? This is a function of the method of instruction. "Pulling up the rest of the class" ought to be the teacher's job in the first place but these sorts of "direct instruction" (DI) based workflows, which do help less fortunate kids a lot, have become extremely unpopular. Every teacher wants to be teaching the 1% of gifted kids and have them "learn everything on their own"; no one wants to actually do the hard work of teaching.
- slantaclaus 6y ago
  The overall effect on everybody else is that they graduate higher ranked in their class, benefit from grading curves, there may be others. But regardless, saying that we have to sacrifice the smart kid so he/she can benefit the other students....its not the kid's job to do that.

RhysU 6y ago

If you have such a child, get them into an extracurricular where they can compete with others based on body mass. I got my ass kicked in varsity wrestling after a grade skip. Still, I competed as I had since late elementary school. I could start varsity because our high school was smallish and I fit into an open weight class. I had a strong peer group orthogonal to my classmates. I spent time in the weight room and otherwise working out. I learned how to handle myself for the rare occasions that conflicts became physical. These skills helped me immensely when I began university at 16.

esjeon 6y ago

From my own experiences, most "gifted" students are actually from middle or upper class families, and their parents are usually well-educated and very interested in the education of their own children. This will positively affect the "psychological well-being" of those kids, and likely also negate many negative impacts of academic acceleration. Plus, acceleration is really unnecessary these days. There's no shortage of information on the internet, so why bother rushing into universities? Just let kids find and follow their passion.

slantaclaus 6y ago
I once did a pretty broad GIS analysis looking at different kinds of data related to census block groups in conjunction with published standardized test scores and the correlation between income and education is practically a straight line. Money and Education are a chicken and egg problem in terms of causality.

tmaly 6y ago

I have a 6 year old daughter who has been taking lessons with the 3rd graders this past year. I just had a conference with her teachers and they are ok to jump her a grade. They thought two grades would have been too much socially. But they did agree to give her advanced lessons. She is in a Montessori where grades 1-3 are together. I really believe all children have the potential for genius. Its all in how they are raised and what they are taught at a young age. The Pygmalion effect has massive power over young developing minds.

nouveaux 6y ago
Would you care to elaborate on the Pygmalion effect? How did you raise your child?
- tmaly 6y ago
  There is a positive to this effect that can really help the child grow and thrive. https://bigworldlittleom.com/the-pygmalion-effect-and-its-effect-on-your-child/ https://bigworldlittleom.com/the-pygmalion-effect-and-its-ef... But there is also a negative side to it that can destroy a child's self esteem. https://www.wisdomtimes.com/the-pygmalion-effect-at-home/ https://www.wisdomtimes.com/the-pygmalion-effect-at-home/
- tmaly 6y ago
  My wife and I read to her a lot when she was young. We gave her lots of open ended play with lots of arts and crafts. My wife taught her to read right around when she turned 4. I was also applying some of the techniques from Glen Doman in his book How to teach your Baby to Read. I think learning to read is what really helped her excel. She was reading 2nd grade chapter books by the time she started kindergarten. Once you know how to read, you can learn about the other subjects. There is more that we did, but I think reading to her and teaching her to read where the biggest parts of it. The idea that any child has the potential for genius came from Glen's book. I really think its true. Even if you only spent 15-30 minutes a day, that is enough to have a profound influence on the child.
gwern 6y ago

justinram11 6y ago

I consider myself pretty fortunate to have both: 1) Been accelerated after I had formed a pretty tight friend group with my same-aged peers (jumped 2 years of math in 7th-8th grade) 2) Been born in a time where the internet was modern enough that we could all hang out and game online I entered University at 16 (the PSEO program in MN that pays for tuition and books your junior and senior year of high school), but was able to keep in touch with my high-school friend group with multiplayer video games. Even today, a decade later, I'm still able to keep in touch with them almost daily even though I'm living in Taiwan (started the digital nomad thing soon after graduating University at 20). Academically I did _really_ well in a large University environment with a lot more autonomy, freedom, and responsibility (it's insane to me that we have 18 year olds still needing to ask permission to go to the bathroom during class). Socially, I'll admit that I struggled to make any college-aged friends, but I think that was more due to still living at home than anything else. Instead of being able to take people up on offers to hang out at night, I had to make the last bus out of Minneapolis to my small town by 6:30pm.

joelthelion 6y ago

> The accepted manuscript version of this article will be publicly available on 07/02/2021 Does anyone have access to the study?

pgcj_poster 6y ago

From the paper: Acceleration Composite = 1 × AP Courses + 1 × College Courses + 4 × Grades Skipped "The average age of high school graduation was for Cohort 1: M = 17.8 years (SD = 0.62); for Cohort 2: M = 17.7 years (SD = 0.76); and for Cohort 3: M = 17.2 years (SD = 1.02)" According to figure 2 (pg 5), only 52 of 1497 (= 3.5%) students graduated from high school at an age ≤ 16. So it seems like this study is measuring very modest levels of acceleration, most of which probably comes from AP courses. I don't think this study tells us much about 20 year-olds with PhDs, or what would happen if we put an 8-year-old in a high school literature class, or if we separated everyone into different tracks an a young age, or a lot of the other things people are discussing in this thread.

getpost 6y ago

I was a "mentally gifted minor" as of the 5th grade in California. This seemed mainly to be about the schools receiving additional funding for each such student. The high school I attended let us vote on how the funds were spent, and we voted to purchase musical instruments (which anyone in the school could use). We also hired a Mandarin tutor for one quarter, which was decades ahead. I don't remember any Mandarin except for one phrase, which translated to 'I am reading a book.'

tobmlt 6y ago

Total honesty time. This topic has bothered me for years. I went to public school and did every honors program / enrichment class / etc. that we had. Nothing that showed me how to think about learning, however. I'll get to that below. Furthermore, everything was easy enough that nobody ever found out I had severe issues focusing on the material because the pacing was so slow. I didn't think of these things as a problem at the time. I thought it was normal to daydream then learn math sort of looking in reverse, in review of what was covered "yesterday, while I was dreaming" or similar. More importantly though, given the ease of the curriculum, from an early age I thought of school as a game -- a type of intelligence test where the object was to do as well as possible with the minimum effort, using only the materials provided by the teacher, and the class lecture. This was reinforced by my peer group of course, but also parents and authority figures always telling me I was smart. With friends, the mantra, "You aren't smart if you have to work hard" was the sort of maxim we obeyed. This all proved to be an absolutely disastrous set of notions when I finally arrived at university. I daydreamed through calculus -- I didn't have the skill of focusing. I took misinformed and patchy notes and, still playing the intelligence game, used those notes as my only source of information. I played the game until undergrad was finished. I graduated... I'd gotten by on geometric intuition and educated guesswork. I made b's and c's. Even as I failed at my own game, I wondered what was wrong with me. Why was I not smart enough? Only at the end of my BS, after falling off the treadmill I assumed would simply spit me out in a professorship somewhere, did I realize what a mistake I'd made. The mistake, of course, in not taking every opportunity to maximize what I learned and to investigate what I was curious about -- indeed, what I loved. Only then, with no options, no academic structure before me, with every opportunity (seemingly) past, did my eyes open to see the world as it was, and not as the intelligence game. I type this now, 16 years later, in my home office; a shrine to self learning... At that time, I dug out my calculus books and started over. Soon I went to grad school for something easy -- something I could get into based on the existence of my engineering degree alone (a degree for which in and of itself, I was basically unemployable, or at least to which I did not trust myself to struggle onward and use in that way). Meanwhile I taught myself calculus over again from page 1, and began to resurrect my prospects in the most painful way possible. Piece by piece I scrapped my education together, getting my PhD in engineering (not physics like I wanted) years late. I've a very wide education now, but I am always wondering what could have been, and now I have a toddler, almost 2 years old. One thing about the above I know: I just want to make sure he never goes through such a process with wool over his eyes. I want him to know from the start how to direct his curiosity into learning what he wants, at his own pace.

paulgrant999 6y ago

I for one, lamented the (abysmally slow) pace at which schooling took place. When you are correcting your English teachers at 12 ("its a word; uh-huh, use a bigger dictionary"), arguing that the system of arithmetic/geometry/algebra/calculus being taught is wrong (no, no, that doesn't have to be so...here are some exceptions), and getting thrown out of art class for not "following the rules" of your art teacher... luckily... I used to hang out with adults (who at the time, surpassed my abilities++). and discovered the public library (libraries, I used to tear through them like a hurricane+++). ... I used to think that the "next level" of school, would be were I got to meet the people like me... except of course, it never materialized. it amuses me to think about it from time to time. and then, sometimes I regret, the waste. but thats life, eh? -- ++ if nothing else, in resources. +++ ... and later, the Internet was born... and a million phones rang out at once... ;)