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“Took years to catch up” seems a loaded sentence. So yes maybe someone wouldn’t act like a 20 year old until they actually turn 20. But that is’t a great argume

“Took years to catch up” seems a loaded sentence. So yes maybe someone wouldn’t act like a 20 year old until they actually turn 20. But that is’t a great argument for keeping back their education for 5 years. If academic acceleration was more widely accepted you would just have been starting at 15 with other 15 year olds and there would have been no social context pressuring you to act 5 years older just because you did well in school.

dang 6y ago
I was good at acting older. The problem was that I forfeited peer relationships. In fact, I forfeited adolescence. That was a high price to pay. And in hindsight, what did it matter that I worked through undergraduate math at 16 instead of 19. By the way: my experience does not negate your experience. It's hard to talk about these things in general. If you'd share how it worked for you, I think that would be interesting.
- boublepop 6y ago
  My point is that having to act older and missing out on adolescence has nothing to do with academic acceleration. If you are 15, spending your schools time going to an educational Institution, it doesn’t matter what the level of the material is. The only reason you where in a situation where you felt the need to act older and felt you missed you adolescence was because academic acceleration isn’t accepted, so kids who do well end up being put into the social context of much older students in order to get education at an appropriate level. Think of it this way, when adults go and take primary Spanish because they want to learn the language late in life, we don’t put them together with Spanish preschoolers, and why would we? Yet it seems kids being a bit brighter is perceived as such an extreme oddity in our society that the only way to get access to college level education is to literally go to college. Doesn’t that just seem odd to you, even having gone through it?

dang 6y ago

I was good at acting older. The problem was that I forfeited peer relationships. In fact, I forfeited adolescence. That was a high price to pay. And in hindsight, what did it matter that I worked through undergraduate math at 16 instead of 19. By the way: my experience does not negate your experience. It's hard to talk about these things in general. If you'd share how it worked for you, I think that would be interesting.

boublepop 6y ago
My point is that having to act older and missing out on adolescence has nothing to do with academic acceleration. If you are 15, spending your schools time going to an educational Institution, it doesn’t matter what the level of the material is. The only reason you where in a situation where you felt the need to act older and felt you missed you adolescence was because academic acceleration isn’t accepted, so kids who do well end up being put into the social context of much older students in order to get education at an appropriate level. Think of it this way, when adults go and take primary Spanish because they want to learn the language late in life, we don’t put them together with Spanish preschoolers, and why would we? Yet it seems kids being a bit brighter is perceived as such an extreme oddity in our society that the only way to get access to college level education is to literally go to college. Doesn’t that just seem odd to you, even having gone through it?