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As someone who was put in a reading class five grades above my actual grade, I disagree with the idea that acceleration should be the primary benefit of gifted

As someone who was put in a reading class five grades above my actual grade, I disagree with the idea that acceleration should be the primary benefit of gifted education. What I needed was not just higher level reading, but content catered to someone 5 years younger than the usual age group for that reading. I needed help writing fast enough to keep up. Because grade school curriculum came easily and I could ‘figure out’ everything, I hit a wall when stuff got genuinely difficult or required significant work. What I needed was to learn how to put forth effort to do things that were hard or required work for desired output. I needed help socializing because I didn’t relate to people my age and was too inexperienced to engage people who were on my intellectual level as peers. I needed help creating because the standards for myself were so high. Not exceeding those standards always felt like failure

hellisothers 5y ago
This is where my 8yo is at now and it’s infuriating. He is in class all day at 2nd grade level and is given homework at 4th+ grade level but that means we our effectively his actual teachers. This also results in, as you say, everything is trivially easy or all of a sudden hard which has in general given him a complex around mildly difficult things and practice in general.
- brightball 5y ago
  My 7th grader is in 9th grade math and I feel this. The homework load is the killer and I end up being the teacher. I like the teaching part but it’s still exhausting.
- brimble 5y ago
  For kids who are behind, they solve this by throwing a lot more personnel at the problem, to the point that some kids have one-on-one assistants/tutors follow them around all day. Good luck getting budgets increased enough to do the same for gifted kids, though.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- bcrosby95 5y ago
  I guess it depends upon exactly what you mean. But based upon my 2nd grader, and from what I've heard from other 2nd grade parents, this is pretty normal for a 2nd grader, regardless of how gifted they are or aren't. My 2nd grader can burn through material from the first half of the year. But current material... good luck getting her to do it. Difficult work makes people uncomfortable, and most young kids don't like being uncomfortable.
- fma 5y ago
  This is why many parents enroll their kids to Kumon. Kumon gives kids the about of work for their right level - whether that's a 2nd grader is ahead and at a 4th grade level, or a 2nd grader who is behind and starts at a 1st grade level. At the same time just because a kid is at the 4th grade level in math...maybe their reading is in 2nd grade. With traditional schools all the kids are throw together. This results in kids who lag behind to further lag behind because they can't keep up with the class and lose confidence in themselves. A kid who is ahead gets bored and lose interest in school and never gets challenged to maintain that independence.
citilife 5y ago
I'd argue this is why many kids are successful when home schooled. The idea that you should interact so much with your peers is kind of strange to be honest. Is it really healthy for kids to interact regularly with their peers? I'd argue it's much better for children to interact with adults. Historically, kids would learn to work on the farm, attend church, etc and they'd see other children, but most of the time they'd be learning from adults how to act and strive for.
- alfalfasprout 5y ago
  If you want them to socialize, then yeah they should be with their peers.
  - kbelder 5y ago
    But there's no reason to restrict the peers to kids their age, which is somewhat unnatural. They need socialization, but with a mix of ages. Not just other 7th graders.
  - lief79 5y ago
    Sure, but also note that those peers may be a few years above or below their biological age.
- giantg2 5y ago
  Well, those farm kids were 1 of 8 or so. So they socialized with each other.
  - irrational 5y ago
    This is a good point. Children from large families have the opposite problem of being lonely or needing socialization. They struggle to find time to themselves. And then all the siblings often have friends, so your actual socialization group ends up quite huge.
- watwut 5y ago
  Afaik, home school kids are not massively more succesfull. Some are, but others have troubles. And historically, kids were cared for in quite large variety of setting. And quite a lot of those were not romantic at all.
zozbot234 5y ago
> I hit a wall when stuff got genuinely difficult or required significant work. The thing is that everyone hits that wall at some point. Some just hit it later than others. But I agree that acceleration should only ever occur in a context of learning for mastery - if complete mastery is not attained in the "easy" subjects, pushing through the 'wall' of the actually challenging ones is way too difficult.
- antiterra 5y ago
  It’s better to hit a wall earlier, when teachers actually care how well you’re doing and the stakes are lower. Then, you can get guidance on how to start climbing that wall.
  - zozbot234 5y ago
    If you're learning for mastery, that implies that whoever's teaching or tutoring you will care how well you're doing. No matter what your level is, i.e. even if you need to be "held back" from acceleration because you've yet to achieve mastery of your current curriculum.
sheepybloke 5y ago
Personally, that's why I liked AP courses in high school. After my AP Chem class, most of my college courses were straight forward, because my AP Chem class established and pushed good study and work habits because you needed those to do well and my teacher designed our course to help build them. Maybe in this case acceleration should mean challenging and building up students without overwhelming them?
- antiterra 5y ago
  I failed a semester of AP english because I didn’t do weekly homework. I never really had to bother with homework before as a pass/fail requirement. I had to drop AP Calc for another class to get my required English credit that semester. It was astoundingly basic. “Circle the right word” worksheets with “Joe [is/are] an astronaut.” I would do the work and pass out at my desk. The other students would slide the paper out from under my arm and copy my answers.
WalterBright 5y ago
> I hit a wall when stuff got genuinely difficult or required significant work. I hit that wall my freshman year at Caltech. What a disaster. All my strategies of effortless A's blew up in my face. I'd get comments like "I really should fail you, but I'm going to give you a break." At the end of first semester of sophomore year, I had to come to grips with solving this or leaving. After that, each semester came easier and easier, as I learned how to learn. I'm so glad freshman year was pass/fail, as my execrable performance that year did not affect my final GPA. I also am indebted to several people who freely gave the gift of their time to help me out. (I never would have succeeded with remote learning.)
- pdonis 5y ago
  > I'm so glad freshman year was pass/fail MIT had the same policy when I was there, and I felt the same way about it: I needed that year to at least get started developing the study habits I didn't have to develop in high school.
  - azinman2 5y ago
    I think this makes a lot of sense for a place like MIT. Unfortunately we didn’t have this at UCSD, despite the incoming class having an average 4.1 GPA (and this was a while ago). I think I got an F or a D on my first exam and I freaked out. Had never gotten that my entire life and was used to getting good grades without studying. Was a wake up call. In retrospect, I’m glad that exam was very early on in the quarter.
- mwattsun 5y ago
  I hit that wall at U.C. Berkeley over the English requirement. I didn't know how to write an essay on "Odysseus" and "The Iliad" and say something intelligent about them. I was doing fine in math and physics. In retrospect, my high school English teachers focused on doing well on SAT's, not teaching me how to write. Parents: Make sure you're kids can write before they get out of high school because it's a crucial skill
  - CliffStoll 5y ago
jacinda 5y ago
> I hit a wall when stuff got genuinely difficult or required significant work. This was, to me, the greatest benefit of being put in a gifted program in 3rd grade. I was so used to everything being easy that I cried at home that I had homework taking longer than 10 minutes that I actually had to concentrate on. I asked my dad to go back to the regular program, and he said I should stick it out for at least another month. I did, and learned how to work through things that seemed challenging at first. The experience of having to put forth effort early(ish) in my life set me up far better for dealing with life later, because I learned how to push past things that were uncomfortable instead of giving up (i.e. "grit" became a part of my psyche when it was still pretty flexible). I probably could have learned this lesson in other ways, but the fact that it's one of my clearest childhood memories certainly speaks to the impact it had on my life. And I know plenty of friends whose first experience needing to put effort happened in college, and things seemed a lot harder for them emotionally.
dottedmag 5y ago
> I hit a wall when stuff got genuinely difficult or required significant work. I hit that when I was 35yo. Oh boy it was difficult: you've been breezing through the life, and suddenly hit a brick wall.
namibj 5y ago
Even worse when you know you were on easy mode in HS, and no one tells you about the first couple weeks at university being anti-scare easy mode, leading you to calibrate a work/life balance target too far towards life with all the expected issues from that. Btw, any tips for how to learn how to put forth effort to do things that require work for desired output? If they're "just" hard, curiosity tends to do well, but effort other than trying to grasp new concepts is surprisingly hard to bring forth...
astkaasa 5y ago
Agree with your point. I also want to mention that knowing how to adjust yourself when you hit the wall is important. Because "gifted" people always has his/her limit and is doomed to be failed at some time, he/she may not know how to handle this failure. One may drive himself/herself to a dead corner, don't know this is a normal thing and don't know how to get out. Early failure should be considered as a good method.

hellisothers 5y ago

This is where my 8yo is at now and it’s infuriating. He is in class all day at 2nd grade level and is given homework at 4th+ grade level but that means we our effectively his actual teachers. This also results in, as you say, everything is trivially easy or all of a sudden hard which has in general given him a complex around mildly difficult things and practice in general.

brightball 5y ago
My 7th grader is in 9th grade math and I feel this. The homework load is the killer and I end up being the teacher. I like the teaching part but it’s still exhausting.
brimble 5y ago
For kids who are behind, they solve this by throwing a lot more personnel at the problem, to the point that some kids have one-on-one assistants/tutors follow them around all day. Good luck getting budgets increased enough to do the same for gifted kids, though.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
bcrosby95 5y ago
I guess it depends upon exactly what you mean. But based upon my 2nd grader, and from what I've heard from other 2nd grade parents, this is pretty normal for a 2nd grader, regardless of how gifted they are or aren't. My 2nd grader can burn through material from the first half of the year. But current material... good luck getting her to do it. Difficult work makes people uncomfortable, and most young kids don't like being uncomfortable.
fma 5y ago
This is why many parents enroll their kids to Kumon. Kumon gives kids the about of work for their right level - whether that's a 2nd grader is ahead and at a 4th grade level, or a 2nd grader who is behind and starts at a 1st grade level. At the same time just because a kid is at the 4th grade level in math...maybe their reading is in 2nd grade. With traditional schools all the kids are throw together. This results in kids who lag behind to further lag behind because they can't keep up with the class and lose confidence in themselves. A kid who is ahead gets bored and lose interest in school and never gets challenged to maintain that independence.

citilife 5y ago

I'd argue this is why many kids are successful when home schooled. The idea that you should interact so much with your peers is kind of strange to be honest. Is it really healthy for kids to interact regularly with their peers? I'd argue it's much better for children to interact with adults. Historically, kids would learn to work on the farm, attend church, etc and they'd see other children, but most of the time they'd be learning from adults how to act and strive for.

alfalfasprout 5y ago
If you want them to socialize, then yeah they should be with their peers.
- kbelder 5y ago
  But there's no reason to restrict the peers to kids their age, which is somewhat unnatural. They need socialization, but with a mix of ages. Not just other 7th graders.
- lief79 5y ago
  Sure, but also note that those peers may be a few years above or below their biological age.
giantg2 5y ago
Well, those farm kids were 1 of 8 or so. So they socialized with each other.
- irrational 5y ago
  This is a good point. Children from large families have the opposite problem of being lonely or needing socialization. They struggle to find time to themselves. And then all the siblings often have friends, so your actual socialization group ends up quite huge.
watwut 5y ago
Afaik, home school kids are not massively more succesfull. Some are, but others have troubles. And historically, kids were cared for in quite large variety of setting. And quite a lot of those were not romantic at all.

zozbot234 5y ago

> I hit a wall when stuff got genuinely difficult or required significant work. The thing is that everyone hits that wall at some point. Some just hit it later than others. But I agree that acceleration should only ever occur in a context of learning for mastery - if complete mastery is not attained in the "easy" subjects, pushing through the 'wall' of the actually challenging ones is way too difficult.

antiterra 5y ago
It’s better to hit a wall earlier, when teachers actually care how well you’re doing and the stakes are lower. Then, you can get guidance on how to start climbing that wall.
- zozbot234 5y ago
  If you're learning for mastery, that implies that whoever's teaching or tutoring you will care how well you're doing. No matter what your level is, i.e. even if you need to be "held back" from acceleration because you've yet to achieve mastery of your current curriculum.

sheepybloke 5y ago

Personally, that's why I liked AP courses in high school. After my AP Chem class, most of my college courses were straight forward, because my AP Chem class established and pushed good study and work habits because you needed those to do well and my teacher designed our course to help build them. Maybe in this case acceleration should mean challenging and building up students without overwhelming them?

antiterra 5y ago
I failed a semester of AP english because I didn’t do weekly homework. I never really had to bother with homework before as a pass/fail requirement. I had to drop AP Calc for another class to get my required English credit that semester. It was astoundingly basic. “Circle the right word” worksheets with “Joe [is/are] an astronaut.” I would do the work and pass out at my desk. The other students would slide the paper out from under my arm and copy my answers.

WalterBright 5y ago

> I hit a wall when stuff got genuinely difficult or required significant work. I hit that wall my freshman year at Caltech. What a disaster. All my strategies of effortless A's blew up in my face. I'd get comments like "I really should fail you, but I'm going to give you a break." At the end of first semester of sophomore year, I had to come to grips with solving this or leaving. After that, each semester came easier and easier, as I learned how to learn. I'm so glad freshman year was pass/fail, as my execrable performance that year did not affect my final GPA. I also am indebted to several people who freely gave the gift of their time to help me out. (I never would have succeeded with remote learning.)

pdonis 5y ago
> I'm so glad freshman year was pass/fail MIT had the same policy when I was there, and I felt the same way about it: I needed that year to at least get started developing the study habits I didn't have to develop in high school.
- azinman2 5y ago
  I think this makes a lot of sense for a place like MIT. Unfortunately we didn’t have this at UCSD, despite the incoming class having an average 4.1 GPA (and this was a while ago). I think I got an F or a D on my first exam and I freaked out. Had never gotten that my entire life and was used to getting good grades without studying. Was a wake up call. In retrospect, I’m glad that exam was very early on in the quarter.
mwattsun 5y ago
I hit that wall at U.C. Berkeley over the English requirement. I didn't know how to write an essay on "Odysseus" and "The Iliad" and say something intelligent about them. I was doing fine in math and physics. In retrospect, my high school English teachers focused on doing well on SAT's, not teaching me how to write. Parents: Make sure you're kids can write before they get out of high school because it's a crucial skill
- CliffStoll 5y ago

jacinda 5y ago

> I hit a wall when stuff got genuinely difficult or required significant work. This was, to me, the greatest benefit of being put in a gifted program in 3rd grade. I was so used to everything being easy that I cried at home that I had homework taking longer than 10 minutes that I actually had to concentrate on. I asked my dad to go back to the regular program, and he said I should stick it out for at least another month. I did, and learned how to work through things that seemed challenging at first. The experience of having to put forth effort early(ish) in my life set me up far better for dealing with life later, because I learned how to push past things that were uncomfortable instead of giving up (i.e. "grit" became a part of my psyche when it was still pretty flexible). I probably could have learned this lesson in other ways, but the fact that it's one of my clearest childhood memories certainly speaks to the impact it had on my life. And I know plenty of friends whose first experience needing to put effort happened in college, and things seemed a lot harder for them emotionally.

dottedmag 5y ago

> I hit a wall when stuff got genuinely difficult or required significant work. I hit that when I was 35yo. Oh boy it was difficult: you've been breezing through the life, and suddenly hit a brick wall.

namibj 5y ago

Even worse when you know you were on easy mode in HS, and no one tells you about the first couple weeks at university being anti-scare easy mode, leading you to calibrate a work/life balance target too far towards life with all the expected issues from that. Btw, any tips for how to learn how to put forth effort to do things that require work for desired output? If they're "just" hard, curiosity tends to do well, but effort other than trying to grasp new concepts is surprisingly hard to bring forth...

astkaasa 5y ago

Agree with your point. I also want to mention that knowing how to adjust yourself when you hit the wall is important. Because "gifted" people always has his/her limit and is doomed to be failed at some time, he/she may not know how to handle this failure. One may drive himself/herself to a dead corner, don't know this is a normal thing and don't know how to get out. Early failure should be considered as a good method.