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Why I pulled my son out of a school for 'gifted' kids

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Re: Why I pulled my son out of a school for 'gifted' kids

#91

Post by techdragon »

superuser2 wrote: post #88
Someone1234 wrote: post #11

You tell a kid they're smart: You've immediately set them up for long term failure. "Smart" is a quantifiable hard limit. The problem with smart people is that as soon as they run up against a challenge/concept/issue they cannot immediately overcome, they get frustrated, because they "should be smarter than this!" Which often results in avoidable frustration/anxiety/depression. You see this a lot. "Gifted" "smart" ki…

>an atmosphere where failure IS acceptable Ultimately, education is about competing for progressively smaller numbers of seats in progressively better lives. High school has nothing to do with "learning" - it's a test, a very long one, to find out who belongs in selective colleges and who doesn't. Colleges are, in turn, a test to find out who gets to stay in the middle class. School before HS is about learning the di…

To be both somewhat insightful I provide a small correction...

> Ultimately, the predominant educational system and it's preeminent methodology, have become about competing for progressively smaller numbers of seats in progressively better lives...

One of many reasons I have put off having a child, the financial burden of giving a child a 'good' education, is considerable. From the purely academic component of quality teachers, to the social component of creating an environment where their interaction with other children is beneficial, neither of these comes cheap.

I'm not after much, just well paid teachers who stay passionate while they teach, a class size where they can give each student enough attention, curriculum that allows the child to 'surge forward' when driven by curiosity and be rewarded for their work not punished for not doing 'this weeks assignment', and enough other children to interact with so they can develop social skills. The last one is the tough bit, all the others can be provided by home school with or without using private tutors or paying for a 'personal teacher'.

Re: Why I pulled my son out of a school for 'gifted' kids

#92

Post by caseysoftware »

baldfat wrote: post #72
Kluny wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope your son beat cancer since then.

Sadly he passed away from bone cancer (osteosarcoma) 2 years ago. PS I usually say this so I can plead with people to help fund Pediatric Cancer Research. Only 4% of US Federal Grants go to Peds Research. American Cancer Society gives less than $0.02 per dollar for Peds Cancer Research. Adult research has little to no impact for the kids. I 100% support St Baldricks and Children’s Cancer Research Fund. We finally hav…

I'm so sorry for your loss. I lost a daughter for wholly different reasons but the little I understand is more than I want.

I've heard great things about St Baldricks and I'm glad to know that their work is doing some good. And thank you for supporting it for others.

Re: Why I pulled my son out of a school for 'gifted' kids

#93

Post by morgante »

beedyg wrote: post #68
morgante wrote: post #39

Honestly, this sounds like a terribly selfish move. The OP consciously took her son out of a bigger pond to put him into a smaller pool where he could shine again. This completely ignores the fact that probably the best way to learn is to be surrounded by people more intelligent than yourself. Speaking as someone who spent most of my childhood as "valedictorian" I would have craved a competitive peer group much soone…

> This completely ignores the fact that probably the best way to learn is to be surrounded by people more intelligent than yourself. It might feel great interacting with your intellectual peers, but being among your actual peers will train in you in the kind of interactions which will form the majority of your life.

In what way are other intelligent students your age not your "actual peers?"

Re: Why I pulled my son out of a school for 'gifted' kids

#94

Post by studentrob »

contingencies wrote: post #81
noamyoungerm wrote: post #64

Gifted people always end up turning out average. Because they aren't special. Nearly every school catering to the middle class and up has a 'gifted' program. How many kids is that? Millions per grade. Everyone who passes through that filter gets to think of themselves as a 'smart person'. In a given K-12 grade, there are 60000 students in the 99th percentile (whatever that means) per criterion . But that's not enough…

We have to find some way to filter these million above-average kids into a few hundred people who truly make a difference. ... or perhaps we need to simply admit that aspects of life outside of formal education including blind luck and chance may contribute overwhelmingly to these types of transformation later in life. Success and life goals are relative, subjective, and frankly optional anyway. There is an argument…

> the state have no business over-defining these things for young people

Agreed. Hope you don't mind if I shoot the shit a little. You got me thinking.

The state sets a goal for us to make as much money as we can. It educates towards that. Banks incentivize saving, and the system promises more money if you make more money. When a country makes more money it can provide more for its citizens. Military protection and domestic luxuries. It's up to us as individuals to decide when we have done enough work, learned enough, or have enough money. The state will never say you've done "enough". Banks won't, and your parents won't either. They can't make that decision for you because everyone's potential varies based on environmental factors. You must make that decision yourself. And as individuals I believe none of us ever want to underperform. Yet we also don't want to be super stressed. So we try some stuff and see what sticks. What level of work and money allows us to move forward and experience new things? It's a lifelong effort to find out. We don't know for sure what we can or can't do tomorrow. Every day we have a different set of variables and opportunities.

I'm not sure this is anything new

Re: Why I pulled my son out of a school for 'gifted' kids

#95

Post by anonbanker »

powertower wrote: post #22
astazangasta wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The schools are not their to raise the child, that is the parents' job. If primary education isn't child rearing, nothing is. Schools are absolutely there to raise the child.

> If primary education isn't child rearing, nothing is. Schools are absolutely there to raise the child. By that logic, what exactly is the parents job then?

legal guardianship awarded by the state, and fiscal liability for 18 years, basically.

Re: Why I pulled my son out of a school for 'gifted' kids

#96

Post by SZJX »

noamyoungerm wrote: post #64

Gifted people always end up turning out average. Because they aren't special. Nearly every school catering to the middle class and up has a 'gifted' program. How many kids is that? Millions per grade. Everyone who passes through that filter gets to think of themselves as a 'smart person'. In a given K-12 grade, there are 60000 students in the 99th percentile (whatever that means) per criterion . But that's not enough…

I've always hated this notion of being "gifted" and "successful". What does that ever mean? Everybody should have his/her own life to live and experience in full. Trying to force such an shallow and meaningless mainstream value on everybody is a totally terrible thing to do. Not to mention your view seems to indicate that being "special" means something innate, something "determined at birth", which is a horrible model to begin with.

Re: Why I pulled my son out of a school for 'gifted' kids

#97

Post by volaski »

kamaal wrote: post #74
volaski wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a big difference between calling your child "Smart" and calling "Gifted". Sounds like wordplay but it's really not. I agree with your main point that "gifted" children end up failing way more than just ordinary smart children. But I've also seen a lot of children who grew up a confident person because their parents praised them a lot. They just shouldn't call them "gifted" because it implies that the kid alre…

>>But I've also seen a lot of children who grew up a confident person because their parents praised them a lot. As long as things are going your way, confidence is good. When they are not, fake confidence leaves you completely blind to your own problems. And it kind of amplifies a negative feed back loop. Almost every person I meet this days talks of 'optimism', 'hope' and 'confidence', often confusing that with lazi…

In my opinion if you truly have confidence, chances are you will succeed in life (assuming you're not some delusional psycho). The world revolves around people who take action and confident people tend to take more action. Doesn't matter if they're not smart enough to tackle the problem (who is, anyway?), they will figure out as long as they keep trying. Whereas people with low confidence in most cases don't even try. And even when they try they give up too early. I totally agree with you about the "optimism" junkies. I know a lot of people like that and they all tend to have read too many self help books without taking action. However, this "fake confidence" you're talking about never comes from parents praising their child. It comes from insecure people reading too much self-help porn.

Re: Why I pulled my son out of a school for 'gifted' kids

#98

Post by lazyant »

This reads as another instance of the "curse of the gifted" that many readers here are familiar with and the standard advice is to praise effort not intelligence.

The ideal condition for learning is when you are challenged and things are a bit difficult; not too easy (you get bored) and not too hard (you get discouraged).

Re: Why I pulled my son out of a school for 'gifted' kids

#99

Post by Kalium »

Someone1234 wrote: post #11

You tell a kid they're smart: You've immediately set them up for long term failure. "Smart" is a quantifiable hard limit. The problem with smart people is that as soon as they run up against a challenge/concept/issue they cannot immediately overcome, they get frustrated, because they "should be smarter than this!" Which often results in avoidable frustration/anxiety/depression. You see this a lot. "Gifted" "smart" ki…

> Where is the school program that let's the bullshit pseudo concept of "smarts" fall by the wayside and instead replaces it with an atmosphere where failure IS acceptable, and that you just have to work through the hard parts?

This isn't as much better as you might think. For a lot of people, this just leaves them with "It's OK to fail". Full stop.

Re: Why I pulled my son out of a school for 'gifted' kids

#100

Post by drdeadringer »

somesmartkid wrote: post #84
Someone1234 wrote: post #11

You tell a kid they're smart: You've immediately set them up for long term failure. "Smart" is a quantifiable hard limit. The problem with smart people is that as soon as they run up against a challenge/concept/issue they cannot immediately overcome, they get frustrated, because they "should be smarter than this!" Which often results in avoidable frustration/anxiety/depression. You see this a lot. "Gifted" "smart" ki…

Nobody told me I was smart. Nobody had to. Class was boring, but I got straight As. It was excruciating listening to other kids try to ask and answer questions because every goddamned thing they struggled with was so fucking easy . It was fucking horrible . It didn't change, all the way through high school. Then I went to university, and I had a lifetime first: kids who knew things I didn't. Kids who corrected me on…

Would it have been helpful to have a "you are not as smart as you think" or a "you are comparatively stupid" or a "you know nothing, Jon Snow" experience sooner?
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