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Homeschooled with MIT courses at 5, accepted to MIT at 15

news.mit.edu

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Re: Homeschooled with MIT courses at 5, accepted to MIT at 15

#31

Post by evook »

ww2 wrote: post #18
evook wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah for sure... I attended a school for gifted kids. Those who where a lot younger than the rest of us where always pushed by their parents and their parents always told they where not pushing. And that is a first hand experience watching 42 gifted smart young children pushed in our education system and over their interessents on behalf of their parents. I attended this school for 6 years. It was a pain, and as if s…

"Most of the stuff is rational trivia" --- rational trivia, I like the word.

I don't know if you're beeing sarcastic or not. If so, excuse me please. Anyway you are probably right. I am still not sure about that phrasing. What I wanted to refer to, is that the Stuff you get teached at MIT still isn't any harder or easier than the stuff you can read or maybe already have read in books anyway. When I started college my profs where constantly referring to Tanenbaum, Dijkstra and co. Texts I have read and understood 5 years before I finished school.

Re: Homeschooled with MIT courses at 5, accepted to MIT at 15

#33

Post by marrs »

suby wrote: post #8
jasode wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>pushing your kid like that I dunno about this... we're not intimate with his family so it seems a little unfair to characterize his parents as "pushing him". For all we know, the opposite may have happened and his parents were "holding him back" and trying to prevent a precocious teen from rushing into MIT at age 14 instead of 15. As far as the article's text reveals, it says his parents were responsive and not push…

I think that scenario is unlikely given the fact that they started the MIT preparation at 5.

I love how you think you can deduce that after reading a couple of paragraphs of an MIT article.

Re: Homeschooled with MIT courses at 5, accepted to MIT at 15

#35

Post by chrisBob »

evook wrote: post #11
jasode wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>pushing your kid like that I dunno about this... we're not intimate with his family so it seems a little unfair to characterize his parents as "pushing him". For all we know, the opposite may have happened and his parents were "holding him back" and trying to prevent a precocious teen from rushing into MIT at age 14 instead of 15. As far as the article's text reveals, it says his parents were responsive and not push…

Yeah for sure... I attended a school for gifted kids. Those who where a lot younger than the rest of us where always pushed by their parents and their parents always told they where not pushing. And that is a first hand experience watching 42 gifted smart young children pushed in our education system and over their interessents on behalf of their parents. I attended this school for 6 years. It was a pain, and as if s…

>school is mandatory where I live

Do you mind if I ask where you live? In most of the US school is "mandatory", but pretty much anyone can homeschool if they want.

Re: Homeschooled with MIT courses at 5, accepted to MIT at 15

#36

Post by NameNickHN »

ktzar wrote: post #32

Some people force maturing, when maturing comes on its own... And by doing so they loose childhood, which never comes back.

Some people mature earlier than others without being foced.

For some the ideal childhood is playing outside, playng games or playing sports. For others it's technology and science.

Re: Homeschooled with MIT courses at 5, accepted to MIT at 15

#37

Post by hackerboos »

collyw wrote: post #23
rtl49 wrote: post #22

“I will never forget the feeling of walking into the lobby of Building 7, looking up, and then touching the pillars to see if they were real. I couldn’t believe I was at MIT. My life and my ambitions moved to another level at that moment.” I think this impressive achievement is more a testament to the role that aspirations acquired during childhood play in determining a person's success than it is a reflection of thi…

Personally I am pretty glad that I had a "normal" childhood.

When I was 5 years old I had trouble mixing up the letters b and d.

Given an MIT course at that age I probably would have ignored it in favor of playing outside.

Re: Homeschooled with MIT courses at 5, accepted to MIT at 15

#38

Post by sannee »

allendoerfer wrote: post #6

As long as he did not exclusively learn technical stuff but also got a humanistic education, which we do not know, and enjoyed his childhood, which I think he did, because you cannot perform like that without enjoying it, I think this is pretty amazing parenting. You could find other reasons to nitpick (Did he do sports? Did he develop social competences by interacting with other kids?), but even if these things are…

You have to realize the fact that humans have some really annoying bugs.

a) The first one is the fact that we want (mostly) to help each other and make each other happy. This looks benign, but combined with b) can be really irritating

b) Humans are bad at empathy. You might enjoy humanistic education or sports and so you automatically think that everyone else does too.

This probably worked fine for our ancestors (getting torn apart by a cave lion is something no-one would like) but kind of breaks in modern society.

Different people like different things, keep that in mind.

Re: Homeschooled with MIT courses at 5, accepted to MIT at 15

#39

Post by sdegutis »

hackerboos wrote: post #37
collyw wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I am pretty glad that I had a "normal" childhood.

When I was 5 years old I had trouble mixing up the letters b and d. Given an MIT course at that age I probably would have ignored it in favor of playing outside.

Can confirm. Those 75 hours spent finding every secret and getting 100% in Super Metroid was time well spent.

Re: Homeschooled with MIT courses at 5, accepted to MIT at 15

#40

Post by NameNickHN »

mkj wrote: post #34

"two-year-old son — already an avid reader" sounds somewhat unusual?

There are people who have a hard time learning to read and some who never manage it despite making every effort. Why is it so hard to believe that there are people at the other end of the spectrum who are able to learn to read as an infant?
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