Smart Kids Should Skip High School
sonyaellenmann.com
Smart Kids Should Skip High School
1–10 of 68 posts
Re: Smart Kids Should Skip High School
#2I don't think kids should skip high school, but I think parents could let up on expectations placed on children to compensate for the uselessness and tedium of much of the subject matter.
On the other hand, engaging in passion driven projects that also involve self directed study is the way to go. Parents should encourage the latter while being less fussy about grades. Grades don't matter anyway 10 years later when the child will be hired or try to make a business, but a few passion driven projects could go a long way towards later success.
Re: Smart Kids Should Skip High School
#3I don't get the trend of being all cool and dropping out of High School or College or whatever. High School gets out at 2 or 3 pm, leaving plenty of time to learn on your own or build projects. At that age are you really going to start a business? Besides, school provides motivation to learn, especially Colleges, because you are paying for it and don't want to fail classes.
Re: Smart Kids Should Skip High School
#4I don't get the trend of being all cool and dropping out of High School or College or whatever. High School gets out at 2 or 3 pm, leaving plenty of time to learn on your own or build projects. At that age are you really going to start a business? Besides, school provides motivation to learn, especially Colleges, because you are paying for it and don't want to fail classes.
high school does not provide motivation. That comes from the students that know what their next step is and want to get into college.
Re: Smart Kids Should Skip High School
#5My son went to Grossmont Middle College which is a charter school for the last two years of high school located on a jr college campus. He was able to get enough college units to save him a year and a half at 4 year college. High school, depending upon your goals and classes can be not the best use of time if you can just jump in and do the college courses anyway... why do double work.
Re: Smart Kids Should Skip High School
#6I don't think kids should skip high school, but I think parents could let up on expectations placed on children to compensate for the uselessness and tedium of much of the subject matter. On the other hand, engaging in passion driven projects that also involve self directed study is the way to go. Parents should encourage the latter while being less fussy about grades. Grades don't matter anyway 10 years later when t…
The problem is college admissions. Sonya says, "Skipping college is almost middle-class mainstream at this point," but she's dead wrong. It might be mainstream among the lower classes, but they aren't doing too well these days, are they? And it's mainstream among a certain fraction of the upper-classes who have enough of a safety net in family wealth and connections that it doesn't matter. But for the vast majority of the middle classes, the true middle classes, college is still very much a mainstream choice, and increasingly important as a backstop against falling into the lower class. If you don't have a high school transcript, your chances of getting into a college go down by quite a bit.
As for, "I could have spent three years writing and reading and working on interesting projects, instead of enduring the sociocultural hell of high school," I nearly giggled when I read that. Maybe Sonya was among the special 1% of kids who would actually have done that, but realistically, if I had skipped high school, I would have spent my days playing video games and getting into trouble, not "reading and working on interesting projects".
Re: Smart Kids Should Skip High School
#7My son went to Grossmont Middle College which is a charter school for the last two years of high school located on a jr college campus. He was able to get enough college units to save him a year and a half at 4 year college. High school, depending upon your goals and classes can be not the best use of time if you can just jump in and do the college courses anyway... why do double work.
because taking your time through college can be an incredible experience.
Re: Smart Kids Should Skip High School
#8I dropped out because the school system wasn't designed for kids with dyslexia. All I ever felt was left behind.
Re: Smart Kids Should Skip High School
#9Very smart kids should skip multiple grades at least.
http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ746290.pdf
"A 20-year longitudinal study has traced the academic, social, and emotional development of 60 young Australians with IQs of 160 and above... The considerable majority of young people who have been radically accelerated [skipped 3+ grades], 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 relationships. 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."
Re: Smart Kids Should Skip High School
#10My son went to Grossmont Middle College which is a charter school for the last two years of high school located on a jr college campus. He was able to get enough college units to save him a year and a half at 4 year college. High school, depending upon your goals and classes can be not the best use of time if you can just jump in and do the college courses anyway... why do double work.
because taking your time through college can be an incredible experience.
On the other hand, parent-poster's son probably saved enough money to buy a car. College credits are incredibly expensive, and if you can do them for free in high school, there's no reason to skip them.
On a broader level, I would very much like to disagree with people who say that you should take your time through college. Take your time through college... if you can afford it. Don't forget that you're paying a good ten to twenty thousand a year for the privilege of taking your time.