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Academic acceleration in gifted youth: a 35-year longitudinal study

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Re: Academic acceleration in gifted youth: a 35-year longitudinal study

#71

Post by Mirioron »

honkycat wrote: post #62
colechristensen wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I experienced long term psychological effects from lack of proper education pacing. From the very beginning, I entered kindergarten as the only one in my class able to read. The teacher, doing her best, sent me off to read by myself in the corner as she taught the rest of the class. In the years where your brain is programmed to adapt itself to the environment it expects for the rest of life, I only ever had to do th…

Yes. Exactly. Precisely the same thing for me. I was reading at an absurdly young age. School for me was a special sort of hell where I was able to read at a 12th grade level in 3rd grade, and yet a decade later was in class with people who could not yet read. I would stare at the clock and switch between sleeping and being insanely bored. I'm 31 years old now and I feel I have enough life experience to call it what…

What helped me get through the boredom of school was to learn to daydream. Any time there's something boring going on I can tune out from that and daydream. Walking around while doing it is great. The downside of it is that it's not productive and once you're out of school you don't need it to occupy your time, but you still want to.

Re: Academic acceleration in gifted youth: a 35-year longitudinal study

#72

Post by clairity »

dang wrote: post #28

I wonder if they lack good ways of measuring this. I skipped a few grades and started university at 15. It took years to catch up socially and in many ways I never did. I wouldn't recommend it. In retrospect, I'd say a better thing to do with a smart kid is to convince them that they should work on things they're not as good at. Nobody's good at everything. However, that would have required individual attention of a…

i chose not to skip grades and not to go to college early, and looking back, that was probably the right decision for me. i needed the time with peers to mature socially and emotionally before venturing out into the world (i wasn’t a social outcast, so i wasn’t desperate to leave other than out of boredom).

that’s not to say that i couldn’t have benefitted intellectually from acceleration. if i could have stayed with peers but had accelerated education, i would have chosen that instead, but it wasn’t an option in my case.

Re: Academic acceleration in gifted youth: a 35-year longitudinal study

#73

Post by barry-cotter »

olliej wrote: post #56

I didn’t know that this was in question. Most of the questions I’m aware of are reinforcement of systemic bias (equivalently capable white and Asian kids being selected over other races), and the diversion of funds from teaching the less “advanced” to teaching those kids who aren’t struggling with no evidence that the acceleration actually accomplishes anything in the long term

> and the diversion of funds from teaching the less “advanced” to teaching those kids who aren’t struggling

This doesn’t happen. In the US gifted education gets at most 1% of all education spending, almost certainly less. Special education gets over 20% of all spending, probably closer to 25%. The average high school has no explicit accommodation for gifted students and a dedicated special ed teacher.

> with no evidence that the acceleration actually accomplishes anything in the long term

Strong positive effects exist.

https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ746290.pdf

> Exceptionally Gifted Children: Long-Term Outcomes of Academic Acceleration and Nonacceleration

> a 20-year longitudinal study has traced the academic, social, and emotional devel- opment of 60 young australians with iQs of 160 and above. Significant differences have been noted in the young people’s educational status and direction, life satisfac- tion, social relationships, and self-esteem as a function of the degree of academic accel- eration their schools permitted them in childhood and adolescence. the considerable majority of young people who have been radically accelerated, 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 relation- ships. 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. Without exception, these young people possess multiple talents; however, for some, the extent and direction of talent development has been dictated by their schools’ academic priorities or their teachers’ willingness or unwillingness to assist in the development of particular talent areas.

Re: Academic acceleration in gifted youth: a 35-year longitudinal study

#74

Post by bamboozled »

TomMarius wrote: post #50
bamboozled wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered this is a problem that's pretty specific to you and what while your experience might suck. It also sucks for kids who can't read well, period. I think while schooling is far from ideal, most kids aren't reading physics books in elementary school. Many kids are struggling to cope on several different fronts.

Have you considered that the psychological effects on said children are not ignorable even if there is only a small minority of them?

Sure, I'm saying that it goes both ways.

Re: Academic acceleration in gifted youth: a 35-year longitudinal study

#75

Post by lordnacho »

barry-cotter wrote: post #2

There is no argument against academic acceleration beyond that it increases inequality of achievement. If the school system was about education more than childcare acceleration would be the norm for bright children and we’d have 14 year olds starting their Bachelor’s level studies in every school and 20 year olds who already had doctorates in every city of any size. Instead we waste their time, to their detriment and…

I've long wondered why education isn't just a bunch of different ladders that people can crawl at their own pace.

For instance my kid is starting to read about stuff they normally only introduce in high school, but there's no way he will ever be examined on it until then (he's turning 8 in a few weeks). If someone wants to learn something, luckily these says we have the likes of Khan Academy and other internet resources. When I was a kid, you wouldn't even know that physics was a thing until quite late in your education, and you'd need quite the motivator to go to a library to see what exactly it was.

Why not make it so that every kid who wanted to learn something could start crawling that ladder at their own pace? Kids who want to learn math can spend more time on that and advance, kids who want to write poetry can learn about that, and so on.

What is the rationale for keeping everyone together, other than timetabling issues? I'm sure you can develop soft skills without having to do it with people who happen to be in the same ability level. Everyone knew a kid who was extraordinary at sports, but that didn't seem to stop them being friends with everyone. Likewise any other skill.

I was quite fortunate to have a math teacher who gave me extra classes, out me on the math team, and pushed me up a year. Without that I might have gotten bored.

Re: Academic acceleration in gifted youth: a 35-year longitudinal study

#76

Post by emteycz »

colechristensen wrote: post #66
honkycat wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Exactly. Precisely the same thing for me. I was reading at an absurdly young age. School for me was a special sort of hell where I was able to read at a 12th grade level in 3rd grade, and yet a decade later was in class with people who could not yet read. I would stare at the clock and switch between sleeping and being insanely bored. I'm 31 years old now and I feel I have enough life experience to call it what…

I wouldn't go and say I am of just of average genetic predisposition for intelligence... but really a bigger part of it is the people raising me, parents and grandparents, they taught me to read before I went to school. I don't think a child has to be particularly exceptional to learn to be able to read at 4 or 5, somebody has to go and teach them though. And let me add to "child jail": not only was I sent somewhere…

If only not sleeping well and boredom were the only issues. Being born in a post communist country, teachers here have a really powerful position, work used to be scarce, parenting is... Different, and thus my parents placed way too big importance on school. School has ruined my childhood, robbed me of all joy for more than a decade, made it very hard to have (and trust) normal human relationships, made me seriously neglect my body, and nearly destroyed my family.

Thankfully I was still able to pull myself out and try to repair the family as an adult. And I like the person I am now, with the experience and relationships I have, so I don't need the past to change, but things could have turned for the worse just as well. I am fighting negative/destructive thoughts (as in "oh if you did this to me I would beat you SO HARD", not suicidal) to this day.

My children will never go near a school.

(Edit: I really wonder who and why downvotes this)

Re: Academic acceleration in gifted youth: a 35-year longitudinal study

#77

Post by Xelbair »

colechristensen wrote: post #46
barry-cotter wrote: post #2

There is no argument against academic acceleration beyond that it increases inequality of achievement. If the school system was about education more than childcare acceleration would be the norm for bright children and we’d have 14 year olds starting their Bachelor’s level studies in every school and 20 year olds who already had doctorates in every city of any size. Instead we waste their time, to their detriment and…

I experienced long term psychological effects from lack of proper education pacing. From the very beginning, I entered kindergarten as the only one in my class able to read. The teacher, doing her best, sent me off to read by myself in the corner as she taught the rest of the class. In the years where your brain is programmed to adapt itself to the environment it expects for the rest of life, I only ever had to do th…

I've had quite similar experience - but with math, not reading.

Also add ,the only person in my life whom i hate, absolutely inept math teacher in primary school. She managed to strip my ability to do calculations in head, and quite literally failed me for being too good at mental calculations as i must've been cheating.. despite solving it at blackboard standing next to her.

Re: Academic acceleration in gifted youth: a 35-year longitudinal study

#78

Post by Xelbair »

emteycz wrote: post #76
colechristensen wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't go and say I am of just of average genetic predisposition for intelligence... but really a bigger part of it is the people raising me, parents and grandparents, they taught me to read before I went to school. I don't think a child has to be particularly exceptional to learn to be able to read at 4 or 5, somebody has to go and teach them though. And let me add to "child jail": not only was I sent somewhere…

If only not sleeping well and boredom were the only issues. Being born in a post communist country, teachers here have a really powerful position, work used to be scarce, parenting is... Different, and thus my parents placed way too big importance on school. School has ruined my childhood, robbed me of all joy for more than a decade, made it very hard to have (and trust) normal human relationships, made me seriously…

Oh yes, teachers in post communist countries can be separated into two groups:

* majority that's absolutely horrible at their job, whose only goal is to average all the children. Hammer down nails that stick out, and artificially inflate grades of struggling children without helping them at all.

* few great motivated teachers, who are genuinely great.

Usually the latter ones were part of protests, or some anti communist movement. at least in my experience.

Supposedly all communist countries had gifted programs, but those were stripped/forgotten in transitional era(at least over here).

Small observation: i haven't met any PE teacher that was part of the second group, nor any of my friends(and their friends) ever did.

Re: Academic acceleration in gifted youth: a 35-year longitudinal study

#79

Post by TomMarius »

bamboozled wrote: post #74
TomMarius wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered that the psychological effects on said children are not ignorable even if there is only a small minority of them?

Sure, I'm saying that it goes both ways.

I think everyone in this discussion recognizes that and in no way has tried to suggest anything different. Here we are talking about the unusual children and their (different from most others AND each other) needs.

Re: Academic acceleration in gifted youth: a 35-year longitudinal study

#80

Post by Xelbair »

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #3
barry-cotter wrote: post #2

There is no argument against academic acceleration beyond that it increases inequality of achievement. If the school system was about education more than childcare acceleration would be the norm for bright children and we’d have 14 year olds starting their Bachelor’s level studies in every school and 20 year olds who already had doctorates in every city of any size. Instead we waste their time, to their detriment and…

That's also why you practically never hear about anyone being left behind a grade. From the start of kindergarten to the end of high school, the everyone I knew who started in my grade finished in it. I can't remember a single exception. In what other areas do the fastest and slowest do 13 years of work at nearly the exact same pace? The only difference allowed seems to be in AP classes, which are pretty limited in a…

I remember a single exception. My friend was left behind because he literally skipped 400-ish hours in half year... for a 3 semesters in row.
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