Academic acceleration in gifted youth: a 35-year longitudinal study • Hacker News Board

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

#121

Post by C1sc0cat » Tue, Jul 07, 2020, 12:24 PM UTC

dgellow wrote: post #84

lordnacho wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 resour…

> I've long wondered why education isn't just a bunch of different ladders that people can crawl at their own pace. Just a guess: as far as I understood US parents are very good at lobbying schools administration, and a lot of them would hate to see that some kids are smarter or more advanced than theirs. Now regarding your ladder idea, in some cantons in Switzerland and some Bundesländer in Germany the school system…

The problem with that its in large part class based - come from a working class background or have learning disabilities you get pigeonholed into the lower tracks - with less resources.

Jumping tracks is hard and before the EU intervened almost impossible.

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

#122

Post by fouc » Tue, Jul 07, 2020, 12:33 PM UTC

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…

In retrospect I weirdly wish I was actually held back a grade or two. I feel like I would've benefited socially by being the oldest kid in a classroom.

Simultaneously I would've wanted some enrichment or flexibility on learning pace..

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

#123

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC » Tue, Jul 07, 2020, 12:34 PM UTC

auslegung wrote: post #119

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I was left in a corner to rot in child jail for a over a decade, during some of the most important years of my life, and constantly punished for the crime of being a bored young person whose time is being wasted. I read the story of Thomas Edison and think what would have happened to him in our time. He would have been medicated up the wazoo until he finally became a quiet, docile little boy who sat in class and di…

Can you point me to this story of Edison? I’m resonating with a lot that’s being said in these comments, and now I have two toddlers who are precocious and for years I’ve wanted to homeschool them.

From an interview quoted here:

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/thomas-edisons-mom-lied-ab...

> One day I overheard the teacher tell the inspector that I was “addled” and it would not be worthwhile keeping me in school any longer. I was so hurt by this last straw that I burst out crying and went home and told my mother about it. Then I found out what a good thing a good mother is. She came out as my strong defender. Mother love was aroused, mother pride wounded to the quick. She brought me back to the school and angrily told the teacher that he didn’t know what he was talking about, that I had more brains than he himself, and a lot more talk like that. In fact, she was the most enthusiastic champion a boy ever had, and I determined right then that I would be worthy of her and show her that her confidence was not misplaced.

According to the snopes page, he was taught by his mother until age 16

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

#124

Post by justinram11 » Tue, Jul 07, 2020, 12:35 PM UTC

I consider myself pretty fortunate to have both:

1) Been accelerated after I had formed a pretty tight friend group with my same-aged peers (jumped 2 years of math in 7th-8th grade)

2) Been born in a time where the internet was modern enough that we could all hang out and game online

I entered University at 16 (the PSEO program in MN that pays for tuition and books your junior and senior year of high school), but was able to keep in touch with my high-school friend group with multiplayer video games.

Even today, a decade later, I'm still able to keep in touch with them almost daily even though I'm living in Taiwan (started the digital nomad thing soon after graduating University at 20).

Academically I did _really_ well in a large University environment with a lot more autonomy, freedom, and responsibility (it's insane to me that we have 18 year olds still needing to ask permission to go to the bathroom during class).

Socially, I'll admit that I struggled to make any college-aged friends, but I think that was more due to still living at home than anything else. Instead of being able to take people up on offers to hang out at night, I had to make the last bus out of Minneapolis to my small town by 6:30pm.

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

#125

Post by paganel » Tue, Jul 07, 2020, 12:35 PM UTC

mmaurizi wrote: post #113

paganel wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> say Nazi Germany in the late 1930’s I'd say Nazi Germany in the late 1930s was more of an anti-Jewish intellectual society, more than an anti-intellectual society pure and simple, the reason being that them being mostly a technocratic State they highly needed those intellectuals, engineers and technicians. One of the many proofs is the work of von Braun, without which us as a species wouldn't have gotten to the Moo…

Pol Pot.

Yeap, that too, had forgotten about his atrocities.

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

#126

Post by dgellow » Tue, Jul 07, 2020, 12:45 PM UTC

lordnacho wrote: post #108

dgellow wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've long wondered why education isn't just a bunch of different ladders that people can crawl at their own pace. Just a guess: as far as I understood US parents are very good at lobbying schools administration, and a lot of them would hate to see that some kids are smarter or more advanced than theirs. Now regarding your ladder idea, in some cantons in Switzerland and some Bundesländer in Germany the school system…

This is not quite what I had in mind, though. I lived in Switzerland as well, and it seems more like a traditional education system where everyone in the academic stream still needs to learn a broad range of subjects at the same pace as each other. Also having a single cutoff time at roughly age 12 seems quite harsh to me. I'm more thinking that you could learn English at an age-average pace while being ahead in math…

Yep, I understand. I'm not aware of school systems going as far as what you describe. That's an interesting concept, though I'm not sure how practical that would be.

A set of random thoughts:

- I would expect that would require more teachers which is already a scarce resource in a lot of places

- Also, you mention mostly individual learning and progression, but I would also expect part of school to be about group learning, with topics such as languages that becomes more of an issue if you have part of the students ahead in English, some ahead in French, while other at average level for everything

- I guess that would make school classes a more fluid concept, where you are with your advanced math friends for 2 hours, then with kids from the average English course for 2 hours. So you don't have a common group of kids spending their school time together. I'm wondering what social environment that would be, e.g would that result in more or less bullying? More or less social cohesion? More or less difficult to build friendships? If you come from a disadvantageous background, won't you have more difficulties to mix with the ones who can access more advanced courses thanks to their parents? Of course they are open questions.

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

#127

Post by dgellow » Tue, Jul 07, 2020, 12:51 PM UTC

C1sc0cat wrote: post #121

dgellow wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've long wondered why education isn't just a bunch of different ladders that people can crawl at their own pace. Just a guess: as far as I understood US parents are very good at lobbying schools administration, and a lot of them would hate to see that some kids are smarter or more advanced than theirs. Now regarding your ladder idea, in some cantons in Switzerland and some Bundesländer in Germany the school system…

The problem with that its in large part class based - come from a working class background or have learning disabilities you get pigeonholed into the lower tracks - with less resources. Jumping tracks is hard and before the EU intervened almost impossible.

Yes, that's definitely an issue. I had 3-4 different version of the system I described during my school time as my swiss canton was struggling to find the correct balance, each time you could see kids finding themselves stuck because of a lack of parental resources or other reasons. Moving from one stream to another is possible, though of course that varies from place to place, but that definitely requires a strong investment from the student in both time and effort if they want to switch to a stream with more opportunities.

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

#128

Post by treis » Tue, Jul 07, 2020, 12:55 PM UTC

adrianN wrote: post #69

barry-cotter wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US spending per student on K-12 education has tripled since 1970. Achievement has been flat[1]. There’s no shortage of money. Practically unlimited education funding has limited effects on results[2]. It’s structural change that’s needed, like acceleration for all. [1] https://www.cato.org/blog/school-funding-system-not-broken-i... [2] https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/americas-most-c...

But what is that money spent on? Are there more teachers per student? Because intuitively that's what you need to provide more individualized teaching. Here in Germany a lot of money is spent on using more computers in the classroom. Blackboards are replaced with computers, students get tablets. The number of students per teacher on the other hand is unchanged or growing.

A lot of that increase went towards Special Ed and administration overhead. It's hard to do a raw student/teacher ratio because today you have special Ed teachers with a handful of students. That didn't really exist 40-50 years ago.

Pensions are another huge problem. Those big promises handed out in the 70s-80s are now coming due. There's districts spending double digits percentages of their budget paying retired teachers.

So lots of money going in but bills are riding faster.

But the general point is still correct. Inner city schools generally have the highest budgets per pupil in their state. Ultimately spending is not very correlated with performance.

Of course, in a perfectly allocated system it wouldn't be correlated at all. Money would flow to where it was needed most until every school generated equal outcomes

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

#129

Post by brutus1213 » Tue, Jul 07, 2020, 12:57 PM UTC

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…

Former prodigy who was accelerated. Agreed with the social struggles. It is its own unique hell. As a teen in University, the academic stimulation thankfully offset the pain of social distancing. I was so sheltered, I thought I must have been one of the smartest persons in the world until grad school (it is really sad when I think about it now). What a wake up call/shock that was. I think I would be very hesitant accelerating my own kids.

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

#130

Post by currymj » Tue, Jul 07, 2020, 1:02 PM UTC

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…

consider it from an alternative perspective — sending a 14 year old to grad school to get their PhD by 20 is putting them in a 60-hour-a-week high pressure job that causes mental breakdowns in many adults.

i don’t doubt that academic acceleration has many advantages for smart kids but i do not think “getting” to give up your teenage years for a few extra years of high pressure work is one of them.