[wyattpeak]

I'll bite - yes, I think it leads to both a good life for them and benefit for country.

I don't know what your gifted education programs were like, but I never recall feeling like I missed out on my childhood. Occasionally I would take different classes to some of my friends (but with others), and that was about it.

Far from keeping people from being free to develop and think for themselves, most of the gifted classes I took actively encouraged that, with open-ended problem solving and free-form classes often led by student interest.

But children need to be reined in, they don't have the reasoning skills or understanding of adults; the one time I was allowed to fully control my own syllabus it led almost directly to me losing the ability to speak Cantonese, which I'd been fluent in up to that point. As a kid who'd spoken it all his life, I simply didn't believe all of the people who told me I'd forget it without practice. Because I was a child.

I don't know exactly how free-form Sudbury Schools are, but I'd have extreme reservations about sending my children to one.

[crawfordcomeaux]

So the lesson you learned wasn't that you had the power to choose what you learned and how to do so responsibly?

Did you instead learn these things?:

• exercising that power could lead to you losing a skill

• doing so is bad

• you don't have the power to choose your own course corrections when you notice a skill waning

Based on your suggestion that children need to be controlled, I think your experience was limited and too short.

[wyattpeak]

I grant I learned all of those things, but I think pretty well everyone learns those things by adulthood, and I don't think my forgetting a language especially honed my understanding of those points.

I don't even know if you're arguing in good faith, because your second dot point isn't really a thing that even a child needs to learn.

I'll also thank you not to suggest that our differences of opinion are due to your superior understanding of my upbringing.

[crawfordcomeaux]

I agree...I think those are things we're culturally taught, typically implicitly and not explicitly.

And I don't assume to have an understanding of your upbringing. That's why I was posing it all as questions. The points I made are things I think can potentially hinder learning and are commonplace in society.

[ygaf]

You ultimately have to want the skill. The gp would have noticed his skill gradually waning, not suddenly when it had gone, yet as a kid he didn't care for it.

[dasyatidprime]

How would you notice a skill waning if you aren't using it at the time?

[ygaf]

You're right, I don't know what actual skill I had in mind there (one are you are no longer trained in but still use). I meant to say, even when a kid is wise to the danger of not taking lessons, they don't know what subjects are best for them or how many different ones must be pursued.

[crawfordcomeaux]

I think the key is to teach them a way to integrate whatever they learn into a joyful life that strives to contribute to all other life.

Teach them to tap into intuition, ask (not demand) for help when support is needed, and learn how to learn.