[hackerrenews]

I was fourth picked for g&t. First and second pick ended up being quite successful, as did the third picked. One has a high up, prestigious position at Amazon and the other retired from Microsoft wealthy.

Me, I smoke weed and that’s about the only thing I’ve really done consistently since high school.. more consistently than music, and programming, even.

Frankly, I wish I had been better separated from the other kids. I would have been far happier in middle school just hanging around other nice, smart people. (With a few exceptions, the smart kids tended to be kind). The mixture with the “gen pop” led to bullying, repeated physical abuse and harassment by other kids from ages 10-12. This was decades ago when physical abuse amongst minors was often ignored, even by police.

By freshman year of high school, I was worn down and switched back to some non-honors classes mid-term. This unfortunately led to dysfunctional friendships with the “cool” kids (same bully crowd), introduction to drugs and a low achievement life. There was some form of Florence nightingale syndrome involved here, due to unresolved physical abuse leading to friendships with the abusers in high school.

Separating gifted children for accelerated learning is great. Ignoring social development by blindly sticking all kids together in unstructured environments where bullying and physical abuse is allowed to persist will override any hope for some kids. I know, I was there. Still here.

[borski]

Amen to this. I was separated (went to Stuyvesant HS in NYC) and it made a world of difference for me, as compared to JHS or elementary school. Prior to Stuy, I was bullied like crazy, beaten, and it was very difficult to try and fit in with many of the others around me who, frankly, just didn't give a fuck. It really sucked.

Stuy was a different world, and the first time in my life I felt the opportunity to actually just learn, and not have to hide my report card or test scores as soon as I got them, because doing "too well" meant a beatdown after school.

2/3 of my MIT admission essays were about this experience, incidentally.

[edit 1] Aside: one additional anecdote is that I was constantly getting in trouble before Stuy; I was always bored, because the work was easy, and nobody ever gave me additional work to do, so I would talk to the other kids. I was always an extrovert, and very bad at being bored; I could not sit in one place and just stare at the wall, or pretend to listen to a teacher drone on about some geometry thing I already knew. So I got in trouble constantly for distracting the other kids. That stopped in Stuy, because I wasn't bored; I was challenged.

[edit 2] The other corollary to this, of course, is that on the last day of JHS, after having held my reactions entirely for nearly a decade, and just taking the beatings...I finally lost it. It was really bad, and on the last day of JHS I went absolutely apeshit on this kid for pushing me around and punching me, after I gave him three warnings. Easily one of the top 3 least proud moments of my life. That could have been avoided, too, though you could make an argument a large part of that was also due to it being taboo to actually talk to someone about your feelings in the 90s. I never wanted to fight back because I was afraid of hurting them (I had been training in martial arts for like 7-8 years) and because I didn't want to get in trouble. It was dumb.

[762236]

I had a similar experience. It was wonderful to be put into a magnet school filled with kids that were smart and generally wanted to learn (every one of them went to a college/university), and to be separated from the kids that hated school. That is the sad thing: so many of the kids causing problems in the normal schools wouldn't cause problems if they attended schools that focused on their vitalities in the way that the magnet schools focused on ours.

[dcbadacd]

I have exactly the same experience as the previous commenters, I was also basically rescued into a (learning-)conducive environment and I'm seriously thankful for that. The alternative would've very likely been awful because I've seen on a good friend of mine what happens when there isn't an opportunity to get into a "magnet school". It basically caused clinical depression and such a strong distaste for school that it made completing even high school basically impossible.

[LaLaLand122]

Having been educated in probably a different country, with a different school system, I am surprised to read all these comments.

Not saying my country school system is perfect, it isn't. And there are cases of abuse, bullying does exist. But 30 years ago I was the good, shy, student in a poor neighbourhood of a big city and never suffered or witnessed anything too bad (and from 4 to 12 year old we had a kid with Down syndrome in our class). And nobody would even think about splitting kids by ability, we don't have "advanced"/"honours" classes.

[wongarsu]

In Germany we split children into three kinds of school at around age 10-11. There is decent mobility between the schools if you over- or under-perform, and little to no splitting within the same school (well, until age 16/17). It's generally a positive experience for everyone, with everyone getting the right teachers and the right mix of practical and theoretical work/learning.

[sokoloff]

At some point, every fully developed education system splits kids by ability. Not everyone goes on to advanced studies, engineering school, law, or medicine. Not everyone learns a trade.

That split might not happen until age 18, but my wager is that it does happen everywhere. The question is when is the optimal time? I tend to think earlier rather than later.

[tsukikage]

How early is “earlier”? Children have no clue of possibilities or consequences. This is why we have an age of majority: to protect kids from long term consequences of life choices they are not ready to make. Why should education be different? - what right have we to put a big cross on a child’s future and declare “you can never amount to more than this” based on childish behaviours and choices they may yet grow out of? We do this in no other area of life.

[DataWorker]

In the US we have increasing numbers of students who don’t speak English? Is it ability grouping to give Spanish instruction? Are such students not “disruptive”?

[koolba]

The solution is not to pull out a handful of high performers, it’s to kick out the even smaller number of disrupters.

[rayiner]

This is 95% of why we send our kids to private school. In the rare case a disrupter makes it in, they're "counseled out." It's a travesty that schools permit a handful of bad apples to ruin the learning experience of everyone else.

[barry-cotter]

It’s not the schools permitting it, it’s the justice system making getting rid of disruptive students impossible.

https://educationrealist.wordpress.com/2019/08/06/public-sch...

> Wonder what allows a school to at least consider permanent expulsion? The student has to be convicted of:

> murder drug dealing aggravated assault rape possession of a deadly weapon

> But expulsion can be permanent if and only if he or she is over 16 or older. And of course, forget all those criteria for the disability manifestation exclusion–if the student was convicted but disability is the reason for the behavior, no action can be taken.

[AnthonyMouse]

That's for expulsion, which makes a certain amount of sense. A student with home life problems or a psychological condition is still entitled to an education. But why is it incumbent on every other student that they receive their education in the same classroom?

[barry-cotter]

Because there’s only so much money to go around and trying to educate people who don’t want to be educated is expensive. They need very small class sizes to show any improvements and you get very high staff turnover if you concentrate them because teaching apathetic students is bad but teaching hostile or violent ones is just awful.

And any kind of discipline or moving them to special classes or special schools leads to being sued.

Education is not the first or second priority in the school system or things would look quite different.

[solveit]

Yes, but how would that work in practice? Special schools for high performers is much more palatable than special schools for quarantining children who aren't going to amount to anything (no matter what you call it and how you design it, this is how it will be perceived).

[taurath]

We have them - even in my small town there was a high school where the kids who were in and out of juvi would attend - everyone at the school knew it’s reputation. It’s where you went if you were expelled.

[grawprog]

Yeah we had one too. Though, the one we had actually tried. It had an auto mechanics program and a few different trades classes and other more specialized stuff the regular high school didn't have. A lot of those kids actually started doing better themselves when they got expelled and were sent there.

[empthought]

If mandatory school attendance were repealed, it would work itself quite quickly.

[ip26]

All well and good, but those people still get to vote.

[empthought]

There is no difference between voters who attended school only because they were forced to, and hypothetical voters who weren’t forced to attend school.

[eloff]

But would bring other problems. The cure is likely worse than the disease.

[yters]

Most of history? I'd argue three Rs is the basics everyone needs, and then they can find their own way.

[chimi]

Just such a thing is done in Season 4 of HBO's The Wire. It profiles just such a class where the disruptive students are pulled out. Yes, it's fiction but you can see how it'd work and it's pretty interesting to see the changes in attitudes among the "gen pop" class and the special class.

[nitrogen]

Both exist. There are "last chance" public schools in some areas for those expelled from the main schools, in addition to charter and private schools for the higher achievers.

[seanmcdirmid]

I don’t think the number of those disrupters is as small as you think it is. It really depends on the school though, for me it was much higher for 7th-10th grade in Vicksburg MS than it was for 11th-12th grade in Bothell WA (a much richer school district).

[raxxorrax]

Disruptive kids can very well be gifted and are bored by school. Doesn't mean every disruptive kid is a genius in hiding of course.

[scarface74]

The “disrupters” are usually “pulled out” disproportionately if they are poor or minorities while kids who do the same thing but have more influential families get a “counseling”.

https://www.vox.com/identities/2018/4/5/17199810/school-disc...

[dsfyu404ed]

Yes, some demographics have it worse than others but that's a totally separate variable of the equation though. A rising tide lifts all boats. Not bettering the system because a particular group/groups will not do better relative to some other group even though both groups do better relative to their past position is foolish. This is true for systemic improvements in general, not specific to education.

[scarface74]

How does a rising tide lift all boats when you systematically take people off the boat?

[dsfyu404ed]

Say the education system takes an input of children with a value of 1 and outputs educated people with a "value" between 5 and 10. Even if the system is overtly racist and only outputs minorities of values 5 and 6 it is still beneficial to everyone if the system is improved so that everyone gets a +1

[Merrill]

It was a relief when some of the worst bullies finished 9th grade and dropped out.

[barry-cotter]

That’s illegal.

https://educationrealist.wordpress.com/2019/08/06/public-sch...

> Wonder what allows a school to at least consider permanent expulsion? The student has to be convicted of:

> murder drug dealing aggravated assault rape possession of a deadly weapon

> But expulsion can be permanent if and only if he or she is over 16 or older. And of course, forget all those criteria for the disability manifestation exclusion–if the student was convicted but disability is the reason for the behavior, no action can be taken.

[Supermancho]

> That's illigal.

That is irrelevant.

This is done, to some extent, via auxillary schools in many affluent areas. If a student is problematic in any myriad of ways, off they are sent to the school with lower standards (often within sight of the other campus). For example, 1994 presidential blue ribbon Brea HS has the Canyon high school meters from its campus, specifically for this purpose.

[ChristianBundy]

> murder drug dealing aggravated assault rape possession of a deadly weapon

Without punctuation, this sounds like a ridiculously specific and esoteric crime.

[shantly]

To be fair you're lucky if murder-drug merely deals aggravated assault. The means by which the deadly weapon became possessed (who knew this was going to take a turn for the supernatural?) is pretty distasteful, though.

[thatfrenchguy]

> Prior to Stuy, I was bullied like crazy, beaten, and it was very difficult to try and fit in with many of the others around me who, frankly, just didn't give a fuck. It really sucked

Can't we fix bullying in the first place ?

[onion2k]

Lots of child psychologists and teachers believe that parental involvement is key to stopping a child becoming a bully (eg parents actively engaging with their kids welfare) and the most common thing that stops parents being involved in bringing up their kids is poverty. Trying to fix poverty is weirdly controversial.

[jcims]

Is there some kind of consensus that bullies are predominately poor? Even if thats true on a quantitative basis, the bullies that count are the ones with social standing.

[hutzlibu]

Some even make it to president. Some even think, being a bully is mandatory for any higher position in politics ..

[eloff]

I wonder if it's better in old style schools not segmented by age. Then faster physical development gives much less of an advantage, and the immature younger students can have their behavior moderated by the older, hopefully more mature students. And older siblings can watch out for younger ones.

[Filligree]

Every study I've ever read says this is much better.

[lordgrenville]

I haven't given this topic a lot of thought, but at first glance it sounds like one of the very hardest problems imaginable to solve? It's hardwired deep into human psychology, and you have limited ways of affecting - or even communicating with - school-aged kids.

[hcurtiss]

I think we have several millennia of proof we cannot.

[throwaway3833]

> Prior to Stuy, I was bullied like crazy, beaten, and it was very difficult to try and fit in with many of the others around me who, frankly, just didn't give a fuck. It really sucked.

I want to echo this. I too was bullied like crazy (I was ridiculed/outcast for being "gay", in the homosexual sense, except I was completely straight. But that doesn't particularly matter to middle-schoolers. I was ridiculed for the clothing I wore (it fit funny as I grew in spurts) and was physically beat, too.)

Our local schools had some advanced schools ("tracked", as the article calls it); I applied. In my system, if you met the entrance requirements, your fate was tossed into a lottery. For one particular school, ~100 students were accepted from ~600 applicants. I was 500th on the waitlist for that school. (It was the worst of several.) I spent an extra year in my assigned school because of that, and it was hell. It was a gift from God when I got out of there the next year. (I got off one of the wait lists!)

It took ten years to really work through most of the resulting depression and confidence issues my time at my assigned school left me with. I have no idea if I would have succeeded if not for "tracked" education.

The author is wrong on several points:

> Eight Bay Area school districts found similar results when they de-tracked middle-school mathematics and provided professional development to teachers.

Perhaps it was the professional development, and not the de-tracking that led to better results? The link doesn't seem to support the author's conclusion, either, and largely seems to credit the professional development.

> [other remarked about "fixed-ability"] We are at a point where the negative impacts of fixed-ability thinking are undeniable.

I have never heard of "fixed-ability", and at least where I was, it was never the argument for separating out achieving students. The arguments was not that the lower-performing students weren't capable¹ of performing, it just simply that if you taught at their level, you were wasting the potential and the time of the students who were outperforming their peers, as you would have to teach significantly below their ability, which is inevitable when you cater to the lowest common denominator.

> When students, instead, embrace the knowledge that there are no limits to their learning, outcomes improve. When students develop a “limitless perspective” positive changes go through their lives,

And the bullies I was schooled along side with joined hands with the bullied and sang kumbaya. (/s) This is absurd.

> International studies show that the United States is one of the most tracked education systems in the world, but tracking hasn’t led to high achievement for the country.

Tracking is a symptom of people trying to escape the poor baseline education; it is not the cause of the poor baseline education, and eliminating it will not improve that.

> Instead, it has brought about stark racial divisions in opportunity and achievement.

Ah, now it's racist to want to receive an at level education? This argument was bantered around in my school system, and it never made any sense. Some combination of socio-economic standing and what generation you were mattered a whole lot more. (Those with good socioeconomic standing either moved out of system, or enrolled in private schools. First-generation kids — with the exception of the Hispanic community for whatever reasons — seemed to do considerably for whatever reasons. Our "tracked" schools were overrepresented in Asian and (I believe, but these demographics aren't measured) first-generation African-Americans, and under-represented in Hispanic and all other African Americans … and it only ever seemed to me that it was that last one that bothered people.

> Now is the time to invest in the teacher professional development that allows this to happen.

Sure, but this is orthogonal to eliminating tracked education. Add in that every government I've seen seems awfully reluctant to pay the teachers. (And you are paying them for the time they'll need to do this, right?)

> For when we tell students they can reach the sky, and provide them with opportunities to do so, amazing things happen.

This was as patronizing then as it is now.

I can't understand why someone is so eager to shut down the only thing that gave me a future.

¹many of them lacked discipline. They were poorly behaved children, and it's a miracle the teachers wanted to continue to be there at all, IMO. Many of them were clearly not getting discipline taught at home … and teachers are forbidden nowadays from imposing any meaningful discipline themselves.

> The other corollary to this, of course, is that on the last day of JHS, after having held my reactions entirely for nearly a decade, and just taking the beatings...I finally lost it. It was really bad, and on the last day of JHS I went absolutely apeshit on this kid for pushing me around and punching me, after I gave him three warnings. Easily one of the top 3 least proud moments of my life. That could have been avoided, too, though you could make an argument a large part of that was also due to it being taboo to actually talk to someone about your feelings in the 90s. I never wanted to fight back because I was afraid of hurting them (I had been training in martial arts for like 7-8 years) and because I didn't want to get in trouble. It was dumb.

On one of my final days prior to transferring out, I almost lost it on another kid. I think my body language threatened violence, and I think it scared him a bit because I'd never done that. We both still ended up getting dragged to the principal's office, though as I remember I wasn't punished. Today, I regret not actually exacting violence on him. Which runs incredibly contrary to most of what I think my own morals are. But do you just keep trying to fend off the incoming violence forever, or at some point take a stand that might actually make a difference? (It wouldn't be until much later that I read Ender's Game, which argues this very point.) (Or who knows, his friends might have come rushing to his aid, and it would not have been a fair fight at that point.) It was dumb.

[polotics]

This! Martial arts, in my case Judo where the first hour was just muscling up, made all the difference: being able to flip and never hit, let aggressors accidentally hit corners of things instead... In the US I don't know how this would have worked, depending on how high escalation can go. Still learning to fight is good advice for bullied kids.

[spurgu]

Reading this and the parent post makes me think that prisons are actually kind of like elementary school except for adults. Same kind of bullying, establishing pecking order, repercussions of snitching etc. Although a lot more dangerous/scary.

[nostrademons]

I have a life story similar to you up through middle-school - second pick for G&T, bullied heavily, repeated physical abuse from peers, ended up hanging out with losers who were into drugs both in middle & high school. After that it diverges though - I switched to a charter school for high school, went to a top liberal arts college, then worked at a couple startups and had a pretty prestigious position at Google. I've still got some scars from that time, but on paper at least, I did okay.

For me, being separated from the bullies made all the difference in the world. And it wasn't separation as in "hang around only with other smart kids" - my charter school was academically worse than the public school that I left behind, and like I said, I hung around with the stoners, rockers, and drop-outs. But the charter school focused explicitly on building community and accepting people for who they were. In short, it made it a point to address the emotional needs of teenagers that so many public institutions conveniently forget about. That made all the difference in the world.

For you - if you can muster the money or get insurance to pay for it, I'd highly recommend seeing a therapist that works with trauma. This stuff sticks with you a long time, but it doesn't have to define your life.

[kick]

I'm currently not in a position to be able to look up this stuff (making dinner), but Duke has done a lot of research on this stuff under their TIP program that basically everyone in this thread might be interested in: it validates your experiences in numbers as the default for gifted children/adolescents/teenagers when not helped structurally, and provides a reasonable amount of information and resources to try and offset some of their suffering.

There's nothing to really help people who've already experienced it, but seeing the numbers somehow really helped to put it in perspective for me.

It's kind of an epidemic at this point.

[gct]

I was in TIP. Hanging out with smart, kind kids every summer was the highlight of my year. Lotta great memories. Public school...not so much.

[sudosteph]

The TIP programs looked fun, shame they were so pricey. I kept getting the invites, but neither me nor anyone I knew had parents who could throw down for it. I do recall doing an excellent forensic science daytime camp program with the law enforcement training program at the community college though. It was only a couple of days long, but the instructor was great and it was a totally unique experience. Making summer programs more accessible and interesting would probably be a great thing for kids of all ability levels to be honest.

[why_only_15]

I was in TIP and CTY, and I would agree. That was always the best part of the year, and it provided a view into worlds I didn't know existed before. In fifth grade we studied recursion in math and all the kids there were smarter than me. The people were so much more interesting too. Life changing experiences.

[artificialLimbs]

"There's nothing ot really help people who've already experienced it." Exposure therapy. No, don't go trying to get into situations where you get bullied. Re-live your worst experiences in your head over and over again until it gets boring. Make sure you're in a comfortable setting and have some comfort devices nearby (food, a beer, family, etc...) Proven extremely effective in many psychological practices.

[kick]

I was specifically speaking in the context of Duke's programs; there are plenty of ways for people to try and recover from things elsewhere.

[faceplanted]

I've been reading this thread and honestly I'm getting the impression that it matters far more what the kids are separated _from_ that whether they're separated at all.

Which tallies with my own experience, in the UK there's secondary school and college (AKA sixth form) before university, which basically means the last two years of high school are separate from the first 5, you go to a different school (sometimes, some places have both on the same campus). And I made the choice to go to a college further out of my way that added 10 hours of cycling onto my commute every week pretty much so I'd never have to speak to anyone from my secondary again, the new place was just another college, no special grade requirements, but not being around the same people and being able to basically "reset" made my life so much better that I can't really argue that never separating kids is a good option.

[sudosteph]

Middle school is just terrible in general, I think. Not that high school is much better. But middle school was easily the worst part of my life, though in retrospect I'm thankful it at least wasn't physical bullying. Still, the emotional toll messed me up pretty good.

In my case, I still got bundled in with the "high achievers" in the IB honors program in HS, but it wasn't any better for self-esteem. The kids in that program weren't genuinely smarter or nicer for the most part - they just had parents who were wealthier and able to afford tutors/extra-curriculars plus stable home environments. The teachers in that program were incredibly unaccommodating to disabilities and there was a sickening elitism that the IB kids has towards everyone not in IB. The "normal" kids weren't the ones making me miserable, it was my peers.

I eventually couldn't take existing in that state, and the toll it all took on my mental health came to it's reasonable conclusion in the form of self-directed violence. Eventually transferred schools. Almost dropped out, but found a loophole that let me take some community college classes for credit and graduate a semester early, so I still got through.

Took me a long time to get perspective on all that. My only long-term friends I still have today from HS were from electives - they were skipping class and smoking up in HS. I never considered that option for myself (did no drugs at all back then), since I wasn't really interested in "coping" so much as getting out. But still, I don't think being separated helped at all. Sure I passed every test, but I was socially out of my depth the entire time. Just being surrounded by other young people in general can be a recipe for misery for people who can't fit in. I'd like to think online school would have been better, but not sure if being completely isolated would have just messed me up more in the long run.

Edit: left out a key word, "physical" bullying. There was definitely tons of the other sort.

[mynegation]

I started school in Russia in 80s. Back then there were no magnet schools in my small home town but now I realize that the ministry of education came up with a different solution to a bullying problem: a dedicated school for “special needs” children. I do not remember anyone being sent there for bad marks but repeated behavioral offenses would get you there. All the potential bullies were scared shitless to be sent there. It is one thing to be a bully and the strongest guy in the class and totally different to be in the class full of people exactly like you.

[Tade0]

We (still) have the same thing in Poland.

Interestingly, people actually graduate from these schools and sometimes go to college afterwards.

I think it's a better system - why make the victim switch schools when obviously they aren't the problem here?

[nitrogen]

Everyone advocating for forced abolition of private schools and high-wealth public districts needs to read this thread. Hits too close to home.

Bullying and peer pressure cause serious harm, not just emotionally but economically when good kids drop out of society. These harms would be magnified if kids who don't fit in with the crowd had even fewer options to escape.

[rtpg]

> These harms would be magnified if kids who don't fit in with the crowd had even fewer options to escape.

The idea isn't to just get rid of private schools, but to take money that goes into that and finance better public education (which can still include ways for people to move around if needed!)

Having a separate world for the rich means that kids who "don't fit in with the crowd" but don't have wealthy parents won't have any way out.

In an alternate world where more money is invested in the public system, having wealth would no longer be a necessary requirement for having access to alternatives.

[dragonwriter]

> Bullying and peer pressure cause serious harm, not just emotionally but economically when good kids drop out of society. These harms would be magnified if kids who don't fit in with the crowd had even fewer options to escape.

That's perhaps a good argument for having smaller free-and-equally-funded public schools with more within any given radius of every residence, with policies that leverage that to provide greater permitted and practical choice for students/parents independent of wealth, but unless freedom from bullying and peer pressure is desired to be gated by wealth I don't see how it opposes, in any way, abolition of either private schools or public districts with superior funding because the local residents are richer.

[tyjen]

This anecdote resonates with the experiences encountered by my child. What's interesting about our case is that we move every 2-4 years and experience five different states and school districts--all public schools. For reference, our child ordinarily tests in the 99th percentile for the normal battery of tests the school psychologists administered.

A Hawaiian school did not offer a G&T program due to a lack of funding for it. Participating in the normal classroom changed her to the point that it contributed to withdrawing her from school and we instead opted to home school. Coming from the mainland, Hawaii's general curriculum was behind and she became bored, faced relentless bullying from peers for being a "...know it all haole...," and found it difficult to make friends. She often came home with stories regarding the teacher spending significant time dealing with behavioral issues, negatively impacting instruction to the few children looking to learn. The teacher was also culpable for practicing a less engaging and micromanaging teaching style involving smothering children with worksheets during the school day, and forcing parents to initial all assignments and fill out learning logs at night. The teacher treated learning like a chore instead of a fun discovery process, and it killed her curiosity and motivation. After she was assaulted at her bus stop, we pulled her from school.

Fortunately, we only lived in Hawaii for a short time period and I was capable of taking a hiatus from professional life to home school her until we moved from Hawaii. We involved her in local home school groups to facilitate like-minded friendships and the customized, self-paced curriculum enabled her to make substantial strides in her subjects. Thankfully the damage done to her was temporary and she resumed her happy normal curious behavior.

In every other school with a G&T program, she has fit in and flourished. Good teachers, friends, and personal growth on her part. Not acknowledging that people have different aptitudes and motivations, then forcing them to learn from a cookie-cutter styled teaching program is a defunct social experiment gone awry. In our Hawaii case, it seemed like crabs in a bucket when it came to peer bullying. I get it, you're only as strong as your weak is a decent metaphor, but sometimes people and institutions are taking this concept to a degree that forces others down instead of boosting people up. I'm just guessing from personal experiences, but mixing students of all abilities appears to generate a net negative social welfare outcome.

[pdonis]

> I wish I had been better separated from the other kids. I would have been far happier in middle school just hanging around other nice, smart people.

As someone who had both experiences--being in classes that were separated for more advanced students, and being in classes that were not--I second this observation. I was much happier in the separated classes and got much more out of them.

[kazinator]

People separate as they go through life, and that should start in school. You shouldn't have to wait until you graduate.

[zebraflask]

I think the tenor of what you're trying to express is that smart kids shouldn't be abused for being smart. Not a controversial opinion.

Making them unnecessarily cut off from everyone else who isn't quite as "gifted" is worse, in a way. How is that kid going to get out of his/her bubble?

[Nasrudith]

The thing about "bubbles" is they are inherently normist based on population or status with nothing backing their actual validity. They are recipocial no matter how fucked up the objective differences are. "Man what kind of fucked up bubble are you in if you think burrying or burning your grandma instead of eating her is normal?".

To be frank we already let social norms over reason lead us into enough nightmares and stupid decisions - we shouldn't be encouraging them.

[spc476]

I was part of the "gifted crowd" from 5th grade (9-10 years old) up, and not all of my classes were of the "gifted" variety.

[mumblemumble]

I find this argument uncompelling insofar as "smart" is a crap proxy for "needs protection from bullying". And, insofar as kids who aren't particularly bright have every bit as much of a right to not be mistreated at school, if our key motivation here is keeping kids from being bullied, a solution that is only available to a select few kids who are sometimes perceived as having greater personal worth would be entirely missing the point. Bullying needs to be dealt with in a way that works for everyone.

[LaLaLand122]

This!

And as I did mention in another comment I still can barely believe the cases of bullying people describe here, they are horrible! I don't think bullying at such a level is a global problem. I suspect such huge bullying problems must be just a symptom of a deeper society issue. We had a kid with Down syndrome in class for 8 years of primary school and nobody did EVER put a finger on him. By 12 years old I had known my classmates my whole live, quite a few of them also from activities outside school. I didn't like all of them, we had arguments which were not always handled diplomatically, but we had some basic decency towards each other.

Bullying and whether kids should be separated by ability are two orthogonal problems.

[rowanG077]

Your points don't have much to do with being gifted though. Is it fine if "normal" kids get physically assaulted and bullied?

[widowlark]

I hope all is well now, thanks for sharing.

[adamnemecek]

How old are you?

[jancsika]

> Separating gifted children for accelerated learning is great. Ignoring social development by blindly sticking all kids together in unstructured environments where bullying and physical abuse is allowed to persist will override any hope for some kids.

I had no idea that calls to public_policy return type bool.

[seamyb88]

Sounds like you have some real problems in your society for that bad experience at school. Surely if you're the gifted individual you claim you are, you'll want to change society rather than seclude yourself from it as much as you can get away with. The non-gifted kids, whatever the fuck that means, don't deserve to bullied/abused either.

[borski]

The non-gifted kids (to use your terminology) weren't bullied or abused. They were friends. They played sports together. I played sports too, just not with them, because I wasn't invited to. I wasn't 'cool.' I 'tried too hard.' I 'cared too much about learning.'

Not sure what you're going for here?

[seamyb88]

I added a "non" to the word in the title of the post to indicate the opposite of that thing. But my terminology.

[borski]

You followed it up by "whatever the fuck that means," implying that you were unclear on what 'gifted' (or the opposite thereof) meant in the first place. I wasn't looking to get into a debate on what it means to be gifted or not, and thus I was making it very clear that I was using your verbiage, and not being disparaging.

[downerending]

No one deserves to be bullied. And I'd be pretty okay with permanently removing bullies from the general population.

That said, in my experience, the gifted/nerdy/aspy kids got the lion's share of the bullying. I still carry it with me decades later, and at least one of my comrades in misery killed herself because of it.

[wwright]

Do you not feel that gifted/nerdy/aspy kids reciprocated?

It might just be that I’m a complete asshole, but I grew up in Mississippi feeling very isolated and estranged from everyone around me. I think I definitely felt like I was bullied when I was very young. But by high school and college, I was being outright toxic to people.

If I am generous to myself, a lot of that could be attributed to anxiety, depression, lack of examples of how to behave pro-socially in my life, being in Mississippi (which as far as I can tell might truly be the worst place in all of the US). But I was still as much of bully as a lot of other people, maybe more.

I don’t think that’s an isolated event.

[catalogia]

In my school, the 'gifted/nerdy' group had significant (but not complete) overlap with the 'socially/athletically outgoing' group, with the 'aspy' kids sprinkled around and generally respected by their peers. A lot of the dichotomies being described in this thread are therefore alien to me.

The bigger divide was between the 'gifted/nerdy/popular/athletic' group and the 'prone to violence, nihilistic body modification and hard drug use' group. Those kids weren't cool though. Drug use, poor grades, and criminal records all disqualified people from participating in sports, which negatively impacted their ability to socialize.

I think sports are a big equalizer. Through a shared enthusiasm for a sport, a stereotypical 'aspy nerd' and 'popular jock' can come to understand and respect each other. I don't think there is much else in the public school system quite as effective at tearing down these barriers as a healthy athletics program.

[nitrogen]

Sounds like a good school.

In my home town, sports were incredibly divisive, and football was the worst. Teachers were expected to go easy on football players. Football players got mostly ignored for shoplifting and other misbehavior. Football players even excluded other football players if they seemed too nerdy. Football players dumped a swimming pool full of sand on student body officers during a school assembly. Every student was forced to attend pep rallies to promote the football games.

Not every athlete was an athhole, but the general tenor was violent and rude to anyone not in their peer group.

[Kaiyou]

I never had any enthusiasm for sport, though and felt trying hard to win at a sport is stupid. Always tried to sit everything out. On the other hand, I also felt trying hard to achieve good results in other subjects isn't worth the effort, since the material was mostly useless with the exception of math. But there I never had to try hard, though, I probably would have, if it was more challenging and also interesting.

[chimi]

In toxic environments, the individual is forced to choose to be a target or be a bully. You chose to be a bully to survive. That is expected. If you'd chosen to be a target, you might be dead.

Unfortunately, it's very difficult to unlearn those bully behaviors that enabled you to survive. Had you instead been able to focus your attention on developing your gifts and confidence, you would be much better off right now and society too, I imagine.

[downerending]

I'm sure that happens, but it didn't in my cohort. If you whip a dog for a while, it'll fight. Whip it for long enough, though, and it will just lay down helpless. That's what I saw.

[seamyb88]

Do you have kids?

Suppose you have two. One's into javascript and dungeons and dragons. The other's not great academically. No good at football either, and they still behave in a slightly awkward way. But great person, all the same.

So, you condemn the latter child to the cesspit that is public life and protect the former? Or think up a better policy?

[chimi]

The gifted kids are bullied by their very nature, because they are different. They have abilities that create envy in others. That envy prompts bullying to neutralize their abundance.

Someone with abundance in a community of scarcity is a target for bullying. That bullying robs the individual and society of those gifts.

So, yes, we protect the gifted, precisely so their gifts survive to benefit all of society, including the bullies. That's the irony. The gifted want by their nature to share their gifts and do so -- even with the bullies and at their own expense.

The average individual is much less likely to be bullied and thus need less protection.

[seamyb88]

I went to a Grammar school and am finishing a PhD. Pretty damn nerdy. These gifted wonder kids you speak of... you reckon they aren't going to bully? I was selected at the age of 11 and told how magnificent I was. Growing up was still tough.

"It'll all be ok if we keep away from the riff-raff" doesn't do anything but say "we can only really afford to educate X amount of kids". This lot are brick layers.

Of course who am I talking to? I don't know. Might be somebody who thinks gifted means Daddy has a yacht.

[chimi]

I had a single mom with a government job. Being discovered as gifted saved my life. I am still bullied to this very day. Most recently I was fired by bullies for refusing to write illegal software and now the company could be in serious legal trouble.

Gifted people don't escape bullying by growing up and it has immeasurably costly ramifications for society at large.

[marcusverus]

Allowing kid A the opportunity to move at an accelerated pace with other high achieving kids does not affect the opportunity afforded to kid B. Education is not a zero-sum game.

[ls612]

But social status is a zero sum game and that’s the dirty little secret of the people opposed to tracking. They can’t seem to improve their own kids’ lot so they hurt other kids’ opportunities instead.

[pmoriarty]

"The hope to change the world is a childish illusion. You have to change yourself."

Marie-Louise Von Franz