[4778468d]

I think 12 year old kids need to be 12 year old kids and go to the same school and class with other 12 year old kids and be 12 years old.

There’s a lot to be said for being ordinary, and living an ordinary life, even if you’re super smart. Our society worships the idea of being some sort of extraordinary super person, even if it’s not good for them.

[colanderman]

I agree about the social aspects, but smart kids emphatically do not do well when mixed with academically average social peers. They get bored with the material, develop disdain for those who can't keep up with them (including teachers), and overall develop an unhealthy relationship with society and schooling itself.

Better is to get said kids into programs with other smart kids their age, where they can be intellectually stimulated, but continue to develop normally socially. The younger the better; suddenly being tossed into such a program after being the smartest (and possibly most isolated) kid in the room for a decade doesn't bode well for one's psyche either.

Wealthy families effectively have access to such programs via private schools, whose curriculum is often a year or two ahead of public schools. Good luck finding such a setup in a public school system, or even finding public school teachers who can provide adequate individual instruction of advanced students: the pay to retain such teachers isn't there.

I don't know what the solution is, but I think it at least involves funding public school better.

[topkai22]

Depending on how far out on the curve a kid is, there are options in many places. Gifted and talented programs exist in many if not most places. In multiple areas I’ve lived, the “local” (it might be over an hour away) university has offered some form of extremely talented youth program, although perhaps not at 12.

For kids who are so smart that those programs aren’t enough, it often stops becoming a question of money and more just numbers- kids that are 1/100,000 level smart and live in an area where there are a million people, then the school system sees less than one of you per year/grade. There aren’t enough “peers” to get a full class together.

I’m with you that GATE programs are beneficial and worth funding, but there will always be exceptions that a general program can’t cover and I can believe this kid is one of them.

[colanderman]

I agree re: the kid in TFA; college at 12 is absolutely an outlier.

For my family the problem with gifted & talented programs was money. I did end up taking some courses at the local community college. But e.g. when the opportunity to participate in the Johns Hopkins CTY program came up, my parents couldn't afford it so I did not do so.

(In fact in adulthood I ended up teaching at CTY for three years. It is absolutely a program I would have benefited from as a youth, but very much skewed toward children of wealthy parents. I distinctly remember one session I taught, how much trouble the one public school kid had fitting in. The kid who flew in on a private jet found more in common with his classmates.)

[TigeriusKirk]

I think it's an extreme position to believe even the most extraordinary should be forced into an ordinary life.

I think that's much more harmful to those people than letting them be different in the ways that they actually are different.

And it's a lasting harm, one that will linger with them their entire lives.

[GGfpc]

I understand the social aspect, but I don't see anything good stemming from forcing a kid to stay in a class learning about things he's way ahead of.

[catsareevil]

Not wanting to kill himself because he's completely lost socially, bullied and a social outcast.

Just skipping one grade can completely destroy you socially.

I've experienced it to a lesser extent, and 15 years later I'm still broken mentally, I'm bipolar, I most likely have some sort of PTSD, I take 3 meds daily, and I have suicidal thoughts since I'm 6 or 7yo, and I'm 100% sure most of that wouldn't have happened if I had been just average in school and didn't skip any grades. I would literally give everything to go back in time and prevent my parents from allowing it.

DON'T allow your kids to skip a grade, unless maybe if you're rich and can afford to pay for a good private school for gifted kids. Just DON'T.

[Viliam1234]

Bullying is a frequent and horrible experience at schools, but it also happens to many kids who don't skip a grade. Do you believe that skipping a grade increases the risk?

It seems that, statistically, skipping a grade is a positive experience for gifted kids. (Sorry, can't find the link to research now.) I also skipped a grade, and I have no complaints. I spent less time in the pathological environment of the educational system, and still had the same credentials at job market.

Maybe it matters which grade you skip. I think the strategic choice is the last grade in given school. So you don't end up as the only new kid in an existing class, but are simply one new kid among many.

[boublepop]

Some people used to think that “woman needed to be woman” and “blacks needed to be blacks”. I would categorically argue that nothing, absolutely nothing good came out of that sort of thinking. Why do you care about his age? He’s a boy ready for uni, so let the boy attend uni. Perhaps if society cared a little less about organizing people neatly into boxes bases on product color, feature set and production age, it would be easier for those who come out ahead of their peers expeditions to live comfortably in it.

[okprod]

My mom always used to say that average people are the most special people in the world. And that's why God made so many.

[phobosanomaly]

Your mom sounds like a really good mom.

[sunstone]

Exceptionally talented kids whether it be sports, music, math, chess etc. should go to normal schools and receive training relevant to their gift in a separate setting. Their schooling doesn't have to be an either or choice.

[colanderman]

I agree, but unfortunately access to those programs is typically not free. The best an academically gifted public-school child can hope for is either the existence of a (free) after-school enrichment program run by a benevolent teacher, or to be bumped up a grade or two in their subject of talent (which typically only works in later grades, when students have more flexible schedules).

My own experience as a public school child was following the latter course (bumped up two years in math in high school), but that was only an option because (a) I was in one of the best public schools in the state, and (b) my mother was herself a teacher, and could navigate the system to fight to open that option to me. But that only worked for one year – before that, it logistically wasn't an option (so teachers would just isolate me with a special workbook); after that, well, there were no higher-level math courses offered (so I just didn't take math and instead dicked around in the AV club room for an hour each day).

[sunstone]

Too bad it couldn't have been you and Walter Pitts in the library with the pencil.

[jdeibele]

My daughters attended a local public program where students had to achieve at least 99% on certain tests. The program started out relatively central, then was moved further out. The year after my younger daughter left, the program was split into two, with elementary students as far east as it was possible to go and still be in the district and the middle schoolers as far south.

The district would clearly like to kill the program. It used to be possible to get high school credit for the science classes and the district did away with that.

The one opportunity that students have in some other local schools to advance is to do Compacted Math, where they do 7th and 8th Grade mathematics plus algebra in 2 years instead of the usual 3.

Nowhere in the district is there an opportunity to go faster in English or anything else.

What I would have liked for my daughters is to be able to go to local schools and still have some advanced classes. Their local middle school has 3 classes from one school, 4 from another, and another 4 from a 3rd school. There's 275 kids in a grade. Surely there could be 1 or 2 classes for the fast learners and extra help for some others?

No way, that's tracking and the district refuses to do it.

[Viliam1234]

It would be wonderful if normal schools would provide optional advanced lessons in many subjects!

Among other reasons, it would be wonderful, because some kids are exceptionally talented in one area, but some of them are exceptionally talented in two or three different areas. Currently, if you are talented e.g. in art and math, you have to choose between a normal school, art school, or math school... but there is no option to get advanced art and math.

(Advanced lessons are better than skipping grades, because skipping means "the same thing, only faster", while advanced lessons could also be "deeper". I don't have a good example for this, but imagine that normals kids spend e.g. one month learning about squares and one month learning about triangles... then the faster option would be only three or two weeks learning the same information about each... while the deeper option would be also learning one month about squares, but learning more facts about them, and then one month learning more facts about triangles. Except, it's not just more facts, but also more connections between the facts, etc.)

Also, it is great if kids exceptional in one subject can interact with kids exceptional in other subjects. I have seen great school projects, for example a computer game where the code was written by a computer science talented kid, and the pictures and music were created by their artistically talented classmates. More impressive than a typical computer game generated by math school students, where the physics engine is awesome... but, no offense meant, the aesthetics is usually quite meh.

Finnish schools seem to provide more flexibility to students; instead of everyone in the same grade following the same schedule, you have some freedom to choose classes. On the other hand, kids exceptional in one subject are typically encouraged by teachers to focus on the remaining subjects, rather than further improve the one they already excel in. The culture values balance, not extremes. (I was told so by a Finnish student.)

And perhaps if we use more computer education in the future, it would be easier (and cheaper) to allow different students progress at their natural pace. Instead of normal and advanced classes, we could have literally each student proceed at a different speed... at a computer. And teachers could then provide consultations, individually or in small groups.

Unfortunately, the same prejudices that people have against schools for gifted children, also apply to talented classes. If your dogma is that no one is really different from others, then no one is allowed to be different from others even for one lesson a week.

There are also technical problems, like if you have 40 kids in a grade, then if their talents are on a bell curve, you get 1 kids exceptional in math, and maybe 2 more half-exceptional kids, and the rest is normal or bad at math. You cannot make a separate lesson for 1 kid or 3 kids; and splitting the class 20:20 will not provide that 1 kid what they need.

[garmaine]

I went to college early too. Not 12 years old, but young enough for it to be a social issue. This is child abuse, plain and simple.

[balnaphone]

I went to university at 14 to study math, no problems. I had a good experience. I wish I went earlier, because years are worth more when you're young. The university environment was far superior, both socially and academically.

[jki275]

I went to college at 12. I enjoyed it, it wasn't abuse.

This kid will be fine.