Re:Why I pulled my son out of a school for 'gifted' kids
by contingencies on Tuesday November 03, 2015 @08:16PM
(#10503943)
Same but 1.5 years fatherhood here. My wife and I chose earlier this year to stay in China instead of migrating to Europe or Australia/New Zealand for our daughter's early education. There seem to be a decent number of concerned parents living here and we are collectively considering starting an independent school to avoid the currently poor options (extreme creationist Christian international school, Chinese primary schools) in a few years' time. There is some interest in established alternative models (Montessori, etc.). What struck me about the article was that they broke children in to groups even within the high potential performance group, and that was dumb. Thinking back to my own gifted/talented schooling experience in Australia, that never happened... we were all exposed to exactly the same challenges and often worked to overcome them as a group, which on the face of it seems a more realistic/adult approach to learning and work.
Kids need fun and excitement to grow. They'll all eventually learn their ABC's and far beyond. How far beyond, though, is unrelated to how early they learn their ABC's. Rather how confident and interested they are in what they're doing. That, and genetics, which no amount of training will change. This seems obvious when you let yourself step outside the education rat race for a second.
And then going back to the "far beyond" ... How far beyond do we need to get? I personally got to graduate level math and did well enough. Yet I'm still mostly (and happily) writing web software that I could have done with a high-school education or less. And working for (excellent) managers that were not even close to being child prodigies.
We adults are the ones with the experience to know what is important, so why do we warp this knowledge when we apply it to our kids?