Education

So I wanted to respond to this post by a friend of mine and decided that what I had to say was too long for comments.

This blog entry actually overlaps part of a conversation we had at a Super Bowl party a few weeks ago, but I'd like to gel what I am saying.

Some background:

I was designated as gifted at a very early age. It was determined that I was not "emotionally mature" enough to be skipped ahead and like my friend, I found myself isolated into special sections. The only classes I ended up in with my classmates was art and gym at the Catholic elementary school. I was in separate classes for language arts, math, and I never took phonics because I read when I was 2 1/2. I went there until 5th grade when I transferred to a 5-12 prep school. All of a sudden school became hard.

By 6th grade I experienced much of what Jackie mentions in the first paragraph of her blog. I don't think it was a low view of my own abilities, but the problem was that I had never learned how to work. Up until then I had never been pushed and never had to work hard; school had been easy for me. My last year in Catholic school was punctuated by my teacher throwing my desk across the room because I was not paying attention. Learning how to work is really, in my opinion, the most important thing to someone to whom everything is easy. This was at the heart of my underperformance in the following years.

By the time I graduated high school, I had taken a few APs and had good SAT scores, but below average grades. My transcript had smart-lazy written all over it. In true ironic fashion, the classes I did worst in were math (see the end). My math tutor, Mrs. Gerstle was the only thing standing between me and failure in math and thankfully she was a large woman. She made me sit in one place and concentrate. I credit the time I spent with her in laying the groundwork for my later development.

Unlike Jackie, I don't completely discount what the separate classes did for me. Although I have my complaints about them, had I been left in regular class, I would be in jail right now. As it was, it's a miracle I am not. I attribute my felonious bearing more to my personality and Jackie's outcome to hers.

In my opinion, the "profound boredom" she experienced was a failure of the school system to adequately handle gifted and talented kids. In many ways the schools are trained and prepared to respond to G & T kids with less effort and resources than special education and troubled children. I too felt as if "they didn't know what to do with me." The most important time to develop these skills is in the first 5 years of learning. In my case, by the time 6th grade rolled around, I had been negatively conditioned and it was too late.

There were two other factors that kept me from incarceration. Unlike Jackie, I was afforded the advantage of having very encouraging parents. My mother, in particular, was a teacher in a school for the gifted and knew how to encourage me and foster my intellectual growth. To me it was expected to be an intellectual. We didn't have a tv in the house or a radio in the car to foster debate. My parents both have PhDs. The other factor, and one Jackie and I have discussed, is that I went to prep school. Despite my grades, I got into good colleges with scholarships mostly based on my test scores and the weight of my school's name.

The reality is that prep schools like this make a difference and give children more options. However much we hope to achieve a meritocracy, Harvard, Yale, and Stanford's doors are open wider to prep school kids. And although I appreciate my undergraduate and graduate educations, thus far, top ten schools have much higher standards and much better training. I'm not kidding myself when I see that top ten programs do in a semester what we take 3 semesters to do.

A sidenote: I was expelled from my first college after my 1st semester and didn't begin school again until I was 27. I spent time homeless and drug addicted in between, oh, and became an award winning executive chef. One of the most important influences on me returning to education was the fact I went to this school. Out of my small group of friends in high school, only 2 of us don't have a PhD or an MD and I'm working on mine. Being around people like this made getting a college education important.

So to answer Jackie's final questions:

And what to do with a smart kid?

Put them into as challenging an environment as you can as early as possible.

Isolate them or surround them only with other smart kids, praise them or treat them as if nothing about them was special?

Isolation is bad, but so is surrounding them with only other smart kids. Make school be about other smart kids and foster a healthy social life outside of school with all types of kids.

Send them to regular schools so they get normal social activity, or send them to magnet or private schools so that their potential gets fully realized?

See above. I never hung out with kids from school. I think you also learn certain social skills being in a private school environment. Although much of the world doesn't live that way, I believe that it is important to be able to comport oneself in any social situation with ease. Being comfortable when invited to your boss' mansion is an important skill. People don't like to be around people who are uncomfortable.

Encourage them to see themselves as special or superior, or keep their intelligence an open secret so that other kids still want to play with them?

Treat them as if it is totally normal to be reading at at 8th grade level in 3rd grade, as if it it the most natural thing to read Dante at 13, and all 10 year olds want to debate the electoral college.

Raising kids is the most daunting thing in the world. The important thing is not to dwell on what you think might be a mistake, because you never know what might happen and how your "mistake" might have influenced your children in a positive, meaningful way. I only hope my kids are as great as Jackie's....I have a fear my kids will be jocks and cheerleaders and hate learning.

So the final punchline is that I am working on a PhD in economics, doing graduate level mathematics on a daily basis.