<p>What makes me sad is that there can be harsh penalties if one chooses to listen to popular wisdom and just "live and let live," "do your own thing," and stop "trying to keep up with the Joneses." I've learned that it's quite naive to think I or my children can choose not to "play the game." Regrettably, those Jones kids will be trying out for the same team as your child, will be auditioning for the same seats in the orchestra, and willl be applying to the same colleges as your son or daughter. So as long as Mr. Jones or Mrs. Patel are willing to wake their child up at 5 every morning to study math, or practice tennis, or play the violin, then your child is obliged to go to similar lengths to stay competitive. Yes, there are many opportunities, but in a large school district your son can't, for example, show up to try out for the middle school soccer team and expect to make it if he hasn't been playing travel soccer since age 8 like the other kids have. You can't just decide that it's OK if he doesn't get private training and practice night and day, because he's not trying to be a star--he'd just like to play. When 100 kids are trying for 22 spots, your son won't get that chance to just play. (and before anyone mentions intramurals, they don't exist at the high school level here.)</p>
<p>The GFG:</p>
<p>I have indeed read about such districts and I know one often has to play by the rules of whatever game. My Ss were not in activities that were competitive or for which spots were limited, so we did not have to put up with such rules. S1 took music lessons but did not take part in competitions; he took karate lessons to a high level, but disliked team sports or competitive sports. S2 loved being on the Science Team as much for the social element as for the science learning. Competitions were just catalysts for finishing team projects. Maybe other kids who played sports or tried out for the various local orchestras encountered more competition, I would not know. </p>
<p>Perhaps the sense of competitiveness is less in our district because the high achievers are a smaller proportion of the student population than at a similar sized suburban school. Or perhaps, the k-8 ethos carries over into high school.</p>
<p>marite: Good point. But I don't think applied science projects could proceed without critical reasoning skills and an ability to follow scientific method. A kid who tinkers on a mechanical engineering project still has to conduct research or at least apply existing science in a new way. Materials science data, for example, would allow him to improve on his hypothesis. THis is where a mentor could be brought in to help the young scientist explore advanced CAD/CAM or have access to or understand the industrial process. All spawned by the kid's natural curiosity and aptitude. The kid GFG posted about was definitely in the applied science category.</p>
<p>Stickershock:</p>
<p>I agree that applied science should be given more prominence. Besides the practicality, it would attract the tinkerers. The Science Team's favorite project was always the Rube Goldberg contraption.</p>
<p>marite, I just realized I must have given the impression that I personally developed these implants. It's hubby who tinkers there, not me. There would be a lot of crippled people hobbling around if I were designing them.</p>
<p>I do see how a project in certain fields would be harder for a high schooler to do by himself than say mechanical engineering.</p>
<p>A while ago I recall reading about a young lady who completed a wonderful science project in the field of chemistry--I think it was for the Westinghouse competion. This was another example of research which was credible and age-appropriate. One day when she was warming up a plate of food in the microwave she began to wonder if any chemicals were leeching out of the plastic wrap into her food. So, she set up a project to test that hypothesis and did indeed discover that certain harmful (I think even carcinogenic) chemicals were indeed found in food cooked with wrap.</p>
<p>This thread has taken some interesting turns. I want to address The GFG's invocation of "harsh penalties" for not keeping up with the Patels in the child-pushing department.</p>
<p>I struggle a bit with this, too. I am blessed with high-achieving kids, but not necessarily with driven kids. They do not naturally do what some of the other children discussed here have done. My older child has wanted to be a writer since she was 10, and has in fact spent hours and hours, week after week, writing, often beautifully, but she also goes through weeks and months of fallow periods where she hates what she writes and winds up watching Buffy DVDs. Her academic record has always been less than perfect, because she is rarely willing to devote herself to things she finds boring (most math, French vocabulary). My younger child is a natural student -- although not necessarily flashy and brilliant like his sister -- who is amply rewarded for his efforts: lots of numbers, lots of prizes. He has a full plate of ECs (including the vaunted "leadership positions"), a paying job, and a longstanding internship in a paleontology lab (which consists of autoscribing dinosaur fossils, giving tours to little kids, and shooting the breeze about evolution, the job market, and sports with postdocs). And he tap dances. And he has chosen to do all of that (and most of it on public transportation, to boot). But he does not push himself to the extent he could. In fact he attracts a certain amount of resentment from the science-competition kids because he gets some of the strokes from his science faculty they regard as theirs by right, without putting in the hours they do. He has spent the summer as a camp counselor, not in a lab. A fair amount of energy gets expended on crushes on girls.</p>
<p>So Harvard and Yale were out of reach for my daughter, and maybe for my son, too. They are wonderful, but perhaps not quite the sparkly wonderful of the kids who find themselves in those places. Is that a "harsh penalty"? In the end, I think not. They both have wonderful educational opportunities. I love Harvard and Yale -- extensive family connections at one; the other my alma mater -- but they are not the be-all and end-all of existence, or even of education. I am convinced that my children will have every chance to become who they are going to be in a great educational environment. At this particular turn of the demographic wheel, they may not be at the tippy-top, but being at the tippy-top of someone else's scale is not really a valid end in itself, and certainly not the appropriate center of an 18-year-old's existence.</p>
<p>Of course, sometimes my wife and I think, "If only we had applied a liiiitttle more pressure . . . " But we have applied plenty of pressure, usually without meaning to. We apply pressure just by being there. These days, I find myself trying to turn down the pressure rather than ratcheting it up. It would be a Pyrrhic victory to get one of my children to do something for me rather than for them at this stage of their lives.</p>
<p>And I don't want -- and I don't want them -- to feel any resentment toward the Intel finalists and civic leaders in their cohort. As I have made clear, I hope, I admire those kids, without regarding them as superhuman. None of them is taking anything that belongs to my kids, and none of them is "better" or "worse" than my kids, either. Their accomplishments and their rewards should be appreciated for what they are without diminishing others and without demonizing them (or their parents). </p>
<p>(I knew "pushed" kids back in the day, too. Some of them indeed crashed and burned; some not. One of them was Chris Gabrieli, a child of immigrant research scientists, who seems to have done OK but still wants to win stuff.)</p>
<p>(Re the sports: This situation is upsetting, because I loved playing sports growing up, even if my children never have. But at the end of the day, if high school sports is going to be a little imitation of D1 or professional sports, I would not want my "just play" child to have to deal with that. Indeed, I reluctantly supported my son dropping wrestling, which he loved, because it became clear that remaining a wrestler -- in a not-that-competitive program -- would mean giving up everything else he cared about. I suppose I could have tried to organize some club sports, but I didn't.)</p>
<p>The GFG and anyone knowledgeable:</p>
<p>She posed a great question (one that some have wondered about). Did she need access to a lab and special equipment/chemicals to test her hypothesis? </p>
<p>When S was taking a Biotech class, he and a classmate were told to design their own project as they both were too advanced for the class. They devised one which sounded very interesting, but they needed special materials which could only be acquired through labs--and they did not have access to labs. So that was the end of that experiment.</p>
<p>GFG: I'm too lazy to look it up, but didn't a girl recently win Intel (or another biggie) by researching how our overuse of antibacterial soaps & cleansers was contributiong to the mutation of germs into "super-bugs" like MERSA? Another clever project inspired by a kid with natural scientific inquisitiveness.</p>
<p>Soovie,
I feel that Marite's posts to me have been extremely rude. Before you lecture me, please have the courtesy of rereading my posts. If you still believe she didn't make things up and attribute thoughts and verbiage which I never thought or said, I will be happy to apologize.</p>
<p>I think we are all bringing up or have brought up gifted children. Some of the posters have degrees in education. I value everyone's opinion, but there is a fine line between deliberately misreading or misattributing one's thoughts in order to emphasize one's own point and politely disagreeing. When I think the line is crossed, I say so.</p>
<p>JHS:</p>
<p>You make some very good points. Many parents and students seem to see admissions into top colleges as a prize, a reward, and not getting into some dream school as a personal affront. I never could understand the lament of students who were rejected from their dream school (another problematic concept): "Four years of hard work for nothing." As if the only reason to study History or Math was so they could get into HYP or wherever.
And the sad thing is that there are so many excellent schools.</p>
<p>A childhood for a superachiever (based upon personal experience) would make time for winning national music competitions. Then hanging out with friends. Winning Intel. Then going to the movies with friends. Representing the US in international chess tournaments. Then playing chess with an 80-year old Greek gentleman and having the grace to lose...deliberately. Surfing the net...feeding the poor...swimming...going to baseball games....solving complex problems....helping one's grandmother paint the house...building a rocket for a science fair...weeding the yard...babysitting for a mom who has to go get chemotherapy. Going to Disneyland with friends. Reading Proust. At the end of the day, one not only has a highly accomplished child, but one who has a conscience, the ability to interact with many different kinds of people and one who gives as well as receives. This has nothing to do with envy...this has everything to do with balance, perspective, and the fact that, at the end of the day, when this superachieving gifted child graduates with his PhD from Harvard, he still has to get along with and work with others, and give back to society. One of the most important aspects of childhood is to instill a very strong moral compass....because that is what I'm afraid is getting skewed these days.</p>
<p>Symphonymom, this type of discourse: "childhood for a superachiever (based upon personal experience) would make time for winning national music competitions. Then hanging out with friends. Winning Intel. Then going to the movies with friends. Representing the US in international chess tournaments. Then playing chess with an 80-year old Greek gentleman and having the grace to lose...deliberately. Surfing the net...feeding the poor...swimming...going to baseball games....solving complex problems....helping one's grandmother paint the house...building a rocket for a science fair...weeding the yard...babysitting for a mom who has to go get chemotherapy. Going to Disneyland with friends. Reading Proust. At the end of the day, one not only has a highly accomplished child, but one who has a conscience, the ability to interact with many different kinds of people and one who gives as well as receives." ....</p>
<p>that, I think is what gets you on the wrong side of people on this post. You seem to be in the business of deciding formulas for how kids should have a childhood that imbues them with the proper character. </p>
<p>As someone in the mental health business, I can tell you that there is simly NO Formula for the outcome you desire. You can have one child who likes to do math problems in most of his spare time, but with good parenting that teaches and models respect and empathy for others, that child can turn out to be as or more caring, helpful, and socially adept than the child who includes lots of social activities and working in soup kitchens. And likewise, the youngster who has an unstructured summer spent relaxing, reading, and gazing at stars may be no more content than the one who went to math camp followed by debate camp followed by music camp....if this is what they choose. Some kids' minds are like a muscle that itches to be used and challenged all the time. Some kids need a lot of down time to regroup, or be creative. </p>
<p>There are many ways to become the whole person you desire. That "math camp kid" may get great satisfaction from helping kids for whom math doesn't come as easy (my son actually did a lot of that through school). There simply are a myriad of paths to Rome.</p>
<p>from JHS: "And I don't want -- and I don't want them -- to feel any resentment toward the Intel finalists and civic leaders in their cohort. As I have made clear, I hope, I admire those kids, without regarding them as superhuman. None of them is taking anything that belongs to my kids, and none of them is "better" or "worse" than my kids, either. Their accomplishments and their rewards should be appreciated for what they are without diminishing others and without demonizing them (or their parents)."</p>
<p>YES! This is the balance I am always trying to find. Sometimes I still sway to one side or another, though. But I always tell the parents who struggle with this what I tell myself: it's a big world out there. Opportunities and honors are not like pies, such that if someone takes a slice that means there is one fewer slice available for your child. When someone does well, it should enrich us all, not make us feel less. I feel miserable when other parents give me the cold shoulder out of jealousy because of what my kids accomplish, so I make a point to be very nice to folks whose kids have just earned an honor so that their joy over it is not diminished. Even if I feel a bit jealous, the act of being gracious helps to adjust that inner balance.</p>
<p>GFG-- I said it before and although my tongue is still firmly in cheek I'll say it again.... you should move. I cannot imagine a hell more insidious than the community you describe.</p>
<p>There are lots and lots of places in this country where a smart kid (especially one with educated parents) can spend their HS years exploring, learning, having fun with their peers, seeing a movie with a significant other, contributing to the community, having a job, spending time with elderly grandparents, etc. all without jeapordizing their admission to college, and NOT competing with a kid who gets up at 5 am to cram. </p>
<p>However, I think it takes an enormous amount of parental discipline to pull this off, regardless of the baby boomlet, regardless of how competitive other people in your neighborhood appear to be, etc. But it's definitely within reach.</p>
<p>I worked full time since my kids were born, and for most of their childhood, we just didn't have the cash or the time to haul them around to activities. So-- they played in the yard. My leisure time with them was spent at the library (free) or feeding the ducks or some other inane activity. Their father was always teaching them how to snake a drain or paint a baseboard, or whatever repairs were neccessary around the house, since that's how he spent his free time with them. They didn't know karate or know how to ski but I imagine they'll be pretty desireable mates down the road!</p>
<p>I remember a neighbor asking with envy how she could make her kids into "readers" like mine.... I said that we went to the library every week and that seemed to do the trick. She told me, "oh, no way would we have time for that.... they kids have a lesson every afternoon after school and weekends are for sports practices." So the same mom called when my son was a hs junior to ask for a referral to an SAT tutor.... I told her I'd been too cheap to pay for one. She was astonished. Who has their kid take the SATs without a tutor?</p>
<p>The one thing we paid for-- willingly- was CTY, which for my kids was a life-altering experience. It was blissfully non-competetive but very challenging academically and a really supportive social environment.</p>
<p>We made peace early on with the fact that it didn't matter if our kids were at the tippy top of some artifical pyramid (gifted, super acheiving, Ivy bound, however you defined it) as long as they were exposed to lots of different ideas and people, and as long as they were using their god given gifts in a productive way. The HS summer that many of my son's friends were doing impressive-sounding internships, he was mopping floors at a fast-food restaurant for minimum wage. They wrote college essays about curing cancer; he wrote about how to get grease out of a polyester uniform.</p>
<p>My point is not to hector you.... just that we all make thousands of choices along the way-- some conscious (no money for SAT prep) and some not (kids who spend lots of time in libraries reading hundreds and hundreds of books, even if it's just out of boredom, tend not to need SAT tutoring by the time they get to HS). These choices will dictate the kind of childhoods our kids have even if we live in a competitive neighborhood, even if our peers have completely lost their minds; even if our society has adapted a winner take all mentality.</p>
<p>There are still things you can do to maintain the balance in your own household. It's important to approach the college process as a journey you're all taking together, rather than see it as the Miss America pageant where only one winner gets to wear a crown. My son ended up at MIT; two years into it he told us that although he loved every single day there, he knew that he'd have been just as happy (in other ways perhaps) had he gone to any of the places we'd looked at with him... including a non-top tier state U which was his safety.</p>
<p>I would hate to raise a kid for whom college was the pinnacle.... it's really just the opening of the gates for the rest of his/her life.</p>
<p>Great post, blossom. I agree with a lot of what you say above, and our story is similar in some ways (like the library story/no SAT prep). Living a more relaxed childhood here is much more doable when the child is not exceptional. The average kids avoid too much notice and thereby avoid too much pressure. No one expects a lot from them so they can take it easy. </p>
<p>But the problem arises with a very bright child who in himself is motivated to do well, but wants to be balanced. Here's a real-life example One of my kids is smart and motivated, but not brilliant. She likes school, works hard, but sees no reason to go to after school tutoring or take summer classes so she can skip courses during the school year. So, the first day of algebra class she walks in ready to learn. She is in 7th grade, so this is the earliest a child may take algebra following the normal progression in our district (unless they've received outside tutoring.) Many of the children in her class, however, have just taken algebra over the summer to ensure their success and good grades during the school year. The teacher begins to teach the curriculum and soon realizes that many of the kids are learning very quickly or seem to already know the material. So the instruction becomes fast-paced. As a result, the "unprepared" and not especially motivated kids begin to do poorly and drop out, which they are able to do because ordinary kids take algebra in 9th). Any "unprepared" brilliant kids are smart enough to cope regardless. But what about the smart kid who should be there and could handle it if it weren't for this artificial situation? She will either get lower grades which will impact her high school placement, or have to be tutored at a large expense which her parents may not be able to afford and which will force her to quit some EC's she loves. The child's middle school math track and grades determine his high school math and science placement. So if your child wants to be able to take AP and honors classes later on so he can get into a good school (and I don't mean just an Ivy! Kids from our state have it the toughest to get into all the good colleges because there are so many bright students here), there is no room for error at ages 10, 11 and 12.</p>
<p>Someone questioned my use of the word "drastic." It may have been a bit extreme, but to me it seems drastic that if we don't play the game that a group of highly competitive people have imposed on us, my child won't have a shot at a good college at age 18.</p>
<p>GFG-- isn't this a subject to take up with the district? Agree it's absurd to have kids looking at algebra for the first time sitting next to kids who have spent the summer taking the course.... but it strikes me that either the curriculum allows a "normal" bright kid to make it through the advanced math/science sequence without outside help or not. If you can only get to AP Physics if you've had summer school, tutors, etc. you've got a problem with the sequencing; if normal kids are locked out of advanced classes, this is just the problem that many of the pro-Intel parents have been discussing on this thread and why they feel so strongly that Intel is a good thing despite the one or two problematic contestants.... if science is only seen as the province of the "gifted" we should be encouraging any and all strategies to get more kids involved in it.... even if it means the occasional wacko parent or two forcing their kids into a lab where a mentor does the hard stuff.</p>
<p>I had one "math kid" who seemed to get it intuitively, whether or not he'd seen the stuff before; I had one non-math kid who could get it with some effort after it seeped in for a while. We opted to put them in a parochial school which didn't lock kids out of AP classes for this reason (well, one of about 100 reasons). All kids were encouraged to try the hardest section possible; if it was a struggle, they moved down, but not without giving it a go. So-- both my math kid and my non-math kid completed AP physics, BC calc, etc-- this wouldn't have been possible in the local public HS.</p>
<p>It would have been moot however.... AP Physics is no longer offered locally, due to low demand. Talk about lowering standards and diminished expectations of the American educational system....</p>
<p>The GFG:</p>
<p>I can see your problem! I used to think the way our k-8 school dealt with advanced kids was a bit too ad hoc and depending on the willingness of the teacher to accommodate, but now I see that approach has its uses. Our school had combined grades, though for math, 7th and 8th graders were taught separately. The math teacher (the same for both grades) was willing to accelerate kids; his method, however, was to let them study on their own rather than actually teach them. So one 8th grader was doing 9th/10 grade math; one 7th grader was doing 8th grade math; 2-3 other 7th graders were doing precalc; one advanced faster than the others and began doing calc in the second semester. The math teacher just lent the kids the necessary textbooks. Some of the students had parents who could supervise their studies. One student's parents hired a tutor to meet with the student once a week to go over some unclear materials, assign problems and go over new problems. One student went to the high school for 9th grade math, etc...
While this put some burden (including financial burden) on the parents, this unstructured way of dealing with the kids who were advanced but to different levels and were comfortable working at different paces was the most flexible. </p>
<p>I do think high achieving kids can present a more complicated issue. We had no anxieties whatsoever in helping S1 select which colleges to apply to. There are hundreds of good colleges that can accommodate students who are above average; it was just a matter of choosing a good fit (and he was not interested in HYP). For S2, the range of schools that would be a good fit academically and socially shrank dramatically, and the schools were all crapshoot. So in fact, we were a little bit more anxious about his chances than for S1. Or perhaps, it was a consequence of my having discovered CC and realizing to what extent the schools were crapshoot! :)</p>
<p>CFG:</p>
<p>You seem to be hungup on Patels and Chens. I know of more examples than you when 'white/blacks' parents push their kids. Including academics, sports or whatever. I also know many examples when the parents are just plain lazy - they let their kids do anything they want. As many posters have pointed out you can only 'push' so much. </p>
<p>Are you sure you did not 'push' your kids?</p>
<p>A while back you asked a question,"Why do you think we continue to need to import foreign scientists?" - the blunt answer - American kids do not want to engage in mentally simulating math/science careers. 80% of PH. Ds we have hired are foreign nationals. I have asked this question (where do you see yourself in 5-10 years?) to every white intern kid in my company and the answer is - work in the technical area for a while then go in to the management.</p>
<p>Then there was also a opaque reference to asian cheating. I wonder if Ken Lays, Andrew and Lea Fastows or Martha Stuarts were asians.</p>
<p>As many have suggested, if you don't like it move.</p>
<p>If you want me to I can name quite a few stereotypes for 'whites' in the eyes of asians as well.</p>