No, there was no such requirement. He does have a lot of musical talent and is 1st chair though he’s never worked that hard at his instrument. I’m sure if he’d worked harder, he would have have excelled, but he just plays for fun. His only EC other than band and academic teams is his job. Music isn’t even much of an EC since he’s never taken private lessons or played other than his class requirements.
I see. Well, that is different. Our kids had plenty of exposure to mixed ability and non-academically oriented students on a daily basis, and were not seeking it in math class.
That post gave me a smile. Thanks for that. And good luck to your son!
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Yes, that’s good, and inevitably everyone is exposed to a wide variety of people in their everyday situations. Even kids who are in a bit of a bubble expand their lives once they leave home. This is one of the best parts of life, and it benefits everyone to have lots of different types of people around them and to learn to appreciate those people for who they are.
The relevant point to be made for this thread is that we see our kids’ school experiences to be a valuable way to experience that. So we’re not very concerned about boredom because it teaches other lessons that we value.
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It helps explain our differences in perspective. I am looking for schools that reinforce academic values in core classes as my kids have plenty of exposure to others who are differently valued. If your children do not, and only chose to surround themselves with similar others, then I can see why requiring more academic diversity in core classes was valued for you to get that exposure.
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I am not sure that @ColdWombat was saying that this experience in math class was vital in order to get exposure to different kids. To me, it sounded more like a story about an unexpected side benefit or silver lining.
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I certainly didn’t. I got put in a history class that was using the same text from 2 years earlier and the teacher assigned the introduction to the book as homework. Wha? I looked around that classroom–half the students had their heads on their desks and the other half were doodling. Some had been with me from two years earlier. I knew a lot of those students–they weren’t stupid–they were bored to tears. And I lay the blame directly on the teacher. In my eyes he had a class of decent students and wasn’t willing to engage nor challenge them–and they lived up to his very low bar.
I handed the book back to him at end of class and told him I was on my way to another teacher’s class for the next day. Which surprised the other teacher a bit since I wasn’t on her roster but she let me join (she knew me) and changed the schedule for me. Instead of the introduction to a book I’d already gone through we started learning how political campaigns work and discussed civil rights and the Viet Nam war. And that was the difference in regular vs advanced classes.
We had multi age classes almost my entire school career from middle-HS. I’m pretty sure my HS still has them to this day. Even in elementary school I remember one student who was sent to the HS for math class. Nobody blinked an eye. I only now realize how lucky I was.
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Fair enough. I edited vital to valued
This is very important to understand. What might have been minor boredom for ColdWombat’s son could be much worse for other kids.
My children were fortunate to attend a very good public school system. But middle school was still too easy for my son in particular. There was never any hope of school meeting my son’s math needs (he taught himself algebra in first grade for example), but he wasn’t being challenged in any of his other classes either. It’s important to note that he was never pushed. He did the pulling, and kept us busy in trying ways to keep his mind fed.
So for a while we became active in Davidson Gifted, which supports kids that are roughly +3SD and above. Now, I can imagine some people thinking, why do those bright kids need help? Won’t they do fine anyway?
The answer is no.
Davidson Gifted is different from other programs like Johns Hopkins CTY and SET. The latter, due to the high cost of its programs, catered to high income families who were generally in good school systems. My D attended some of those CTY summer sessions and really enjoyed them.
Davidson Gifted on the other hand had programs that were subsidized and therefore very affordable. My son and I attended one of their weekend sessions and it was an eye opening experience for both of us. Most of the families there were of modest means and attended poor performing school systems.
The parent only breakout sessions were heartbreaking. One woman, who attended for the first time with her son, broke out in tears in the session after describing her son happily interacting with his new found intellectual peers for the first time in her life. Other parents told stories about how their extremely bright kids did poorly in class, or even acted out, because of their extreme boredom. The kids who attended Davidson regularly formed extremely tight friendships.
I have a hypothesis that kids can really only develop cognitively and socially if they are no further away than 2SD of their class mean. If the bright kids are +2SD relative to the class, they will still have a number of intellectual peers in any reasonable size school system. But these were +3SD kids that might have been attending a -1SD school. They were so far away from the mean that they were academic and social misfits, and they acted out.
In contrast, while my son was bored, he still thrived socially because the kids in our school system were well above average.
We came away from that session with a much better understanding of how fortunate he was, and also that not meeting the needs of kids that are far away from the mean (in either direction) is a waste of potential.
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It’s great that your son could turn his boredom into something very positive and valuable. However, there’s no reason a high performing kid can’t be challenged academically and help others at the same time. I know others have expressed different views on the subject, but I’ve always asked my son to seek opportunities to help and “tutor” other kids. It’s more than doing something that makes one feels good or helps make friends. I told him that he hadn’t really learned the material as well as he could, until he could explain it to others who didn’t know, or knew less well about, the material.
The purpose of education is to help every child reach or exceed her/his potential. Leaving no child behind doesn’t have to come at the expense of other children not having the opportunity to reach/exceed their own full potentials, especially when resource isn’t an issue.
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As a side note, for anyone finding the cost of JHU CTY prohibitive, contact the professor directly. Sometimes arrangements can be made.
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I agree 100%. I see limited resources as a big issue, at least in the places I have lived. Although my kids have attended excellent public schools with decent funding, the resources are not plentiful enough to provide tailored education for all the kids.
This is where I’m willing to “leave behind” the superstars who might not get super advanced classes they need to challenge them. I am fine with giving those resources to help the kids that have fallen behind. Sometimes that comes at a cost (given limited resources), and it is one I am willing to pay.
It’s nice that the superstars can get their needs met outside of the public school system (as described by @hebegebe above). I think that arrangement is fine since the public schools have limited funds.
I’m curious, and I’m not trying to be argumentative with my question. You are willing to leave behind the superstars in high school to help others who have fallen behind catch up.
What happens to these two groups when they go off to college? Do you think they will have equal results or do you think there will still be a gap in learning?
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You mean a gap between the high achievers and low achievers? Yes, I expect there will be a gap, and it is likely one that will persist throughout life. But I would like that gap to be smaller if possible. Not all of them will go to college. The high achievers will likely be fine no matter what. Many of the low achievers won’t attend college, which is okay. What I want for them is the basic education and skills they need to be healthy and happy citizens.
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This is basically an optimization problem, and the first thing you try to do is figure out what you are optimizing for.
As parents, this is easy, we’re optimizing for the best education experience for our own individual child.
Public education is different. They don’t have the resources for creating the perfect individualized environment for each kid. So they are optimizing for something else. The bias here is to optimize for high achievers because the demographics of this board skew that way. But I think that’s probably not the purpose of public education. It becomes a matter of trade-offs.
Are we utilitarians, trying to maximize the most happiness for the most people? Are we trying to produce the most geniuses? Are we trying to minimize the number of people needing public assistance in the future?
It becomes a matter of values, and how we measure these things. I think we need to answer those questions first before trying to figure out the how…
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“Fine no matter what” is not necessarily true, but I see it used all the time to excuse neglect of gifted students.
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I think that’s no more fair than calling regular classes a zoo in order to excuse the neglect of non-gifted students.
I get this is a somewhat emotional subject, but I think we can try to not assume the worst in others.
Editing b/c I think my post was at risk of doing the opposite of what I intended. Basically, I think no one is intentionally trying to neglect anyones needs… i think there are differences in who needs the resources and how… I think we can assume we all want everyone to succeed as much as possible.
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This topic brings to mind Vonnegut’s classic book “Harrison Bergeron.” And perhaps also this scene from The Incredibles: Incredibles Dash and Mom - YouTube
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I don’t disagree per se. But the ways in which my academically-inclined kids may not be “fine no matter what” are not in the category of educational opportunities. Their pitfalls lie in other categories. I understand that’s not necessarily true for all students that have been labeled as “gifted”, but it is true of the ones that I personally know. Obviously, YMMV.
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American society is not known for being academically oriented. Few high schools are an intellectual oasis. Personally, I would like the US to emphasize academic achievement a bit more here so that we improve our odds that climate change will be solved, cancer cured, and technology guided for social good, all of which is likely to come from investing in high achievers. It would be hard to claim we do much
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