Some of the more insightful comments picked up on something that this author (as opposed to Terman's group) has conflated--




Originally Posted by Darkone
05/17/2012 01:14 PM

"... gifted pupils from relatively affluent backgrounds suffered the most from being pushed “too far, too fast”."

Isn't this about parents hothousing kids?

That's what I suspect, too-- and that this particular analysis of the Terman cohort was done with a particular axe to grind in this respect.

I definitely can believe that pushing MG children to perform like HG ones can be damaging. Unquestionably.

I can also believe that there are quite a number of affluent parents doing such pushing. (Though not so much, probably, in Terman's day; I don't really know.)

I'm guessing that this shows us a lot more about how school environments are highly inappropriate for young children-- of any ability-- and not that they "aren't ready for school."

So why did later entrants seemingly do better (and please note, I'm not sure that Terman's study supports a truly statistically meaningful conclusion here once one accounts for sampling methodology of the day)?

Maybe because of asynchrony. They were all still CHILDREN first, and PG children second, after all. Perhaps they had more well-developed emotional regulation, better executive functions, just better COPING skills with that additional year or two...

and maybe the reason why that mattered so much is that school is set up to be fairly toxic for PG children to begin with.

That's my hypothesis.

Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.