Dude,

You use "tiger parents" as your frequent basic argument against change. So I ask: "tiger parents" compared to what? By your definition, what defines the parents that are the ideal parents?

Again back to Mozart and Beethoven. How much does the world of music owe to the ferocious tigers that were the fathers of Mozart and Beethoven? Left to their own devices and to the influences of their childhood playground peers, what would have been the outcomes for Mozart and Beethoven? Would we even know the names of Mozart and Beethoven today if their fathers had not been such beasts in the raising of their sons?

I am not endorsing child abuse, but I am also not condemning a willingness to unlock the potentials of genius if the genius is shackled and chained by society's conventions. I hate school, but school is something we are stuck with. Concluding that, I ask myself: What can be done with what we have to give the greatest opportunity possible to our most gifted young people?

If you ever find time to read my "NASA Academy of the Physical Sciences" proposal, you will find this key measuring stick:
http://nasa-academy-of-the-physical-sciences.blogspot.com/
QUOTE: "NAPS will put an enormous academic and emotional strain on its NASA Scholars, especially during the junior year. Therefore, it is absolutely essential that each and every scholar can relate in a genuine supportive way with his/her classmate scholars especially, but also with scholars from the other two grade levels and with the “high school” teachers. Because emotional maturity is not always on a par with intellectual maturity, gifted adolescents in the transition to adulthood need friends who can understand them. Gifted adolescents are adolescents at risk who are sometimes very vulnerable to social challenges, and they tend to know this about themselves. But, in usual settings, they are alone with their fears. NAPS academies will have the opportunity to create a safe haven in which truly extraordinary young people can experience what it feels like to be ordinary, at least during the while when they are among peer classmates; the importance of this cannot be overstated: a NAPS site will either succeed or fail in its primary purpose by whether or not it can succeed in making its scholars feel ordinary."

* * *

The same applies here: if what I have proposed does not succeed in allowing the exceptionally gifted young person to feel ordinary in an academic setting, then I have failed to achieve my primary goal. If you read the "Santiago's Brain" article that I linked at my previous post ("Clarity" at #186926), this quote should have startled you:
"There are an estimated 72,000 exceptionally gifted kids between the ages of five and 18 in the United States, and almost all attend public schools. What those schools offer — skipping a grade or two, or circumscribed "enrichment programs" — are useless to them. The American educational system is predicated on a conviction that age-peer socialization is developmentally indispensable, radical acceleration is destructive, and tedium is benign. No federal legislation mandates programs for gifted students. Only six states both require and fully fund gifted education programs, and none of those programs focus on the exceptionally gifted. It is practically impossible for an exceptionally gifted American kid to find a public program that will take him or her from elementary school to college. The number of public K-12 schools for exceptionally gifted kids in the United States is one. Based in Nevada, it was founded in 2006." (Santiago's Brain by Jeff Tietz, ROLLING STONE, December 8, 2011, page 81)

The people I care about are the "estimated 72,000 exceptionally gifted kids between the ages of five and 18 in the United States," especially those who are attending public schools. If their parents are "tiger parents" who are desperately trying to advocate for their children in a stifling atmosphere that does not welcome their tiger-like involvement, then I say: "God bless them!"

Dude, the joke in our home was that whenever I telephoned my daughters' public high school a "Red Alert" was immediately issued from the school office that immediately resulted in everybody being unavailable to take my call. But guess what? I have two children, and both of them earned full-ride academic merit scholarships to the public university of their choice. They got free tuition to a U.S. public university because they earned it; they worked hard throughout high school and thereby earned a free ride through a university. Yes, it can be done.

But know this: my oldest daughter took her first on-campus university course when she was 11 years old, and my youngest daughter — a National Merit Scholar — finished high school with 100 credits already earned on her university transcript.

What is telling is this:
http://school-usa-proposal.blogspot.com/2011/06/regarding-tia.html
When I personally gave Tia Holliday a copy of that letter of recommendation, she humbly thanked me for the letter and then very sincerely thanked me for something else, and that was for demonstrating to her how important it was for her to start advocating for her own children's needs at their public schools, that the teachers — her professional colleagues — could not be depended on to always do their best without the clear knowledge that a "tiger parent" was watching from the sidelines.

Excellence is a challenge for everyone concerned: for the student, but also for the parent, and for the teacher, too. Everyone has their role to play, and not one role is easier than another in the final analysis. One lazy uncaring person can easily kaput the efforts of everyone else. You can maybe rightly question the tactics of a "tiger parent," but never question their good intent.

Steven A. Sylwester