Honestly-- I wanted to
scream about that when DD then developed socially-prescribed perfectionism. Gee, wonder where
that notion came from??
So... we expect you to get 100%. On everything. To prove to us that you belong in your accelerated placement, see... and, um... we aren't going to actually give you any HELP to learn the material.
{DD} I have no idea where you got the idea that the world expects you to always already know everything perfectly before you have even been shown this stuff!!
That thudding sound is my head hitting the table, incidentally. I'm really, really sick of the mythology surrounding this kind of thing. Yes, HG+ kids learn VERY quickly-- like sponges. But no, they aren't all little Newtons, figuring out all of integral and vector calculus from scratch and just from their observations in the playpen.
That doesn't mean that they aren't still "that smart." It just means that they need instruction. Like other human children-- and quite probably a bit less of it than most, since they often need less repetition.
The other thing that I find incredibly frustrating is the notion that a child reading 5-7 YEARS beyond his peers might be 'accelerated'
one grade via a part-time pullout or move to a different classroom, where... he is still bored out of his mind, the other students don't know him and he decides that they are still not that interested in the things he cares about any more than agemates are...
and this is labeled "social immaturity" and a "failure" in terms of
the accelerated placement. Better still, sticking a child like this in the corner alone while classmates all do fun (but educationally useless) activities as a group is used to argue that the child in question "lacks maturity" if s/he acts out over this kind of thing, or seeks attention in maladaptive ways.
All while overlooking the painfully obvious fact that this is STILL in no way an "appropriate" educational placement for that child. This really just stacks the deck against such children. I watched this happen to my own DD a few times, too.
Makes me see red, it does.
