ColinsMum,
Please, ...
Those who will not need convincing are these: the genius young people who score at the 99th percentile in mathematics and the sciences and who enjoy mathematics and the sciences, and the parents of those young people; Pentagon-based generals and admirals; the highest ranking personnel in the various U.S. intelligence agencies; and the highest ranking personnel at NASA.
... in that you've reached plenty of people who are in at least one of those groups here, and we do seem to need to be convinced.
A school is not a painting. The only way you can expect to put one together to your vision without negotiation, justification or compromise is by making your billions first, and then choosing to spend them this way. And even then, you have to convince the parents - the same parents who are reading you here.
In fact, you haven't yet made a serious attempt at an argument for why this school should meet the needs of its target children. It's teaching material normally taught to older people, fine - but the pace and depth of those courses will still be that designed for average college attenders, which will be too slow and too shallow for our children.
... you are an "I," not a "we." Long ago in difficult circumstances, I learned that those who claim to speak for everyone actually speak for no one other than themselves. There have been no votes taken here yet, and so there is no "we" that has spoken.
I want to create an opportunity for deserving young people who want it. I am concerned about parents. Consider the following excerpt from my proposal:
http://nasa-academy-of-the-physical...11/first-model-university-of-oregon.htmlFinally, they will undergo an interview process to test their emotional maturity and their ability to handle stress in a university environment. Everything possible will be done to select for enrollment only those students who will thrive and succeed at NAPS.
* * *
In my opinion, most of that interview process should be conducted one-on-one between the prospective student and a NAPS representative without the parents of the prospective student in the room. Under no circumstances should any child be made to enroll in NAPS against his/her will. In the whole NAPS equation, parents are most to be feared.
Why? I very confidently predict that most NAPS graduates will receive a full-ride academic merit scholarship offer from almost any university they apply to. There is an enormous financial reward awaiting the average NAPS graduate at the end of their three year grind, and that reward will be mostly experienced by parents in the form of a free university education for their child. Consequently, many parents are to be feared in what I am proposing.
But, ColinsMum, you are welcome to keep your child away from it all. My genius children are now 21 and 23. Maybe my grandchildren will benefit someday, but not me and not my children � at least not directly. My NAPS proposal is in response to what I went through. Any American who imagines that public education will take care of the needs of their exceptionally gifted children by using the current models is full-blown delusional. Funding for TAG is evaporating. Hell, just call it gone!
ColinsMum, you wrote: "... the pace and depth of those courses will still be that designed for average college attenders, which will be too slow and too shallow for our children." Consider: almost all university professors have Ph.D. degrees and almost all high school teachers do not. I am talking University Calculus I, II, III; University Calculus-based Foundations of Physics I and II; University Organic Chemistry and Laboratory; mathematics as high as University Elementary Linear Algebra, which is beyond University Several-Variable Calculus I and II, and you are talking "too slow" and "too shallow." Are we on the same planet?
Steven A. Sylwester
