Originally Posted by hip
First, my son is a perfectionist. If he has trouble at the beginning of a learning process, he still, at age 11, tends to give up. I don't let him. [quote=hip] So just yesterday, we had a scene at the piano that was similar to the one in Chua's article (though shorter and less intense). What would my son's approach to school, or topics he's interested in, or life in general, be if I hadn't started doing this years ago? I shudder to think.

Perhaps he would have found out that learning his job, his success and his joy. Seems what he's learned from the current system is that ultimately it is your responsibility not his. Over the long term how do you see that playing out. Will you be standing over him in middle school, high school, college, on the job? Is he supposed to get the experience again and again that learning is a result of force, but then at some point this morphs into him becoming a self motivated learner and motivated person?

Originally Posted by hip
As a result, I had a nasty shock in some college courses and in grad school when I was confronted with the necessity of really stretching my intellectual ability, whether in reading, seminar discussion or writing papers.

I agree that can be a huge problem and it is one of the reasons we decided to allow our child to radically accelerate. No matter how how well meaning parental pushing and badgering is not an adequate substitute for a sufficiently challenging curriculum and educational environment.