Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Race to Nowhere- any thoughts?

And, many definitions of success. If your definition is being NORMAL, then yes, many prodigies will fail and that is the case whether they go to college early or not. It is not going to college early that makes these kids weird - they are extreme outliers who will by their very definition not be normal. Some research suggests most people who go to medical school are in that "optimal" zone of intelligence - they tend to moderately gifted people. If this individual was such an extreme outlier she likely would stick out in the environment no matter her age. Do you believe giving her four years of unhappy high school first would have made her just like everybody else?

For me the much more important definition of success is will the person be well adjusted and HAPPY. To take a person who cares deeply about intellectual pursuits and confine them to an environment where they have no access to appropriate intellectual outlets is not the foundation for a happy well adjusted individual. That same individual skipped to college may find much more possibility of acceptance. Our child has happy positive experiences every single day in college and that most certainly would not have been the case in middle school.

That said, I think very little is accomplished by trotting out anecdotal stories and attempting to extrapolate from them. What makes more sense is to look at the research on radical acceleration and it is clear that when it is carefully chosen it can work very well. There was a good quote from Julian Stanley in the whiz kids article posted earlier...

"It depends a lot on the parents--whether or not they get the kids motivated and involved and encourage independence, and if they're facilitative, not exploitative. That is, they're not trying to 'create' brilliant kids. They have brilliant kids, and they're trying to help the kids use that brilliance"

I am back to respond to the comments.

Rushing: When I was in high school, I had a lot of extra time to make a national team. I remember my history teacher telling me that I missed 56 days of school that year. Yet, was still top of the class and 3 years ahead in sciences and math.

I think the acceleration, and I do have DD accelerated with CTY math, can create a momentum of acceleration within the child of "you are able to do this and move ahead" and I remember getting in my head, that after a year I could get into medical school and within 5 years I would be done. DH's good friend did that. He went to Thomas Jefferson in Philadelphia at 16 and by 20 was an MD.

DH didn't accelerate. In high school, he won a bunch of science competitions, did boy scouts activities, went to Chile for a semester and then went to Harvard. He really enjoyed Harvard, didn't rush. He spent some time down in DC working as an intern.

I still feel like I am racing to nowhere.

Which makes me truly ambivalent. Because I want DD to have challenge, good work habits yet I don't want her to feel like she is racing to get things done. It really is part of my psyche.

Her science program is accelerated, her math is accelerated yet she isn't acclerated in school. And I struggle with that. I also struggle with the social aspects since I partied too much and didn't always make the right social decisions. I was hoping more for nerdy but I can see now that my extrovert could go easily over to my experience. Not so keen for that. There is part of me that fights to get her accelerated.

And part of me that wants to give some space and not make her feel like she should rush.

I am sorry that horizontal diversification didn't work. I am finding that there is so much more for her to experience. Now being highly competitive, like I was, does eat up a lot of time, but I am not that keen to pursue that as everthing else has to go eventually to make room for that.

I am not sure. I am more on the fence that my diatribe suggests.

Ren

I went to a rural public school where there was a policy against skipping grades, limited social choices and no internet or any other access to the outside world. A number of times I made attempts to get them to make exceptions to this no skip policy, but without success. I could also hardly wait to finally become part of the nerd crowd I felt I belonged with.

Looking back, I am happy I never succeeded in both the grade skipping and a desire to find the nerd crowd early in life. Having seen the world outside of a world I would have choosen is the most valuable education I have had to date.

The delay in education helped me see the world before being taught about the world. When I did finally have the opportunity to pursue the areas of study I was most interested in, I realized much of what I was being taught was inaccurate. Rather than study my field of interest, I choose to avoid education in this area until I was confident I had seen more of the world. I came to the conclusion that there was as much danger in education as there was benefit. This may not be the case in all areas of study, but I feel my area of interest hasn't matured enough.

As to my social desires, I now realize making these choices based on preconceived notions would have been a big mistake. By the time I did find the nerd crowd, I realized they were not as into their interests on average as I had originally suspected. The odd person was, but most of them were people who merely skimmed the surface of the subjects they were supposedly interested in.

Cities offer the opportunity for us to place ourselves into a box with a very limited view of the world around us. Even a lot of people who travel the world confine themselves to a very similar world to the one they live in locally. I sometimes feel I have met a greater variety of people in the small community I grew up in than most people who travel the world will ever meet.

As the population in my home town increased, the coffee shop went from having tables consisting of a very mixed crowd to tables with very similar people. You now find tables exclusively consisting of farmer, teachers, mechanics, similar ages, same genders, etc. When the population was smaller, the tables were of mixed ages, genders and areas of interest. The level of conversation in these mixed crowds was far more interesting and in many cases had greater depth.

I don't think anyone would argue that there are not environmental influences on IQ when you consider the impact that lead exposure or malnutrition, for example, have on brain development, and it seems clear that the gains that we have made in many countries in improving maternal and infant health and in decreasing toxic exposure to materials like lead (by banning its use in paints and fuels, for example) have had a beneficial effect on average IQ.

It is important to note that, because of the nature of standard scoring, decreases in the number of people scoring at very low levels shift the center of the curve to the right - which means that the population level IQ goes up. It is also important to understand that children with high "genetic potential" are not immune to the deleterious effects of poor nutrition and toxic exposures: an environmental insult that depresses IQ by 30 points leaves what would have been a gifted child functioning at an average level, and decreasing the incidence of such insults increases the proportion of the population able to function at a high level, again raising the average IQ. The Flynn effect over the course of the 20th century is a paean to the relatively steady progress that we have made world-wide in improving living standards and nutrition, improving pre-natal care, and decreasing pollution and childhood exposure to known neurotoxins.

There is also no question that deprived environments, those where children have few opportunities to explore or interact with their environments in novel ways, or where they have little exposure to language, depress IQ. But that is a far cry from indicating that IQ is infinitely elastic, as some (not you) have argued.

Maybe that's the key. If it feels like rushing then the acceleration probably isn't appropriate. Radical acceleration has never felt like rushing here - it feels like going at a reasonable pace that finally isn't way too slow.


I'm not. The desire for going horizontal was all about me. It wasn't about my child and the person he is. So, to say that it is sad that going horizontal didn't work for me feels like saying we are sorry he's the person he is. And, that doesn't make any sense. I'm grateful we've been able to find an academic plan where the child is challenged, happy, and developing needed lifeskills like handling frustration and having a strong work ethic. He's getting what he needs and that's something to be happy about.

The reason I think a few of us are talking about these limits in potential is due to our experiences in the workplace. In every technical workplace I have worked in, there seems to be only a handfull of people who really seem to know what they are doing in their field. I think some of the more intuitive educators are also aware of these limitations in people.

This small group often find themselves having to document the technical work and procedures to such a detailed level, it is likely a lot of uneducated people could perform the work. It is often also necessary to direct these people to what document or procedure to follow for each task they are assigned to perform.

A lot of the people having to be effectively babysat in their work are often the ones who had very high grade point averages in the field they are now practicing. Having seen some of the tests given in University and finding they often adjust the test scores to match some predetermined end result, I wonder if this is the cause of the rather poor performance in the workplace.

I have also seen cases where someone with what appears to have talent suddenly hits a dead end in progressing further. In some cases I have even seen some people lose some of their former talent. I have seen this happen to people in their 20s and much later. This is something I think happens to everyone to some degree. I suspect this may be a result of many different factors and may in some cases be temporary. In the movie "Proof", a math student mentions how if you don't accomplish something big by the early 20s, it may never happen. Given what I have seen in the workplace, I wonder if the writers are also aware of this happening.

Whether these people are aware of their lack of talent in their field is not readily apparent. I am not entirely sure if this is necessarily a lack of talent, a lack of interest or a lack of having to be concerned as management is often unaware of how much hand-holding these people appear to require.

I think you missed the point. I was referring to my own acceleration and the result. Maybe I am an anomaly. Because I could do the work easily, quickly, it was move on. Attempting to find the challenge. And I think that was the problem. Accelerating to the point of finding the challenge.

And the result was: (drum roll please) that when I hit the workplace, and the challenge was too easy, there was something wrong. When I could get the job done, quickly and easily -- and I am not talking about jobs defined as easy, but ones that are somewhat rare and difficult to get -- but I got bored and wanted to move on -- which was disastrous for my general life.

That is the point. The lesson you are teaching is tha child needs to push to the point of challenge. Wait until they get to the workplace and they can do it easily and the challenge disappears. What do you think they should do?

In my experience, the results of attitude and inability to deal with the average person in the workplace -- who could be the boss, may not be so good.

I once sat in a meeting and said this is the situation to the people in charge. The other guy, said, that is not true. The boss knew me and asked again. I said, that if you believe him, I want off the project and no responsibility for the result. They went with him, and in 3 months came back to me carte blanche to fix it. And then after it was done, I was gone because I was a reminder of the mistaken choice they made and I was vocal about it above these guys. I fixed the problem, as best as it could be fixed but it was too far gone and a mess.

Typical of the workplace your children will face from the in the box average guy.

Ren

I do think you are making an excellent point, Wren. As a child, you are praised/encouraged for doing your work quickly. Acceleration is a good thing.
In the workplace, at most jobs, you have to work with other people who may be- not as bright as you, not as gifted, or even jealous of you. And unless you have incredible luck, you may have to stay in that job and learn to deal with it.
I really agree with you.
It took me a long, long time to realize that life isn't a big IQ/other test. It's interacting with people on their level. In many jobs, if your coworkers (or boss) are uncomfortable with you, you will not be successful, no matter how gifted you are. Or you will not be as successful as your potential dictates.
My son is bright, probably MG. He learns easily and is not learning lots of new things right now in second grade. We tell him- "this is the real world, kid. Learn ways to occupy yourself when you are done with the work and everyone is still catching up. Don't bother the teacher or the other kids." He isn't depressed or bored silly, as some kids are on this chat site. The other kids seem to really like him, and his social skills are good.

To me that doesn't speak as much to acceleration as to the importance of highly gifted people receive good career counseling and to find work they find intellectually fulfilling and personally meaningful. That typically isn't work that is "done" or assigned by someone else. It tends to more often be work that is never entirely "done" - such as science research. There is always another part of the puzzle. If you are intellectually fulfilled by the process there is always more available to you. I'm sure we can find many examples of prodigies who were radically accelerated who have found work they find enjoyable and fulfilling.

Also, I would keep in mind that many talented people will not just have one career or one hobby for a lifetime. They may become highly competent in more than one field and them combine their interests in new and creative ways.


I don't believe denying a child acceleration solves that problem. Spending years totally out of step with your peers doesn't promote positive social skills and in some cases can encourage the development of a really condescending attitude. People who are comfortable with themselves tend to have better ability to be kind and considerate toward others. It is hard to develop consideration if you don't receive a lot of it.

I wonder: was your workplace problem due to acceleration or was it due to the fact that you don't think the way that other people think? To me, this story seems so typical of just being different.

I've been in situations like that: the problem is obvious, the solution is obvious, but only me or maybe two of us can see that. No one else is interested, and the group is going to approach the problem the way it has in the past. You try to explain what's wrong and how to fix it and you end up in trouble.

High intelligence means that you don't think like other people (I mean the general you here, not just YOU, Wren. ). A person is born that way, and I don't think that something like acceleration can change the fundamental way that his/her thought patterns form in a situation like this. You can lower your expectations and/or stay quiet or go along with the group, but that won't change what's going on inside your head or make you any happier. Added: and more me at least, it's frustrating feeling as though I could help improve something, but get rebuffed.

It's such a hard and horrible problem. Humans are social animals and we tend to want to fit in when we're in groups. So when someone who thinks differently expresses an opinion or operates in a way that's very different from the group's, I expect it's hard for the group to get that person as it is for the person to get the group. Creative people and arty types probably face this same issue because they think differently too.

I have to stop now; more later I hope.

Val