Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Piggy-Backing on HK's Epiphany re: Challenges

HK's Epiphany relating to the flip-side of "What a Child Doesn't Learn" has officially drawn me from lurking mode. (I've been following the "To Skip or Not" threads for awhile.)

I must also echo her experience with what I consider to be some sort of a reinforcing effect when a grade skip fails to yield meaningful challenge: HK -- "Then in the wake of acceleration, if there is an unresolved lack of challenge, the child interprets this as normal."

I think we are battling this same issue, which, if anything, makes me much more confident that the early grade skips were an absolute necessity. Although now I am finding that they have not been enough.

Our son is in 8th grade @ age 11 (Fall BD), and takes Geometry across the street @ the HS everyday as his first period. Depending on the comparison state, he's two or three years ahead of his age peers.

He's maintained a 4.0+ throughout 7th & 8th and as I look back, it's almost like 2nd & 3rd grade all over again: this stuff is just not challenging enough for him. (Either that, or he is just *that* good at making it look easy!)

Geometry, however, has proven to be the leveling factor. He has maintained a B, but only because the teacher gives credit for *completed* homework, rather than *correct* homework. As a result, the A for homework masks the C for quizzes and tests, giving him a B in the class. And because it's considered an Honors-level course for an 8th grader, he gets 4 pts, hence his 4.0 GPA.

BUT... (cue HK's Epiphany)... because he has been conditioned by his other classes that hard work is not necessary... that note-taking is not necessary (unless graded)... that actual *STUDYING* is not necessary... he doesn't have a gosh-darned clue how to tackle his Geometry debacle. And I guarantee that the total-fantasy B he's getting in Geometry doesn't help the situation much.

Unfortunately, I have no bloody idea where to go with this. When I raised my concern with his Algebra teacher last year, he said, "Bah! It's a maturity thing -- he'll pull it together. After all, he understands the material." And his Geometry teacher this year essentially plagiarized the Alg teacher's answer.

Bottom line for me is that DS is screwed when he runs into real educational challenge -- like those pesky college courses -- if he doesn't get his poo together NOW! Heck -- I'm not so sure he'll have to worry about college classes if he bombs his SAT math section.

So there. That's what's been percolating in my head for the past several weeks (months?). Thank You to HK for sharing her epiphany.

What now? Any suggestions?

Dandy

I don't have any suggestions, but just my sympathies. I wasn't a HG kid (IQ about 130 back in the 1970s) but was gifted enough to get through most of my schooling without effort. I *still* have a hard time dealing with frustration. (In fact, I was just fantasizing about quitting my job the other day because I can't figure something out that I think is really important.)

That all being said--I *did* eventually figure it out, once I got a 2.0 GPA my first year in college and totally freaked out. I'm still not amazing at dealing with frustration, but I can do it when I need to. And, I can make myself work when it's required, though I do still procrastinate. And, I'm pretty successful in my chosen field, well-liked by my colleagues, respected by my boss, good at what I do. (AND--beyond all that, I'm really happy with my life--my work, my family, my home... which really, isn't that what we want for our kids?)

Hmm... Depends, really. *Does* he understand the material (but make slips in tests?) do you think? What happens when you talk to him explicitly about the need to work and needing to work being fine, etc? I asked my DS what he'd advise (mostly, of course, wondering whether anything would come out of relevance to his own situation) and, interestingly to me, he immediately assumed your DS was just not interested in geometry as things are, and suggested books, e.g. the AoPS geometry book, or DVDs e.g. Great Courses Maths of the Visual World, that he might find interesting. Anything in that? What does he say about it? As a practical matter, I wouldn't let errors in homework go, even if the teacher does.

I never really got geometry, but I got tutored for credit in geometry (so that I could take a trig class the next semester).

I got a 740 on the math portion of the SAT's back in 1991 (?). I also got an 800 on some other college test math achievement whachamdaoo (I remember this because I was angry at not getting an 800 on the SAT math section).

As long as he can sleep through calculus, then he will be fine on his SAT's.

For some reason, geometry is different.

I talked about this with Val (?) somewhere else here.

My outcome is whatever the opposite of staceychev's outcome is.

My college GPA shows a *very attractive* straight line down from a 3.75 first semester, which also caused me to totally freak out. Fortunately, I was able to freak out very effectively and self-sabotaged down to a 1.75 one of my last semesters, with a number of Withdraw-failure and F's (I just had to obtain and look at my transcripts lately when I asked myself - hmm, I wonder if I could go to med school, so this is quite fresh in my memory).

More specifically, it caused me to give up, as I was no longer able to get a 4.0, so was there even a point to college anymore?

I mean, if you can't get a 4.0, aren't you already dead and haven't you *already failed*?

My outcome has been whatever the opposite of *staceychev's* outcome is (permanent teenage angst and existential despair?).

So, the moral of the story is to learn that failure isn't equivalent of death and that it's best to learn this early in life rather than when you are a practicing attorney.

Me neither. Geometry was brutal, yet somehow I did fine in calculus.

I loved geometry, but I suppose it played right into my areas of strength. Compared to other maths, it was long on concepts and formal logic, and short on computations. My brain likes to hide the occasional stupid computational error at random locations, but could immediately visualize and grok the concepts of geometry, so it was basically made for the subject.

Geometry lays the conceptual framework that was used to build trig, but that doesn't mean you necessarily have to master that framework in order to use trig, any more than you need to master the concepts of metallurgy and the Carnot cycle to drive a car. You can just accept that it works, and use it.

I was thinking about Geometry yesterday because HK had mentioned not knowing how her daughter goes from knowing nothing to everything on a subject. It was in freshman geometry when I figured out how my brain did that stuff.

For a topdown/abstract thinker all these facts come in like random cards in a card catalog. Until the index system is identified and understood, that information is inaccessible. Once the brain works through some models and hypotheses and some obscure point of balance is passed this whole scaffolding pops into place and all that data is accessible.

Geometry rewards a very topdown perspective with bonuses for visualization skills. To my memory 90% of year 1 geometry can be derived from Pythagoras' Theorem.

I think the best way to have challenge is to throw out the motivation of satisfying the school's requirements and to rather drive for one's own complete understanding while encapsulating the inadequate expectations of the class.

I think there are two problems here. One is the concept of challenge at school. The other is what I call thinking in a new way as distinct from "studying." (Actually, there could be a third, which would be subpar teaching, but I'll ignore that here).

Personally, I've been wondering if a HG+ kid can be consistently cognitively challenged in a school environment. The material just isn't that hard (for a HG+ kid). By cognitive challenge, I mean stuff that's hard to understand, not just lots of homework. Increasing the volume of the workload doesn't make the material harder to understand.

For many or most HG+ kids who are paying even a bit of attention, most everything makes sense on the first pass. I'm not saying they absorb the information completely, just that the ideas make sense. In that situation, all that's required is a bit of cramming during lunch or on the bus or while watching TV or whatever. Presto! Another good grade.

Suddenly, a kid meets something that doesn't make sense on the first pass. Now a bona fide cognitive challenge may exist, but it's isolated and the child has no idea how to approach it. Complicating the problem, he has only his limited experience to interpret what's going on. If geometry is the only class that's ever posed a problem for your son,he may decide that he's reached a limit. In this situation, it's natural to misinterpret what's going on (Example: "Those other kids are doing better than I am in Geometry, so they must be smarter than me."). Remember that based on his lifetime experience, getting a good grade results from being smart. Yeah, I know he's got a B, but it's from homework and he sees how the other students are doing on tests.

This is the part where thinking in a new way comes in. A student who always gets the basic idea on the first pass may have no concept that it's even possible to look at something that's completely baffling and figure it out by simply staring at it and thinking. This is very different from the idea of "studying," which, to a HG+ kid, can mean "cram it in" or "do the worksheets as quickly as possible." There's a subtle difference between studying and thinking in a new way, but it's a savage one. Until a person actually groks the idea of "stare and think in order to understand," he'll be hindered by misconceptions about his abilities. And yet, once he gets the idea, he'll have made a huge cognitive leap. See? Subtle, but savage.*

Schools do not teach this idea to HG+ kids.


*With thanks to Truman Capote for this phrasing. He was describing the difference between writing that is merely very good and writing that is true art. See Music for Chameleons.

If you get stuck, you can also toss it into your subconscious and wait a few days for a solution to magically appear.