Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Supplementing verses Hot-Housing?

Belle - you were doing this as a teacher at the time?

Yes, I taught K in Florida for over 10 years and loved it and then over the years just became frustrated with the system....then when my little guy came along, it was a really easy choice for me to leave teaching for awhile in hopes of going back to it again one day if things changed:-)

It seemed like my son's knowing too much was a problem in Kindergarten because it just led to more questions. For example, the teacher was telling him and the rest of the class about long and short vowel sounds and my son, who always looked for those exceptions that teachers don't seem to want to talk about, was a little upset when I went to pick him up one day. He told me what the teacher said and then he said "What about the e's in "entendre" like in double entendre?" He named more words where the e was pronounced differently, but that is the one that I remember because I remember thinking how many 5 year olds could read double entendre, know what it means because he enjoyed reading the dictionary, and think of this and other exceptions to what the teacher was telling him. This kind of thing really bothered him. He felt that the teacher didn't want him to ask questions about what she was teaching. He was supposed to not ask questions even when the teacher asked if there were any questions because he somehow asked the "wrong" questions and he was supposed to be content with doing lots of coloring in the lines, which he was not good at because he has motor dyspraxia. My son did not fit in and nobody could make him fit in and that is why we homeschool.

Belle and Lori,

I don't know whether to feel better by commiserating or to feel worse since it is so universal.

It seems like a circular argument. Your child is desperate to learn and, like little sponges, they soak it up. Then they are told that they are different (different being inherently bad, as 'Neato said!) and that they should be like other kids. And even the teachers who are different because they share the same joy of learning are brow-beaten into place. I just get so frustrated!!!

The problem is that we don't have a school system that rewards a passion for learning. We reward test taking, rote memorizing, speed drills, filling in the little answer circles with little or no understanding in order to get a good grade, and doing the least amount of work in order to get by.

Anything that complicates those objectives is seriously frowned on. (be it a kid who asks too many questions or a teacher that goes above and beyond) Maybe if we valued education more in this country so that we paid all of our teachers more (and rewarded them for putting in more effort... which is not the same as rewards for performance) and had people competing to get jobs as teachers, then we wouldn't have to choose between Kriston's two poisons. We wouldn't have to choose between letting our kid's mind grow at their speed and being labeled 'that weird kid who knows too much'.



Bella, your post makes me think that the problem is not with an individual teacher or school district... but with how we value education in general. If the teachers are told to do the least amount of work to get by (through low pay, not enough respect from the community, or for fear of making the other teachers look bad), aren't we just telling our students that they aren't worth the effort. Or maybe, more precisely, we are subconsciously telling them that learning isn't worth the effort.

Ah, sing it sister! I wish I knew what else to say.

These are the reasons we're homeschooling, but I wish we didn't have to. I wish the system worked better for our kids.

*sigh*