If your son likes to read about science you could also start to guide him towards books/stories about science that incorporates history and people. My DD first got the hint about badly behaving adults and science with a book or two about the drama of paleontology over history and the tweaking of the truth and stealing each other's work etc. I don't remember any of the names of the books, this was from a couple of years ago. Also some children's biographies of scientists include their dealings with other people or living in a particular country that made it difficult to do their work, or others stealing their work and using it for evil instead of good, and how it upset the original scientist or the teams. Alot of gifted kids seem to like the good versus evil concept (my DD never tires of it) and how big, important people and young kids alike all have to deal with it maybe every day.
Back when they were doing multiplication in class, parents had to write down on a form how many minutes your child spent studying that day's x , sign the form and send it in the next morning. Well, the first x was 1...so I put 5 minutes just so it wouldn't be blank. We all had a good chuckle. The next day DD reported that the teacher gave money to the child that had 30 minutes, because it was the most time of everyone, and each day the child who had the most minutes got money.
Well, don't you know...the minutes reported by classmates, they started increasing by leaps and bounds. We just kept the course though, however long it took it took (not very long, I believe in manybe 5-10 minutes a few times per day and maybe concentrating on the ones she might be getting stuck on). Anyway, she said one day that a fellow student got the money that day because she had 120 minutes. DD was lamenting she still hadn't gotten the money. I asked, "how long is 120 minutes?" and she said, "2 hours" and I said, "do you really think she spent 2 hours on the 4x table last night? She has swim team and dance on that day too, and regular homework." DD just strugged. I said if she REALLY wanted to, she could try and "beat" that time to see if she could win the money tomorrow, but she REALLY had to spend that amount of time on the x that night (now over two hours as a minimun, to beat that 120 minutes....) because I wasn't going to lie on the form. Anyway, DD opted to play with legos instead over and above homework and time for x, and I haven't heard about it since!
