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."
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.
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.
