Hothousing is very easy to spot. For a start, the amount of unscheduled time a child has. Then there's the second guessing the parents engage in. It's really very very obvious.
I'm not so sure that I agree.
I think that the "second-guessing" can also be a factor in any child who is an outlier. In fact, I have
not seen any second-guessing among hot-housing prone parents I know. If anything, they seem to have a zealot's tunnel vision about the entire thing-- it never seems to occur to them that there might be another way.
Way to ruin a good Highlander joke, y'all. Some of the kids must not be earning enough garlands.
My school has multiple salutatorians, but one valedictorian.
Does this mean that--
there can be only one?
I agree with Sueev's post, by the way-- this kind of atmosphere (really hard-core hothousing) is both toxic and contagious where one finds it.
I'm also finding that it is sadly transforming
higher ed as well. I had truly hoped that once the college admissions dance was done that would be that-- but not so.
We're seriously reconsidering our placement of DD in a flagship's honors program because it is evidently geared much more toward compliant automata than to gifted students. MANY, MANY of her classmates in those classes have been--
groomed. Thoroughly. They aren't there for the learning. They most certainly are there for the GRADES. It's very, very sad.
