B.C.:
Just wait 'til you have kids. Perhaps then you will appreciate what this site has to offer, not to mention the Davidson Institute for Talent Development, our hosting organization.
Consider, also, that with more than 89,000 posts, drawing your conclusions based on a small sample might not be particularly fair.
I've seen enough people equating intelligence with superiority (including my family) to know that intelligence, like money, doesn't get you class.
I found this statement striking, as I've never sensed any such negative vibe from this site... and I certainly hope you didn't either! (I can't recall any conversation where class was discussed, let alone how it might relate to intelligence.)
Don't force your kids to do anything they don't want to do.
I'll be super interested to read your thoughts on this when your kids come along. Seriously.
We make/force/require our kids to do all sorts of things: brush teeth, eat broccoli, go to bed, play piano (but would NEVER make them play cello [shudder]), say "please" and "thank you," etc. You know, all the classically evil stuff in life.
As far as academics are concerned, we do not haunt our child with his scores. (He doesn't even know them -- or at least we've not told him.) We do go out of our way, however, to make sure he's properly challenged, as he was quickly becoming addicted to the feeling of rolling out of bed each morning already knowing all the answers for school. At age 6 (too young for intervention by your standards), he was in third grade... just coasting along, having never yet faced the slightest degree of intellectual challenge from school. Straight A/A+ without ever applying himself. Seriously, how fair would it have been to let him continue on like this?
If anything, I'm guilty of reminding my kid that his ginormous brain is not his ticket to success. It certainly gives him an advantage of sorts, but if he never learns how to really use it, what good is it?
One of my favorite quotes about tenacity:
"Brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don�t want something badly enough. They are there to keep out the other people" � Randy Pausch
