Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments High School....and girls

LaTexican posted a link to an article on a different thread,

http://depts.washington.edu/cscy/pdf/AllRiversLeadtotheSea.pdf

which has got me thinking. Acceleration in this case is skipping high school, as in with the EEP

"acceleration can be particularly beneficial for gifted young women because it allows them to by-pass a social milieu which is often destructive to female intellectuality (Callahan & Reis, 1989 and Nobel 1989)"


One of the discussion points about skipping high school [for both genders] was about the "negative social or emotional problems...resulting from the accelerative experience". Many educators, parents, psychologists, and counselors fear that acceleration will deprive young people of the critical social experiences they will need to creat healthy, well-functioning, and successful lives. Because high school is considered a normalizing experience on the road to responsible adulthood, students are urged to remain with their agemates regardless of differential ability, motivation, or special needs....

I'm curious about your experiences. Would you all agree or disagree that high school was a normalizing experience on the road to adulthood?

How about for women? DId any females on this board feel that high school benefitted them "socially and emotionally?" and/or academically. If so, what was your high school like?

I didn't go to high school, when I returned to the states at 16 after 8 years of boarding school, I was advised that high school would be a waste of my time entirely. I went straight to college and I have no regrets.

My daughters had miserable experiences in High school:

DD20 (MG) enjoyed 9th grade because we were in a big city that had an amazing magnet program and the high school she went to had a counselor that actively recruited the brightest middle schoolers from across the district so she was in good company with lots of challenge. She was also in an award winning jazz band that was regularly hired to play social events in the community so she had a lot to be proud of and excited about and she had awesome peers. Then we moved to a small town where the academics were a joke. She still enjoyed marching band but her counselor confessed that the school had nothing else to offer that would challenge her so she was allowed to graduate 2 years early.

DD17, (HG) was not so lucky and her sister's counselor had left by the time she was in high school. The school had nothing to offer my DD17 academically either, but they chose to focus on squashing her will to live instead. The stance was "she needs to learn the discipline to plow through the workload so she will be able to handle it in the workplace" My DD refused to do any work outside of school but aced all of her Pre AP tests and passed all of her classes with 100s on tests and zeros on busywork. I posted elsewhere about the English teacher who broke the rules in order to fail my Daughter so she could teach her a lesson (my Daughter was the only student in that Pre AP English class to even pass the Pre-AP exam but the teacher decided to dismiss the grades for that test and instead threw the weight of the grades to homework for which the deadline had already passed). In addition to the demoralizing effect of being bullied by a teacher, my DD had to deal with religious bullying from her peers who were certain my DD was going to hell for questioning the existence of god and would hold "prayer groups" for her during the bus-ride home(!) On the bright side, she enjoyed marching band.

So I guess if you have the right high school it may be a positive normalizing experience, otherwise it can be a soul crushing experience for kids that aren't average to begin with.

Here's my saga, for those who care to muddle down memory lane with me:
I went to a rural public HS in the midwest with about 70 per grade. It's fair to say I struggled socially, emotionally, and academically.

First hint of a problem was the last month or so of my freshman year. I stopped doing math homework (it wasn't due daily) and found that I didn't "need" to do it, but as I was a "good" student I ended up cramming it all in at the end so I would get credit.

Sophomore year was more of a bad year socially. I was on the fringe of the popular group, but not really accepted by any group. I actually dated a popular senior for a while, but as a result was harassed by some upperclass girls. In hindsight, I understand why I had problems relating to everyone else, LOL. I had a decent year academically, since I decided to take a full class load and study both French and Spanish. The French teacher let me work at my own pace. I also had art class and drama activities that I really enjoyed and a good English teacher. But, I stopped doing math homework again. When I pointed out to the teacher that I was getting at least 97% on the tests without doing any homework and didn't she think that meant I should be in a different math class? I was told that she couldn't accelerate me if I wasn't willing to do the homework. So I copied the work from a friend in another section (the credit was for completing the work, not doing it correctly). They still didn't accelerate me. I think I skipped a week or so of school toward the end of the year and just read books and played sick.

Junior year, things started falling apart. I had problems with the biology teacher who refused to teach evolution because he didn't believe in it. He also had no understanding of the material. We did not get along. It all started to seem like a waste of time to me. I think I skipped 50+ days my junior year. I looked at entering college with early admission, but my parents, who aren't the most pro-active people, didn't seem to be very supportive. I was 16 at the time, and my mother thought it was more of a mental/depression problem and put me on antidepressants. I gave it a try but they didn't seem to help much and I stopped taking them after a few months.

Because of the full class load earlier I only needed a semester more of credits to graduate, so I went back my senior year. I didn't even have a full class load and most of the classes were a total joke: Individualized Reading, Speech, Life Skills and I did others independent study. I graduated at semester and thought I had a job teaching dance lined up, but that fell through, so I ended up having to hang around until May graduation anyway, but it gave me time to work on some theater projects, so I can't complain.

In the fall I went to a small liberal arts college on an honors scholarship. I didn't do terribly well academically, but honestly, I just wasn't that into it. I think people did me a disservice by saying that "college will be better" and that you just have to get through high school, like it's a rite of passage, or war time or something. I built it up to be a life changing experience, but in fact I found that college was more of the same. The classes in general weren't particularly challenging or more interesting, but there was more reading and longer papers. People were still petty. But I did make some good friends in spite of the social drama. I dropped out mid-sophomore year. In hindsight, I might have been better served by going to the state university. I suppose I do have the "normalizing" of some high school social experiences, prom, learning how to handle mean girls, and there were some good parts too. But academically and career-wise I think early college entrance would have been good for me.

I agree with kcab. There was nothing "normalizing" about high school. I went to an all-girls high school so eliminating the entire male gender is anything but "normal." I always found the assertions that high school would be "the best years of your life" depressing. Thankfully, that has been far from the truth.

I can't say anything especially good or bad about my high school experience.. it just was what it was: three years of my life. Here, HS includes grade 10-12. The school I went to had 1200 students. I was involved in a few extra-curricular activites and worked a part-time job. I worked hard while in class but did all of my homework last minute (including studying). I got good grades with minimal-moderate effort. Socially, I had one really good friend and, like someone posted above, I was on the fringe of the popular group. I never felt like I truly fit in with any group. I tried them all out and by moving around was able to avoid a lot of the nastiness that occurs with cliques.

I can't say that I learned much from a social perspective, except the realization that I did not have a lot in common with anyone. I do not recall any life-changing events or big social dilemmas. I just kind of skirted around and did my own thing. Academically, I learned what was taught in class and little else. I had an amazing biology teacher who helped to fuel my love of the subject and I will be forever grateful to him for that.

Retrospectively, I am having a hard time identifying anything that stands out as important or necessary that I 'got' out of high school (except how to drink beer while standing in three feet of snow, in the woods, while wearing a mini skirt and not get frostbite).

Me too, although my HS had closer to 90 students per grade. I remember thinking how wonderful it would be to be homeschooled, so I could learn everything I needed in just a few hours a week and have more time to do what I wanted. I was frustrated with both the lack of academic challenge and the teasing/bullying. On the plus side, because the school didn't know what to do with me, I got to spend several classes sitting in the back reading.

On the other hand, while I think I could have handled the academic challenge of college early, I'm not sure I would have been ready to leave home at 15 or 16. I was happy to leave at 17 though.

Although it wasn't possible at the time, my ideal would have been a virtual high school supplemented with distance learning courses and extracurriculars through the local high school.

high school was a very rough time for me for reasons I won't go into here. I dropped out of my public high school, then enrolled in an alternative high school where I goofed off a fair amount. I started writing and had things published early, but just felt like an oddball. In college and grad school, things were better to some extent. I attended a Seven Sisters college and an Ivy for grad. I was shocked they took me because I basically never attended high school. I got A's without exerting myself in college and grad school. Perhaps I selected majors that weren't challenging enough for me or just never knew how to work through challenging material. I never felt dimininished as a female or tried to high my mind in school but I was in an alternative school where I worked at my own pace and also went to Wellesley for undergrad.

I think high school is probably the least normal place I've ever spent my time.

I spent the decade after high school un-learning all the social things I had internalized (in my very wealthy, preppy suburban HS).

I can't really comment on the academic side of things, as I don't remember ever studying. In fact I remember a group of kids getting together to study before a math final and thinking "wow, they actually do that!"

I think I was pretty much lost at sea for those 4 years.

I imagine that homeschool/virtual school would have been a great fit for me, or at least a bigger, more urban school.

Did anyone have a healthy & kind of fun 4 years?

I'm not sure what exactly you mean by a normalizing experience? I really made sure that my high school experience wasn't that normal.

I think I DID benefit significantly from HS but not so much from an academic perspective but that was the first time I really had a strong peer group. Most of my friends from hs have gone on to be doctors, lawyers, academics etc. And I did have a handful of close friends who were highly gifted too so I really lucked out.

The classes certainly weren't always the most challenging but I really worked the system. I took classes independently if they didn't interest me, I skipped lunch to take more advanced classes at times and if I was really bored most teachers would write passes to get me out of school and I'd go to the park or pick up donuts for the class or something.

I also was heavily involved in extra-curriculars and barely had a spare moment to myself, which was probably a good thing. I did debate and was on a very team that traveled extensively so that kept me extremely busy.

My school wasn't a gifted school but it did provide an enormous amount of AP/honor classes (and they were FULL). Sure, they tended to cater to "bright" students but there were a number of teachers that had open-ended assignments so you did the amount of work/level of work you wanted to. I think flexibility in the system was the key more than anything else (and I was also a pretty self-aware HS student so if I didn't like a class I would go to my counselor and asked to be switched or ask to take it as an independent student or ask to get rid of prerequisites etc).

I still keep in touch with a number of my friends and they've all followed amazingly interesting paths in their lives. I always assumed this was normal for HS until I went to college and beyond and now I realize I had a pretty unique experience.

Granted, now my thoughts on education have changed rather drastically over time but I still think it was what I needed at that time even if it's not necessarily the type of education I'm planning for my own children.

I've always felt this is why the teen suicide rate is so high. If you really believe these are the best years of your life, then what's the point of going any further?

I had a miserable time in high school, for the most part. I was a social outcast until my senior year, when at least that got better -- I was no social butterfly at that point, but I had friends in every group and people had mostly stopped bullying me. Of course, friends in every group is also a problem, because none of your friends actually like each other and it's hard to hang out with more than a couple at a time.

I think it would really have helped me if they had told me my freshman year that I was 11th in my class. I didn't find that out until a couple years later, after I had already demolished that with a lot of slacking off and ditching.

Acceleration would have been wonderful, although I really could have used it back in elementary and then god knows how bad it might have been by high school. Being even faintly challenged would have been useful, and might have given me some kind of a work ethic.