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Joined: Mar 2013
Posts: 1,489
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TO be fair, Michelle, I have encountered some of the pushy, Tiger-type parents. They can actually damage their kids, albeit with the best of intentions.
So this might actually be a genuine concern for a small subset of parents. Unfortunately, it then becomes a matter of baby and bathwater for those of us that are not actually "pushy" parents who want to crow about our "genius" child on an international stage, or have visions of Carnegie Hall or Nobel awards in our heads. I have too met many pushy Tiger parents in my school district. Enough that my school district has done a HUGE push back. Too many parents have enrolled their children in after school tutoring to have them on the path they think they need to be to get into top colleges. And it's tricky for the school district to tell the difference in a way that seems fair. Sometimes these students who have been tutored look better on paper becaue they have been taught to the test. And the district has had students who were hurt by acceleration. The math teachers for example were finding many poorly placed students in their advanced junior high math classes and this sometimes didn't show until the students hit higher level math in H.S.
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Joined: Sep 2007
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My daughter has no idea how to LEARN that which she does not know. She has no idea how to work for understanding. Period. This point is really important. I had the same problem, my daughter has the same problem...etc. This is why I see acceleration in the US as a least-worst option rather than a good approach to educating gifted kids. Public or private, our education system tends toward the superficial. IMO, this problem is driven by the fact that we've become so hooked on shallow standardized tests on the one hand, and, well, actually a lot of other problems on a lot of other hands. So more slightly harder but mostly superficial stuff still doesn't teach a HG+ kid how to stop, think, and solve. You need confidence for that, and you only get the confidence with experience. TBH, I think that the lack of imparting this skill in our most talented students is one of the greatest tragedies of the US education system. In addition, the way that schools are set up makes acceleration not necessarily the best option. I know that this idea isn't popular here, but my son had a lot of trouble fitting in when he was a little 11-year-old in a class full of adolescents. Placing kids with others who are older (or much older) creates its own problems. At the same time, DS understands that not skipping him wouldn't have been any better, because of the whole boredom/study skills thing. Personally, I don't like the idea of painting acceleration as a wonderful solution. It isn't. The age-grade thing makes it a mixed bag. Also, my kids may be capable of understanding ideas that are beyond the norm for their ages, but that doesn't mean that they have executive function skills and other attributes that older kids have. Many teachers don't understand the difference, which also creates problems.
Last edited by Val; 02/23/15 10:49 AM.
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Joined: Apr 2013
Posts: 5,261 Likes: 8
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Joined: Apr 2013
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There is a vast difference between strong advocacy to have a child's needs met, and pushy parents of the tiger-parenting variety. The child's love of learning was mentioned by another poster upthread, and can be utilized as an easy distinction between the child's comfortable pace/depth of learning and a child who is hothoused, pushed, tiger-parented to become a trophy child. In general, pushy parents may seek to have their students accelerated in both ELA and math, while remaining at grade level with the specific motivation to have the child's test scores be superior to those of their classmates who've had less exposure. This is different than an child whose needs in ELA and math require advanced academics in those areas but who is otherwise not a candidate for whole-grade acceleration(s).
While a school may have had students who were "hurt by acceleration", this may be due to improper fit or improper implementation. Some may say that in these cases the home/school team would be wise to conduct a post-mortem review to see what might have been done differently. For example, in some cases beginning with the IAS to assess proper placement may be a factor, a school attitude of support for accelerated students may be another.
In the final analysis, teachers know the child for a short while, parents are in the relationship for life; Parental input ought to be heavily weighted in decisions. Documenting decisions, as the IAS suggests, may help both teachers and parents carefully weigh the pros and cons in each situation.
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Joined: Jul 2010
Posts: 480
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We accelerated to what her executive function and emotional maturity would bear-- and it wasn't enough, academically. She is paying the price for that now-- she has no idea how to memorize information, has no idea how to really study material that she doesn't know intuitively/ad nauseaum, and struggles to take tests which are memorization-based (because that IS how most people learn the low-level material, evidently). She did not NEED any of those skills to ace everything in high school, including "AP" and "dual enrollment" courses, and to smack a home-run on standardized tests, too. <-- that bit is important. She. did. not. NEED. to really learn to be a "student" in any meaningful way to do those things. Because she is what she is. She has enormous, but almost entirely untamed/undisciplined/untapped raw potential. And no way to deliberately ACCESS it, because nobody has ever asked her to, never mind insisted upon genuine effort in that direction. They THOUGHT that what they were offering was "challenge" for her-- but it most certainly was not.
That's the crystal ball for what happens to kids who aren't challenged sufficiently. "Wider and deeper" sounds awesome until you realize that what is actually being described is systematic stunting of a child's growth as a learner. Kids like my DD run the risk of graduating with top honors only to discover that they have been-- metaphorically, I mean-- raised BY WOLVES. DD is a "feral" student. Surrounded by very bright to bright students who KNOW all the things that she does not. Now, her raw potential is still what it is, and we're hopeful that it will turn right in the end, but this is a rough, rough road through adolescence and college, for sure.
My daughter has no idea how to LEARN that which she does not know. She has no idea how to work for understanding. Period.
I feel a little as though we thought we were walking a tightrope all those years-- thought we were so clever, we did-- and now I've woken up to the fact that we were actually walking on nothing but imagination.
Because she had such stellar academics and wasn't "acting out" or "underperforming" (from what they could see, anyhow-- WE saw that she was), nobody would listen to our concerns. Nobody.
I had just one completely open and utterly frank conversation with a school staffer in nine years. In that conversation, she heard me-- and was struck SPEECHLESS with horror. Her response?
A halting, astonished; "We have failed her. We have completely, utterly failed your daughter-- I am-- so-- so sorry {Howler}-- I don't know what to say to this, and I have no idea how to make this better for her within the mandates that we have to follow, but we-- and by "we" I mean not only us as a school, but the state's mandates, too-- have failed to do the one thing that is most fundamental for her-- she hasn't learned anything FROM us. Because she hasn't learned HOW to learn from us, we've harmed her."
That was four years ago now. This is why I'm compelled to reply to people who say their kid is "doing fine". Because everyone else in the class is being taught soft skills that will stand them in better stead than IQ will for the rest of their lives. And the kids with the highest IQs are considered disposable and not worth teaching any of those skills. It really really annoys me.
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Joined: Apr 2013
Posts: 5,261 Likes: 8
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... everyone else in the class is being taught soft skills that will stand them in better stead than IQ will for the rest of their lives. And the kids with the highest IQs are considered disposable and not worth teaching any of those skills. Agreed. It is unconscionable. Fortunately, there are many books and websites on how to study, how to learn, how to develop critical and analytical thinking skills. Parents and students can find these on their own, outside the classroom. Exercising the skills is another story; For this kids need a challenging curriculum, an antelope.
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Joined: Feb 2010
Posts: 2,640 Likes: 2
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I have too met many pushy Tiger parents in my school district. Enough that my school district has done a HUGE push back. Too many parents have enrolled their children in after school tutoring to have them on the path they think they need to be to get into top colleges. And it's tricky for the school district to tell the difference in a way that seems fair. I like the math curriculum at the Russian School of Math (many branches in Massachusetts) more than the Everyday Math our schools use (without any option for acceleration, of course). Yes, being better at math will help them get into selective colleges and do well in STEM classes there. So our three children attend RSM. A phrase such as "pushy Tiger parent" suggests we are doing something wrong, but I don't see it. We are going to send the children to summer classes this year, too. Is this pushy, or a rational response to a 2.5 month summer vacation that exists because children use to do farm work in the summer?
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Joined: Sep 2007
Posts: 3,299 Likes: 2
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We are going to send the children to summer classes this year, too. Is this pushy, or a rational response to a 2.5 month summer vacation that exists because children use to do farm work in the summer? My kids also do math over the summer. This is primarily because they'd forget a lot of what they'd learned if they didn't, and I don't see much point in doing all that work between September and June so that you can forget it in July and August, and then re-learn it in September through October or November. They don't do LA classes or other classes because they all like to read. I'd prefer that they have the summer to be completely unconstrained in what they pick to read. We manage do the math lessons in spite of them going to day camps every day Monday through Friday. The camps they like are mostly, though not completely, oriented toward outside activities.
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Joined: Jun 2012
Posts: 144
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While I've read books like "Battle hymn of the tiger mom", I've never met anyone that extreme in person. My actual experience with other parents is that life is much more complex and nuanced than pushy parents hot housing their kids vs. gifted children just searching for adequate educational opportunities. There are differences of opinion on actual potential, how much to enrich, how to build motivation, when to push for a particular placement etc. When an acceleration is sought, you don't always know if a child will thrive once given it and in conversations with others deciding what to do there is always a lot of angst over whether they are making the right decision.
Likewise I've never found that competitiveness is the sole and defining feature for "hot housing" however you define it. I'm sure its out there just like every other combination of motivations but I'm also equally sure you can find competitive families that have genuinely smart kids. And just to make things complicated it something exists mixed with other feelings like worries over social adjustment if asking for a grade skip.
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Joined: Aug 2013
Posts: 448
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I think the root of it stems from the view that a subject has a list of check boxes for a given grade. Some teachers only know and feel comfortable teaching those items. You then get a kid that learns them in x amount of time where x<(whatever ridiculous long amount of time the curriculum states) and you need to do SOMETHING with the rest of the time. Option 1: enrichment, depth and breadth, insert eduspeak buzzword here, etc. Option 2: accelerate and move on to another set of check boxes.
Now I'm not opposed to option 1 because frankly I think most of their check box lists have a lot of room for expansion. The problem is that you need a teacher that is actually willing and able to teach outside of the curriculum. This works even better if they actually know a bit more about their curriculum than most of our elementary generalists seem to and if they have a bit of a passion for the subject themselves (which I've yet to see but there has to be some elementary teachers like this somewhere). The second problem with this occurs when teachers are perfectly fine doing this as long as it doesn't turn into option 2 at which point they all of a sudden freak out that they can't do that! What will they learn next year? Dear me! Seriously though, with the way that the curriculum spirals it is pretty hard to completely avoid option 2 in many cases (take math, 1 digit addition... wait a year.... 2 digit addition.... wait a year.... oh look kids now there are 3 digits.... wait a year....kill me now).
The flip side of this as has been highlighted is the accelerate at all costs just to appease the tiger parent that wants their 12 year old in the local paper because they are going to University (never mind that the kid clearly wasn't into this plan). Only focusing on option 2 without any of option 1 I also see as a problem. I mean not all HG+ are going to be ready for the rest of what comes with attending college/university when they've finished whipping through the standard K-12 curriculum if they haven't spent a little time slowing down to explore things outside of the basic checklists.
Either way, uggg.
ETA - I guess what I'm trying to get around to saying is that I view them both as something that should go together. Unfortunately they often get presented as an either/or option.
Last edited by chay; 02/23/15 01:25 PM.
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Joined: Dec 2012
Posts: 2,035
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Puffin, if you're referring to my message (unlikely given the timing thing), this was at a private school and the teacher in question was also in charge.
But you're correct that they could be following orders (though this would just move the ignorance a rung or two up the ladder). The people at the top will be truly ignorant or deliberately ignorant. The people at the bottom will have drunk the cool aid or pretended to. My son's teacher is not going to say she disagrees with the principal even if she does. It would hurt her and not benefit my son. Also an old teacher here could have started with new math in the seventies, done plastic bag maths in the nineties and now be doing the numeracy project. Each of these was introduced as THE solution so some shrug and adapt is reasonable. In NZ though there is essentially no choice as about 99.9 % of schools teach the national curriculum to national standards and use state trained teachers. This is good in a lot of ways but when you have a child who is HG+ yourchoices aew suck it up and supplement or homeschool.
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