Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Grade skipping and sports

It sounds like you've made a good decision mountainmom2011! I'm sure it feels good to get the decision over and done with and behind you

Good luck to your dd in the coming school year!

polarbear

What pb said! Glad that you found a solution that you're happy about and looking forward to.

Not addressing the OP anymore, but reading the following article, the idea of pursuing a sports scholarship with a time commitment that could interfere with one's studies seems odd to me, unless there is a real prospect of becoming a professional football or basketball player or other well-paid athlete. I won't expect my children to work during the school year unless they can find jobs that are related to their intended careers.

What Off-Season?
By Jake New
Insider Higher Education
May 8, 2015

I couldn't agree more.

My son will probably continue to swim on a club team in college for fun. The workouts for swimming center him. Being part of a club team will provide a social group. But the demands of being on a club team are different. Paper due? Missing practice is no problem. Need to grab an extra workout after you finish the paper? No problem if there are open swim hours. He has never set his sights on the Olympics or swimming in college. He is really happy swimming club year round and having some fun on the high school team. College will be for college with activities on the side.

I could.

Assuming my child could devote the same number of hours each week, to reap the same amount of financial reward, I'd much prefer my DD spend the time outside of school work doing the sport she loves. School and related employment both involve the same kind of pressure, and doubling down on that, absent necessity, is a recipe for disaster. College sports are high stakes, so there's pressure there, but it's a different kind of pressure, and outside of competitions, there's the usual fitness and camaraderie benefits that work as an effective stress safety valve.

Working students drop out at a high rate for a reason.

College athletes who are experiencing academic issues get a very different kind of support from the institution than those who work.

Also, college scholarships are generally offered to incoming freshmen. Paid internships are usually not offered to them.

Students working long hours at jobs unrelated to their studies may have a high drop out rate, but I doubt this is true for students working part-time in a job related to their academic work. My eldest son likes math and programming. If he got a job writing code for a professor, that probably would not interfere with his classes. I've seen articles about CS majors dropping out to take jobs with tech companies. That may not be a bad thing, but the Tiger Mother would be more skeptical.

For freshmen and sophomores, there isn't much work related to their academic work, since they're mostly still doing general studies at this point.

Unless you want to be bored with the details, just trust me that if your DS was employed to write code for a big enterprise (public or private) project, it would be very easy to become a major commitment that interferes with his studies. These opportunities represent a far larger share of the pie than the chance to write code for a professor (who might be an adjunct being paid less than minimum wage).

Tech interns taking tech jobs are somewhat of a special case, because IT is one industry where the BS degree is still declared as required, but turns out to be optional in practice, if you can show an aptitude. This doesn't happen nearly as often in other fields, AFAIK. And it makes perfect sense to dump the degree program once you're offered a permanent job, because that was why you were pursuing the degree in the first place. So, while it's a fairly solid strategy in IT, I wouldn't recommend it to people pursuing other fields.

I have friends/co-workers that did that years ago. Left university because they had a great professional job coding that paid well. It came back to bite them when our company went under and they had a hard time finding a new job. While they had 15 years experience under their belt many businesses wouldn't even look at their resume since they had no degree.

The Clash had a song in which it was sung

"The men at the factory are old and cunning,
You don't owe nothing, boy get running
It's the best years of your life they want to steal"


I sometimes see whole grade acceleration in this same light, as we're pushing kids to get to the drudgery of the adult world far sooner than they need to. Trust me when I say that I wholly understand the frustrations of a child who is not being challenged at school and who does not even have any *prospects* of being challenged for the foreseeable future in school. I am not advocating for that at all.

But why would we want to compact their childhood? Yes, I've seen the studies of the potential for additional income per year of work life. They'll get there soon enough.

Please do not think I agree with the Gift of Time school of thought, because there is a very big difference between those teachers/administrators and me. They have no problem with a child being unchallenged in school for years on end, so long as they stay entirely with age peers.

I, on the other hand, have no problem with a child/person staying in school and *continuously learning* for years on end. More of the Platonic school of thought, if you will. The only area of agreement I have with the Gift of Time group is that childhood is fleeting, brief, and there to be savored- all while soaking up as much knowledge and information as possible.

I am not judging anyone's choices, though. I know and understand that whole grade acceleration is the only option for some children/families, the only way in which the child can get anywhere near the appropriate level of education for them. I know that we are fortunate enough to be able to afford private school which, although not ideal, is still much better than the public school options available to us. It's just unfortunate that the system doesn't work better and that families are forced to make this kind of decision.


To the OP- Good luck next year and I hope the STEM school works out after that.