You are right, remedial social skills often go hand in hand with high intelligence. This was one of our concerns, and it is one of the things that our local program addresses. And arrogance is one of the things that I address. I always tell my kids that everyone has different needs, and this doesn’t make them better or worse than anyone else.

I grew up nerdy and socially awkward, and it was very painful, not to mention that my low self esteem at the time and boredom kept me out of the gifted program where I grew up.

Anonymous 1:24 has it right. Every child should be helped according to their strengths and weaknesses. Society has a lot to gain from it, and not just profit.

American high schools for the most part train for the average student. It is quite easy for someone who is average. American colleges don’t have the same plan and if you use the same studying skills in college as you did in US high school you will fail. I learned to study as a freshman in college and then again in the first year of medical school. There were some truly smart people at medical school, but the ones who succeeded were the ones who studied the most.

I read something in the last year speaking about the dicotomy between the US and the rest of the world regarding education and the work place. The US coddles children with their education and overpromotes, while the capitalist workplace is very Darwinian. The quasi-socialists countries of Europe are the oppositie. School is very rigorous and the adult workplace is quite lax. I don’t know if that is true as I’ve never been in a European school or workplace, but it rings true after reading some of the above comments.

Lastly, I’ve found that regardless of race, ethnicity, class, country of origin, most people don’t know how to work hard. Whether that means studying, being diligent in your career, or putting in the hours necessary to succeed, few people learn what hard work means.
b

World is really big, you know. Are you comparing the US schools to places where kids from poor families have to work from a very young age?

This says to me that high school is becoming seriously watered down.

I’m not sure if it’s the kids, the parents, the schools or all three.

I know personally of kids who won’t sign up for AP courses because they’re afraid they won’t get an A and it’ll affect their GPA and their chances of getting into a “good” college. Some high schools have cut back on these types of courses because not enough kids are signing up for them. We have a new generation of teachers who were educated under this “dumbed down” system and think mediocrity is normal.

Both of them were in the ‘bottom streams’ at my selective school, so no way geniuses, just a bit above average. They graduated with high grades a year early having done bugger all work. Oh, and business leaders in the UK say that the Uk workforce leaves school unskilled… I dread to think what it’s like in the USA.

(US colleges seem to be much more rigorous – that must be a really big jump for a lot of kids, not just the gifted ones. Is that more of the issue?)

Then I started law school at a top tier institution (a top-20 school). Suddenly the bottom dropped out. I had no skills, no discipline to handle the amount of material that was delivered. The first semester was a disaster. The next two were nightmares. Finally, in year three, when other classmates were taking GPA-padding classes, I took some heavy hitting seminars and courses and nearly made dean’s list.

I am still trying to get a grasp on some skills that I’m certain I should have mastered years ago. And I’m certain, too, that if I had been accelerated way-back-when, things would be different now. Fortunately, a new day starts every 24 hours.

Gasman: you are wrong on this issue. Excel or die would work if the schools were designed around that concept — but they aren’t. Too much of what CS Lewis foresaw in his “Screwtape Proposes a Toast” is coming true. We have, as a society, made mediocraty the goal for our children. Because we don’t want to label some kids as “below average”, we’ve adjusted the bar so that most kids can be above-average. This was best illustrated to me when I attended my nephew’s high school graduation in a small Texas town. As I looked at the program, a full 70% of the seniors were graduating with honors! So instead of letting those who are bright stand out, we knock them down to be with the rest of the crowd so those at the bottom are made to “feel better” about themselves. Oh what we do to satsify the god of self-esteem…

Do we want to spend our time, energy and resources:
* teaching the brightest students to achieve at their maximum potentitial?
* teaching everyone the same thing?
* teaching to the people in the class with the most barriers to learning?

Simply put, how does a society treat it’s most intelligent (“book-smart nerds”), it’s members with average intelligence, and it’s members and it’s members with difficulty learning.

That says more about a group of people than income or standardized tests.

Where I grew up, all of the school material was more spread out. Everyone could read after the 1st grade so even those of us who learned to read before starting school were “bored” for only a very short time; we memorized multiplication table and learned division in the 2nd grade, fractions in the 3rd. And it wasn’t just memorization, we had to solve problems that often involved logical thinking. Almost from the start math was more about logic than just memorization and drills. This was years ago, since then they moved algebra from the 6th grade to the 4th which I think made it easier because some problems we had to solve in 5th grade using only arithmetic and logic breaking it up into steps were much easier to solve using algebra.

We also had to write compositions as soon as we learned to write, so anybody who is gifted in language could simply write a better composition on the same subject. Teachers read the best compositions in class. I remember one girl whose compositions were like short stories when she was still 9, but she wasn’t particularly good in math.

From the 5th grade we had algebra, geometry (where we learned the concept of proof and the difference between a theorem and axiom as the very first thing), physics, biology, chemistry, native language, literature, history, foreign language, etc. as separate subjects. Only a couple hours a week in virtually everything but math and language/literature, but with homeworks. So even kids who were gifted and way ahead of the others in one subject, had some work to do in other subjects. I haven’t seen anybody who was so great in everything that every class was boring. People who got A in every class were more more diligent than others. “Gifted” kids were more likely to be great in one or two related subjects but had to work hard to get a good grade in other subjects.

In addition, we spent less time in classes as kids do in the US, so we had time for extra-curricular activities some of which could include study groups and competitions in subjects one was exceptionally good at and really interested in. In high school one could transfer to one of the “special” school with more advanced instructions in subjects one was interested in but still the same base program. US-equivalent would be AP classes; but our basic program was still more demanding.

I think US high school has lots of opportunities for really gifted kids, but until high school the program is way too easy. Also, because everything is crammed into high school a lot less kids actually learn sciences.