Advice to the Bright and Young
An article on one bright young man, Moshe, recently appeared on Hacker News. For a long time I’ve been meaning to write about the subject, and what was to be a simple comment morphed into this essay.
The story of educational acceleration is an old one. Curious, bright children learn and explore rapidly on their own, and interactively with their parents. The world is like a playground for the growing mind. The child takes in everything. Eventually, these children find themselves mired in school’s morass. There are new adventures: more kids, older kids, a new environment. Yet kept in one place, individual attention of parents replaced by lectures from often overtaxed and uninterested teachers, their minds are left to go fallow. While some of school is new, and quite enjoyable, boredom and obedience, for the curious child, is torturous, a fact which lucky children and mindful parents come to confront.
Alternatives appear: skipping grades, dropping out, home-schooling, gifted programs, science fairs, participating in the popularity game, sports, focusing on musical or athletic achievement, playing hookie, becoming jaded.
After entering junior high I pretty much stopped responding to the world at large. Life rapidly degenerated. I quickly dropped out, and luckily my parents didn’t make me go back. At that time both of my parents were very busy with work, and so homeschooling couldn’t work for long. We discovered that college was much cheaper than private school, which didn’t seem very good anyway. We argued my way in.
Insights by Danielle Fong 