College at age 11...

[Quicklet]

It's important to keep in mind that being a genius isn't the only ingredient to success, however you define it, nor does someone's being a genius necessarily make them a good teacher (in fact, it might make them a worse teacher). Past a certain threshold of intelligence, other factors might be just as important if not more.

In terms of school systems, what would be more helpful would be for teachers to recognize when some kids have particular talents and be able to support those talents. Some teachers have the presence of mind to do this already, but I fear many others either don't or are ill-equipped to. Changing a culture where kids are ostracized for being smart would help, too, but that's not exactly a simple problem to address.

Perhaps a good analogy would be sports. There are many more institutional mechanisms available to recognize talented athletes and nurture their abilities from a young age. There's less of a stigma attached to being extremely good at a sport than there is to being extremely intelligent as well. After all, our society places more monetary value on professional athletes than on doctors, let alone scientists.

[Aksannyi]

Honestly the honors classed were as described: didn't really lose some of the stupid people (book smart but no common sense, which to me was equally, if not more annoying), and just taught the same material with a ton of extra work piled on. Why even bother? I wanted to learn more while I was actually inside the school building, not take up more of my time outside of school. And for what? Taking honors courses didn't affect either negatively or positively whether I got into a good college, and it sure as hell has no impact on getting a job now, twelve years after I last set foot in a high school classroom.

I had the grades to get into the honors classes but after taking a few my freshman year, I really didn't see a point. I kept with honors French for the prestige and because I truly enjoyed French class, but other than that, by my junior year that was the only honors course I took.

Now if the honors courses really did teach at an accelerated rate (they didn't), and if school in general would ever teach students how to apply learning skills in the real world, people might see a point in applying themselves and/or taking honors courses. But nothing I learned in high school with the exception of foreign language classes have really been beneficial to me. What do I truly need to know to function in the real world? Third grade mathematics? I love learning new things, but expanding my horizons by learning something like calculus which I would never use for anything I'd enjoy doing as a career just seems like such a waste of time. It's not surprising people don't care enough to really apply themselves.

It's not completely the schools' faults, honestly. The world itself places very little value on education. Anyone can get a degree from any college or university and get an entry-level job in their field, and I bet you my entire paycheck this month that they'll be re-trained over the next six months, much of that training directly contradicting what they learned in school. It really does make me wonder what the point of all this extra education actually is. I dropped out of college because of financial reasons, but I'm not sure I'll be going back, because I'm perfectly successful without a degree.

Not sure what my full point of this is trying to be. I guess that for me, taking honors courses seemed just pointless in the grand scheme of things. In the Army we're always told, "Work smarter, not harder." I got the same education as those in the honors courses with a lot less work. Seems like a winning solution to me.

[Seanr]

Fuck you need a degree for? Look at all these reality shows...

[archibaldcrane]

Honestly the honors classed were as described: didn't really lose some of the stupid people (book smart but no common sense, which to me was equally, if not more annoying), and just taught the same material with a ton of extra work piled on. Why even bother?

Jesus christ, you guys must've gone to some hopeless schools.

But still - I mean, you had to take what, 2 years of math and 2 years of science to graduate? I mean you must've had the choice of at least harder math classes (8th grade algebra, 9th geometry, 10th algebra/trig, 11th pre-calc, 12th calculus maybe? shit my HS had 2 years of calculus and you could AP test completely out of math for college) and science (everyone takes biology, then kids split into earth science [dumb kids] or chemistry [everyone else] and then you could take physics junior year optionally and then APChem 1st semester senior year / APPhysics 2nd semester senior year), and then 4 years of foreign language which is a cakewalk for not many people unless the teacher is just awful...

I dunno. The idea that AP/advanced classes teach the same stuff just with more work is...an awful way to go. I always get so surprised/think people are bullshitting when I read BG threads about how awful their public (or private) school experiences are. I guess I was just spoiled.

Raising kids in los angeles is going to suck isn't it...

[Greatguardian]

Honors courses don't come remotely close to tapping people's potential. Neither do AP courses, even when done right. I had blitzed through multivariable calc 3, physics 2: E/M, and ordinary differential equations by my sophomore year of high school along with over a dozen of my peers.

Most students aren't even exposed to Calculus in high school, and even in the honors/AP program barely get Calculus 1 before they graduate.

It's not that there aren't "honors options", it's that the standard bar is set so damn low that even the slightly higher bar is remedial in the grand scheme of things.

[archibaldcrane]

If they teach you enough to pass AP tests and get college credit, AP classes are doing their job.

If people are complaining beyond that, jesus christ get over yourself, and this is coming from someone smarter than you

[hey]

Jesus christ, you guys must've gone to some hopeless schools.

But still - I mean, you had to take what, 2 years of math and 2 years of science to graduate? I mean you must've had the choice of at least harder math classes (8th grade algebra, 9th geometry, 10th algebra/trig, 11th pre-calc, 12th calculus maybe?

This was the only harder courses offered by my high school. But again, it was only for those that took algebra 1 in 8th grade. Everyone else had to do algebra 1 in 9th, geometry in 10th, then more algebra+trig in 11th. NJ only requires 3 years of math, so at that point, there was an option of precalc (or calc for those that took precalc in 11th grade), AP statistics, or an easier class that basically consisted of more in depth trig (only the very basics are taught in algebra 2), stat, and some other things, which is what most people took, if they took a fourth year of math.

think people are bullshitting when I read BG threads about how awful their public (or private) school experiences are.

No, it's not a joke. Most schools really are that terrible.

[Greatguardian]

If they teach you enough to pass AP tests and get college credit, AP classes are doing their job.

If people are complaining beyond that, jesus christ get over yourself, and this is coming from someone smarter than you

You're probably just trolling, but this is a serious problem with the system as well. Passing a test or getting credit for something doesn't mean that people are learning to think critically. I never said AP classes didn't do their job. I simply said that they don't tap people's potential, even when they're done right, because most students are lucky to have a high school that offers up to Calculus 2 - ignoring the fact that AP courses are only accessible at the high school level to begin with, and come with prerequisites that come extremely slowly throughout the rest of the primary education system.

I think you're missing the point where I was able to take those classes, and did great in them. I'm not sitting here pissing and moaning about how I wish I had the opportunity to do things because I already did them. My beef is with the fact that so many people are taught that they can't do these things when they can.

And yeah, you probably are smarter than me. Goes to show how underperforming your school was if you weren't acing all of those classes as an adolescent.

[Aksannyi]

Jesus christ, you guys must've gone to some hopeless schools.

You'd think that, but I went to a private Catholic Prep School. :/

[Seanr]

Go to predominantly black schools

[Ghost_Wheel22]

I have a niece that went to one of those. She piled on the AP courses, walked into an aeronautics/tech college this last term as a sophomore found the workload easier that in prep. But it helps when her parents are also very supportive and aggressively pro-learning. As my brother sorta-laughingly said "Learn something new every day or I'll show you new ways to hurt.".

[Hyan]

These kind of threads make me appreciate something I once thought wasn't anything special.

I guess the biggest difference is, when somebody has trouble he is transferred to 'special' class so the rest can move on at a faster pace.

[Brutala]

College at 11 just means he's going to have veiny legs, shitty eyesight and a boss sucking the life out of him at a younger age. Not jelly at all!

[Deadgye]

Ah, the arrogance of assuming one is bored because they are not challenged. Perhaps, and this may come as a shock to some of you, school is just boring because the material is not being taught in a way that's engaging. Presenting bald facts and figures isn't interesting to most people.

What assumptions? I'm pretty sure almost every single one of us is tossing in our own anecdotal experience.

I mentioned how I wasn't challenged in my math and science classes. But I said nothing of the sort for my English and social studies classes. For those classes it was pretty much like the rest of your post, I just saw no reason to care.

That's why most people are like, shut the fuck up, you're not a genius. Because really, you're not.

Don't know if that's a general statement or meant for this thread, but if it's the latter I'm pretty sure nobody here is calling themselves a genius.

Did people not have Talented And Gifted/AP classes in high school they could take to get out of the pool of retards dragging everything down?

I was personally only given the option to move to "advanced classes" in 7th/8th grade, which were simply only one year ahead and had a shitton more meaningless coursework. I tried to skip precalc and just go straight into AP calc, but they wouldn't let me.

But still - I mean, you had to take what, 2 years of math and 2 years of science to graduate? I mean you must've had the choice of at least harder math classes (8th grade algebra, 9th geometry, 10th algebra/trig, 11th pre-calc, 12th calculus maybe? shit my HS had 2 years of calculus and you could AP test completely out of math for college) and science (everyone takes biology, then kids split into earth science [dumb kids] or chemistry [everyone else] and then you could take physics junior year optionally and then APChem 1st semester senior year / APPhysics 2nd semester senior year), and then 4 years of foreign language which is a cakewalk for not many people unless the teacher is just awful...

Eh? That sounds pretty standard or lack-lusted to me. My school district had algebra 7th/8th, Math A in 9th, AB in 10th, B in 11th, precalc in 12th. (A/AB/B were apparently changed to geometry/trig/something after I graduated.)

If you went into the advanced classes in 7th grade you only took one year of algebra and thus took everything a year earlier and had a choice of taking AP Calc in 12th. Science was Life Science 7th/8th, Earth Science 9th, Biology 10th, Chemistry 11th, Physics 12th. If you went into the advanced classes in 7th you only took one year of life science and thus took everything a year earlier and have a choice of taking AP Physics C in 12th. Foreign Language grades 7-10 was mandatory (I think).

This type of curriculum is what I considered not accelerated enough. If given the material I probably could have learned everything from all those math classes by 10th grade easily. Same for sciences. The advanced classes were just the same shit as the regular classes.. except you were taking it a year earlier and had a lot more meaningless homework to do.

I think we only needed 2 years of math and 3 years of science to graduate and there were options for the stupid people to take easy science courses if they couldn't pass chemistry. But the "harder" options you listed were.. the standard. The easy stuff that I got bored of because of how slowly we learned stuff.

[BaneTheBrawler]

We had a couple options for particularly smart students. One was to take the AP classes, which covered -slightly- higher level material, or the Post Secondary Enrollment Options program, which basically sent you to the local community college, both of which gave credits that would count for both high school graduation and college graduation, when you got there. You needed to have good grades to get into the AP stuff, so I took PSEO.

In retrospect, it was a bad choice for me, but it was a last-ditch effort on the part of my counselor to get me out of there with a half-decent GPA. It backfired horribly, since the Community College courses were even worse than the high school courses. I shit you not, one of the college teachers had a lesson plan my high school history teacher had used two years earlier. Whole bit about the "Nacirema" people scraping their faces (men) and legs (women) with blades and whatnot. It's not the type of lesson you can sit through twice and be productive both times. I still managed, though, because I was the only person in the college class willing to say anything in response to a question. So... these horribly boring classes are taking place at the community college, where they don't take (or care about) attendance... and it's 20 miles away from my high school. I did what any other sane high-schooler would do: I ditched the shit out of those classes.

Most of the time I sat in my car reading or sleeping, occasionally I'd work on a project for my High School classes if it was interesting. I never actually went out and fucked around, though. Spending too much money or buying anything other than food would attract my parents attention, so I just sat there. Reading. Or sleeping. Best part? By that time I had gone through all three of the local libraries (School, small town, big town with college) selections of science fiction and fantasy books and picked them clean of shit that looked interesting... so I read textbooks. History textbooks. They're almost like novels, if you try hard enough.

In any case, I managed to graduate with something silly like .5 more credits than the bare minimum. Because one of my English teachers gave up on trying to get me to do homework (well, all of my teachers did) and sat me down and said: "Look, I know you know this stuff. I see you reading the books and you know the answers when I ask questions. But, I need something, anything to grade you on. Here, we're talking about ________ today. Go write me a paper." and sent me into the computer lab. That day, during her class, I googled the shit out of that subject. I turned in my paper, and got a C for that quarter. I saved that paper, though I don't remember offhand what it was about.

Actually, thinking about it, I had a few teachers who went out of their way to accommodate my voracious reading and general lack of interest in the homework. Some assigned me extra reading, which is the only type of homework I did, unless it was particularly fun or interesting. Others let me dick around in class, which in my case meant reading whatever I wanted while they did their lesson.

Sorry for the tl;dr, but I'm kinda proud of my high-school experience, in a weird way. Especially the bits about reading. I'm a voracious reader and want others to enjoy reading too.

Edit: Also, the options I mentioned were for above-average kids. For a truly gifted kid like Santiago, they would have had to do pretty much the same thing they did in Colorado.

[Greatguardian]

Community college is just high school 2.0 for the kids who weren't able to get into real universities. The teachers are straight up not allowed to teach harder material or fail kids most of the time. It's definitely not the place to look if you want to bolster your education from high school.

When I wanted to get extra classes done, I just enrolled for the summer terms at my local state university. I knocked out quite a few fun classes that way in between school years.