Ask HN: How to Educate Gifted Child? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How to Educate Gifted Child?

8 pointsjkhdigital5 comments

I know there are some smart folks in here, and intelligence is highly heritable so I'm sure some of you have exceptionally intelligent children. My son just started 1st grade, and (as we have suspected for a while) he meets the criteria for "gifted": RIAS-2 composite standard score 135, NNAT standard score 133, both 99th percentile.

I have some personal experience here as well; I also scored in the 99th percentile on pretty much every standardized test I was offered. My parents did an admirable job of ensuring I was placed in the most accelerated academic programs available in my public school district, but even in that environment I was frequently bored and depressed.

I'm not concerned about "achievement" and "potential" because I know from personal experience how pernicious those expectations can be. I just want my son to enjoy his educational experience and emerge into adulthood with a firm understanding of his strengths and weaknesses, and confidence in his initial career direction whatever that may be. I did not get that from public education, even the accelerated track, and I suspect that my son would not either.

Of course I am doing a lot of my own research, but it helps to hear personal experiences of what worked well in specific situations to guide that research. Parents of gifted children of HN, how do you help your child get an appropriate education? I'm open to all options.

Some points, in no particular order:

1. For kids that grow to become successful, content adults, intelligence is only one factor, likely not a determining one. If success is on your mind, qualities like lifelong curiosity or emotional self regulation are much stronger predictors. Hyper focus on measured aptitude can sometimes detract from good development of both these qualities.

2. Good schools matter, a lot. At some point, sooner than you think, it's the peer group that'll shape what your child believes is time well spent. Aim to find a school with parents and a community who share your values.

3. So many people get screwed over from this belief they're smart and therefore special. Think of it like a ML algorithm, working at optimizing a score. then you give it a real life task where the score is fuzzy and complex and looks nothing like the training. It's funny when you put it like that, but I've seen it happen in real life and it's the farthest thing from funny.

4. I recommend you read B. Fuller's essay on the Great Pirates, which Steve Jobs creatively stole when he said "Be a Pirate". https://atrightanglestoreality.blogspot.com/2016/03/the-grea...

5. Formal education is great, and the more a child is equipped with methodically learning how to learn (which only happens by doing) the better. Second the opinion to reward effort, not achievements.

I am in a similar situation with my 7 year old daughter.

What I try to do at home is find interesting projects where she has to learn certain things to complete the project.

This might include programming a robot or making a video game in Scratch.

I look for projects that teach practical knowledge. I try to expose her to other subjects like Philosophy ( Introduction to Philosophy for kids) and neuroscience ( Learning How to Learn )

Projects with electronics are some of her favorites. I think these are great because there is so much you can with these.

This is a very short advice, that I very much believe in.

Reward hard work, not achievements. Working 40 hours and getting a semi-bad grade in biology is much more important than studying 4 hours and getting 100% in math.

Now this is me being cynical, but please really try to find a decent school. One reason I'm against having children personally is that the schools here were I grew up are terrible for some people and I didn't even go to a bad school. But it was easily the worst time of my life..

> Reward hard work, not achievements. Working 40 hours and getting a semi-bad grade in biology is much more important than studying 4 hours and getting 100% in math.

That makes me picture someone staying up all night every night, hindering their ability to concentrate and work effectively at all, because working hard is more important than working effectively.

Pushing it to a further extreme, maybe they can go out and dig holes and refill them, or move a bunch of heavy rocks from one spot to another across a field and then move them back. They could do this dawn to dusk every day. That's harder work than studying, so why prefer studying?

Don't relegate his physical development to a second place.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com