From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@yahoo.com)
Date: Mon Apr 14 2003 - 11:52:00 MDT
--- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> wrote:
> > (Anders Sandberg <asa@nada.kth.se>):
>
> >> ...we ended up skipping two years of high school and starting
> >> college at F.I.T. at age 16. That option worked great for the
> >> mind, but horrible for our social development. Sixteen-year old
> >> males on campus were freaks, nerds and did not fit in well.
>
> I think this is mostly a myth, and a very dangerous one. Geeks
> tend to be social misfits /regardless/ of their surroundings. My
> parents took the route of keeping me with my age-peers rather than
> advancing me early, and (1) I was just as much an outcast then,
> and am just as socially retarded now as I might have been had I
> advanced, and (2) I sleep-walked through most of school and didn't
> learn a damned thing I didn't know already.
I concur with this. My parents treated me the same way, and even used
my desire to attend the Air Force Academy to get me to be more 'well
rounded'. Even when I was captain of the school ski team, worked as a
ski instructor at the local ski area, I was still an unsocial and
unaccepted geek whose only girlfriend was on the math team of a
neighboring school...
Furthermore, this 'well rounding' exercise left me entirely unprepared
to pursue a higher education (not in terms of aptitude or knowledge,
but in discipline and motivation). At the nerd college I went to (WPI)
I was the campus 'Bluto' (the Animal House character) from the very
first week of my freshman year and my studies suffered significantly.
It took me 7-10 years to rediscover my inner nerd, and I am still
playing catch up as a result. I am socially gregarious when I feel like
it, but generally enjoy entirely isolating myself with books or
computers more often. My income has been permanently stunted, and I
really have difficulty forgiving those who manipulated my development
so.
Just as 'mainstreaming' has failed miserably with the learning
disabled, it also fails miserably with the gifted student, by actively
making the gifted into learning disabled by killing their curiosity,
motivation, and discipline. Any parent or teacher who tries to
'mainstream' a gifted child should be charged with child abuse in my
not so humble but highly informed opinion.
=====
Mike Lorrey
"Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils."
- Gen. John Stark
"Pacifists are Objectively Pro-Fascist." - George Orwell
"Treason doth never Prosper. What is the Reason?
For if it Prosper, none Dare call it Treason..." - Ovid
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