<story><title>Separating gifted children hasn&apos;t led to better achievement</title><url>https://hechingerreport.org/opinion-separating-gifted-children-hasnt-led-to-better-acheivement/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>koolba</author><text>The solution is not to pull out a handful of high performers, it’s to kick out the even smaller number of disrupters.</text></item><item><author>borski</author><text>Amen to this. I was separated (went to Stuyvesant HS in NYC) and it made a &lt;i&gt;world&lt;/i&gt; of difference for me, as compared to JHS or elementary school. Prior to Stuy, I was bullied like crazy, beaten, and it was &lt;i&gt;very&lt;/i&gt; difficult to try and fit in with many of the others around me who, frankly, &lt;i&gt;just didn&amp;#x27;t give a fuck&lt;/i&gt;. It really sucked.&lt;p&gt;Stuy was a different world, and the first time in my life I felt the opportunity to actually just learn, and not have to hide my report card or test scores as soon as I got them, because doing &amp;quot;too well&amp;quot; meant a beatdown after school.&lt;p&gt;2&amp;#x2F;3 of my MIT admission essays were about this experience, incidentally.&lt;p&gt;[edit 1] Aside: one additional anecdote is that I was constantly getting in trouble before Stuy; I was always bored, because the work was easy, and nobody ever gave me additional work to do, so I would talk to the other kids. I was always an extrovert, and very bad at being bored; I could not sit in one place and just stare at the wall, or pretend to listen to a teacher drone on about some geometry thing I already knew. So I got in trouble &lt;i&gt;constantly&lt;/i&gt; for distracting the other kids. That stopped in Stuy, because I wasn&amp;#x27;t bored; I was challenged.&lt;p&gt;[edit 2] The other corollary to this, of course, is that on the last day of JHS, after having held my reactions entirely for nearly a decade, and just taking the beatings...I finally lost it. It was really bad, and on the last day of JHS I went absolutely apeshit on this kid for pushing me around and punching me, after I gave him three warnings. Easily one of the top 3 least proud moments of my life. That could have been avoided, too, though you could make an argument a large part of that was also due to it being taboo to actually talk to someone about your feelings in the 90s. I never wanted to fight back because I was afraid of hurting them (I had been training in martial arts for like 7-8 years) and because I didn&amp;#x27;t want to get in trouble. It was dumb.</text></item><item><author>hackerrenews</author><text>I was fourth picked for g&amp;amp;t. First and second pick ended up being quite successful, as did the third picked. One has a high up, prestigious position at Amazon and the other retired from Microsoft wealthy.&lt;p&gt;Me, I smoke weed and that’s about the only thing I’ve really done consistently since high school.. more consistently than music, and programming, even.&lt;p&gt;Frankly, I wish I had been better separated from the other kids. I would have been far happier in middle school just hanging around other nice, smart people. (With a few exceptions, the smart kids tended to be kind). The mixture with the “gen pop” led to bullying, repeated physical abuse and harassment by other kids from ages 10-12. This was decades ago when physical abuse amongst minors was often ignored, even by police.&lt;p&gt;By freshman year of high school, I was worn down and switched back to some non-honors classes mid-term. This unfortunately led to dysfunctional friendships with the “cool” kids (same bully crowd), introduction to drugs and a low achievement life. There was some form of Florence nightingale syndrome involved here, due to unresolved physical abuse leading to friendships with the abusers in high school.&lt;p&gt;Separating gifted children for accelerated learning is great. Ignoring social development by blindly sticking all kids together in unstructured environments where bullying and physical abuse is allowed to persist will override any hope for some kids. I know, I was there. Still here.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rayiner</author><text>This is 95% of why we send our kids to private school. In the rare case a disrupter makes it in, they&amp;#x27;re &amp;quot;counseled out.&amp;quot; It&amp;#x27;s a travesty that schools permit a handful of bad apples to ruin the learning experience of everyone else.</text></comment>
<story><title>Separating gifted children hasn&apos;t led to better achievement</title><url>https://hechingerreport.org/opinion-separating-gifted-children-hasnt-led-to-better-acheivement/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>koolba</author><text>The solution is not to pull out a handful of high performers, it’s to kick out the even smaller number of disrupters.</text></item><item><author>borski</author><text>Amen to this. I was separated (went to Stuyvesant HS in NYC) and it made a &lt;i&gt;world&lt;/i&gt; of difference for me, as compared to JHS or elementary school. Prior to Stuy, I was bullied like crazy, beaten, and it was &lt;i&gt;very&lt;/i&gt; difficult to try and fit in with many of the others around me who, frankly, &lt;i&gt;just didn&amp;#x27;t give a fuck&lt;/i&gt;. It really sucked.&lt;p&gt;Stuy was a different world, and the first time in my life I felt the opportunity to actually just learn, and not have to hide my report card or test scores as soon as I got them, because doing &amp;quot;too well&amp;quot; meant a beatdown after school.&lt;p&gt;2&amp;#x2F;3 of my MIT admission essays were about this experience, incidentally.&lt;p&gt;[edit 1] Aside: one additional anecdote is that I was constantly getting in trouble before Stuy; I was always bored, because the work was easy, and nobody ever gave me additional work to do, so I would talk to the other kids. I was always an extrovert, and very bad at being bored; I could not sit in one place and just stare at the wall, or pretend to listen to a teacher drone on about some geometry thing I already knew. So I got in trouble &lt;i&gt;constantly&lt;/i&gt; for distracting the other kids. That stopped in Stuy, because I wasn&amp;#x27;t bored; I was challenged.&lt;p&gt;[edit 2] The other corollary to this, of course, is that on the last day of JHS, after having held my reactions entirely for nearly a decade, and just taking the beatings...I finally lost it. It was really bad, and on the last day of JHS I went absolutely apeshit on this kid for pushing me around and punching me, after I gave him three warnings. Easily one of the top 3 least proud moments of my life. That could have been avoided, too, though you could make an argument a large part of that was also due to it being taboo to actually talk to someone about your feelings in the 90s. I never wanted to fight back because I was afraid of hurting them (I had been training in martial arts for like 7-8 years) and because I didn&amp;#x27;t want to get in trouble. It was dumb.</text></item><item><author>hackerrenews</author><text>I was fourth picked for g&amp;amp;t. First and second pick ended up being quite successful, as did the third picked. One has a high up, prestigious position at Amazon and the other retired from Microsoft wealthy.&lt;p&gt;Me, I smoke weed and that’s about the only thing I’ve really done consistently since high school.. more consistently than music, and programming, even.&lt;p&gt;Frankly, I wish I had been better separated from the other kids. I would have been far happier in middle school just hanging around other nice, smart people. (With a few exceptions, the smart kids tended to be kind). The mixture with the “gen pop” led to bullying, repeated physical abuse and harassment by other kids from ages 10-12. This was decades ago when physical abuse amongst minors was often ignored, even by police.&lt;p&gt;By freshman year of high school, I was worn down and switched back to some non-honors classes mid-term. This unfortunately led to dysfunctional friendships with the “cool” kids (same bully crowd), introduction to drugs and a low achievement life. There was some form of Florence nightingale syndrome involved here, due to unresolved physical abuse leading to friendships with the abusers in high school.&lt;p&gt;Separating gifted children for accelerated learning is great. Ignoring social development by blindly sticking all kids together in unstructured environments where bullying and physical abuse is allowed to persist will override any hope for some kids. I know, I was there. Still here.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>solveit</author><text>Yes, but how would that work in practice? Special schools for high performers is much more palatable than special schools for quarantining children who aren&amp;#x27;t going to amount to anything (no matter what you call it and how you design it, this is how it will be perceived).</text></comment>