Can school help in raising gifted kids? Deborah Ruf writes on parenting her son.

“I have never been a fan of learning in a classroom. Inside a laboratory or a garage, I always wanted to know more, but never inside a classroom.” – Caltech physicist Caolionn O’Connell, PhD.

That quote is from my article “Getting out of school alive.”

The standard classroom doesn’t engage the gifted

A related post on my Teen / Young Adult Talent site titled “Does school encourage or limit high ability people?” has a comment by writer Carla Rivera (Los Angeles Times) from her article “Are gifted students getting left out?” – she says, “Highly intelligent, talented students need special programs to keep them engaged and challenged…a sizable number of highly intelligent or talented children in the nation’s classrooms find little in the standard curriculum to rouse their interest and often fall by the wayside.”

But school, even the more ordinary variety, can be helpful for gifted children and teens.

Deborah L. Ruf, Ph.D. describes some of the experiences of her son, who is among the group of what she identifies as “Level Five children.. students who do not easily fit any school set-up at all, and getting into a gifted program does not even begin to provide a solution.”

School can provide some options

After some positive and helpful periods of homeschooling and private tutoring, she writes, “By eighth grade I wasn’t sure what to do. We decided to have him return to school full-time. Students have a wide array of coursework available to them in high school, and Charlie really has enjoyed most of his classes.”

She notes, “High school is not a worse option than college, and you have all the appropriate social options.”

Later on, “After several different declared majors, Charlie ended up majoring in physics by his junior year at M.I.T. He was tempted back to Hollywood [to act in some movies] during his sophomore year..”

From her article One Profoundly Gifted Kid’s — Now Grown Up — Story.

[Photo: "West High School wins Academic Decathlon."]
~~

raising gifted kids, parenting gifted kids, psychology of gifted, psychology of talent development