You know, sometimes I get annoyed with the way things are presented in media; not even news, but everything. Case-in-point that made me write about this was a news story that I saw on my ticker on my desktop: "10-year-old takes college by storm". I actually hadn't heard much about child prodigies lately, so just out of vague interest, I looked into it...and all the magic disappears. He's taking algebra. Yes, it is a 10-year-old taking algebra, but come on. Algebra in college. The kid most likely isn't especially smart out of some cool genetic defect or something that increases knowledge retention...He's probably just a smarter kid who had parents with the crazed motivation to push him through a community college (ELAC), because I know quite a few people who could have learned algebra at 10. There was just no reason to, because the knowledge would come in time.
In the end at that age, the question is not one of learning the raw technical knowledge, but preparing yourself for the world. I would have to say that what would seem to be a much more suitable option would be to tutor him up to completing his secondary school math, rather than using a community college like an ersatz high school, a practice which I suspect is rather wide-spread if you can actually take algebra, of all things, in college. After learning the full high school range of math, then he could go on to some prestigious college for astrophysics, considering he enrolled in his college at 8.
Ultimately, if you're the parents of a more intelligent child with the motivation to push him way ahead, doing what this boy's parents did is probably the least advisable course of action; it all comes back to reiterating that it's not the technical knowledge, but the maturity that's required to join a workforce; and incidentally, considering he wants to be coming out of some school of astrophysics at age 14, what's he going to do for two and a half years while he waits for his driver's license? Somehow, I think that this whole approach of giving him the world's fastest secondary school-level education is a bad idea: He won't be any different from the astrophysics students graduating at 22 or whatever age they may be, except that he'll be younger than they are. Even if he isn't, every university will look down on him as immature and, as he is, a 14 year-old. He isn't necessarily better than everyone else because he finished sooner. Would he take a more normal job more suitable to a teenager, the raw knowledge has nothing to do with how well you can mop the floors. It's how hard you work at mopping the floors, and a good work ethic comes from an intensive and in-depth education...not jumping from 2 years of algebra at a community college to a "prestigious four-year school to study astrophysics".
You can't make lemonade by just filling a glass up with lemons, no matter how many you put in or how quickly; you need to take time to add ice, juice the lemons, add sugar, etc. I just can't help but think that the mindless glorification of things is misleading, especially if when you really look into such things, they're not nearly as good or well-planned as they've been portrayed as being.
This was a very well thought out and mature discussion on your part. Education is so many things, and "taking classes" is only a small part of it.
Posted by: Dadoo | May 19, 2008 at 07:49 AM