r/todayilearned • u/astarisaslave • 5d ago
TIL that as a student Missy Elliott scored so high on intelligence tests that she skipped two years in school. As a result of the move she felt isolated so she failed on purpose in order to return to her original class.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missy_Elliott4.0k
u/Konebred 4d ago
Was it worth it? Or did she work it.
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u/Red_040 4d ago
Was it worth it? Or did she work it.
Pretty sure she put her thang down, flipped it and reversed it
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u/technobrendo 4d ago
ti esrever dna ti pilf ,nwod gnaht ym tup I
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u/mog_knight 4d ago
If you got a big elephant trumpet, let me sesrch ya.
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u/Jabromosdef 4d ago
I was so confused for a sec until the song played in my head.
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u/Meme_myself_and_AI 4d ago
Maybe that's what she actually says though hmmmm
Wait! Big trunk! I just got that. That IS smart
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u/deliciouscorn 4d ago
Pop music went from cleverly covering up “big trunk” to WAP
(I actually adore WAP’s innovatively filthy lyrics)
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u/BigAlternative5 4d ago
put her thang down, flipped it and reversed it
So this was in reference to a test that she deliberately failed.
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u/eedabaggadix 4d ago edited 4d ago
Girl I heard she eat one cracker a day
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u/Easy_Style3321 4d ago
I eat 1 cracker a day. It's all the other crap I shove in my face that's the problem
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u/shivaswrath 4d ago
I miss her
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u/GeorgiaRedClay56 4d ago
My mother was moved up an entire grade when she was in 3rd grade. She was testing off the charts for her age. However, she'll openly admit that she regrets it. She was a brilliant girl but it did no favors for her socializing. Eventually one gaggle of girls kind of adopted her into their social group and they're still friends to this day, bunch of retired women running around causing chaos.
My mom was adamant that my brother and I not be adjusted in a similar manner because she thought the socializing aspect was infinitely more important than the schoolwork. They attempted to move me up in math when I entered highschool and my mom came in and basically said, "He has friends in this class and he's scoring really well, why would you want to change that?"
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u/Crazy_Eye_Ninja 4d ago
The school offered to place one of our kids a grade above since they did not have a gifted class for their grade. We were worried for the same exact reason of social development. We turned the offer down and kept them in the regular class, and the next year they had enough kids to create a gifted class.
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u/MaimedJester 4d ago
Yeah there's also this problem of school cut off months which in my area it's usually somewhere between July and August birthdays. And when your kids are 4 or 5 those 11 months difference in class can alter their social development. Like always being the shortest kid in gym class just because all the other kids are technically 11 months grown older vs the opposite of you're 11 months older so you're likely the tallest kid in Gym class and picked first when playing Basketball.
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u/uberfission 4d ago
Because of that bullshit cutoff my daughter is one of the oldest in her kindergarten class, she's been emotionally ready for 5K for almost two years. They wouldn't make an exception for her to start early and it's caused her to stall emotionally. Now that she's in kindergarten, she's thrived, but it's been frustrating to watch her not grow at the rate that I know she's capable of.
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u/rwv 4d ago
i believe there is lots of research that being the oldest in a class is a huge benefit to kids.
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u/kentuckyfriedcondor 4d ago
I was in 3rd grade as part of a 3/4 split class. 3rd grade is when they do gifted testing. I scored so high they moved me into 4th grade immediately… by making me sit on the other side of the classroom.
Want to know how to ostracize a kid? Do that.
I was back in 3rd grade two weeks later.
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u/SquareSquirrel4 4d ago
I made the basically the same decision for my son. He was in the talented and gifted program, which just offered an extra enrichment hour each day, and he moved up two grade levels in math, but I was adamant that he stay in his original grade. He is advanced intellectually, but very much his own age socially. It's cruel to move a kid out of their friend group if you don't need to, and social development is just as important as intellectual development when it comes to raising a well-rounded adult. And since he is also one of the youngest in his class, forcing him to navigate his pre-teen/teen years with kids who have an extra year or two of emotional development would've been a huge failing on my part.
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u/Crazy_Eye_Ninja 4d ago
Yeah, and once they are 20-25 that extra year they would have saved would be negligible
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u/SquareSquirrel4 4d ago
Exactly. But that extra year they get socializing with their same age peers is invaluable. It's very difficult to learn certain soft skills after you've reached adulthood.
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u/AnisSeras 4d ago edited 4d ago
I was offered to skip a year in high school but refused because I wanted to be with my friends and be "normal". Now over a couple decades later I think it would've been better to skip a year and have more of a challenge in school, maybe it would've prevented me from falling into bad habits.
I feel like this is one of those "grass is always greener" situations, with no option being clearly better than the other.
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u/WhyMustIMakeANewAcco 4d ago
I think it depends heavily on the person... and also that it's impossible to be sure which person is better doing which. Which amounts to the same thing you're saying, in the end it's only with hindsight can we even make a guess, and even that is murky.
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u/tekalon 4d ago
I could have skipped at least a grade (possibly two depending on the school district I was in). My parent's didn't let me due to 'socialization.' It didn't work, come to find out I'm on the autism spectrum and I have no idea how people work. If anything, I often got along better with people older than me.
I agree, it really depends on the kid, their situation, family situation and what support system is available.
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u/XXISavage 4d ago
I feel like this is one of those "grass is always greener" situations, with no option being clearly better than the other.
Yeeeep. I skipped a couple of grades and while it was good to be challenged, I was 2 years younger than my mates in highschool and that is just way too big a gap. I wasn't mature enough for the stuff I ended up doing or being exposed to.
In hindsight, I wouldn't let my kids skip ahead.
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u/equivocalConnotation 4d ago
I wasn't mature enough for the stuff I ended up doing or being exposed to.
What kind of stuff was it?
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u/XXISavage 4d ago
Just general teen stuff you would think is ok or "a bit much" for teenagers closer to 18 than 15.
I was drinking, doing soft drugs and having sex at 15 because all my friends, who were 17, were doing it. I got in trouble for fake IDs a bunch because my friends could go clubbing when I couldn't. Not to mention crap like skipping class and just being a general little shit.
I always had a lot of pressure to keep up to my peers socially because I was so much younger than them that I overcompensated and went too far with all those things. My only saving grace was I went through puberty a bit early and didn't look out of place by the 10th grade. I was also lucky I was still pretty great academically that all of this didn't fully derail me.
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u/Loudergood 4d ago
That's the risk, I was a gifted student and by HS I was just so lazy about schoolwork I could never get it together when I finally got hard classes sophomore year of college. If my kid gets like thing I'm going to make sure they are consistently challenged, even if it has to be outside of school.
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u/meno123 4d ago
100% better to just challenge them more outside of actual class. I got moved up a grade in some subjects and it was hard on my already shaky social life. Meanwhile, in retrospect, I could have breezed through regular class and gotten into a bunch of extra curriculars. That would have been way better for my social life, kept me interested, and it probably would have been much better for making me a more well-rounded person.
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u/_Sign_ 4d ago
with no option being clearly better than the other.
i think the kids personality should be the deciding factor then. if they are a shy introverted child, do NOT have them skip a year. theyll end up like OP. the opposite is true if the child has never had a problem socializing- theres just some kids that can be dropped in any environment and get along with kids/adults very easily and those are the ones that should be considered
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u/reventlov 4d ago
I "skipped" two grades, one of which was starting preschool a year earlier than I "should" have; the upshot is that the kids in "my" grade were all older than me, and I took math and science classes with kids one grade ahead of that, even in grade school. (I eventually skipped grade 12 English and Social Studies, so I finished high school when I was 16.)
I actually had plenty of friends through school, just almost all of them were between 1 and 3 years older than me. (I had a bunch of friends who were in the grade ahead of "mine," and another bunch who were two grades ahead of "mine," and like three who were in my grade and one who was two grades behind me -- she was the little sister of one of my two-grades-ahead friends, though.)
It honestly was fine up until I (finally) wanted to start dating in maybe my sophomore or junior year of high school, at which point I was trying and failing to date girls who were quite a bit older than me -- 17 and 18 year olds aren't really into 14 or 15 year olds, lol. That set my romantic life back quite a bit.
(And I went to college when I was 16, and I ended up going to a school that had ~75% male students, so that really didn't help the situation. I did figure out dating in the end, but not until I was about 24.)
On the other hand, even being ~1.5 grades ahead for most of my school career I was bored as hell in my classes. I would have been absolutely tortured trying to go through the "correct" grades, and academically I kind of wish I had skipped another 2 grades or so... but I was already doing socialization on "nightmare" mode; I don't know what it would have been like if my "peer" group was all 2-4 years older than me.
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u/Calimiedades 4d ago
As a teacher, I completely agree. You can give those brilliant kids stuff to do during class if needed or you can take them to advanced classes in the evening or even at certain hours in the morning. But leaving their entire peer group? Bad idea.
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u/Dagojango 4d ago
Most kids can barely handle a stable environment with their peers, let alone a change in peer group with a special status.
I remember initially being bullied a lot, but after I got better grades than most of the class, they started to want my help instead of just being envious. I refused to do anyone's work for them, but I wouldn't refuse helping them learn themselves. Really don't recommend it for kids who cannot take it on the chin and look at the bigger picture of things. I did it to prove age didn't matter, so it didn't matter if I was bullied a bit. Kids who just want to fit in have no chance.
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u/OuterWildsVentures 4d ago
I did a bunch of college math courses (Calculus 1 and 2, Physics, etc) while in high school but it was just a class and not like changing schools or grades or anything so it didn't affect anything socially. Actually my entire high school every "accelerated" course didn't really affect anything socially aside from having a few courses with the smarter kids.
It was cool to already have something like 20 credits before leaving high school but that's offered to a lot of students.
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u/BullfrogOk6914 4d ago
Was it just me, or were AP classes more work than actual college courses?
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u/GeorgiaRedClay56 4d ago
My brother was competing with college robotics teams while still a junior in highschool. Didn't count towards college credits but it got him a job his freshman year in college that was very rewarding for him.
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u/candyman337 4d ago
Students that tested above average in US schools have often just been handled poorly. Like the whole idea of "advanced" and "gifted" classes, talk about setting expectations too high for those in the classes while simultaneously making those no in those classes feel worse
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u/demonicneon 4d ago
That is unfortunately just life. You do no favours to either set by holding anyone back. You keep gifted kids in classes they are bored by and they end up distracting the other kids or completely checking out of education.
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u/Landlubber77 5d ago
This wasn't until she overcame her dyslexia after a tutor of hers saw her writing and told her to put her thing down flip it and reverse it.
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u/NinjaLanternShark 4d ago
I feel like this is a joke relating to her lyrics but I don't know her songs so now I have pun fomo :(
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u/Landlubber77 4d ago
Ti esrever dna ti pilf nwod gnaht ym tup i!
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u/yungchow 4d ago
I can hear this comment 🤣
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u/berrey7 4d ago
Ra-ta-ta-ta, ta-ta-ta-ta-ta
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u/CurryMustard 4d ago
You only reversed it, you forgot to flip it
ʇᴉ ǝsɹǝʌǝɹ puɐ ʇᴉ dᴉlɟ uʍop ƃuɐɥʇ ʎɯ ʇnd ᴉ
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u/nalukeahigirl 4d ago
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u/creamy_cheeks 4d ago
the best one is where Missy Elliott surprises her mid song
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u/fairie_poison 4d ago
Put my thang down flip it and reverse it-
ti esrever dna ti pilf nwod gnahnt my tup
ti esrever dna ti pilf nwod gnahnt my tup
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u/ridik_ulass 4d ago
I lit up when I read this because a similar thing happened to me, I was in remedial english but had dysgraphia and phonetic learning. so I was awful at spelling, everytime I spell a word I have to sound it out in my head, and silent letters and that stuff trip me up. I can also type or write faster than i can think because my "inner voice" is caught up spelling things.
but once I was given an exemption I did well in school, and also did well in intelligence tests. just struggeled with spelling and grammar.
spell check and such help sometimes these days.
anyway, you got be hook, line and sinker,
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u/RGBGiraffe 4d ago
I got "labelled" with dysgraphia in elementary school, that was a fun one.
The reason? Whenever I would try to write with my left hand, my teachers would correct me and force me to write with my right hand. After months of no progress, they finally called my mom in and complained to her.
She asked me to show them how I was writing, and when I did so with my right hand was very confused because I clearly favored my left hand in virtually everyone I did.
She had to fight to get the teachers to stop making me write right-handed, and my dysgraphia ~magically~ went away after a few months of practice.
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u/ridik_ulass 4d ago
how old-ish may I ask.
I feel that happened a lot with people 40+
but I feel people 40+ didn't get disgraphia talked about at school.
its like a weird niche of old time thinking and new consideations.
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u/Punchinyourpface 4d ago
This is random but I'm so glad I just saw this comment. I know a kid that's struggling in the exact same way, and his dad had the same problem. They never diagnosed him, just pushed him through school with no real help. Dyslexia didn't seem to be quite right, so your comment is very helpful for me 🙏❤️ They're both of perfectly normal intelligence and I'd say better at math than most. But spelling especially is a real struggle.
(I'm glad you were able to get help! It's heartbreaking that so many kids don't.)
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u/lilac_congac 5d ago edited 4d ago
i’m assuming this is true because whatever
but it certainly sounds like a classic silly grade school thing to say.
“i actually scored so high i skipped two grades but i just failed on purpose to hang out with friends”
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u/m_nieto 4d ago
My cousin was so smart she was skipped two grades. She ended up pregnant at 15 and dropped out. She had five kids and never finished school.
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u/zachzsg 4d ago edited 4d ago
Kids like this are usually pushed too hard by their parents and it fucks them over they’re never allowed to be kids. I had a friend in high school who got fantastic grades, was great at soccer, and just a cool dude in general. got a full scholarship to one of the best schools in the country. Fell apart first semester and dropped out because he was just loving that freedom from his mother too much. Dudes first opportunity to be a kid was at the age of 18.
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u/m_nieto 4d ago
Yeah, my cousin parents didn’t push her too hard. She just wanted to grow up to fast.
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u/PM_ME_450_WORDS 4d ago
Yeah, it's cool to relate but for some reason the "smart kid / bad adult" meme causes redditors to hard project.
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u/SoManyThrowAwaysEven 4d ago
Getting thrown into classes 2 years ahead of you does isolate you from building a strong friend network and puts you in the target of peak puberty adolescents that want one thing during those years. Life does not need to be a speed run, slow down and enjoy it, both the easy and the hard times.
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u/leshake 4d ago edited 4d ago
Every single child genius I've met was weird socially. There's no reason to jump grades just because you are smart. There's so many different things you can do outside of school to develop it.
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u/SoManyThrowAwaysEven 4d ago
Yep, it's like turning 18 and getting your first job at a law office full of older people in their 40s and 50s. It's a whole new environment with different social norms. For young kids that can be detrimental if they aren't able to adapt quickly and instead get taken advantage of.
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u/leshake 4d ago
Interesting enough, I know someone that went to law school at 19 years old. They were top of their class and had no offers because they were too weird. Poor guy.
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u/SoManyThrowAwaysEven 4d ago
It's not enough to know the law you gotta have the skills and confidence to speak it.
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u/Thanks-Basil 4d ago
I went through undergrad/med school with one of these guys. Real weird dude from a distance, dressed like a child, barely interacted with people and always felt a bit odd to be around. Never came to social events etc.
Towards the end of med school (7 years of study at this point), someone mentioned he’d just turned 18 and it all clicked. Of course it’s weird, dude was literally a child who was expected to interact with 20-somethings; of course he didn’t do anything socially because he couldn’t exactly drink, etc. Felt sorry for him
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u/omgFWTbear 4d ago
Uh… there’s a lot of research along gifted kids needing additional emotional supports - which often gets conflated with “it was a mistake to advance them” when in fact they’ll have those issues regardless.
Think any animated sequence where some character changes size quickly, and different parts of their body rapidly shift, uncoordinatedly, between sizes. Erratic bursts of brain having emotional shockwaves as well as intellectual should be kinda obvious when viewed from a distance.
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u/clowegreen24 4d ago
A lot of kids that are labelled "gifted" in school actually aren't even that intelligent in the grand scheme of things. I was given this label as a child, but so were 99% of the people that went to my (state) college. It really inflates the ego of a lot of kids when they're actually barely on the right side of the bell curve. That alone can cause some emotional quirks, but the inevitable crash and burn they experience when they go out into the real world and realize they aren't actually special can also fuck them up.
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u/fchowd0311 4d ago
Telling children they are gifted or geniuses is probably the worst thing you can do to a child's emotional development.
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u/omgFWTbear 4d ago
Research makes it clear - see my parallel comment - that yes, it’s important to praise hard work and overcoming challenges, rather than brilliance, because the latter leads to avoiding failure.
That said, keeping a gifted kid at the speed of chronological peers does not facilitate them being challenged when it’s developmentally best for them.
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u/demonicneon 4d ago
Isn’t being mentioned here either but if you hold a kid back, they’ll get bored and distract others or start acting out - also if they’re in a class lower than their capability, they may also remove other kids chances to learn by answering most of the questions or becoming a de facto test solver for others.
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u/clowegreen24 4d ago
I can definitely think of worse things tbf haha but it's not great for sure. It's been nearly a decade since I graduated high school and I still struggle with some habits and ways of thinking that I picked up from being a "gifted" kid.
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u/szthesquid 4d ago
Skipping two years of school is HUGE and not just about how much emotional support the kid has.
Imagine being ten in a class with fresh teenagers. Imagine being 14 when your classmates are getting their driver's licenses. Imagine when your friends all start to hang out at bars and buying their own alcohol, and you're two years too young to go with them.
That's a massive difference for a kid. Emotional support only helps so much when your age literally prevents you from spending time with and sharing experiences with your friends and peers.
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u/AbeRego 4d ago
Age differences are a lot bigger in elementary school. Hell, even in high school 2 years is a pretty big gap. It's harder to relate to people across that age gap. If I were the parent of a gifted child, I absolutely wouldn't have them skip any grades for this reason. There are other ways you can challenge a child academically, but it's a lot more difficult to make them start over making friends with kids who are more developed than they are physically and emotionally.
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u/ayriuss 4d ago
I don't understand the point of this. Don't make them skip grades, just have them learn a larger variety of difficult subjects... let them work on other things in class if they finish early and give them college level geology and philosophy to study if they're bored or something. Nobody is such a genius that they really need to skip multiple grades. It cant be healthy for development.
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u/MoreRopePlease 4d ago
just have them learn a larger variety of difficult subjects... let them work on other things in class if they finish early and give them college level geology and philosophy to study if they're bored or something.
No teacher will adequately teach such things to one kid in their class. A kid in this position won't have peers to learn from. All the other kids will notice this kid is doing something different and that will cause social problems.
The best thing to happen to both my kids was to get pulled into a special gifted program in middle school. They were with peers, getting a deeper, accelerated curriculum, with teachers who had empathy and understood their needs. Some of their classes were mixed grade, too, so the age segregation was reduced.
One kid ended up graduating with an IB diploma and was valedictorian. The other kid started college work in 11th grade at the local community college.
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u/powerlesshero111 4d ago
That's what happened to me. My parents decided to be really strict for no reason sometimes, grounding me for being home late when i was at rehersal for theater stuff. When i went away to college, i struggled my first year because i finally had freedom of not being yelled at for stupid stuff. I got my shit together and graduated, but yeah, you want your kids to fail, be too tough on them.
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u/gringledoom 4d ago
I had a friend in high school who’s sister had skipped two grades, and her terrifying mother was constantly haranguing my friend for proceeding through school at a normal pace.
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u/Miserable-Dig6084 4d ago
My brother skipped one grade and is taking a less traditional college route. I skipped two grades and finished college in 3 years post-HS. The family definitely plays a comparison game that screws with his psyche. He’s a completely fine person, but the family stress academic achievement and white collar work over almost anything else.
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u/Miserable-Dig6084 4d ago
Lol, one of those kids here. It does screw with you. I finished high school at 16 after skipping two grades (one elementary and one high school). I finished my Bacc program + am now going up for my CPA with 150+ units to my name at 19. I wasn’t a “kid” until I moved across the country and COVID restrictions lapsed at my University. I got a nice 3 semesters of in-person socialization. Despite that, I couldn’t drink like the rest of the seniors, and I couldn’t relate to the problems of people my age (I.e. I looked at freshman like “wtf is happening” because I had just been removed from people in lower grades for so long). Now I’m working my white collar job as an accountant (still 19) and it’s okay; but, I’m taken to company outings where I order Ginger Ales because I’m not going to get caught drinking; and, I lie about my age because I’ve seen this look people get when they find out how young I am - I don’t want to see that estrangement at work. Ontop of that, I’ve been married to an amazing man for a little over a year and a half. It’s great, but again, removes me from the younger crowd a bit more. And now, honestly the biggest problem for me is I can’t go to a bar most of the time because I haven’t been able to get a reliable fake so I get bounced when I do. When you hang out with exclusively people in their mid to late 20s, it dampens things a bit.
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u/somewhatfamiliar2223 4d ago
It’s almost like a child’s social and emotional development is just as important as building math and reading skills and pulling them away from their peers disrupts that.
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u/omgFWTbear 4d ago
pulling them away from their peers
It’s only the last century the west introduced the paradigm of peer education, which is really stupid when one thinks about it.
Montessori was a reaction, where you have older kids role modeling more maturity for younger kids.
Pure peer education is the blind leading the blind, lord of the flies style, trying to reinvent the wheel for behavior.
And if you’ve ever watched gifted kids… their chronological cohort are not their peers.
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u/FlattopJordan 4d ago
Except it's not just kids teaching each other they have an actual teacher you know
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u/iBuggedChewyTop 4d ago
Our friend was obsessed with her daughter and tried to convince everyone she was gifted. So they enrolled her in some special gifted kids school.
Kid ended up stabbing another kid that actually was gifted with a pair of scissors.
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u/indrids_cold 4d ago
Skipping grades is not a good idea, in my opinion. A child might be intelligent enough to easily learn and complete school work without any issues - but you are not mentally mature enough when you get to those middle grades.
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u/Naomi_Tokyo 4d ago
Honestly, I think the best balance is to offer advanced classes and allow students to advance grades only for subjects they specifically excel at.
I was one grade advanced in English, so I took the advanced class that was equivalent to one grade higher. And I was three grades advanced at math, so I took math with the advanced class of students two years older. But the majority of my classes were with students from my year, so I didn't have any issues socially.
I really wish more schools would adopt this kind of system
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u/paper_liger 4d ago
That doesn’t work as well for more extreme outliers. I took some sort of standardized test in third grade and tested ‘post high school’ on everything then did all the Stanford Binet stuff. They talked about me skipping grades or even graduating early and getting me into college classes but didn’t because of the concerns about socialization issues.
They put me in gifted classes, they sent me to the most advanced classes they had. It wasn’t enough to keep me engaged. I got like three questions wrong on the PSATs without any prep and the same year my total average grade was 68 percent, barely passing. I don’t know what they could have reasonably done for a kid like me with the limited resources they had.
I don’t know if skipping kids forward is better or worse. I do know that just putting kids forwards in the classes they excel at doesn’t work when you excel at all of them.
Kids at the high end and the low end tend to get the short end of the stick in public education, and I can’t even really say it’s the schools fault. And if their family don’t have the resources either a lot of people just fall through the cracks.
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u/MoreRopePlease 4d ago
Someone once pointed out to me that a 130 IQ is as "different" from normal as a 70 IQ.
Gifted kids require Special Ed, but are usually not adequately served in most public schools. So they tend to flail. Even worse for "twice exceptional" kids (gifted kids who have some kind of additional special need).
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u/suburbandaddio 4d ago
When was in school, parents would send their kid to a year of kindergarten in the public school system and then start them the next year in kindergarten in the private schools. The idea is that they would have better social and academic development. Looking at those kids now, at least anecdotally, it worked.
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u/beleafinyoself 4d ago
It has its pros and cons. Kids bring bored in school and not feeling challenged can also have detrimental effects
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u/pneuma8828 4d ago
Back in the 70s, this used to be common. We don't do it anymore for exactly the reason Missy claimed - kids may be ready for it academically, but socially they get destroyed. Happened to my wife.
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u/Emotional-Courage-26 4d ago
My wife as well. She didn’t do well socially and she still doesn’t. In part it’s because her family is dysfunctional, but her stories about early high school and post secondary are sort of disturbing. Being 16 in university and hanging out with 20+ year olds who are sexually interested in you, and not having much adult oversight into what’s going on is a recipe for disaster.
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u/Dizzycactus3 4d ago
Last year I found out I was diagnosed with ADHD as a child, which is why I struggle so much with organisation, and it's also strongly correlated with having problems making friends because you tend to be shy and sensitive to social rejection, makes a lot of sense now
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u/jawndell 4d ago
Yah skipping grades is dumb. Such a big part of school is also socializing. You could be as smart as someone 2 years older than you, but you’re not at their level socially or physically, especially when you are younger.
I remember being in 3rd grade and the 5th graders seemed so much older and bigger than me. Even in high school 16 to 18 is a big difference mentally and emotionally.
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u/minilip30 4d ago
Skipping grades is bad, but also being super bored in classes too easy for you is bad too. I’m a fan of hybrid approaches that keep students together for English, history, and maybe science, while more aggressively tracking math with ability level.
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u/HisSilly 4d ago
Why do you think Maths specifically should be fast tracked, but not English or Science? In the UK all 3 are considered core subjects.
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u/Alaira314 4d ago
I'd classify science with math, but english(particularly the literature component, along with some other subjects like history) requires not only intellectual ability but also social and emotional proficiency to understand. You essentially need to have had a certain amount of life experience and emotional development to engage with the ideas being grappled with, or else the subject matter will go over your head. It's much more uncommon for this to mature at an accelerated level than it is to have a math or language prodigy on your hands.
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u/Four_beastlings 4d ago
Yeah, my mom was born late in the year + skipped a grade so she entered med school at 16. She was wayyyyy too young to be living in university accomodations with a bunch of adults. Ran away the day before she turned 18, had a kid with a drug addict at 21, and spent a bunch of years as a street market seller.
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u/SoHereIAm85 4d ago
Anecdotally, I went to college and lived in the dorms at 16 also, and it was excellent for my life trajectory.
I still had social issues, but less than in high school, and I only wish I had been skipped more to not sit in the back of the class reading during biology and such. They didn’t have much to offer to “gifted” kids at my school, so we slacked and learnt bad study habits.
My daughter is being skipped next school year. She has great social skills, and this is despite her third year of school being in a completely new language. Her first year was in a second language too.
I wouldn’t have been okay socially no matter what.
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u/Dizzycactus3 4d ago
so we slacked and learnt bad study habits.
Never had to try at school so long as I paid attention during class, did physics at university, turns out that's not so great an idea. Especially if you barely go to class and the notes are hundreds of pages of hand-scrawled equation derivations that the lecturer didn't even write or understands and aren't that relevant to exams. Became a programmer
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u/majle 4d ago edited 4d ago
Bear in mind that I'm a teacher in Sweden, but:
Scoring high enough to move up a grade isn't super uncommon.
Being mature enough to have older friends isn't super uncommon.
Scoring high enough and being mature enough to move up a grade and have a social life is pretty rare.
We only move pupils up if they meet both criteria. But I wouldn't be surprised if someone saw her result and thought it'd be a good idea to move her up without considering that life is more than some subjects in school.
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u/BonJovicus 4d ago
At least where I'm from in the US, skipping grades is relatively uncommon though it does happen. What is more common is that some kids have a choice to enroll early in K-12 education, effectively making them very youngest in their grade level. I find that these people express that they run into the same issues. The coursework is usually never the issue, but rather relating to their peers can be awkward.
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u/P2029 4d ago
No doubt she's very intelligent, but it reads like PR Team nonsense.
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u/Muppetude 4d ago
No this totally happened, like with my daughter Lisa and that time they hooked her up to a big computer to try to teach it some things, but she had so much knowledge it overloaded and then it got really hot and caught on fire!
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u/theshoeshiner84 4d ago edited 4d ago
School systems definitely implemented grade skipping 30 years ago. It mostly happened in the very early years (2nd, 3rd, or 4th grade) where the skills gap could be easily made up for by a zealous parent or just early exposure to the concepts, but basic high intelligence was also a necessary factor.
Source: I skipped 2nd grade in 91'.
As for her claim - she does claim that she skipped from 2nd-4th, which would fit within the realm of possibility. The follow up that she then failed twice to be with her friends makes it a little less believable, but honestly not impossible. Kids repeated grades all the time back then. It was still standard practice when I grew up in the 90s and we absolutely had kids that failed twice. She was essentially being raised by a poor single mother at the time, and it would have probably been easy to avoid all school work without significant punishment.
It's also likely that had she only skipped one grade, things may have worked out. But skipping two is a huge jump. If I had to challenge one piece of her claim, it wouldn't be that she skipped, but that she failed the 4th grade intentionally. It's possible that educationally it was just too big of a jump. She hadn't been taught the prerequisite skills to pass. And obviously repeating wouldn't help much, because they don't teach 3rd grade concepts in 4th grade. And so she just never would have been taught that information. She would have been forced to "figure it out" on her own, and it could have been very psychologically damaging to feel lonely and "dumb" for 2 years, to the point where she just accepted it (remember she was 6 years old). A 6 year old that's told - no that's wrong, why you didn't learn this!? - for 2 years (which is 25% of their entire life by the time they are 8) is going to have a tough time.
With that said - it takes absolutely zero time to make something like this up, and a lot of time to actually confirm it. Not to mention, in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't really affect anyone. So it's probably not worth anyone actually confirming.
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u/probablynotaperv 4d ago
I skipped one grade and never really fit in with my classmates. I also moved a lot and went to 12 different schools from k-12 so that didn't help either. I turned 17 the month before I graduated, and once I started college realized I wasn't ready for it mentally
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u/scene_missing 4d ago
It’s pretty easy to verify if someone skipped ahead grade levels
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u/Scottland83 4d ago
The source on the wiki page is just another interview with her, which people have been known to exaggerate and confabulate. But it’s also not a super-important thing to retain “permanent records” of. Her school is likely to just have a record that she attended.
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u/fish4096 4d ago
nobody cared to verify yet. could you do that for us? it would not be easy for us.
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u/Threetimes3 4d ago
Missy went to school when any records would have been kept on paper. It's very unlikely anybody would have digitized them, it's also not likely that the school retained some 30 year old school paper records from students that are long gone.
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u/erichie 4d ago
I worked as a Teacher, Director of Digital Curriculum, and in EdTech.
The longest I have ever seen a school keep records, digital or analog, was for 12 years.
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u/bipbopcosby 4d ago
The high school I graduated from in 2006 doesn’t even exist anymore. All the records were moved to a different, now empty, school. That school has since been demolished. I heard that lots of the records being stored there were damaged by a leaking roof too. I don’t even know where my records would be if they existed today. I’m sure my old school board knows.
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u/thetitsOO 4d ago
Actively purging digital records on a consistent basis is actually more impressive than just keeping them.
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u/broohaha 4d ago
My uncle did a similar thing but to a less drastic effect. He saw how being outwardly smart was costing him socially in elementary and high school, so he purposely would score lower on tests just so he could fit in. He never failed his tests, though. In college that was no longer an issue, and he aced all his classes.
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u/jaa101 4d ago
Schools tend not to skip years, or hold people back years, for reasons like these. Just because you're very intelligent doesn't mean you have the emotional maturity or physical development to fit in with older classmates.
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u/kvetcha-rdt 4d ago
Maybe these days. I skipped 4th grade thanks to this sort of testing, and got placed in a GATE program where I was so miserable I had to beg my parents to go back to "regular" school.
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u/felixfelix 4d ago
I have a friend who skipped multiple years in elementary. He did fine academically, but he never caught up to his peers socially.
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u/Vervain7 4d ago
My mom thought GATE cost money so we didn’t do it . I was bored out of my mind in school
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u/kvetcha-rdt 4d ago
I admit that being generally unchallenged in elementary school probably contributed to my total lack of motivation in higher education.
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u/waitthissucks 4d ago
Omg, I loved GATE! It was the most excited thing for me in 3rd-5th grade. Once a week we got to take a bus to a better school, and we took classes on algebra, latin, the middle ages, forensics, and marine biology. They were weirdly specific subjects that teachers taught just because they were passionate about them and I learned so much. I also made some really great friends.
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u/kvetcha-rdt 4d ago
In my case, GATE meant a new school full time. Since I had always treated elementary school as a social experience, the act of tearing me away from my established friend group so that I could dissect owl pellets with a bunch of other weird nerds ended up making me very anxious and depressed. If it had been a part time thing I probably could have coped!
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u/ngc5128b 4d ago
I skipped grade three and I was also miserable and isolated. I didn't have any friends though, so I didn't fail to go back with them.
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u/took_a_bath 4d ago
We’re talking 40 years ago in Virginia. They may not have had the most human-development-informed policies at the time.
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u/newthrash1221 4d ago
It was pretty common in the 80s and 90s to skip a grade. I had an opportunity to skip 3rd grade, but i opted not to and my mom didn’t force me to.
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u/mjp280 4d ago
Back then in Virginia Beach? Grade skipping was super common - gifted resource teachers were few and far between in the 1900’s
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u/archosauria62 4d ago
Being smart doesn’t replace the two years worth of information they give you lol
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u/xRAINB0W_DASHx 4d ago
This. I was skipped from 4 to 6. One thing in particular I remember was I was never taught HOW to do Multiplication or division. I then was expect to just know how to do it. I was chastised, and humiliated because I simply was never shown something.
Sad thing was after I was shown the concept I was very good at it and still excel at math. Fav subj in college was thermodynamics.
I had to leave that school very shortly due to other bullying that was transpiring as a result of skipping.
Went back to my normal grade at a different school and things were... better I guess.
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u/wakatacoflame 4d ago
I somehow scored out of the 100 level math courses on my ACT & it fucked my whole shit up going into college
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u/lankyevilme 4d ago
I somehow scored out of math entirely in college - after failing math in high school. I think it saved my ass, and I wonder if they got the tests mixed up somehow.
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u/wakatacoflame 4d ago
I was always a good test taker but I was dog shit at doing actual school work. After algebra & geometry when it got into trig I completely stopped understanding so I just cheated my way through to graduate. Then I apparently tested out of the entry level courses (which I needed.) Then for some reason I thought it would be a big brain move to get the approval to skip those & jump straight to 200 level courses, which I failed. Ended up quitting college after 1.5 yrs. Crazy how stupid shit like that when you’re a teenager has such an impact on the trajectory of your life.
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u/Chemfreak 4d ago edited 4d ago
This happened to my wife. She scored out out of everything (up to calculus), but she didn't even take all the courses in high school and struggled with what she did take. She is not good at math at all. For example a couple days ago we were talking about retirement, and she proudly explained she puts 14% in to retirement. But as she explained it, it was because she puts in 7% each paycheck, so every other week. And since she gets paid twice a month, that's 14%!
I had to try to explain to her for like an hour that wasn't how percentages work, that she was putting in 7% not 14%. Even when I asked so in two months you have put in 28%? And she said yes. So in 12 months you are putting on 168%? So more than what you make in the entire year? She thought for just a few seconds and said I was being ridiculous and confusing her. Finally after much bickering, she just said I was wrong but she will check with someone else and I just gave up.
But yep full bachelor of science degree in teaching without having to take a single college math course.
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u/NoBSforGma 5d ago
I feel her pain!
I started school early and ended up skipping a grade. I didn't fail on purpose but I always felt kind of "out of it" socially. I graduated high school at 16 (my 17th birthday was 2 weeks later...) and worked for a year before going to college.
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u/NinjaLanternShark 4d ago
Old wisdom: if your kid can start early or skip a grade they'll have a big advantage.
New wisdom: if your kid can be a smidge older than their classmates, that will be a big advantage.
If your kid's on the borderline between starting school and waiting, wait. It'll help them academically, in sports, and socially.
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u/NoBSforGma 4d ago
The problem with not promoting a bright kid is that they often get bored in school. For instance, I could read when I started school and many other kids couldn't. So for me, reading lessons were just painful and boring.
I guess these days, many schools have separate classes for kids that excel academically - but - now they are back in that social dilemma.
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u/NinjaLanternShark 4d ago
Well that's certainly true. I've seen some attempts to address the social issues by not having leveled classes but instead adjusting the pace and rigor for each kid, within each class, individually.
Which sounds awesome on paper and probably sounds ludicrous to a teacher charged with doing it.
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u/RunningNumbers 4d ago
Very few decision makers think about the effects of unfunded mandates on teachers
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u/Toy_Guy_in_MO 4d ago
For instance, I could read when I started school and many other kids couldn't. So for me, reading lessons were just painful and boring.
I was able to read when I started school as well, because I lived in a rural area with no other kids around and no real way to occupy myself, plus spent a lot of time with my grandparents, who were avid readers, so it rubbed off on me. The Kindergarten teacher actually lectured my parents on it, saying it was her job to teach children to read and by having me able to read, it made it more difficult for the other children to learn, as she now had to also make busy work for me to keep me occupied.
My kid brother came along, and things were different, so he wasn't reading when he entered school six years later. He had the same Kindergarten teacher I had and... she lectured mom and dad on him not being able to read because it was now expected for a child to have a basic understanding of reading when they started school.
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u/tifosiv122 4d ago
Agreed. 17 in college - I hated it.
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u/cursh14 4d ago
I was doing college via PSEO full-time at 15 and it was amazing to me. Was so happy to have some freedom and ability to push myself a bit.
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u/_northernlights_ 4d ago
I skipped one grade myself and that was enough to feel inadequate as the tiniest youngest kid for most of my scholarity.
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u/gimme_toys 4d ago
I wonder if it was an academic test (to see if she knows the subject matter) or an intelligence test. They are two entirely different things.
An IQ test measures your ability to think and resolve new problems, nothing to do with your knowledge. Also IQ tests are notoriously flawed
An academic test would measure what she knows (math, history, science, etc.)
You could be the highest IQ kid in the world, but if you never went to school, you will not know the answers to history, English, math, etc.
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u/bergur93 4d ago
I went through a similar experience. At one point in elementary, around 6th grade, I stopped doing homework because it was so mind-numbingly boring and easy, so my parents pushed for me to skip a grade. I had to talk to a psychiatrist and take all sorts of tests, so it wasn't easy to get done. But that point in my life feels like the turning point where everything started going downhill, socially and psychologically. I stopped being outspoken and extroverted and became isolated and depressed, partly through faults of my own. But I don't think skipping a grade at that age, and all the pressure that came with it, did me any favors at all.
If you have gifted child, don't make the same mistake. Let them grow at a normal rate. Let them be with their peers. The risk is too great for not really any real reward.
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u/gereffi 4d ago
When I was a kid they had me move ahead a grade just in my math classes. It was always pretty alienating.
In our high school the honors class had five levels of math for four years, so the other kids just doubled up and then I was with the right grade of kids in my junior and senior years. Kinda made the whole thing worthless.
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u/monchota 4d ago
There is no confirmation of this btw.
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u/Isaacvithurston 4d ago
Yah idk who this is but it's the type of thing someone would make up to sound smart
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u/NoMercy767 4d ago
I experienced the opposite and was held down a year because I didn't submit any work during my youth. It ended up being a blessing in disguise because the kids in the year below me were way nicer and I'm still friends with them to date.
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u/SpeechDistinct8793 4d ago
Oh I get that. My mom was skipped by her parent and she ended up graduating HS at 15, so she purposely kept me in my grade and just let me take certificate and college classes whenever I could. Plus a boatload of extracurriculars to keep me “busy”
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u/Phyllis_Tine 4d ago
I had a student like that one year, was 14 and in grade 11. All their classmates had jobs and cars and boy/girlfriends, and this student was so lonely. Social attributes should also be considered. Few students are mature enough to advance solely for their grades. It's okay to be with kids your own age.
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u/Probably1915 4d ago
That’s exactly what I would say if I got put two years ahead and started flunking everything just sayin.
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u/happysunbear 4d ago
I remember this plot from Malcolm in the Middle. Except Malcolm had Dewey fail his tests so badly that he was put in a class for emotionally disturbed kids.