The internet is not a scary place when you have a passionate, free, and self-directed kid. Kids really do this stuff when they aren’t being coerced to learn, by the way. Some will binge an entire course in astronomy in one evening, and others will learn French literature over the course of a year. Some of the most incredible content creators in the world are putting out everything they know, mostly for free, ready for your kid to interact with at their own pace. Mindless is not how it has to be – and many people are already proving this. It’s not the internet’s fault – it’s the schools’ fault. That’s the real reason we have an epidemic of mindless content online: escapism. This won’t be the outcome, however, if their days are filled with learning they don’t want to be doing. Mind that algorithm: it’s constantly evolving the way it interacts with your kids, depending on their interests. When kids dive deep into courses, videos, lectures, and interactive programs the structure of the internet itself is a tutor. Let them explore the internet on their own, and find people who’re on fire for ideas. Or your kid could write letters to people they admire. Mentors might be paid coaches, facilitated by alternative schooling programs. According to history, it’s highly recommended. You might ask yourself, “How can I find/afford a 1-on-1 mentor for my kids?” Read more, more slowly, and compare less often. To read well, in the way that prepares you for excellence, you must relax, stop striving to be better than your peers, and enjoy exploring ideas.īasically, the exact opposite of what schools do to gifted students. Reading offers no immediate promise of status or success. But limit the sample to people who will go on to change the world, and suddenly the rate of reading approaches 100%. The percentage of people who actually read difficult books is very low. Reading is something people always tell you to do, but it seems like no one is doing. The depths no longer seem like endless possibilities to explore – suddenly, they feel like an abyss kids can’t escape, no matter how hard they work.Įxceptional people on that list – including Virginia Woolf, Blase Pascal, and John Stuart Mill – had parents that not only had books but also loved to read. When they are kept, read, and enjoyed, they are physical manifestations of the world of ideas, an endlessly deep playground.īut, when books given to kids are systematic, preselected, and tested on – they suddenly transform into a prison of anxiety. See, books are not just chunks of tree pulp and ink. The important commonality is not the content, it’s the interest itself. Some just enjoyed a little poetry after dinner. Some of them were experts in Latin, while others dabbled in emerging fields of physics. The exceptional kids of the past almost all had parents that were obsessed with books. Here’s how to get it right – even if your kid isn’t “gifted.” Read books at homeĪnnoyingly simple and maybe even trite, but for good reason. There is obviously a better way to do this. And the kids would have been better off if they hadn’t been identified as “gifted.” At least then, the system wouldn’t have swarmed them and doubled down on its ineffectualness. Then, once they have “gift kid burnout,” the system scratches its head, like, how could this have happened? The machine of factory learning collapses in on these kids until it systematically crushes the talent out of them. You couldn’t design a more disastrous approach to a gifted education if you were maliciously trying to destroy the potential in kids – and waste the maximum amount of money while you’re at it. Remind them nearly constantly of their “giftedness” Push them straight to college (no apprenticeships or jobs – also for dummies) Test, measure, and document their performance constantlyįill up free time that might otherwise be spent exploring ideasĭeprive them of tutoring (that’s for dummies) Let’s compare that formula to how kids who display some talent are treated un traditional schools…Ĭompared with According to the childhoods of nearly all exceptional people, the school system does everything exactly wrong for talented kids: Those are interesting commonalities and give us clues about how to facilitate gifted kids’ growth. They were all naturally gifted but didn’t make a big fuss about it Most were allowed to roam around aimlessly over many years ”Īt least two-thirds of them were homeschooled Let’s take the assortment of geniuses selected by Henrik Karlson in his article “ Childhoods of exceptional people. You’d probably look at the most gifted people of the past and try to figure out what they had in common. If your job was to enable as many gifted children as possible in the shortest period of time, what would you do?
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