I don’t mean to turn this entire blog into a pity party, so let’s get the whining out of the way. Then we can move on to happier, potentially more interesting topics.
If you took the trouble to read a long way into the article on highly-gifted children that I posted last time (and I really didn’t expect that anyone would), you learned that seventeen of the sixty children in that study were appropriately challenged with accelerated programs. Those children throve. Five skipped two grades and did almost as well. Five skipped one grade; these five had notably less successful outcomes. And the thirty-three children who stayed in classrooms with their age peers felt isolated, had trouble making friends, and (in two cases) developed severe depression.
I skipped one grade. To be more accurate, I spent one year in two grades. Get the picture: It’s September 1959. We are in Newport, Maine. I am ten years old; I will turn eleven in November. I am starting sixth grade. I attended fifth grade in this town and in this school, but this is already the third town I’ve lived in since I started school; there will be two more towns and three more schools before I finish high school.
At some point during the school year (I don’t remember what time of year or what time of day), the principal comes into the classrom and tells me to gather my things. I am moving into seventh grade. So like a good little boy, I get my things and follow him. All of a sudden, I’m a seventh-grader.
Yes, it was that abrupt — at least in my recollection. (I have a vague memory of an earlier meeting with school officials in which they told my parents they were planning this, and I must have been there, too, unless I’m just imagining it now.) I did literally walk out of a sixth-grade classroom into the seventh grade. I guess a normal kid would have been bewildered, and (at least somewhat) upset at being torn away from a familiar classroom and classmates. But I already had a strong sense that I wasn’t a normal kid, that adults were incomprehensible beings who exercised an arbitrary power over me, and that it was best just to play along.
Before we moved to Newport in 1958, I had not had much sense of being different. I knew I was more interested in books and music, and less interested in playing sports, than most kids my age. But I don’t think I was far outside the normal range of kids. I played outdoors. I had friends. I visited them at their homes to play Monopoly and to play with their model railroads. I was a Red Sox fan. When we visited my mother’s parents (Grampy and Grammy) in Quincy MA in the summer, Grampy took me to Fenway Park and taught me how to keep a box score. I’m sure I saw Ted Williams play, though I don’t remember any specific games. I even collected baseball cards, for heaven’s sake.
Life changed during the Newport years (1958-1961). Some of the reasons are obvious given my age at the time (think puberty). But I think something analogous to puberty was going on in my brain. I can only describe it by analogy. It seems, looking back, as if my mind was exploding in all directions. I haunted the public library. I couldn’t get enough books, or read fast enough, to explore all the avenues my curiosity was leading me down.
And I had no one to share this with. I wasn’t making friends with kids my age, and I learned very quickly that adults don’t want to have a serious conversation with an eleven-year-old. But I had a rich inner life with my books and my music, and I can’t say that I felt unhappy, because I didn’t know there was any other way that life could be. It was later on, when I discovered that maybe it hadn’t had to be that way, that I became angry and depressed. But we’ll leave the story there for now.
Over the last few years, since I started my self-analysis, I’ve discovered books and articles that have helped me understand myself and reassured me that I was not the only one. Here’s one of those articles. It’s short.
https://youngholm.com/py/assets/kohlenberg_understanding_smart_people.pdf
You would cry too, if it happened to you.
Phil’s Blog 