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[Paisley Hedgehog]

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[MIch elle]

Our experience is that we have a very bright first dc and while he did well at homeschooling he lacked motivation. Now in 9th grade at private high school, he is highly motivated to get good grades and move into honor level courses next year. Grades, honor roll published in the local newspaper, peer pressure, sports, and the structure of his all boys school works for his personality to help him excel in that environment academically and socially.

[Laura Corin]

They are not always the very brightest, but they combine intelligence with drive and can overcome most obstacles. For all other students (the majority) it matters very much what educational situation they are put into.

 

I have talked to local people a lot about our nearest senior school. It has a great reputation, frequently sending pupils on to Oxford and Cambridge. What I hear from parents, however, is that the school offers wonderful opportunities that the most highly motivated pupils can use to very good effect; it's not nearly so good at leading others to reach the levels that they could achieve with encouragement. 'It's a place where everyone can find their level.' For a student who generally prefers to coast (Calvin) I can see this being a barely adequate educational choice; for a more diligent child (Hobbes) it might do very well.

 

Best wishes

 

Laura

[Jenny in Atl]

I think kids tend to be a roll of the dice. You hear of kids coming from awful homes, horrible schools, and still excelling. You also hear of kids who have the best of everything (home, education, support) and yet they flounder. I just think life is too complicated to say if you do XYZ everything will workout 100%.

[Jenny in Florida]

Conversely, can you take a student of average intelligence, put him in a certain learning environment, and make him into one of the "super bright"?

 

No. I do not think you can make a child brighter than he or she is wired to be. What you can do (and what homeschooling has done for mine) is to create an environment in which a child can fully realize what he or she has the potential to do.

 

When we started homeschooling, it was with the baggage we had acquired during our own school years. My husband and I are both bright. (I usually refer to us as "recovering gifted children.") In fact--not to toot my own horn, here, but just to give you the background--I was told at some point that my IQ test was one of the two highest my elementary school had ever seen. And the majority of our social group when we were in junior high and high school was made up of kids we met through school gifted programs.

 

Would you like to know how many of us crashed and burned during high school? All but one. (And she was never identified as gifted.) Out of sheer boredom in high school, we became habitual truants. In fact, our high school ended up changing the way they handled attendance after we got away with skipping school so much. Several of us dropped out entirely. Others got kicked out and sent to the "alternative school." Two of the girls got pregnant.

 

And those experiences certainly informed our educational choices for our kids.

 

So far (knocking very loudly on all the wood I can reach), we seem to have pulled it off. Our 14-year-old daughter is in her second year of college, contemplating graduating in three years. She's happy and healthy (both emotionally and physically), socially successful, etc. She gives us most of the credit, but I know she's been a full partner in the process.

 

Our son is 10, not as academically driven, but wonderful in his own ways. He's mature and articulate, quite the little diplomat, aiming at college probably about 15 or 16. (He could go earlier, but there are too many things he likes about his life at home.)

 

Given what I know of these kids, I suspect that our daughter, had she gone to school, would have simply withdrawn. She would have gotten very good grades, had very few friends and been very unhappy.

 

Interestingly, she is now in an early entrance program at a women's college, sharing a dorm with a bunch of other smart teenaged girls. She is consistently amused and amazed at how many of them have diagnoses of various emotional/mental health problems. She is, apparently, one of the relative few not on at least one medication.

 

Our son, in a traditional school setting, would likely have taken the opposite route and acted out. I'm pretty sure I would have been making very frequent visits to the principal's office to chat about this one.

 

Instead, they've both been given the luxury of a safe space in which to grow and figure out who they are and who they want to be. They've had access to academic resources that feed them and the presence of the two people who love them most in the world to guide them.

 

So far, it's worked very well for us.

[KristenS]

I think it's both, really. But I can only speak from my own schooling experiences, which were public schools.

 

I was motivated to do well because I loved learning, but I also learned early on that it wasn't necessary to slave over an assignment when thirty minutes of work would get me an A. And there were so many other things I wanted to learn, that school things sometimes slipped.

 

I was also shy, so I had a hard time seeking out opportunities. I did well with what was offered, including spelling bees and scholar's bowl, but I would have a hard time approaching the administrators to start new things. (We did start a high school chess club and an Odyssey of the Mind team, but because of no support and guidance, all our motivation got us nowhere.)

 

So I think even motivated kids need some support, and where I was, we didn't have much of it.

 

I can see my kids showing signs of being much the same as they grow, which is one good reason for me to keep them home as long as possible. But I still have to battle my personal shyness to provide them the support and opportunities they need.

[Rebecca in VA]

I think environment can do a lot for anyone, but you can't "make" someone become an academic superstar. A student of average intelligence who is pushed too far is likely to have problems. Either he will (1) push back, or he will (2) fall short along the way. If he makes a superhuman effort and succeeds beyond expectations, he is likely to (3) suffer from the pressure.

 

Most top-notch schools get their good reputations because they are selective about the students they admit -- most require IQ and achievement testing for admission -- and not necessarily because they are the most skilled at teaching. Their students are likely to succeed anywhere. HOWEVER, once you put a bunch of highly intelligent, highly motivated students together, they begin to feed off of one another, compete, and achieve. That's why a carefully-selected school can be a very good place for an intelligent underachiever. (Of course, a school with poor teaching and unmotivated students may have the opposite effect!)

 

You can't make a student of average intelligence into one of the super-bright, but you can give him the highest possible quality education and train good work habits into him. I think SWB would be the first to say this, and she did! It's the very premise of TWTM.

[cathmom]

My oldest was not very motivated early on in high school. There was a lot going on in our family (me on bedrest with the twins and then caring for newborn twins) and he basically ran the house for me. He could have also done schoolwork but chose to procrastinate.

 

However, eventually he realized that if he didn't finish our requirements, he wouldn't graduate on time (and his birthday is in November, so he already would have been an old 18 at graduation). So he buckled down and started working and finished up on time. And he admitted that he could have done more the first couple of years despite our family situation. Putting him in school was never an option because he wouldn't have been able to play football if we did that. He had wanted to graduate early and it was only his procrastination that prevented that.

 

So when I read about young high schoolers who aren't motivated, I think "They'll get motivated when they see themselves stuck at home for an additional year or two!"

[Sarah CB]

When we started homeschooling, it was with the baggage we had acquired during our own school years. My husband and I are both bright. (I usually refer to us as "recovering gifted children.") In fact--not to toot my own horn, here, but just to give you the background--I was told at some point that my IQ test was one of the two highest my elementary school had ever seen. And the majority of our social group when we were in junior high and high school was made up of kids we met through school gifted programs.

 

Would you like to know how many of us crashed and burned during high school? All but one. (And she was never identified as gifted.) Out of sheer boredom in high school, we became habitual truants. In fact, our high school ended up changing the way they handled attendance after we got away with skipping school so much. Several of us dropped out entirely. Others got kicked out and sent to the "alternative school." Two of the girls got pregnant.

 

And those experiences certainly informed our educational choices for our kids.

 

 

 

I could have written this. And I think that "recovering gifted" is a very accurate term.

[Stacy in NJ]

I think that natural ability plays a huge role. Natural ability not just being pure intelligence, but that combination of intelligence, self-discipline and personal motivation.

 

I think nurture can attempt to cultivate a work ethic and discipline in how one approaches problems. I think it can provide a more challenging environment and a moral framework to judge the world. I don't think it can overturn nature. It can influence it but not control it. That's why I think parenting is in certain respects a dynamic event, almost an art.

 

I suspect that students that do well in homeschool would probably do well anywhere. Students that struggle at home will probably struggle in school. Not that homeschooling doesn't matter, but it probably matters less than we homeschooling moms want to acknowledge. That marginalizes what we do, and who wants to be marginalized?

[Carol in Cal.]

However, the right environment is also needed.

 

For instance, a friend of my DD's went into a K program that insisted on everyone reading 3 CVC word sentences by January. This girl had vision problems, and did exceptionally well in K and 1st grade, because generally the letters were so big and a lot of the work was taught at the blackboard, where she had no trouble focussing. Many of the other children were not developmentally ready to learn to read in K, and she was a clear class leader in that regard.

 

But in second grade, when most of the work turned to seatwork, her vision problem, undiagnosed, made her literally incapable of learning anymore. She could not focus on a page at her desk; at the close distance, her eyes had two such different focal planes that she could not see anything but the largest letters, and she couldn't write on the smaller lines that were introduced at that level.

 

She decided that she was the dumbest kid in all creation, and completely gave up on school work. It was quite a while before her parents realized this, as she had been so completely superior before that they didn't pay as much attention as they normally might have; so when she said that she did her homework at school, they found this completely credible. When she brought home near-failing grades, they started to try to figure out what was going on.

 

Eventually they stumbled on the vision issue and took her to a developmental optometrist. She took vision classes and got glasses and they were able to improve her focus to the point where she was normal.

 

But her attitude was set in stone, and she had no more use for school for quite a while. We are out of touch now, but my last information was that even several years later, in 5th grade, she was still not doing well in school.

 

She had the ability, but not the right environment. If she had been homeschooled, her parents would not have made such a fuss about her being advanced in the early years, and would have remediated it sooner when she hit that wall with tougher work. They would have supported her as a student throughout, and she probably would have ended up just fine--a bright, well-educated young woman.

[Sweetpeach]

I think the super-bright, a la SWB variety, will succeed regardless. Having a mom willing to paddle upstream and provide a challenging homeschooling environment paved the way for her inspiring success story but that doesn't displace that fact that natural ability must partner with hard work to succeed as she has . . . I betcha SWB would attest to the fact that being naturally bright was only part of her success story.

 

I believe the average kid with average ability can be taught how to make the best of the significance he possesses. I try to remember that academic giftedness is but one slice of the pie. Many of my PhD friends are, by their own admission, hard workers and not necessarily naturally gifted.

 

Nature . . . nurture . . . it's a lovely mixture of both, imveryho.

 

T

[orangearrow]

Here's the old nature vs. nurture argument for us homeschoolers. In a thread I read yesterday, someone made a comment about how if her dc was a "mini SWB" she could have continued homeschooling, but as it was p.s. was a better alternative. (This was for high school, I believe.) I took the statement to mean that having a self-motivated, high achiever makes homeschooling successfully a bit easier (not saying it is easy). Those Moms with harder-to-motivate kids, especially in the teen years, have a more difficult time overall with keeping going at home. (BTW, the mini-SWB comment was not deragutory at all, just pointing out the student's movitavtion and intelligence portion of the homeschooling equation.)

 

It got me thinking, are the truly great students, the college-at-15 / Rhodes scholar / National Merit bunch, going to do well no matter what type school they are in? Or do they do well because of their parent's educational choices for them? Conversely, can you take a student of average intelligence, put him in a certain learning environment, and make him into one of the "super bright"? What role does natural ability, personality, self motivation, and maturity take in the overall homeschool vs. p.s. question?

 

I'm anxious to hear any comments.

 

It's probably a little of both -but I believe it's chiefly nature. Although - those natural learners who are also nurtured definitely have a higher rate of success than those natural learners who are not nurtured.

 

But, I don't really believe that any amount of nurturing (or educational setting) can take an average student and turn them into a super student. (although nurturing could take a child who is an undiscovered talent and bring forth their natural abilities...)

 

And - those natural students who are NOT nurtured or challenged probably have a more tragic rate of despair than those average students who were not nurtured (in a scholarly sense). I've seen this happen several times (within my own extended family) - children who were downright brilliant with neglectful parents who ignored their education - and those kids have spent time in jail, chronically unemployed, unhappy, and generally discontented. Very sad. And such a waste of ability. :(

[Katrina]

I think both. My dd had problems in school, and was really starting to feel stupid. She's doing much better after we pulled her out during 3rd grade. However, she wasn't an academic genius then and isn't an academic genius now. (She's in 7th-8th grade). I'm not saying this to be harsh, her gifts just aren't in acadamia. However, she's still rather bright and with hard work and good study habits I know she'll be able to go much further than she ever would have if she stayed in regular PS. We're still working on those study habits though!

 

(She wants to be a vet and is extremely good with animals and has a big heart, but I think she'd make a better stunt woman. And I'm not kidding.)

[Daisy]

Both? Seems like too easy of an answer but I really believe...

 

....that God has gifted each of us with the personality and intellect we need to fulfill our role in this life (glorify God). NATURE

 

As a parent, I can encourage my child toward that end or I can place roadblocks in their way. NURTURE

[Garga]

Do you think birth order has anything to do with it? Some people ascribe to the theories that if you're an oldest, middle, youngest, or only child it will affect how you do things.

 

For example, oldests and onlies are generally more driven and perfectionists. Youngests are usually more lighthearted and like making people laugh and might not feel driven to succeed.

[jejily]

No. I do not think you can make a child brighter than he or she is wired to be. What you can do (and what homeschooling has done for mine) is to create an environment in which a child can fully realize what he or she has the potential to do. ...

 

:iagree:

 

I think that natural ability plays a huge role. Natural ability not just being pure intelligence, but that combination of intelligence, self-discipline and personal motivation.

 

I think nurture can attempt to cultivate a work ethic and discipline in how one approaches problems. I think it can provide a more challenging environment and a moral framework to judge the world. I don't think it can overturn nature. It can influence it but not control it. That's why I think parenting is in certain respects a dynamic event, almost an art.

 

 

I totally agree, and was with you up until this point:

 

I suspect that students that do well in homeschool would probably do well anywhere. Students that struggle at home will probably struggle in school. Not that homeschooling doesn't matter, but it probably matters less than we homeschooling moms want to acknowledge. That marginalizes what we do, and who wants to be marginalized?

 

I think the difference that can make or break a child (in terms of reaching his/her potential) is the environment. Kids who achieve can be given limitless opportunities to pursue their interests when they aren't constrained by the public school environment.

 

Kids who struggle in a public school setting will often give up out of frustration, whereas at home they have a ready tutor all the time.

 

Kids who are simply average tend to be ignored in the public school completely -- they aren't praised and commended like the "bright" ones, they aren't singled out for special help like the struggling ones. At home, they are in an environment that values them equally.

 

(Typing quick here between lessons, so I didn't get to fully flesh that out... I hope you understand my point.)

[Nan in Mass]

I'm not at all sure that a bright child will do equally well at school or at home. It depends on personality, probably, and the home, and what the school is like. School can be an absolutely horrible place for bright children. And the bright ones often have problems like being super-sensitive or dreamy or absent-minded that make school such an uncomfortable environment that they shut down, even if they are appropriately challenged academically. Or they are so bored that they shut down or get into trouble. On the other hand, for the bright children who happen to land in a home where their brightness isn't recognized, or isn't valued, or a home where the parents are struggling with life, school can be a wonderful place, one where there are people to encourage them and help them to grow.

 

And I'm not sure that the less academically bright ones will do better at school (unless their home is not a good place), either. I think that some of the less academically bright children have other talents, ones that won't be nurtured or challenged in a school environment. Or they have a passion, something at which they are willing to work very hard. Either way, a good home situation can allow them the flexibility to develop that gift or passion. If allowed, they can become "brilliant" at that something. A school is usually obliged to try to make students well-rounded, and not allow them to become lopsided. Instead of spending time making the child very good at something they are interested or good at, they spend time working on the things the child is bad at, trying to even them out. It is like taking the hills out of a yard by taking the tops off the high spots and using them to fill in the low spots. In the end, you get a flat yard that might be lower than the surrounding yards. If, on the other hand, you take the little bumps and push them onto the biggest bump, you get a place where the yard is higher than the surrounding yards. I'm not saying that everyone doesn't deserve to be taught the basic academic skills they will need to be able to teach themselves and survive as an adult, but that the unschoolers I have met all were at least better than most people at something, juggling or history or computer programming or music or painting,even if they knew nothing at all about lots of other things.

 

So if you by brilliant student you mean brilliant at everything, then I think nature has to begin the project and nurture can probably either spoil it or continue it; if by brilliant student you mean brilliant at something, then I think that either nature begins it (a talent) or nurture discovers and encourages it (an interest), and nurture is probably necessary to continue it, the exception in all cases being the person who was born so passionate about one thing that they themselves make the decision to be lopsided and go for that one thing to the exclusion of all others. Sometimes, those people manage to get what they want no matter what.

 

But who knows. It all seems to "depend" so much GRIN.

-Nan

[mcconnellboys]

I think, yes, to all of the above, LOL. There's just such diversity in the human genome, that I think across a large group you'll see some of all of the things you mention.

 

Some very bright kids will be self-motivated enough, able to internalize their own feelings/desires, etc. enough, to stay motivated and on track for learning no matter what.

 

Some very bright kids may get lost in the system of education and never realize their possible potential. This is the thing that scares me the most about our educational system. I think that tons of kids with potential do get short-changed and lost along the way, never realizing their full potential.

 

Now, I have problems with "IQ". There are so many different types of learning styles, so many different types of intelligence. I'm not at all convinced that IQ testing can pick up all the potentially brilliant people in the world. Some kids who might not seem to have above average intelligence will perservere, work hard, and get ahead in life; maybe even become millionaires (many have average intelligence). They have the self-motivation to do that in spite of any educational disadvantages. Others just like them might only blossom if they encounter a special teacher, or programming that "triggers" them in some way.

 

And there are always genius IQ people subsisting on the fringes of society, as well, whether or not life has handed them lemons in some way.....

 

Maybe there's a tenacity, or bull dog, gene, LOL, that makes all the difference....

[Katrina]

Let's remember why Susan's mom started homeschooling in the first place. It wasn't because her kids were super geniuses with excellent study habits, and Jessie could tell at age 2 they would be destined for greatness. Jessie just taught her kids how to read, and then once they started going to school they were getting made fun of by the other kids and the teachers didn't know what to do with them, and it was starting to have serious negative consequences for the kids. (If I'm remembering correctly without having to get up and reread the intro to TWTM.) Susan is very smart, but how different would her education have been if she were only pushed to be equal to her classmates? And this may be unfair because there are many bright students to come out of the ps system, but each school is different just as each homeschool is different.

 

So, although I can't change my answer from "both" I am going to to say that I think that the right enviroment and the right study habits can take any student and make the them the best student they can be.

[Stacy in NJ]

:

I think the difference that can make or break a child (in terms of reaching his/her potential) is the environment. Kids who achieve can be given limitless opportunities to pursue their interests when they aren't constrained by the public school environment.

 

Kids who struggle in a public school setting will often give up out of frustration, whereas at home they have a ready tutor all the time.

 

Kids who are simply average tend to be ignored in the public school completely -- they aren't praised and commended like the "bright" ones, they aren't singled out for special help like the struggling ones. At home, they are in an environment that values them equally.

 

(Typing quick here between lessons, so I didn't get to fully flesh that out... I hope you understand my point.)

 

Hmmm, possibly, but what about the kid who would bloom in a school environment because they learn best cooperatively or enjoy competition but aren't offered that opportunity and are instead homeschooled?

 

I homeschool. I think it's the best choice for my family. I think it's probably the best choice for many families. I acknowledge, though, that most situations are less than perfect all the time, whether we talking homeschool or ps.

[klmama]

I believe the average kid with average ability can be taught how to make the best of the significance he possesses. I try to remember that academic giftedness is but one slice of the pie. Many of my PhD friends are, by their own admission, hard workers and not necessarily naturally gifted.

 

 

 

I had a tenured professor in college who announced this very thing to his classes. His were THE most popular classes on a large, well-respected state university campus, with 500 students and long waiting lists every semester. I didn't get in until I was a senior. He was an amazing professor, and his classes were well worth the wait. Yet, he told us that many of us had more natural intelligence than he did - his IQ was 110. He explained that the reason he got to where he was wasn't how smart he was; it was simply that he worked very hard to get there. His message was to reach for the dream, no matter what the limitations we thought we might have. If he could reach his, so could we.

[jejily]

Hmmm, possibly, but what about the kid who would bloom in a school environment because they learn best cooperatively or enjoy competition but aren't offered that opportunity and are instead homeschooled?

 

I homeschool. I think it's the best choice for my family. I think it's probably the best choice for many families. I acknowledge, though, that most situations are less than perfect all the time, whether we talking homeschool or ps.

 

A good point (about the cooperative learning). I guess the "easy" answer is to say that I would hope a parent would recognize that about their child and find opportunities within their homeschooling experience to provide that type of learning situation. (Not every class or subject in public school is cooperative, after all, so even kids who thrive in that environment would only get to be in that type of environment on occasion.)

 

I'm clearly not anti-PS, as you can see from my siggy. My oldest DS was never homeschooled, nor was my DD who is currently in high school. I wish I had homeschooled them, though, for many reasons. My son needed to be challenged, but was not. My daughter needed special help, but her need wasn't "severe enough" so she was lost in the shuffle. She's learned coping techniques, however, and struggles through as a "C" student, even though she tries and studies very, very hard. I can't help but wonder if it wouldn't have been better for me to homeschool them.

 

Ah, well, 20/20 hindsight.

[SonshineLearner]

I had a tenured professor in college who announced this very thing to his classes. His were THE most popular classes on a large, well-respected state university campus, with 500 students and long waiting lists every semester. I didn't get in until I was a senior. He was an amazing professor, and his classes were well worth the wait. Yet, he told us that many of us had more natural intelligence than he did - his IQ was 110. He explained that the reason he got to where he was wasn't how smart he was; it was simply that he worked very hard to get there. His message was to reach for the dream, no matter what the limitations we thought we might have. If he could reach his, so could we.

 

This is what my dad has said. He said that he had to work really hard to learn what he did. He was independently studying Greek and Ancient History when he was in High School, way before you heard of this... He's got two Doctorates and two Masters....and has taught for years. After years of teaching, he says that he's just not tough anymore...students don't want to have to hurt their heads thinking.

:tongue_smilie:

[katemary63]

All I know is that my son, by age 12 months, had shown me clearly that he was NOT interested in following rules, or doing something because he was "supposed" to. And he was especially NOT interested in being good at something that his sister, 15 months older and a high achiever, was also good at. So, he started right off the bat being "unmotivated" and has struggled ever since. Only now, at age 22, is he figuring out that hard brain work is actually worth it TO HIM! He met a girl, fell in love....and she told him she was not interested in dating or marrying a man who did not have a college degree! SCORE! Guess who started passing his classes! DS is brilliant and hillarious, but was BORN unmotivated. ( also struggled w/ mild ADD) I have 3 girls who are all high achievers - he's the only one. Same nurturing, same childhood. ( But I love him to death anyway! )

[Jane in NC]

Everything always depends on the individual student, I suppose. And the luck of the draw.

 

I have a cousin who was an average/below average student and always in trouble. He had a science teacher in high school who saw something in him that no one else (including his parents) could see. My cousin has since had a very successful career and is considered "brilliant" my many. Certainly his gifts were not nutured at home or in his early schooling. Would he have succeeded as a homeschooled student? I suspect he would have burned the house down but he probably would have learned something from it. :D

 

The point that I am trying to make is that while his intelligence may have been natural, it had to be nutured at some point in order to be properly directed. I think that is the way with many people which is why just plopping someone down with a stack of books, albeit good books (and even Great ones) does not necessarily make for an education. In today's world, it is the rare mathematician, scientist, policy maker, etc. who sits in a cublicle without colleagues doing his work. Ideas need to be discussed.

 

I think what we as parents should do is find the avenues that best suit our children. I am dedicated to homeschooling for my child because of who he is and who we are. The ideas laid out in TWTM have helped me nuture my child who I believe also has some natural abilities. Is his strong work ethic natural or nutured? That I do not know.

 

But clearly what works for us may not work for the next guy. We self evaluate and create a mental list of the the plusses and minusses of our decisions--there are too many variables to make blanket statements.

 

Interesting thread. Thanks.

Jane

[Wildiris]

Interesting question. Cultivating drive and self-discipline in a child is a challenge. I do not think kids are born with the kind of motivation most school environments want. In my experience most kids, no matter if it is public school or home school, maintain an interest in school until their bodies start their first inkling of change, which can be as young as 9 or10 years old.

 

What separates great students from the rest of them: Great students work hard.