The following piece of news made me cringe:
A complaint of age discrimination by the mother of two 10-year-old twin boys has been dismissed. The Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario complaint was filed by Wendy Foster against the University of Ottawa after her boys were removed by the school from a course on “science and social activism” about a month after they began attending classes in 2006. They had been initially allowed into the class as “special students,” but the school later decided that they could not attend because they did not meet the entry requirements.
It is very disturbing to see parents who rob their children of a childhood because of their own abysmally low self-esteem.
When I was in grad school, there was a woman who kept bringing her 12-year-old daughter to our graduate-level literature classes. Her position was that the girl was a prodigy and would benefit from participating in courses where the average age of students was 30+. The mother wasn’t a student, she just knew some people who pressured the professors into letting her in.
A grad course in Contemporary Latin American literature is a place where adult topics are often discussed. We talked about violence and quoted passages with explicit sex scenes. Imagine how the poor 12-year-old suffered as she sat there with all these adults discussing mature topics on the one hand and her helicopterish Momma on the other. The kid’s misery was palpable, especially when the mother prodded her to make comments. I have no idea whether the girl was a “prodigy” (I don’t even believe that child prodigies exist). What I do know is that she was not properly socialized for her age. Her general behavior was more like the one you can observe in an 8-year-old. This is not surprising with such a hyper-protective parent.
It is true that some kids are intellectually ahead of their peers at school. I spent most of my school years feeling intensely bored in class. However, as I said many times before, school years provide an invaluable and an irreplaceable opportunity to get socialized (not to be confused with becoming sociable) according to one’s age level. A smart kid will have plenty of time to go to the university and become as much of a genius as s/he wants. Childhood and adolescence, however, should be dedicated to taking one’s time to grow. There is absolutely no value whatsoever in pushing a kid into adult situations ahead of time.
There are parents who believe that their child is too smart to “waste time” in playing and hanging out with kids his or her age. However, the time spent playing with teddy-bears and toy trucks is never wasted. These activities develop a child psychologically and provide him or her with life-long coping skills. Parents who push their kids into the role of wunderkinder would be better served finding their own professional and social realization and letting the poor children mature at a normal pace.
Clarissa's Blog 
A smart kid will have plenty of time to go to the university and become as much of a genius as s/he wants.
While I do agree with your general principle, that childhood is the time to learn to get socialized, I don’t agree with this statement. There are certain academic things that one _must_ learn thoroughly and well in childhood; otherwise, if the basics are weak, it is way too late by the time one gets to the university. I can speak for math, which is a great example. If your mathematical basics are weak in school, there is no way you are going to catch up in college or afterwards, no matter how smart you may be, and no matter how hard you try. Math just takes a long time to sink in, even for the smartest mathematicians.
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The basics can be learned at school. I don’t think anybody needs to be enrolled at a university at age 10 to get them.
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Depends on the school. Some high schools do a pretty bad job with teaching math, and I know several kids in my school who took classes in math at the local university.
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There’s a big difference between a 12-14 year old and a 16-17 year-old.
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What about such disciplines like sports and music? If you don’t begin participating in sport X from a young age, it’s impossible to start later. Also there are child actors. F.e. actors of HP movies say they don’t feel like they “lost childhood” and are happy of the opportunity they got. Imo, it should be judged on a case by case basis. In your examples, parents were at fault. In other situations children greatly benefit from doing extra-school activities, be it playing a musical instrument or taking courses at uni. May be not at 10, but at 14-16, why not?
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All those child actors later become drug addicts and alcoholics. The prospects for them are really not good.
As for sports and music, the kids who really want to do them will be fine. But those who are pushed and pushed into practicing 5 hours a day by obsessed, fame and money-hungry parents will not.
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*All those child actors later become drug addicts and alcoholics. *
HP actors are still fine. May be it’s like sports and music – “the kids who really want to do them will be fine”, but many are pushed into it or/and get sufficient parental support.
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*All those child actors later become drug addicts and alcoholics. *
HP actors are still fine. May be it’s like sports and music – “the kids who really want to do them will be fine”, but many are pushed into it or/and don’t get sufficient parental support.
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There’s a big difference between starting to learn something in childhood (sports, music, math), and participating in university-level courses! Plenty of children start all three of those things with an age-appropriate approach (and in an age-appropriate setting) in childhood and go on to have great careers without being forced into situations that make them uncomfortable at a very young age.
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Some people take uni level courses at high school already, but I suppose it’s different. Though I saw a couple of young boys (14+) at uni. If they want and can, why not?
Also acting, like HP child actors, isn’t a hobby. It’s a full-time job.
Olympic level sports isn’t “age-appropriate” hobby either. It’s very physically and mentally demanding, and training must begin from a young age.
Music too is very demanding, if taken seriously.
I talk of such cases, not average Joe twice a week hobby club.
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The average Joe will be a hundred times happier than people robbed of a childhood.
A 14-year-old who prefers to take uni courses rather than play video games, go out with girls and hang out with buddies has some serious issues.
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Then I was about 14 a friend took me to some of his university lectures. I found it interesting and useful. The subject was physics, and I can remember what the lecture was about, far more than any of my physics classes at school.
I’m not saying that kids shouldn’t socialise with kids, but I don’t think it does them any harm to socialise with adults occasionally. I think if I’d attended a university tutorial or two on literature when I was about 12-14 it would have done me no harm, and might have done me some good in giving me a better appreciation of such topics in school.
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Yeah, but that sounds like it was your choice. If the kids want to and are interested, then sure, sounds like great enrichment (in conjunction with the rest of their classes at their age-appropriate school). By the sounds of Clarissa’s story, that child didn’t have a choice in the matter.
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I agree, clarissa. A parent compelling a child to leave their peer group and interact with adults at this level is more about the parent’s ego than about the child’s skill.
If the child wants to do so, however, and has not only the intelligence but also the maturity to do so, that’s another matter. I still think that, in most cases, their socialization should come through their peer group, but some kids can indeed handle more … “peer-ish” contact with adults. They’re definitely in the minority, however
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My Mum used to take me along to her lectures (maths and computing) when she was short of a babysitter. I understood bits here and there and enjoyed feeling “grown up.”
It was only now and again in the summer holidays though: not a whole course!
I agree with Clarissa that a literature class is out due to adult themes.
I also think that genuine child prodigies have it quite tough if their interests lie in lierature, politics or social sciences because, with the best will in the world they are going to lack the life experiance and emptional sensitivity to excel at these subjects until adulthood and in the meantime theres not a great deal of age appropriate teaching out there.
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I wrote my first comp lit essay at the age of nine. I could write it in 3 different languages at that time. I’m very grateful to my parents for not pushing me into premature adulthood and letting me play with dolls and chase after boys. When I grew up, I became a literary critic, so none of my talents were damaged by having a normal childhood. Disciplines like literature, politics or social sciences are the best because they don’t require any teaching at an early age. All you need is just read a lot.
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Sorry Clarissa, just shouting my mouth off about my own experiances there I think.
I was pretty sharp with language skills as a kid (although not nearly as smart as you) and massively interested in the adult world, including grown up conversation, grown up books, grown up ideas.
I spent a lot of time not really understanding what caused the adults I approached to freak out and push me away.
I understand now of course: I was creepy!
I was too keen to converse as an equal and yet missing the emotional experiances which i now know to be necassary to do so. I mean things like grief, ennui, sexual jelously, nostalgia, all the emotions that make an adult and adult.
I would guess that these emotional experiances would be important to literature as well which is why i thought it might be hard for a child to really “get it”
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