Young Outliers: Grade Skipping or Agemate Socialization

Raising Capable Geniuses is difficult, especially when it comes to education.  The question of whether or not to accelerate an Outlier child seems, to Outliers, to often be a silly question.  However, the establishment often balks at acceleration and starts throwing around the S Word <insert ominous music here>

There are many Outlier children languishing in public, private, or even homeschool because of the concept that they need to be "socialized with their peers" instead of be accelerated to a higher grade.

Now, of course I cannot speak for every situation, but I truly believe that the brain needs what it needs to be healthy, even if that means a child will be much younger than his classmates.  We homeschooled our little Outliers so they could move at their pace (fast and slow, depending on the year and subject) that they needed.  I know that is not possible with all families, so I thought we might discuss this for parents of Outlier children.


Let's walk this dog with a leash of logic :

1) A child who is brilliant is brilliant.  His mind needs challenge. To hold him back from learning he needs is the exact same thing as tying up his left leg because the other kids are slower than he is running. Seriously, the leg is a part of the body, the brain is a part of the body. We don't hobble children's legs, we should not hobble their minds either. That would be inhumane and cruel. 

2) The kids whom he "socializes with" in 3rd grade are not at all going to have any bearing on his career or even his "socialization" when he is in college and beyond. 

As soon as I got to college, there was no more nonsense about "age mates". One of my very best friends now is a good 8 years older than I. Three others are two years older than I am (including my spouse). I have one who is three years younger than I am.

3) The point of school is education of the mind. Socialization is Socialization and happens everywhere. Demanding socialization by age is like demanding socialization by shoe size--totally arbitrary and has nothing at all to do with the need of the mind. And, thankfully, we give up that nonsense at college level where people are organized by ability and interest, not by age. Why would the 18 year old at Bob's High School be less worthy of finding true peers than the 18 year old at UCLA?

4) Now think of bigger schools where there are multiple classes of the same age. Do we insist that our children need to be shuffled to various homerooms so they can be "socialized" with all of their age mates? Nope. Do we not recognize that sometimes kids make friends with people of different ages? Yep.

5) Children are going to be drawn to who they are drawn to--being in the same class has nothing to do with that (trust me, kids will find whom they like, even if they are not in the same class. And they never settle on someone they don't like simply because they are in the same class. Ever.) . The whole "age mate socialization" thing is entirely overblown. 

Let's take three children: one is born in January, one in July, one in September. Because of arbitrary cut offs in birthdays, the September child is in a lower grade than the January and July child. Why would we expect that the September child would have "more in common" with those born in, say, August of the following year (almost a whole year behind him) than he would with the child born in July--just a couple of months earlier? And yet, he might. Or might not. 

Age is just a number, not a mark of intelligence or hobbies or maturity or interest. Kids do not say "I really want to hang out with Joe who is two years (younger or older, it does not matter) than I am because we both do minecraft. BUT I think instead I will hang out with my age mate Bob because we both were born in 2005....".

6) I am not saying that acceleration is the key to every child's growth. I really think it is because I know how thirsty the mind gets and how it withers when not allowed to drink, but I recognize that there might be times where a child wants to be with his age mates (but then are we allowing the child to limit himself out of fear? Another question for another time). 

However, a child that is open to acceleration, who craves and needs more stimulation is an excellent candidate for acceleration and in fact might thrive academically as well as socially if allowed to accelerate (we never consider that they might socialize better with older peers in these discussions!)

7) Does this even make sense? "Sitting in rows in silence with age mates for 45 minutes x 6 periods a day is more important than developing one's skills and talents.". Are we expecting socialization by osmosis?? Then the child goes to another class to sit in silence with another 20 "age mates", all the while listening to stuff he knows, doing busy work, and the adults somehow think kids are so easily swayed as to choose friends from people they are forced to be around instead of people they actually like and have interests with. (as a gifted, weird child, trust me, it did NOT work that way).

8) Children need to learn to socialize with ALL ages from birth to 100 year old folk. Keeping them in the same age group for 12 years is stifling, not enriching, socialization.  Yep, that is correct.  It is STIFLING socialization.

I know that some kids have been accelerated and hated it, but I bet they are in the minority. Easy way to fix that: accelerate the child and see how it goes. If he or she starts to flounder, then talk about bringing him or her back to "age mates". But if we would not organize by shoe size or hair color, we must not organize by age which is pretty much the same arbitrary-and-not-indicative-of-actual-maturity-or-need criterion.