Why would you want to take such a child and force them to ‘emotionally develop’ with dumber children their own age?
Because you primarily make friends in school with people in your grade, and if you skip too many grades, the physical difference between the gifted kid and other kids will prevent them from building a social circle based on physical play, and probably make any sort of dating much harder.
Abstract: A 20-year longitudinal study has traced the academic, social, and emotional development of 60 young Australians with IQs of 160 and above. Significant differences have been noted in the young people’s educational status and direction, life satisfaction, social relationships, and self-esteem as a function of the degree of academic acceleration their schools permitted them in childhood and adolescence. The considerable majority of young people who have been radically accelerated [skipped 3+ grades before graduating high school], or who accelerated by 2 years, report high degrees of life satisfaction, have taken research degrees at leading universities, have professional careers, and report facilitative social and love relationships. Young people of equal abilities who accelerated by only 1 year or who have not been permitted acceleration have tended to enter less academically rigorous college courses, report lower levels of life satisfaction, and in many cases, experience significant difficulties with socialization.
[...]
Young People Who Have Been Radically Accelerated. Surprisingly, given the wariness with which Australian teachers regard acceleration, 17 of the 60 young people were radically accelerated. None has regrets. Indeed, several say they would probably have preferred to accelerate still further or to have started earlier. Lubinski, Webb, Morelock, and Benbow (2001) report similar findings from a study of profoundly gifted SMPY accelerands. Some of the children had an unfortunate start to school before their abilities were recognized; others were fortunate enough to enroll in schools where a teacher or school administrator recognized their remarkable abilities and almost immediately argued for a strongly individualized program. In every case, these young people have experienced positive short-term and long-term academic and socioaffective outcomes. The pressure to underachieve for peer acceptance lessened significantly or disappeared after the first acceleration. [...]
In every case, the radical accelerands have been able to form warm, lasting, and deep friendships. They attribute this to the fact that their schools placed them, quite early, with older students to whom they tended to gravitate in any case. Those who experienced social isolation earlier say it disappeared after the first grade skip. Two are married with children. The majority are in permanent or serious love relationships. They tend to choose partners who, like themselves, are highly gifted.
[...]
The remaining 33 young people were retained, for the duration of their schooling, in a lockstep curriculum with age peers in what is euphemistically termed the “inclusion” classroom. The last thing they felt, as children or adolescents, was “included.” With few exceptions, they have very jaded views of their education. Two dropped out of high school and a number have dropped out of university. Several more have had ongoing difficulties at university, not because of lack of ability but because they have found it difficult to commit to undergraduate study that is less than stimulating. These young people had consoled themselves through the wilderness years of undemanding and repetitive school curriculum with the promise that university would be different—exciting, intellectually rigorous, vibrant—and when it was not, as the first year of university often is not, it seemed to be the last straw.
[...]
Several of the nonaccelerands have serious and ongoing problems with social relationships. These young people find it very difficult to sustain friendships because having been, to a large extent, socially isolated at school, they have had much less practice in their formative years in developing and maintaining social relationships. Six have had counseling. Of these, two have been treated for severe depression.
Personal counterfactual: I was smarter than my peers and didn’t skip any grades.
Result: I didn’t physically play with or date the other students.
Exceptions: I did play football and did Boy Scouts, but those were both after-school activities. Moreover, neither of them were strictly segregated by age. Football was weight-based, and Boy Scouts lumped everyone from 11 to 17 into the same troop.
Putting students in the same math class based on age (ignoring intelligence) is like putting students on the same football team based on age (ignoring size).
Yeah, splitting up the “grades” into subjects and letting smart kids take advanced math classes but still have, e.g. civics class with students their own age seems like a better option. You didn’t even need to send them to a different physical space to let them move at their own pace in math. Just let them read a good math textbook while the teacher lectures.
Because you primarily make friends in school with people in your grade, and if you skip too many grades, the physical difference between the gifted kid and other kids will prevent them from building a social circle based on physical play, and probably make any sort of dating much harder.
The physical difference matters, but the mental difference tends to matter more.
https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ746290.pdf
Wow, way to hit my childhood memories right where it hurts. I always envied the kids I heard about in stories who got to skip grades.
Personal counterfactual: I was smarter than my peers and didn’t skip any grades.
Result: I didn’t physically play with or date the other students.
Exceptions: I did play football and did Boy Scouts, but those were both after-school activities. Moreover, neither of them were strictly segregated by age. Football was weight-based, and Boy Scouts lumped everyone from 11 to 17 into the same troop.
Putting students in the same math class based on age (ignoring intelligence) is like putting students on the same football team based on age (ignoring size).
Yeah, splitting up the “grades” into subjects and letting smart kids take advanced math classes but still have, e.g. civics class with students their own age seems like a better option. You didn’t even need to send them to a different physical space to let them move at their own pace in math. Just let them read a good math textbook while the teacher lectures.
I would argue if skipping grades was normalized physical differences wouldn’t have a large impact on socialization (making friends, dating, etc.)