Even among the tracked schools there is sometimes a problem with gifted students being held back by the rest. I had to transfer to a public school for 7th & 8th grade (ages 12-13). They were so behind it was unreal.

After learning basic fractions for 4 years in the public school system, a friend and I made a chess set out of paper scraps. Our typical day involved doing the day's classwork and homework in an hour while the teacher lectured and then playing chess for the rest of the day. We played chess for several months until near the end of the year when a substitute confiscated our set and threw it away.

The problem in the US is that the AP kids get shafted because so much of the budget is spent on running a glorified daycare for the kids who really don't want to be there.

A lot of kids today think that laziness and a "fuck all" attitude is totally ok. They don't think education is important and frankly don't realize the potential consequences this may have on them in later life.

When I was a kid, I had to slop pigs, and shovel the shit out of the pen. My dad would say to me as we were shoveling pig shit or doing some other awful work, "This is why you get good grades. Some day you are going to college so you don't end up like your old man."

I had issues with my oldest kid taking a bad attitude at school and not caring about her education. I thought back to my childhood, then I took my daughter out and gave her a shovel. When she asked what she was supposed to do with it, I told her, "You are going to dig so you can practice up on how to be good at digging ditches, since that is the type of work you will be qualified for if you don't get a good education."

I got a call from her teacher a few weeks later telling me how they couldn't believe the complete 180 she had made at school and that she had never seen anything like it. She wanted to know what I had done. When I told her the teacher was amazed at what a harsh yet unique "punishment" it was, but said that "maybe more kids should be made to dig ditches".

I love this story. Thanks for sharing. I'm curious though, did you try this with your other kid? The one who's presumably not having any problems? I'm curious if your method would further strengthen their resolve.

While I haven't tried that particular thing on the other two kids I have used equally unique/creative "punishments" on all of the children.

I set strong boundaries and consistent enforcement for all of them. For minor infractions, my go to punishment is to make them do a plank while we "discuss" what they did wrong. If you have ever done planks you know the agony of holding a plank for long enough. The great thing about this as a disciplinary technique is that it is good for them physically; they are building core muscles so the older the kids is the longer they can hold the plank.

For serious offenses, I always like to come up with something more unique and memorable so it really sinks in.

What a great way to make them hate physical exercise for the rest of their lives. Also, agony and humiliation ("discussing") is apparently only for minor infractions - major ones need something more!

Contrary to your judgements, they have all grown a healthy love and competitive spirit regarding athletics. My 7 year old has six pack abs which she loves showing off and she was swimming before her 5th birthday. Her and my son are both enthusiastic gymnastics. My son also races BMX, which is a draining year round sport. Meanwhile my oldest competes in swimming, volleyball, dance, and as of late has been begging me to let her join a mixed martial art.

If the issue is "not enough of an area's educational budget is devoted to AP kids", I don't see how that is solved by creating an entirely different school? If there's enough money to create a school for gifted kids, then I think that money is better spent investing in the AP programs in those multi-track schools.

(It's entirely possible that I'm overlooking some nuances in how education budgets work, but I'm talking more in the macro sense.)

A few bad apples. The kids who don't care spoil the opportunities of the kids who do. The two need completely different support systems -- kids who don't care need to be monitored, kids who do need opportunities. As a finite example: they canceled the "electives" at my school (students could sign up for a 2x/week lecture on an eclectic subject) because a lot of the kids figured out they were the easiest to skip.

I agree, but I think "kids who are actively harming the educational system" and "gifted kids" is a false dichotomy: the spectrum of "kids whose educational experience is damaged by bad apples" is wider than the gifted kids discussed in this article, and by only helping out that small subset I think we leave a whole bunch of kids left hanging (and arguably the ones who need a strong education the most.)

(Our high school's approach to that was just offering "study hall" as an elective, with the implication that you could just skip study hall and nobody cared.)