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Ebenezer
May. 24, 2008
Yeah -- what she said.
This about sums it up for me. Except I like to think that I'm a wee bit more gracious about others' achievements. I'm delighted when other people (or, more to the point, other people's kids) aspire to excellence and succeed. But definitions of excellence vary. When I know the child has risen to a challenge -- an honest-to-goodness challenge defined by the abilities of that particular child -- that's praiseworthy. When the benchmark for excellence is something defined by whether a whole classroom of children can succeed but could only be defined as mediocrity for a particular child, then ... not so much. That's when I have to bite my tongue. I don't disparage the level of ability. I disparage the educator who assumes excellence for one child -- typically the average child -- can be construed as excellence for every child, and I disparage the parents who accept that as the upper limit.
I have an internal conflict: I want others to understand why we're different here -- not stereotypical homeschoolers, not stereotypical any-kind-of-schoolers -- but I don't want them to think that I am one of those moms who feels superior because of our difference, or that I'm trying to engineer genius. The difference is just that -- a difference. Not better. Not worse. Just different.
So that's why I'm burying my son's achievement here. (And really, it's not an achievement in the sense that he worked hard at something. It's more of an indicator.) I have told very few people and only when asked why we were in Chicago last weekend. But here it is. My son, a 9-year-old 4th-grader, took the EXPLORE test (i.e. 8th-grade level test) as part of the Midwest Academic Talent Search. The top 5 percent of scorers on grade-level tests are invited to take it. My son's scores were in of the top 1 percent of that top 5 percent. We were pleasantly astonished.
Just one out of every 2,000 4th-graders has a similar baseline for excellence. That's why we do things differently around here. And why we homeschool in the first place.
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Jun. 21, 2008 - Untitled Comment