Home schooling (for now the answer is "no")

As an atheist (and as what in todays terms would be an exceptionally globally gifted youngster who was radically advanced 5 grades and still ended up bored) home schooling is something I've considered for my little girl, currently 2 1/2. In our former home of Lexington, KY the top rated pre-school in the city was a secular one. The closest thing to that which we've found in Jackson, MS is the public school Montessori, which she'll be entering next fall.

Since my spouse is Episcopalian, my daughter is already exposed to imaginary friends, so atheism isn't a strong motivator for me when it comes to considering home schooling. I'm much more worried about her intelligence. It's too early to tell if she'll inherit my global gifts, but at 2 1/2 she's probably averaging 6-10 words per sentence, often ranging up into 15-20 word sentences with grammatically correct conditional clauses.

Exceptionally gifted children don't really need school to learn. (When asked how I managed to get a 31 composite on the ACT at the age of 11 I always answered, "I read science fiction.") As a former college instructor with an extensive liberal arts background, I wouldn't worry so much about providing my daughter with sufficient academic preparation for college. (Although MOST of the resources that I skimmed in thinking about this are Christian-centric.)

In some of the studies that I've been reading lately it looks like structured radical advancement has the most benefits for really smart kids, and most of that benefit seems to come from the social opportunities of interacting with people on your own level of thinking. (As one researcher put it, no one expects to mainstream a child with an IQ of 40, why should we assume that a child with an IQ of 160 should be mainstreamed?) Public schools are, as vjack says (http://www.atheistrev.com/2009/03/atheist-homeschooling.html), centers for social instruction, but that doesn't ALWAYS mean that the social aspects are beneficial (although those aspects certainly CAN be in some, perhaps most, cases).

My own daughter is extremely social. She stayed at home the first few months after we moved to Mississippi, but kept asking to go to daycare (which she'd done before I retired). She simply finds being around lots of other children absolutely fascinating. She emotionally craves that contact. At this point, for my daughter, home schooling isn't currently an option. As a rationalist, of course, new evidence can always lead to change.

I think that the real question for atheists when it comes to home schooling is, "What causes more damage? Socializing with children who are very, very different (either in intelligence or in world view), or having very limited socializing until the dangerous late-teens?" I have trouble believing that any child who is too far off the "norm" can emerge unscathed from childhood, and I think that all parents should navigate their individual courses based on the circumstances that confront them. (Duh!)

Smart doesn't matter much

I know someone intelligent but crazy as a bedbug. In a blog she nicely and correctly attacked the existence of "race" as a load of hooey. I still prefer Hitchens, but, hey, he's a professional. Then, however, like a Charles Manson speech at a parole hearing, the blog went from the reasonable to the absurd. Here are my comments.

Yes, of the multitude of ridiculous memes that have been made up out of thin air, race ranks right up there with religion as a force for holding humanity back from advancing in all sorts of different fields. Which is why Christopher Hitchens refuses to fill out questions about his "race." I myself mark "Other" and, when possible, enter "Human." Which, given the perspectives and level of reading comprehension in Mississippi, will probably get me classified as a Hmong tribesman one day.

On the race question I tend to agree with you, but I have to take exception with the hypothesis you present for your thought experiment.

"If we were all suddenly unable to distinguish color, what would happen? People would be judged on merit and ability. It wouldn't happen overnight, because the money is in the hands of those whom the current system has favored, but our country would change irrevocably. Power would go into the hands of the most talented, the most capable, the most intelligent."

"Talented" or "capable" are ambiguous terms. Talented at what? The most common sense definitions create a tautology: power goes into the hands of those most capable of attaining power. (Of course, we're begging the question of what "power" is.)

I don't particularly care about those issues because whatever definitions are used, "the most intelligent" is not going to be a significant determinant for power, nor should President Obama's election be taken to mean that the country is moving in that direction. Yes, he is indeed smart and articulate and, yes, those attributes probably played a role in his election by providing a sharp contrast with the snickering, fumble-tongued President Bush. Obama's erudition, however, was hyped and in many cases believed as a disadvantage within the Republican base, they marked Obama as "an elitist" because he could construct a reasoned and extended argument and could think on his feet and communicate his ideas.

For all of the politics present in academia and artistic organizations, they are oriented more towards individual effort (or small scale political effort), leading to more chance for intelligence to be properly utilized. Exposure to a large organization where each project requires work from dozens of departments and hundreds of people will soon disabuse you of the value of intelligence. As the sign says, "None of us are as dumb as all of us." It took several years working within the context of a Fortune 500 company before I finally accepted that, yes, indeed, I am a genius and that, yes, that creates problems for me.

Exceptionally or profoundly gifted people are not just intellectually gifted, they are emotionally different as well. (http://www.gt-cybersource.org has some brief yet interesting reports on this sort of thing.) As one of the authors pointed out, no one expects a 40 IQ child to be mainstreamed, yet this is often considered acceptable for a child of 160. There are emotional and social differences regardless of which side of the bell curve you are on.

These differences do not go away simply because someone moves from childhood to adulthood. Extremely intelligent adults making reality-based decisions will, within large organizations, rarely advance quickly unless they are so profoundly gifted in their domain that they change the nature of the domain. Usually, either their expertise is needed in a particular position or their inevitable conflicts with the inevitable incompetents will impair their advancement opportunities. Intensity is difficult to mask, and being required to step outside of reality based thinking is incredibly difficult for myself and the other extremely gifted people with whom I've worked. http://www.sengifted.org/articles_adults/Nauta_GiftedAdultsInWork.shtml has an interesting take on gifted employees in working environments:

Table 1 Characteristic statements made by gifted employees and people in their working environment concerning adaptation problems
What the working environment notices		What the employee states
1	Many conflicts with management and authorities	I have a great sense of justice
2	Cannot listen to what others say	My ideas are not understood, but I’m usually right
3	Difficult to place motives. What’s behind it all?	Apparently I’m a threat to my colleagues
4	Bad timekeeping, for example in meetings	I’m being held back all the time, it all goes so slowly
5	Strongly fluctuating performance, without any clear cause	I have no idea what I want, I find almost everything interesting
6	Not clear where the employee’s optimal work position is; concerns him/herself with all kinds of things	I get too little appreciation, people don’t see what I’m capable of
7	Lack of perseverance and discipline	I’m easily distracted
8	Is difficult to approach, not social	I dislike social talk
9	Makes all kinds of demands concerning work environment factors	I can’t understand how other people can work in that noise

I've experienced most of the above personally. Large scale organizations tend to give power to people that fit certain social and personality templates, whether consciously or unconsciously. The more profoundly gifted you are, the less likely that you will fit within such a template. (Unless fitting in or management is your template, I knew some managers that fit into that mold.)

Smart doesn't mean much in large scale organizations and, quite frankly, it never will.