Some thoughts about self-education

[symbolipoint]

Astronuc, #30
You were and are(maybe) a very unusual person. I cannot say that your frustrating teachers were right or wrong, but seemingly misunderstandings were happening from both first and second parties.

I really hope that, at least the music teacher gave your confiscated book back to you at the end of that class meeting.

 

[OmCheeto]

... My class teacher told me that I was too far ahead of the rest of the class, and that I need to keep pace.
...

Do they teach this to teachers in teacher school?
"If you have a student who is too far advanced, do your utmost to hold them back."

hmmm..... This is kind of making me want to start a new thread: "What are your 'triggers'?"

per google AI; "A trigger is a stimulus that sets off a reaction, most commonly referring to something (a sound, sight, memory) that causes intense emotional distress, often linked to past trauma..."

 

[berkeman]

Astronuc, #30
You were and are(maybe) a very unusual person.

Unusual in the best ways.

I feel very fortunate that my small highschool had an advanced track in math. Without that I would have been far behind when I went to undergrad uni.

 

[Astronuc]

I really hope that, at least the music teacher gave your confiscated book back to you at the end of that class meeting.

The music teacher gave my math workbook to my class teacher who then had a talk with me after class. I promised not to do math during music lessons. She recognized my ability at math and encouraged me. She also asked me to read books of fiction, which was a requirement for our English track, but I don't remember if I did. I explained that fiction didn't appeal to me, but that I rather read books on science, technolgy or history and geography.

At the end of the school year, I was put in a special academically able (AA) summer program in which we did higher level math, like matrix algebra. I did the AA program after 4th, 5th and 6th grade. During my secondary school program, 7th through 11th grade, I did a 6 week program at a local university, where we did three classes per day, usually 1.5 hours each, which were college level courses in various subjects, e.g., history, math, physics, computer programming. Between 11th and 12th grade, I attended a summer program funded by the National Science Foundation at the Colorado School of Mines, an 8-week program in electrical and nuclear engineering. One of the fellow students went on to Princeton and UC Berkeley, did some graduate work in cosmology, did experiments in cosmic microwave background (CMB), and eventually became head of the Physics Department at Caltech, among other achievements.