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Comment by HenryKissinger | Hacker News Reader

Counterpoint: the general level of maturity of an individual, and in particular their emotional maturity and their social maturity, do not strongly correlate with their intellectual maturity. Someone may be advanced enough to graduate at 18 with a bachelor's degree in a technically challenging field, but lack enough self-discipline, sense of responsibilities, or basic social graces and knowledge of social codes to realize their full potential. They might also feel alienated from their older peers.

By moving through the education system at the same speed as their normal peers, they have more time to construct their personalities and learn what they really want to do later in life.

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People should not be deliberately handicapped. Forcing someone to waste years of their life is bad. School is so unlike every other social institution that it is (close to) useless as preparation for anything else. Outside school people actually care whether you do your work, and if your don’t do it there are real consequences, but the standards are completely different, depending on the workplace. Outside school if you’re surrounded by assholes you can just leave unless you’re in prison. Outside school the chances of physical violence being overlooked or covered up by the authorities nominally in charge of your welfare are much smaller. Outside school there are no contexts so rigidly age segregated.

People become responsible when responsibility is thrust on them. They do better, faster with real support. School doesn’t do that. It infantilises people. Nothing you do in school matters of itself. You can choose to do projects or research that people care about but that’s completely optional.

> Forcing someone to waste years of their life is bad.

Taking the time to develop one's personality alongside one's peers, to share the same experiences and to make bonds with them is totally not a waste of time.

> Outside school people actually care whether you do your work, and if your don’t do it there are real consequences

Not sure what schools you attended. I had good teachers, who cared if I did my work. And if I didn't I would get a bad grade. Bad grades are real consequences that can negatively affect your future.

> Outside school if you’re surrounded by assholes you can just leave unless you’re in prison.

So many workers work jobs that they don't like but can't afford not to. Unless you're ready to face unemployment, and possibly the loss of your home and homelessness, you can't always so easily leave your job. I know that this is HN, where everyone makes 6 figures in the tech industry and could leave their job in the morning and find a new one after lunch, but the reality isn't so rosy for the vast majority of workers.

People can develop their personality just fine outside a prison-like school environment. We need to rebuild our local communities, so that these shared experiences and bonds can occur freely among people of all ages.

When I was a teenager, I felt much less alienated from adults than I did from high school students, who lived in a weird, artificial, often hostile social bubble with rules unlike anywhere else:

http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html

It doesn't have to be done with accelerated individuals not experiencing that school environment - just expand existing dual-credit systems and make it possible to spend your four high school years doing dual credit for the entire common core curriculum in your normal high school environment. That alone would probably make a huge difference. Not sure what the equivalent for trades would look like, I don't know enough about the academic process for those. But my high school had an auto shop, so it would be doable in at least one place for at least one trade.

Academic progression does not necessarily have to be tied in lockstep with social development.

Does any of that matter if they move through the system faster if they ultimately, as the abstract suggests, don't suffer psychologically by age 50? Whether they're "socialized" seems unrelated to whether they find personal happiness.

What do you think 8-year olds constantly being surrounded by only other 8-year olds does for maturity? And that this insane pattern is held for 18 years?

One could also argue that emotionally mature(er) students have their emotional growth stunted by being forced to study and socialize with the less mature students.

Did you read the abstract? I’ll quote here: “Concerns about long-term social/emotional effects of acceleration for high-potential students appear to be unwarranted, as has been demonstrated for short-term effects.”

The general finding in the gifted research community is that grouping academically gifted students with their intellectual peers instead of their age peers is overall a better experience. Yes, there will be some issues with asynchronous development, but forcing students to spend their days with students who are not able to work on their level also leaves scars.

It seems that if your suggestion was true, then the effect would be seen in the study as a negative effect of academic acceleration, no?

There’s no remedial maturity classes. If your smart but immature it might take nearly a lifetime of being hit over the head before you realize why being a jerk isn’t productive.

Many smart people don’t learn cause they can still get by in western society.

The traditional approach to that problem is to join Navy boot camp. That sort of environment will no doubt teach you "maturity" extremely quickly - and 18 is just about the right age, too.

And another counterpoint:

Maybe let parents decide?

Will they take upon themselves to supplement their child soft-skill learning?

Right now we are forcing everyone into the same, horrible and inefficient route - which isn't correlated to real world at all.

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