Comment by thaumaturgy
6 years ago
I was fortunate enough to get into a GATE extracurricular program when I was in elementary school in the East Bay, a long time ago. In my case, I got to socialize more with some peer groups, visit a planetarium, make oddball things, get a good grasp of the sciences way ahead of the regular school curriculum, and participate in a problem-solving program that influenced my thinking for the rest of my life.
BUT: in retrospect, those programs are mostly for kids who just happened to be fortunate enough to be born into the right circumstances at the right time. East Bay public schools were pretty good at the time, I was born just in time to learn about computers just ahead of the rest of the world, I had a somewhat stable home life, and my family supported learning and nerdy hobbies.
I was a social outcast for most of my youth too, but that had less to do with GATE and more to do with my family's obsession with being smarter than everyone else, which made me an insufferable, lazy little jerkwad. It took getting out into the world in my late teens to begin realizing just how much of an idiot I really was.
So, YMMV, but if I were a parent I'd at least give a local GATE program a try. (But also sports.)
> more to do with my family's obsession with being smarter than everyone else, which made me an insufferable, lazy little jerkwad.
Massive props to you for having the self-awareness to make that realization. So many people don't.
And so many smart people fail to realize that being smart is just one gift among many. And all things considered, once you reach a certain minimum, other attributes are probably more important in life success (like work ethic, and social ability). It took me until my mid-20s to make that realization.
Did California's GATE actually have a purpose? I was in it for 13 years (~1982-1996) and it seemed completely and utterly pointless. No extracurriculars, no meetings, no resources... it seemed like a smart-kid inventorying service for (insert random conspiracy theory here). Worse, I was constantly pulled out of class to take IQ tests and then bored to death because I was 3 years ahead after coming from a private school that had phonics and aggressive material plans (Challenger).