About

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness…
– Allen Ginsberg, “Howl”.

This blog covers a topic near and dear to me: how to nurture the innate curiosity and adventurousness of young minds.

Those who worry about reforming our educational system often focus exclusively on poorly performing students without acknowledging that our system often fails the most able young minds as well. Entrenched attitudes and practices prevalent in American schools can turn avid learners into unhappy, fragile, poorly performing students.

A recurring theme of this blog will be the special needs of some of our most able young minds.

In many cases, these needs can be served with little or no additional cost by genuinely acknowledging these needs and bringing existing resources to bear. Decades of research has consistently shown that age-atypical learners are better served by being placed with cognitive peers regardless of age rather than with same-age children, and yet the most frequent practice is to place children by age regardless of how advanced a child may be in relation to their age-peers.

I’ll be looking at these issues from a variety of perspectives.