Originally posted by: luvly
"If idNut wants to tap these untoched resources, there are plenty of AP courses or accelerated courses he can get put into."
Please spare me. The so-called AP classes are like an accident. It is what should be considered standard courses for all students. I don't call that intellectually stimulating. Why schools don't have it as the standard system is beyond me. Perhaps that explains why American students do poorly when competing against other nationalities.
I am and was self-taught. I could wait till last minute to study something and pass the test. I knew though that I had to do the homeworks and study each day since the teachers gave so much weight to quizzes and homeworks. I did so because I knew how much people relied on the letters to tell who was intelligent and who was not. But if I hadn't studied for a course, then it would reflect in the everyday quizzes. According to your reasoning, that would make me automatically a dumb person rather than someone who was intelligent but had not applied the intelligence to the contents of that subject.
I know plenty of people that appear "dumb" to the average person, but are in essence, very bright. But guess what, businesses and everyone else in the real world still call these people dumb. It does not matter that your friends know your smart, or that you could've done better on a quiz or test IF you had applied yourself. Thats not what people see these days. If he wants to be successful in the real world, the probability increases exponentially of him being successful if he winds up getting into a better college and getting good grades, all because of those little letters and numbers we like to call grades.
All throughout HS so far, I've rarely studied for a quiz or test. There were just certain topics that could I could excel at regardless of whether I studied or not. But just like you and I realized, there is a NEED to study on certain occasions. If I'm unsure of my capabilites regarding a particular test or quiz, I study, plain and simple. If I know I can handle it, I browse the AT forums
And as with AP-Classes, I'm not talking about taking each and every single class being an AP for him. I'm talking about taking an AP class in a field in which he finds interesting. Obviously an AP class is going to open him up to much more then your normal run-of-the-mill class.
And what about acknowledging that fact of the multitude of competitions he could compete in? I'm sorry, but if the competitions out there based on research projects and assignments are not challenging enough for him, he isn't from this planet. For example, the Intel competition on Long Island.