I am an October baby, so I was started in pre-school at a younger age. I later skipped 5th grade, which pushed me into High School at 12 (for a month or so) and into college at 16.
The difficulties that I encountered were all social, most of them in High School. Not being able to drive untill I was a Senior was a complete pain in the ass.
In college, not being able to drink (legally) untill my 5th undergrad year was a pain in my head. I managed to aquire a rather long line of friends in those 5 years, all of whom made it a point to join me out at the bars on my 21st birthday to seal my doom.
Academically there were no difficulties for me. I actually subscribe to the philosophy that public education in the US is only about 5 year’s of worthwhile education plus 7 years of bullshit, all rolled into one big mess. College was a little bit better.
I’ve moaned over my lack of early application to my math studies many times here, most recently in the “If I knew at age 8” thread. I was skipped one semester in the fourth grade, and one semester in the fifth. While I missed having to be taught by the two most disliked teachers at my school, I wonder why they did it. Sure I knew who the first Pharaoh of Egypt was, and I was the top speller in class, but my math was not up to snuff. So it’s as if someone decided, “Well, the math’s just not all that important. It’s not as if he’s going to be an aeronautical engineer”. Well, maybe in my heart of hearts I wanted to be an aeronautical engineer, or a physicist. I was greatly attracted to those sorts of careers, but too handicapped in math to even consider them as options. I ended up repeating first year Algebra in high school and never going beyond Geometry.
I’ve learned so much math since my school days that I know I could have done better then, if only someone could have turned on the light for me, so to speak. They certainly shouldn’t have skipped me over any semesters. As for skipping grades generally, I think it’s very wrong unless the the student is doing superlatively in EVERYTHING.
God damn there are a lot of people that skipped grades here! Makes me feel like some sort of mental midget…I repeated 3rd grade and it will take me 5 1/2 years to get my Bachelor’s degree.
Just don’t have the mneomic skills and self-discipline to excel in school. Rather, I dragged my feet through the whole thing.
Time is the great equalizer. Now-abandoned hopes of Veterinary school had me attending college full time for 6 years to come out with pre-requisites and BS in Zoology (collecting dust on my desk). My two years of advancement are now only apparent as less grey hair at high school reunions.