Where should a very smart 14 year old slacker go to high school?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Here’s the story. My 14 year old son has been on a three year vacation from school. Well, not literally. He shows up. He does most of his homework. He takes tests and passes, but he is nowhere near his potential. And lately things have been getting worse. He’s starting to get into trouble - nothing too awful yet, but we’ve been called in a few times to talk to the principal. And he doesn’t get to school on time any more.

Some more background. He’s always done very well on standardized tests. And because of that he’s been accepted at one excellent tough high school and one average high school. He wouldn’t be accepted at any school that looked at his report card. Both these schools base admissions just on the test. At the tougher school the cutoff for admission is about 90 percentile, and he scored well above that. At the average school there is a mix of all types of students.

We went to the tough school’s open house this week and I loved it. There are lots of clubs he would like. He likes to build things so he could be in a technical theatre club, a robotics club, and major in architecture, which means getting some credit for building houses. I chatted with as many student volunteers as I could and asked if there is a place for B- or 80 average (this is NYC, BTW) students, and they all said yes. He loved it also, especially the fact that someone told him it’s a top 50 in the US school. I also liked the students, much better than I’ve liked the students at any other school we visited. They seem to really like their work and have a positive outlook on life.

Here’s what I’m thinking. A lot of his problems the last three years may be that he’s bored to death. I think that being with good, bright, hard-working kids may be what he needs. But, OTOH, if he insists on doing the minimum amount of HW, they will throw his butt out. I’d imagine he needs at least two good hours of HW daily, maybe three sometimes to tread water there.

My wife thinks the average school is a safer bet. Probably, if he’ll only do an hour a night of HW, he has a better chance of graduating. But I think the greater danger is that he’ll hang with the bad groups of kids. Drugs, cutting classes, etc. I’m also thinking that if he takes the easy way out, it’s at best a pyrrhic victory. So he’ll be 18 with a HS diploma and seven years of bad habits. Big deal!

Also, if I haven’t touched on it directly enough yet, there is the old cliche about how adolescents are influenced by their peers. And as I said in the begining this is a kid whose judgment is not so great and getting worse. So I figure if there are more good kids around him there’s less chance of doing dumb things to fit in.

Any thoughts and advice would be appreciated.

2

If it were me, I’d tend towards the tough school.

They’ll keep him busy and involved. It’s so easy for bright kids to get bored and into trouble.

My sister put my nephew into a tough private school when he started having problems. He straightened up and did pretty well. Of course, things like getting your grades reported to your soccer coach and not being allowed to play if you went under a B helped.

3

There’s going to be a bad group of kids to hang out with at any school, so you really shouldn’t put too much stock in that as a deciding factor.

And I’d say that if he needs to do two hours of homework each night, sit there with him and watch him do it if that’s what needs to happen. It’s his choice whether he would rather do his homework or get a job/fix his own meals/not see his friends/whatever–and it’s your choice whether you’re going to let him get away with shit when he’s at home.

4

Go to the good school. Nothing terrible can come of doing poorly a class or two in early high school, and chances are the competition will spur him to improve. Average (and crappy) schools are boring schools, and putting a bright slacker in them may well lead to trouble if he already seems moving down that path.

5

I’d have killed for the school described as “tough.” I was that 14-year-old slacker, stuck going to an average school with a boring curriculum and classmates I didn’t mesh with… and became a 14-year-old drop out.

Tough school.

6

Having a bright kid in a non-challenging school is just asking for trouble. I was a great example of that - I never cracked a book in high school, but I sure did everything else.

7

I’m an advocate of pushing kids so they can really learn their limits. And at 14, a kid generally needs that push. At the same time, it’s important to make sure your son isn’t in over his head. Challenge is good. Learning to handle difficulties and even failure is good. Feeling totally overwhelmed, not so good.

Sounds to me like your son need a push.

8

I would definitely choose the tougher school. For one thing, college will take it into account. Also, they will be adept at dealing with kids like your son. The mediocre school is more likely to lump a bright/bored/slacker in with all the run-of-the-mill slackers they likely already have. Give him a chance to rise to the occasion.

9

Oh, I was so your son. I was a goof off because I was bored out of my skull. I came to a kindergarden class where kids were learning the alphabet already knowing how to read, and it was all downhill from there. I scored 99th percentile on every standardized test I took, yet did the absolute bare minimum of work. I don’t think I heard a single phrase growing up as often as “You’re not working up to your potential!”.

Teachers often asked me why I didn’t do my homework, daydreamt in class, and generally slacked off. When I would tell them I was bored, I would get told that school was not supposed to be fun, and that everyone had to do unpleasant things. I had one in high school who replied, “Well, what if I gave you something more challenging?” In his class (and only his class) I excelled, despite his workload being twice my other classes put together.

I am voting 100% for the harder school. I wish I could have gone to private school. By the end of high school I ended up in the bizarre position of being a National Merit Semifinalist in danger of not graduating due to grades.

It will also help him get into a college at his level. My best friend (who has a genius IQ and is 10 times smarter than me) went to a highly challenging private high school and excelled, only to go to an easy college and drop out her sophomore year.

I was extremely lucky to get into a good university-- only because a 3rd generation legacy (and attendant alumni contributions) + high SAT scores + extensive extracurriculars got the admissions people over my GPA. I could just as easily have ended up a lifelong fuck-up.

10

Is it possible that some highly intelligent, mentally healthy, fully-functioning people are just no use to society? Especially the one-size-fits-all, by-the-numbers society we have today?

11

As someone who went to a tough high school for two years and then moved to somewhere with an easier school… put him in the tough one! He’ll enjoy it so much more, have things to do, and (if he is a bright kid) be much more likely to make friends (with other bright kids).

12

I think they may be of no use to the NCLB/Lowest-common-denominator public school system, but me (and my college drop out friend) are both of perfectly good use to the business world.

Hell, my “let’s cut class together” smart-slacker friend from high school also shaped up in college; she makes a 100K at Goldman Sachs now.

14 is a little young to write people off.

13

Well in the end I think he should get to pick, but if he’s open to your advice then I would also agree with sending him to the more challenging school. It sounds like he has figured out to do exactly enough work to get by and stay out of real trouble. So most likely he will start to tread water a little faster and do just enough work to keep his B- average. But when he gets to college he’ll have less trouble keeping up with the kids who got A- grades at their neighborhood schools. FWIW I went to a fairly challenging private high school, pretty much everyone who came back to visit after graduation commented on how easy college was, and this includes the kids who weren’t scholars in high school.

14

It really, really depends on the culture of the school: tough schools have all sorts of different feels. If he likes it and wants to go, I’d encourage it. If he doesn’t feel like he’d fit in, I’d listen to him seriously.

You might also talk to his current teachers for their input: they know the schools involved and they know your son and they may have some good insights.

15

2 hours of Homework a night? Please.

If he’s really a bright kid there’s no way he’ll need that much after school work. There’ll be a paper once a month and a couple math and reading assignments a week that he can probably get done in study hall, or in health class. Don’t stress about the workload, if he’s doing well that well on standardized exams he’ll adjust and get the work done. If you’re really concerned about it have have the school send you his grades every 2 weeks and monitor him that way.

If he’s a slacker because he’s bored I suggest getting him into sports. If there was ever a way to instill a work ethic into a kid that was the way. It teaches him to work towards goals and it will burn alot of his nervous energy. Plus it will give him something he cares about that will motivate him to keep his grades up.

The path of least resistance never benefited anyone.

16

I was a gifted student that attended one of the worst high schools in the nation (rural Louisiana with a general public that did not understand why kids need a fancy high school education if they have other, immediate options let alone college. I was the only one in my graduating class of 39 that went straight from high school to college). I literally failed high school classes because they were too easy and I had to explain those on my college applications. Luckily, I still got a scholarship to a prestigious undergraduate school that I pushed to the limit and then went on an Ivy League graduate school in behavioral neuroscience.

I think a school that is too easy is infinitely worse than one that is hard and most certainly for him too. Smart kids get bored easily for things that are way below their level. Even at 34 years old, I still have the same problem with my mentally demanding mega-corp job. I simply won’t do things that aren’t mentally stimulating like filling out consulting time-sheets hour by hour and all of the other BS stuff that entails. After being talked to a few times, my boss just does them for me and everyone is happy.

I would definitely go for the tougher school. Easy schools can be intellectual suicide for truly bright kids. I don’t believe the 2 - 3 hours of homework either. It might be at a peak but even most adults don’t do anything like that.

17

It took me several readings of this thread to realize it, but I was that slacker* in middle school. If memory serves, I had a 56 in grade 8 history and a 60 in English. I rarely did my homework, partially due to laziness, partially due to forgetfulness and partially due to not giving a crap. Oh, and boredom almost certainly came into it: in grade 6, my teacher was constantly catching me reading during lessons. She refused to give me much trouble about it, though, because she didn’t want to discourage me from reading. My parents assured her that nothing she could do would discourage me from reading, and that getting me to pay attention in class was far more important

I had long ago scored well enough on a test that I was permitted to participate in the gifted program. This was voluntary extra-curricular work that was meant to be interesting to us. Things like an independent research project(my father and I built and programmed a small robot using some servo motors), making our own movie(we parodied a bunch of movies and put it all together in a Siskel & Ebert spoof) and debating. Anyway, because I participating in the Gifted program I was eligible to go to a local magnet high school for Gifted kids. Special advanced classes were offered in a variety of subjects. I ended up choosing to go, and this thread has made me realize that this was a huge turning point in my life.

As I mentioned earlier, in my last year of middle school I was pulling in terrible grades in some subjects. Overall I was probably averaging somewhere in the low 70s, and my marks were dropping. I’ve never been able to really understand what it is that changed for me in my first year in high school, but my marks shot up immediately. I made the honor roll every year and had an average over 90 in my last 3 years. The trouble for me is that I really don’t remember why I was doing so poorly in middle school so it’s hard for me to say why I did so much better. There are several big differences I can identify between my high school and my middle school, but I can’t definitively say that these differences are what changed things for me.

The first big change was the teachers. With one or two exceptions, my teachers in middle school were pretty awful(and one of those exceptions is a big one – I don’t think that I can say that any of my high school teachers saved any of my classmates lives). I think that a lot of them were just worn down from having to deal with kids just hitting puberty, but they just didn’t seem to care much. The majority of my teachers in high school were excellent, though. They engaged us and challenged us. Even one of the teachers I liked the least at the time, my grade 10 math teacher, was a really good teacher in retrospect. He gave me a book about the mathematics of infinity at one point in the term. I kind of rolled my eyes at the time and stuffed it in my bag, but sure enough, a couple weeks later I was bored waiting for a ride and had my backpack on me so I pulled out the book and started reading it. The mathematics were quite abstract and I could only get through half of it(it started talking about functions and I got totally lost), but damned if I didn’t learn a bit about an area of mathematics I never would have heard of without him. My math teachers in particular were excellent. They were always putting bonus questions on their tests to challenge us – I loved the bonus questions. They also required us to participate in a yearly mathematics contest, and our results in that contest counted towards our grades.

I’ve touched on this already, but the material was another big factor for me. As I’ve already said, the teachers were out to challenge us. Smart people enjoy working on difficult, interesting problems. And because I enjoyed the material I was working through, I worked much harder on it. The same thing has happened with my brother, except that for him it’s happened in university. He’s doing a degree in mathematics and I think for the first time, he’s enjoying school, and he’s enjoying because the material is both interesting and challenging for him.

The environment was also critical for me. Being smart was no longer a problem for me. Don’t get me wrong; there was still bullies. Actually, I’m rather ashamed to admit that I was friendly with some of the worst of the bullies. The really nerdy and socially akward kids did get picked on. If might be going a bit far to say that the smartest people and the best students were popular, but they were certainly well-liked. The kids who got picked on were mainly poor students, to be honest(and the bullies were also poor students). For me, this was a godsend after being constantly bullied in middle school, including by some of my so-called friends.

Even though I can’t necessarily be certain about the underlying reasons, I definitely believe that going to this high school was what prompted me to get my act together academically. And because I did so well in high school, I got into an excellent university, and I’m on the verge of graduation with a a near-perfect job already lined up. Going to that high school was almost certainly a hugely important change in my life that’s allowed me to get where I am now.

I’m almost certainly an extreme example, and I probably would have done okay had I not gone to the magnet school. Your son’s mileage will vary. My brother went to the same high school but didn’t get his act together until university, so there are no guarantees. My best friend did poorly in that high school, manage to scrape into a good university but rumour has it he’s failed out. I can’t imagine that it would hurt to try, though.

  • Except that as a November baby, I was 13 when I started high school.
18

This just isn’t true. A highly rigorous high school these days means a kids takes 15 AP courses before they graduate–in Texas the progression is usually 9th: AP Human Geography, 10th AP World History, AP Biology, 11th AP Chem, AP English Language AP BC Calc, AP US History, AP Spanish Lang and/or AP Computer Science, 12th: AP Stats, AP Physics, AP Lit, AP Euro, AP Govt/Eco, and AP Spanish Lit, AP Art history, and/or AP Psych. And of course you are taking pre-AP classes to lead up to each of those. That’s what it takes to be in the top ten in my “urban” high school–not a magnet school, and we have 60% SES disadvantaged. Our top kids easily average 2 hours of homework a night, and junior year (the worst), it’s closer to 3–especially if you include the hours of extra tutoring many of the kids come to before and after school.

This isn’t to say a sport is a bad idea–it’s a great idea–but high school can be freaking rigorous these days.

19

I always believe you should go to the best school you can get into. You’re generally better off being the bottom of your class in Harvard than the valadictorian of Jerkwater State U. The same holds true for high school.

People tend to emulate and adopt the habits of their peers. Of they are around a bunch of mediocre retards and fuckups, they will learn to settle for that kind of lifestyle. If they are around more ambitious students where screwups aren’t really tolerated as much, they will tend to work harder and learn more positive traits.

Also, your kid might be more likely to find a subject he likes in a better school. I was kind of a crappy student until I took an interest in architecture which got me into a top engineering school.

20

Go with the harder school. If he gets motivated it’ll be one of the best things that ever happened to him. If not he can always go back to the easier school, but at least he’d have had the opportunity for something better. This is coming from somebody that was a huge slacker in high school, and carried those habits into college which resulted in me flunking out two years ago, and I’ll graduate 2.5 years behind schedule.