School is too easy, students report

[pnwmom]

35. There's probably not much you can do, except infect them with your enthusiasm.

My son's teachers at a private school were able to do that (and to individualize instruction), but the public school teachers have much bigger classes and much less time. I completely understand how difficult it must be for them.

My theory about very bright children is that the most important thing is to keep them self-motivated, and that grades tend to work against that. What good does it do to reward them for coasting? Or to penalize them when they actually take a risk and yet fail?

When I had a child in public school who excelled at math, I asked teachers to let her work on her own. They thought she was doing fine because she already knew the material -- but I wanted her to have the chance to really dig in and struggle a little, at least some of the time, just like most kids. One of her teachers strongly resisted the loss of control (so my daughter learned nothing all year), but the rest were open to it. So my daughter and her best friend taught themselves math from teachers' texts during most of elementary school, off in a corner where they weren't bothering anyone else. So they never developed the habit of coasting and they both went on to get PhD's in technical fields.