Andrew Solomon Quote
In the 1990s, Miraca Gross studied children who were radically accelerated, starting college between eleven and sixteen. None regretted the acceleration, and most had made good and lasting friendships with older children. By contrast, gifted children stuck with age peers experienced rage, depression, and self-criticism. Today, most gifted programs keep children in an age-based setting some of the time and a skills-based setting the rest of the time. Neither affords a perfect fit. The mathematical prodigy Norbert Wiener wrote that the prodigy knows the suffering which grows from belonging half to the adult world and half to the world of the children about him. He explained, I was not so much a mixture of child and man as wholly a child for purposes of companionship and nearly completely a man for purposes of study.
In the 1990s, Miraca Gross studied children who were radically accelerated, starting college between eleven and sixteen. None regretted the acceleration, and most had made good and lasting friendships with older children. By contrast, gifted children stuck with age peers experienced rage, depression, and self-criticism. Today, most gifted programs keep children in an age-based setting some of the time and a skills-based setting the rest of the time. Neither affords a perfect fit. The mathematical prodigy Norbert Wiener wrote that the prodigy knows the suffering which grows from belonging half to the adult world and half to the world of the children about him. He explained, I was not so much a mixture of child and man as wholly a child for purposes of companionship and nearly completely a man for purposes of study.
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About Andrew Solomon
Solomon's book The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression won the 2001 National Book Award, was a finalist for the 2002 Pulitzer Prize, and was included in The Times list of one hundred best books of the decade. Honors awarded to Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity include the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award, the Media for a Just Society Award of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize, and the Wellcome Book Prize.
Solomon is a professor of clinical psychology at Columbia University Medical Center, a lecturer at Yale School of Medicine, and a past President of PEN American Center.