What's wrong with hothousing?

[justanotherdaduser]

That's it really. Hothousing is often mentioned here in a derogatory tone and I was wondering why people dislike it?

Pushy music parents are really tedious because in the long run, the kids who tend to make it are not always those who had multiple grade 8s before 11. They tend to be those who have genuine passion and real joy for music that is shareable in performances and inspiring to others. The ones I know who made it to conservatoire were often playing rarer instruments at “only” grade 3/4 level when leaving primary but playing really nicely and maturely for their age.

If the kid is really talented, technique can be honed later. What is more important is protecting the joy and the talent and the child’s body - trying to avoid things like terrible back problems, arthritis etc later on by doing lots of good sports to balance like swimming. The other thing that needs protecting is eye sight because young children require lots of time outdoors and natural light on their retinas and complex music is written small for children’s developing eyes.

Sports are a whole other challenge between early success and protection of the body.

Academics/maths etc - parts of the brain don’t fully mature until mid adulthood (mid 20s) I thought for boys in particular so a talented young mathematician need not be pushed - just keeping the joy alive is the aim there. Which I guess can be a challenge in a normal school environment but with dedicated teachers (which many are) often solutions can be found and they can bring in their own enrichment work. One cannot expect a normal state primary school teacher without a maths degree to challenge a really able mathematician fully.

@Intergalacticcatharsis The music ones make me laugh. It's very obvious when a young child is genuinely obsessed with music; they do exist. But the pushy mums just make me sad because their kids may well be talented by they end up burnt out by their teenage years.
Some of the most incredible players are those that started quite late but are talented and passionate.

There was a girl in my child’s school who started learning the flute at around 13, got to Grade 8 in two years, and went to a specialist music school at 16. Before that she’d never learned an instrument. My kids’ piano teacher isn’t a concert pianist but he makes a living through composing, performing and teaching, and he put himself through the exams to Grade 8 during his A levels to make it easier to get on a music degree having never done that formal study when younger.

I find music so interesting because practice is obviously vital to excel but, like sport, unless you are really desperate to make it the centre of things, it’s a miserable life to feed someone into. You have to feel you can’t NOT do it.

I don’t know how many posters on this thread watched the various Child Genius documentaries on Channel 4 but I thought they were a fascinating study of the mix of child and parent driven achievement. It also discussed the excellent point that it can be very hard for children who have excelled to become adults and no longer have the identity of being particularly more special than their adult peers. Someone who has done Maths A level at 12 will not necessarily end up ‘better’ at maths than someone who did it at 18 if both have First Class degrees/doctorates/research posts etc. Hard enough to adjust if you’ve been the child desperate to learn early and widely, but if you’ve been pushed by parents, and felt your achievements were what made you special to them, then how must that feel?

@LolaSmiles
"I also saw a lot of other able and talented musicians pushed into doing more and more ensembles, more grades, more theory exams, need to have a solo, need to enter this competition or that one, and it was a hot house sort of environment. A lot of those parents seemed to think it really mattered that their child was better than others, that Jimmy did his grade 8 at whatever age, that Tabitha is already doing music lessons at the regional conservatoire. "

I know this parent. Very intense in the way they talk about their kids and achievements and honestly extremely draining to listen to.

The thing is with these music exam is that having a Grade 8 in your instrument is sort of the music equivalent to having an A-level in a language. The kids who are really good are something more like native speakers, often playing to the level of a very high grade well before they would be able to pass the exam. Fascinating example is Aimi Kobayashi who could play well beyond grade 8 in terms of technique and musicality at the age of 4 (see on YouTube). When you look at this the whole grade system seems a bit pointless. Still it can be great discipline to sit a music exam, and sometimes a well-needed reality check. I agree with the above posters who have stated that parents who drone on about their child being grade so-and-so at such-and-such an age are tiresome.

Also how does this relate to hothousing? Well in order to make your child a native speaker in a language you need to provide an immersive environment where the child hears that language more or less all day long. In many ways hothousing a toddler is simply providing immersion in another language, except that language is music, or memorization, or shape awareness or any number of things. It is normalising fluency in something which is not a language but a skill, so that the child is immersed in it and becomes adept at it as a native speaker does a language.

I know this parent. Very intense in the way they talk about their kids and achievements and honestly extremely draining to listen to.
I've known a few of them. Hot housing sort of parents are like that regardless of their chosen area to hot house.

It's like they need their child to validate they're a great parent and are living through their children's achievements.

There's always a justification of why they simply have to hot house their child but it always sounds fake because it's obvious that it's all about them as a parent.

Parents who are moving with their child to explore their children's abilities and aptitudes don't feel the need to make a huge song and dance about how great they are as parents and how essential it is to hot house.

For me the point in grade exams is to give the child something to work towards. I used to have the idealistic idea that children should learn simply for the pleasure of learning. Then I realised that, even things I enjoy, I don't get very far without attainable goals - emphasis on attainable. It also (admittedly) is reassuring as a parent to see your child progress through the exams and feel like your money is actually going somewhere :)

I’m interested in the mixed sex vs single sex schools part of the discussion because whenever I’ve tried to look into it, I’ve found conflicting results from different studies. I don’t think there is a definitive answer.

@waterlego I haven't found any conflicting studies. All studies say that girls are performing better resultwise in single sex schools and boys are better off in mixed schools. But this is about grades. When it comes to psychological impact the studies are saying that single sex school made them shy.

There are numerous older studies showing that boys do better educated separately from girls. Even the Guardian seemed to think so back in the day. Obviously this is politically problematic so it is no surprise that a flurry of very unscientific conflicting studies have been released since these findings came to light.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2009/apr/21/girls-boys-english-grades

Another aspect of single sex schools is less gendered subject choice. Girls study what they want to. In mixed environments this seems to change. The Institute of Physics has done some interesting work on this.

If I had a girl with gifts in STEM that might swing me towards a girls' school.

And also the same for boys. They are more likely to develop an healthy interest in things like music, arts, crafts and so forth when educated separately. Until recent history these things were common knowledge. The abolish of boys schools is an attack on boys and men, a deliberate and successful ploy to diminish their confidence and ability. It is true that girls probably do better in single-sex schools too, but the differences are not as drastic compared to boys.

Really? There's still a significant gender pay gap and every profession that women have entered in large numbers has seen a decline in real wages.

The state sector's different of course but certainly in the independent sector it's the boys' schools that have the large endowments, not the girls'. Compound interest is a powerful thing.

I think boys are doing OK for educational opportunities on the whole.

My Economics classes in a mixed comprehensive are 80% male (school is 50/50).

There are very few independent boys schools remaining in the UK, but quite a few independent girls schools. Where I live in York, there are two independent girls schools and no boys schools. The last of them were made mixed in recent decades.

When we consider the effects of mixed versus single sex education, it is helpful to put politics aside and look at students' achieved grades. The grades are the most objective measure of educational outcome. It would also be interesting to look at measures such as earnings at ages 30 and 40 depending on school type attended.

I've also noticed that a very considerable number of the successful men I know personally and who are known by the general public went to boys' schools. Can't help noticing that they seem to produce great results.

Let's put our politics aside and consider the merits of boys schools. It is sad that parents generally no longer have the choice to send their son to one since they have mostly been turned mixed.

Check out the wiki lists below which illustrate how few boys' schools are left compared to girls' schools. Why is this? Politics?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_girls%27_schools_in_the_United_Kingdom

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_boys%27_schools_in_the_United_Kingdom

Having worked in an independent during the pandemic, I should think it's mostly budgets. Being open to both sexes gives you twice the potential customers and means you can educate all the children in a family.

I don't know your area well, but the Leeds Grammar School seems to offer boys' single sex classes from 11-16 - is that maybe where students go whose parents want that type of education?

As a teacher, I can see the attraction of the "diamond" model.

@Phineyj I've had a look at Wakefield Grammar which isn't so far off. They have single-sex from around Year 1 I think. Would mean locating probably though, it's a bit of a commute from York.

The school I'd really like to send my kid to is this one, but it would mean moving to Japan:

https://www.smis.ac.jp/

It looks fantastic. Unashamedly 'boys are great' attitude which I think would be very healthy for my son to grow up in.

Interesting how you say they are unscientific when they don't support your view...🤔I remember studying Sociology years ago and they were saying way back then the results were mixed but actually boys did better in mixed schools and girls did better in single sexed schools.. It seems it is changing all the time and will depending on the variables that the studies look at etc. Simply not as straight forward as you suggest.

@ThunderDad, why are you so concerned about secondary school when your son is not yet three? Enjoy him as he is now, encourage him in his interests as he grows older and let him enjoy being a child. He may/may not be grammar school calibre when he is older but it actually doesn’t matter very much. Your job at the moment is to lovingly guide him to reach his potential but not force him. He will probably turn out very differently from what you imagine now but it will be a very exciting journey.

I think a lot of it is about perception. I was once accused of hothousing DD as DH or I read to her every night when she was little. Apparently I wasn’t helping with equality either as I wasn’t thinking of children in care homes who had little of that and if I didn’t read to DD I was somehow helping the disadvantaged by levelling the playing field. It was quite vitriolic at the time.

DD, now 18 has a natural love of learning and we often have to encourage her to take time out of studying. Which she does and she has a lovely group of friends, is well balanced and has wobbles like many teenagers have but in the most part has good MH.

Reading to a child most nights is a fairly common family thing to do. Obviously lots of people don't do it, but it isn't an unusual activity and isn't anything like hot housing.

Anyone arguing parents shouldn't anything remotely developmentally beneficial just because some parents are unwilling or unable to provide appropriate stimulation for their child isn't worth engaging with seriously.

Exactly @LolaSmiles the person who said this to me is someone I no longer choose to associate with.

Hot housing - the way it is described- requires kids to subscribe to a certain way of seeing the world and performing to a set criteria. The danger is that individuality and creativity is suppressed. I sent my kids to a hot-house prep school. Was amazing, wanting to develop all kids in every which way until year 5 and then it turned into an exam machine. So I took them out before year 5 finished. No regrets

I know right? You get this attitude from people a lot. It's weird. It's somehow a symptom of the politics of the time. Goes against egalitarianism to be giving your child a boost or something like that. Can't say I understand people who think that way.

Anyway good your DD turned out great. You were right to ignore the haters.