I was quite lucky, I had no really rotten teachers, or maybe it was cause in Elementary school at least my mom taught at the same school. (Boy was that fun!
)
I was really pretty bored with the whole business. I picked up things rapidly, at least those I was interested in. (Even though I was a voracious reader I had little use for language arts.) Math was really a trouble area, because I was so interested in it and picked it up so quickly. In 6th grade my math teacher told me (nicely) I could do the lessons with the rest of the class, or I could sit in the back and work the problems in the math book at my own rate. I was in heaven--I finished the 6th, 7th, and 8th grade books by the end of the year. I wasn't very well-adapted socially for many reasons (general geekiness, shy, a minor speech impediment, complete lack of athletic aptitude, a certain amount of cluelessness about social interaction). You could just tell I was gonna have real fun in Jr. High, right??
My parents, God bless em, came to the conclusion that the public schools were not going to accomodate my needs. So they sent me to a private college prep school in town which was willing to place me right into 8th grade.
So. You take a geeky, maladroit, antisocial kid who's the son of a schoolteacher and a fishing tackle salesman, and you plunk him down in the middle of the kids of lawyers, doctors, real estate magnates, old money, new money--just LOTS of money. And you compound the precariousness of his situation by skipping him a grade.
Is this a recipe for disaster, or what??
[to be continued]