Children who have the possibility to finish school at an early age and to start their higher education at a very young age are often called child prodigies or gifted children.They are
frequently treated as curiosities or rare people with an acute intelligence and uncommon abilities .These kids may have special aptitudes but there is a plausible explanation for their situation .To put it simply , either they have fast stages of intellectual development and they were noticed and helped by their parents , family, teachers and/or professionals in order to have an accelerated education , skip grades and go to college at a very young age (probably 9 or 11 or 12) , or they have average (or slightly higher than average) developmental stages and were also taught , helped and trained by their parents , teachers and education professionals in ways which allowed them to finish school early and to enter the university precociously.
I think the way these precocious or gifted children are taught , accelerated education and the opportunity to complete one’s studies early and to start university studies at a younger age ought to be given and extended progressively to all children .This way fast learners will not be left behind or neglected , and generation after generation more and more kids and young people will have faster stages of growth and will be able to assimilate more information at younger ages . When lowering the age of entry to the university , some youngsters could start higher education at the age of 11 or 13 , but the minimum age could be set at 10 or 9 .
Moreover , a smaller , restricted acceleration could be applied to higher education and university studies . For example , becoming an engineer requires four years of study in certain countries and five years in other countries . The five-year programs could be condensed into four years by appropriate methods such as adding hours to the four years of study , condensing some courses and/or adding summer courses . Medical studies usually take eight or ten years or even longer to be completed . By applying the convenient acceleration and condensation of courses and studies the eight years of study could be reduced to seven and the ten to nine and so forth , without loss of knowledge or qualification for the future doctor or medical practitioner. Similarly predoctoral and master’s degree studies could be reduced from five to four years or from six years to five.
Hence in the long run everybody would benefit from this reform and acceleration of education , and the gap between youngsters considered to be average or normal and child prodigies would be less wide , which I consider to be a good thing , providing more educational equality and efficiency .
A short remark concerning one aspect of education: Nowadays young people are generally becoming sexually aware (and sometimes active) at younger ages compared with older generations , and this fact should be taken into consideration in education.
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I’ll add a final remark here : The general system of education followed in a large number of countries today was formed about two or three centuries ago . In a country such as France a major reform in education took place , coinciding with the period of the French Revolution , and with the time when the first successful endoatmospheric human flights were made using
hot air balloons . One thing to note is that the Montgolfier brothers , who flew the first balloon , were elevated to the nobility as a reward . Nowadays the old aristocratic nobility
titles are gone in France , so people are instead rewarded by honorary degrees ,which can be considered as contemporary nobility titles . Many of the thinkers and scientists who
contributed to the reform of the education system in France two centuries ago , such as Condorcet and Laplace , had acquired old nobility titles (such as ‘marquis’) , titles related
to the ‘Ancien Régime’ , and were forming the new system of instruction which would provide the new (education related) nobility titles in France and elsewhere . Perhaps nobility
titles in one form or another will frequently or regularly succeed one another with time , but there should always be room for reassessment , open-mindedness , change and reform . Wilhelm von Humboldt witnessed and was influenced by the French Revolution . He attempted to reform and reorganize the Prussian and German educational system , and founded the University of Berlin in 1810 . In the following decades of the nineteenth century , educators in the United states and other countries emulated and implemented the Prussian education system.
The rest of the nineteenth and most of the twentieth centuries witnessed generally lesser scattered reforms in education , the elaboration of educational and psychological theories , and were the scene of a progressive worldwide adoption of the educational ideas and institutions developed in European nations before , during and after the Enlightenment period and the French Revolution .This epoch coincided with the development of aerodynamics,
aeronautics and heavier-than-air aircraft , and with the beginnings of astronautics and space exploration .
The following idea is worth considering: While the existent educational system , with its diplomas and degrees and its requirements to study or act in a certain way and to start
higher education at the average age of eighteen , has worked well and has been sufficient for people who move or travel on planet Earth and in its surroundings, I think the reform of
the educational system I have proposed and written about here , i.e accelerating education , skipping or condensing grades and lowering the age of entry to college or the university , will
prove to be important , more efficient , and necessary in this era of planetary globalization , and more so in the future , as humans in the age of space travel intend or attempt to go to Mars and others planets , traveling in the solar system beyond the Earth-Moon system and the immediate vicinity of planet Earth.
Knowledge mix 