I think the ridicule I suffered from being younger than everyone would have been less (or at least different) if I hadn’t been the only one in the school like that.
While I was still in the school where it all happened I was fine. There were six of us altogether – all girls – who were placed in our own little class. That year we were in the kindergarten room with two other classes (which was cool cause it had private bathrooms and a nicely decorated floor). Things went downhill after we moved.

I think if kids have parents who are interested, have the time (or make it), and the means, most of those kids learn far more at home than in school. Ours learned the typical stuff at school, but they learned how to learn at home. That’s also where they learned it was fun.

Incidentally, I disagree with you about [1]—kids should be placed at the correct intellectual level in each of their subjects independent of age. The teasing from being a different age is no worse than the teasing from being smarter than the rest of the class, and at least the kids learn something.

Reading along with slower readers can be excruciating torture, particularly if the slower readers are reading something 6 grade levels below what the gifted child’s reading level is, at 1/10th the reading speed, and mispronouncing ever other word. Teaching patience is fine, but the gifted students are often taught nothing else in school for years at a time.

I experimented
with having my lectures entirely driven by student questions about
the examples or exercises in their textbook. The first two times
I tried this, it was not very successful—I covered all the
material, but many freshmen were upset by the lack of organization
and offended that I expected them to read the book and try the
problems before coming to class.

I’ve tried that too – got similar complaints – it’s kind of sad that so many students seem to miss the point of learning.
It worked extremely well in my inquiry-based programming class – the class was by invitation only (top 2-4% of freshmen).

See, for example, http://users.soe.ucsc.edu/~karplus/teaching-statement-mar-04

I suppose that a discipline like philosophy might include legitimate authors who rarely publish with anyone else, but even here I would question anyone who NEVER publishes with anyone.

There are more charitable (and more often correct) explanations for theoreticians publishing alone and experimentalists publishing in groups.

I think animals (including ducks) can certainly bond with each other as well as with us and with other species. I hesitate to call it love (I notice you use the word affection) because love is a very complex thing – I’m not sure we really know how to define it for people, never mind animals. Affection is probably a good word.

I don’t see any reason why it can’t be both instinct AND affection. Just because it’s instinct doesn’t mean it lacks emotion.

Other than during breeding season, ducks tend to live in fairly large flocks so it would stand to reason that two ducks would want to stay close to who-ever they see as their ‘flock’. What’s probably instinct is their need to not be alone.

The average age of teachers is about 50. That means that the average teacher grew up with the same technology as I did – which was BEFORE personal computers and calculators became widespread, and long before the internet was really viable outside of universities and large corporations. The internet is little more than 10 years old; less if you measure it in terms of widespread access and use.

I did my first degree in computer science. Most teachers were trained in faculties that were far behind the leading edge of either technology or education.

I have two problems with their approach:

1. They are basing their judgment on ONE thing. They have no clue about how I live my life or what other kinds of things I may do to help the environment. They have made a complicated thing into something so trivial it is meaningless.

2. They are rewarding people who lie.