Go Ahead, Let Your Kids Fail
One of the ironies here is that it's actually much easier for the smartest kids to excel in school if they have a healthy level of disrespect for it.Intrinsic motivation is the dominant factor. A student that's actually driven by curiosity and a desire to master everything he or she can is tens or hundreds of times more effective than someone acting out of extrinsic motivation -- the carrots and sticks of grades and punishments.It is so much easier to learn this way that the other kids who are just slogging it out seem to be moving in slow motion. Staying far enough ahead of them to get good grades takes very little effort when you've actually internalized that learning is something you do for fun.The real trick of course is igniting the desire in the first place. Which has been obvious for at least two millennia:    "The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be ignited." - Plutarch