Hothousing is a form of education for children, involving intense study of a topic in order to stimulate the child's mind.
The goal is to take normal or bright children and boost them to a level of intellectual functioning above the norm.
[1] Advocates of the practice claim that it is essential for the brightest to flourish intellectually, while critics claim that it does more harm than good and can lead a child to abandon the area studied under such a scheme later in life.
It was Irving Sigel who first introduced the term "hothousing" in 1987 after the greenhouse farming method.
[1] Sigel, who worked for the Educational Testing Service in Princeton, used it to refer to a child who is drilled in academic fields such as reading and math long before other children begin learning them in school.