I think this is a horrible article. His central argument is that the kids who demonstrate exceptional intelligence have too much attention heaped upon them, and discards the argument that in fact out school system fails these kids. While I agree in part that it is easy to put too much pressure on these kids by talking about their "potential" too much and pressuring them in directions they may not actually want to go, the answer is not to simply treat them as average.
He was part of the Vanderbilt University study of kids who score at least 700 on the verbal part of the SAT, or 630 in math, by age 13. I was part of the Johns Hopkins program, which is now the Center for Talented Youth which has similar requirements. he scored 800 on the math portion, 680 on verbal at age 12. I scored 800 on the verbal and 530 on the math at 12. He's a tenured math professor and published author. I'm an IT consultant of 20 years and a published author. I think I'm just as qualified to speak on behalf of this group as he is.
Those kids are under-served by the school system to the point of failure or near failure.He's completely right, talent isn't a number, but that number is indicative on an innate skill for knowledge assimilation and synthesis that is greater than average. Given the proper scholastic environment, these kids ARE capable of more than most, and should be allowed to find their niche just as much as the majority.
The problem, in my opinion, isn't that the school system is too rigidly skewed towards the majority, or that there are bad teachers. On the contrary, throughout my school career I've had a number of exceptional teachers that I still admire, respect, and cherish my time with, even the ones with whom I didn't necessarily get along with well (I was a jackass at times).
The school system had always seemed to me to be too cookie-cutter oriented, and was very difficult for anyone who didn't fit the mold. I didn't fully understand why until about 10 years ago when I read an article and then a book by John Taylor Gotto. The article is "The Six Lesson Schoolhouse". http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html is the article. The book is "Dumbing Us Down" for sale here: http://www.amazon.com/Dumbing-Down-Curriculum-Compulsory-Ann... or at any good library.
The problem is the way the school system itself is structured. In the US, we're utilizing a school system that was designed 150 years ago and hasn't changed much since. We created this "modern" system during the industrial revolution's sweep across America. As machines made farming orders of magnitude more efficient, cities grew at an astounding rate, and industrial jobs became the dominant employment sector. The need for rigorous schedules became the norm with time zones and train schedules, and later with the whistles and bells of assembly line manufacturing. Strict scheduling in schools helped acclimate kids to the forthcoming work environment. It was a great thing, and helped build a strong and well educated workforce.
As times changed, however, schools didn't. We acclimated to special needs kids with attention or learning disorders, which is fantastic because we're able to take these kids, and get then up to the level of their average counterparts, and make them into productive members of society rather than ignoring and shunning them. But we don't do nearly enough for the small fraction who are highly gifted. We simply put them into "harder" or "higher level" classes than their peers. This isn't an acceptable solution. We need to stimulate them, to find out where their passions lie then feed them accordingly. Do they react better to lectures, or readings? Do they react better to more solitary studies, or in group environments? Do they need a standard amount of repetition to help boost retention, or does that simply bore them and artificially stunt their natural abilities?
Mr. Ellenberg is right that pressure is not the proper tool to make the most of these young minds, but neither is pretending they're not exceptional, and not giving them the opportunity to see exactly how far they can go.
But we don't do nearly enough for the small fraction who are highly gifted. We simply put them into "harder" or "higher level" classes than their peers. This isn't an acceptable solution. We need to stimulate them, to find out where their passions lie then feed them accordingly. Do they react better to lectures, or readings? Do they react better to more solitary studies, or in group environments? Do they need a standard amount of repetition to help boost retention, or does that simply bore them and artificially stunt their natural abilities?
We should do this for everyone. It's unclear to me why we should not find the passion and best way to teach "average" students too.
The only difference between "gifted" and "average" students is really how quickly they can learn certain material -- and maybe an increase in their ceiling for learning certain material. But I don't think there is a fundamental qualitative difference in how they should be taught.
Why don't we hand-tailor a bespoke educational curriculum and methods for each student? Primarily, it's a cost issue; secondarily, it's an aptitude issue for the educators. (My parents were both in public education, and some of what I saw as a user and what they reported as members was utterly appalling.)
But, it's the cost issue that makes it a total non-starter. Very few school districts will, across the board, be able to afford the teacher:student ratios required by individualized, customized instruction processes for each student.
If they could not afford to do custom-tailored program for average student, why should they do it for gifted? Results of the survey shows that gifted kids do alright in life, make more than average, get Ph.Ds, etc. Should schools (and average Joe who pays for it) provide them with even more advantages?
Why should we tailor our educational processes for the non-gifted end of the spectrum or those with behavioral difficulties?
My answer is that we've decided to make larger per capita investments in "outlier" individuals and the vast middle of the distribution population is accommodated with a standardized curriculum. I'm OK with that, though I'm concerned that we concentrate disproportionate resources on the left side of the distribution without investing enough on the right side.
I don't view the problem as "How should we use our limited resources to most effectively level the playing field?" but rather "How should we use our limited resources to most effectively foster the development of our future society?" It's no surprise that those two fitness functions result in different choices.
Best and brightest at 8-15 usually do not end up best and brightest in later career. You can see it even in the fact that average salary of that cohort is only 80k/year - only slightly better than average for ALL college graduates. None of those geniuses are particularly impressive and most ended up doing the same work with the same quality as the rest of us.
There was research that showed that IQ after 120 stops being correlated with success - other factors start being more important.
Yeah, my supervisor for my undergrad thesis is a brilliant researcher who's still publishing good work 20+ years into his career. He was just a normal dude in undergrad who started in engineering but switched to math because he disliked project management, and he certainly wasn't in any sort of "young genius" program through grade school. But his PhD thesis was runner-up for best in the country, he consistently presents at all the major conferences in his field, and he has even won a few teaching awards.
It's not about what those individuals deserve, it's about the societal return on the investment of their education. The potential return is simply greater.
This is the point of the article, really: that educational innovation needs to include all kids, because those are who are going to, collectively, have the most impact on society.
Even if the school system could be perfectly tuned for the top genius kids, there's just not enough of them to outweigh everyone else, in terms of long-term social impact.
I agree that this should be done for the majority of students. Like Gatto, I advocate a complete overhaul of the educational system in the US, and I think it's entirely possible even with the meager resources we currently allocate. Clearly education should be a bigger priority, as well.
Perhaps the best policy is to make a note that these children are gifted, stand by while they do their own thing, and when and only when they start getting bored, give them access to the kinds of challenges they need.
In my case, that would have been great. I had a few teachers along the way who allowed me to shed some of the shackles, and by the end of the year, my grades were always over 100%. Those are the teachers I really admired and felt I learned the most from. In my high school freshman year, by the end of the year I'd done all the work from my Honors Bio 1 class and the Honors Bio 2 class, and had loved every minute of it.
he scored 800 on the math portion, 680 on verbal at age 12. I scored 800 on the verbal and 530 on the math at 12. He's a tenured math professor and published author. I'm an IT consultant of 20 years and a published author. I think I'm just as qualified to speak on behalf of this group as he is.
I was one of "those kids" as well. I attended MO(S)P in 1999, won national writing awards, wrote a card game at 20 (Ambition) that is not just playable but actually played by a lot of people I've never met.
The problem is the way the school system itself is structured. In the US, we're utilizing a school system that was designed 150 years ago and hasn't changed much since. [...] The need for rigorous schedules became the norm with time zones and train schedules, and later with the whistles and bells of assembly line manufacturing. Strict scheduling in schools helped acclimate kids to the forthcoming work environment. It was a great thing, and helped build a strong and well educated workforce.
As times changed, however, schools didn't. [... W]e don't do nearly enough for the small fraction who are highly gifted. We simply put them into "harder" or "higher level" classes than their peers. We simply put them into "harder" or "higher level" classes than their peers. This isn't an acceptable solution. We need to stimulate them, to find out where their passions lie then feed them accordingly.
From first principles, I agree with you.
However, what has changed even less than the school system is corporate employment. If you're a cognitive 0.01-percenter, being a corporate drone is going to be way more painful than a decent public high school. Trust me, I know both.
Now, one might argue that 0.01-percenters are just unlikely to end up in corporate drone jobs, all being tapped to become proteges of the Gordon Gekkos and Peter Gregories (RIP) of the world. The data don't bear that out. The OP stated (a surprising fact) that the median income, at age 40, of these top-0.01% students was only $80,000. (I knew that the average income of prodigies was mediocre, but I was expecting $150-200k.) The number of 0.01-percenters who end up in corporate mediocrity is shockingly high.
The corporate "real world" is indifferent to the cognitive 1% (unless it comes with pedigree) and outright hostile to the correlates and eccentricities that come with being in the top 0.01%. The school system is doing its job. All that awful closed-campus stuff, the bells and no-backpacks-in-classroom rules, the hall passes and rules surrounding them, are inculcating a deference to authority that the corporate world still demands. And high school makes more exceptions for smart kids than any corporation. (Corporations might exempt political favorites from their bullshit rules, but that's a different set.)
If we want to make a world where the cognitive 0.01% actually get to use their talents (and I fully support such change) and have some autonomy/power, we should make haste to fix the work world. A real fix, not this chickenhawking VC-funded bullshit that seems just as willing to fund turds like Evan Spiegel and Lucas Duplan. We should abolish the current corporate system and reinvent capitalism with the right people in charge. That is the best thing we can do for the cognitive 0.01% (and society as a whole, which benefit sfrom their work). Improving the education system is also valuable, but cognitive 0.01-percenters are able to teach themselves so long as they receive a basically reasonable education (and the average U.S. public school qualifies).
He was part of the Vanderbilt University study of kids who score at least 700 on the verbal part of the SAT, or 630 in math, by age 13. I was part of the Johns Hopkins program, which is now the Center for Talented Youth which has similar requirements. he scored 800 on the math portion, 680 on verbal at age 12. I scored 800 on the verbal and 530 on the math at 12. He's a tenured math professor and published author. I'm an IT consultant of 20 years and a published author. I think I'm just as qualified to speak on behalf of this group as he is.
Those kids are under-served by the school system to the point of failure or near failure.He's completely right, talent isn't a number, but that number is indicative on an innate skill for knowledge assimilation and synthesis that is greater than average. Given the proper scholastic environment, these kids ARE capable of more than most, and should be allowed to find their niche just as much as the majority.
The problem, in my opinion, isn't that the school system is too rigidly skewed towards the majority, or that there are bad teachers. On the contrary, throughout my school career I've had a number of exceptional teachers that I still admire, respect, and cherish my time with, even the ones with whom I didn't necessarily get along with well (I was a jackass at times).
The school system had always seemed to me to be too cookie-cutter oriented, and was very difficult for anyone who didn't fit the mold. I didn't fully understand why until about 10 years ago when I read an article and then a book by John Taylor Gotto. The article is "The Six Lesson Schoolhouse". http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html is the article. The book is "Dumbing Us Down" for sale here: http://www.amazon.com/Dumbing-Down-Curriculum-Compulsory-Ann... or at any good library.
The problem is the way the school system itself is structured. In the US, we're utilizing a school system that was designed 150 years ago and hasn't changed much since. We created this "modern" system during the industrial revolution's sweep across America. As machines made farming orders of magnitude more efficient, cities grew at an astounding rate, and industrial jobs became the dominant employment sector. The need for rigorous schedules became the norm with time zones and train schedules, and later with the whistles and bells of assembly line manufacturing. Strict scheduling in schools helped acclimate kids to the forthcoming work environment. It was a great thing, and helped build a strong and well educated workforce.
As times changed, however, schools didn't. We acclimated to special needs kids with attention or learning disorders, which is fantastic because we're able to take these kids, and get then up to the level of their average counterparts, and make them into productive members of society rather than ignoring and shunning them. But we don't do nearly enough for the small fraction who are highly gifted. We simply put them into "harder" or "higher level" classes than their peers. This isn't an acceptable solution. We need to stimulate them, to find out where their passions lie then feed them accordingly. Do they react better to lectures, or readings? Do they react better to more solitary studies, or in group environments? Do they need a standard amount of repetition to help boost retention, or does that simply bore them and artificially stunt their natural abilities?
Mr. Ellenberg is right that pressure is not the proper tool to make the most of these young minds, but neither is pretending they're not exceptional, and not giving them the opportunity to see exactly how far they can go.