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> "While everyone focuses on boosting the weakest students, America’s smartest children are no longer being pushed to do their best." Ugh. I went to a so-calle

> "While everyone focuses on boosting the weakest students, America’s smartest children are no longer being pushed to do their best." Ugh. I went to a so-called "gifted school", and this article's whole mindset is repugnant. For one thing, it's humiliating to anyone who got "weak student" stamped on their forehead... particularly galling coming from an educational system run by administrators who avoid intelligence at every opportunity. I know perceptive high-achievers haunted by revenge fantasies where they humiliate those who laughed at them for being in the remedial track. And it's really discussing a certain kind of intelligence. Smart children are often booted from the institution and end up selling drugs or whatever. The desirable "smart children" have assignable curiosity, can be herded into professional/managerial type jobs, etc. Maybe they despise the know-nothing teaching the class, but they'll do what it takes to get to the next rung. (http://disciplined-minds.com/ http://disciplined-minds.com/ and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bR8hfUkmk6Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bR8hfUkmk6Q) A lot of people walking down the street no doubt have great ideas for how a fundamentally better educational system would work. But they can't really do anything about it; who'll listen to them? > "If we cannot bring ourselves to push smart kids as far as they can go, we will watch and eventually weep as other countries surpass us in producing tomorrow’s inventors, entrepreneurs, artists and scientists." Always at the end an appeal to patriotism, partitioning ourselves into nations where the weaker ones get bullied. Gotta "push" kids around (don't want to rely on dangerous self-motivation), because we'll weep if those we're sitting on start doing something better than us!

octorian 11y ago
> I know perceptive high-achievers haunted by revenge fantasies where they humiliate those who laughed at them for being in the remedial track. Ahh yes, every time I manage another great achievement, my parents joke about how to best rub it in the face of that school administrator who said I'd grow up to be a pizza delivery guy. Of course we still haven't followed through, and its really way too late now for them to even remember. (For context, I went to an over-achiever magnet school my freshman year of HS. They pushed so hard, that I basically broke and became an academic failure. The administrator in question was at that school. I did the remaining 3 years at my normal HS, where I actually did quite well. Though it did take those 3 years to recover my GPA.)

octorian 11y ago

> I know perceptive high-achievers haunted by revenge fantasies where they humiliate those who laughed at them for being in the remedial track. Ahh yes, every time I manage another great achievement, my parents joke about how to best rub it in the face of that school administrator who said I'd grow up to be a pizza delivery guy. Of course we still haven't followed through, and its really way too late now for them to even remember. (For context, I went to an over-achiever magnet school my freshman year of HS. They pushed so hard, that I basically broke and became an academic failure. The administrator in question was at that school. I did the remaining 3 years at my normal HS, where I actually did quite well. Though it did take those 3 years to recover my GPA.)