Nobody told me I was smart. Nobody had to. Class was boring, but I got straight As. It was excruciating listening to other kids try to ask and answer questio

Nobody told me I was smart. Nobody had to. Class was boring, but I got straight As. It was excruciating listening to other kids try to ask and answer questions because every goddamned thing they struggled with was so fucking easy. It was fucking horrible. It didn't change, all the way through high school. Then I went to university, and I had a lifetime first: kids who knew things I didn't. Kids who corrected me on mistakes... and they were right. Kids who were as smart, or smarter than me. For the first time in my life, getting graded on a curve meant I had to fucking work instead of just doing nothing and then blowing the curve for everyone else. I desperately wish I'd had that experience at a younger age. It would've been awesome. But I didn't. Gifted classes would've been great, but my school didn't have much of that. The thing you're failing to understand is that the problem isn't that the kids are told they're smart. It's that they're actually smart. Not telling them doesn't change shit.