6 ms·

I tutor some exceptionally gifted students as a side gig (for scale: calculus at 10, publishing research papers and learning graduate-level general relativity a

• barry-cotter 7y ago
  > I can say that the lessons of papers like these have been taken to heed. This isn’t true. Gifted and talented education receives maybe 1% of the funding that special needs education does, if that. In NYC de Blasio is trying to dismantle the existing system because the students are too Asian. Most of the US has nothing approaching that system. Normal high schools are at best indifferent to students who want to go higher than AP; they’re certainly not going out of their way to help and encourage those capable of doing college work to do so. Face it, at barest minimum 10% of 16 year olds could be in high schools like those associated with Bard College at Simon’s Rock[1], where they graduate with an Associate’s degree having completed half of the coursework for a Bachelor’s. I don’t know what percentage of 14 year olds could do the same or complete a Bachelor’s before 18 but it’s 100s of times greater than those who actually do. [1] https://simons-rock.edu/ https://simons-rock.edu/
  • knzhou 7y ago
    My point is that there's been an explosion in opportunities that kids can use that go around what schools provide. Even when I was in high school, you could get most of an undergraduate education from MIT OpenCourseWare for free, and the situation is even better now. (You couldn't get a credential out of it... but who cares, when either way you'll have the knowledge?) Though I'm upset about the political drama over NYC magnet schools, it's important to note that their outcomes aren't due to magic teachers or better equipment. The kids are making things happen on their own! The core benefit these schools provide is mostly that they allow the kids to meet each other.
    • sologoub 7y ago
      You have to know that MIT OpenCourseWare exists. Many people do, but I suspect an even larger number do not. Gifted kids can come from all backgrounds. When parent involvement is there and the parents know how the system works and where to find resources, it’s an ocean of opportunity out there. When parents don’t know the system (immigrants for example), don’t have the luxury of a lot of involvement (work multiple jobs), the asymmetric knowledge/access are now an issue. Public education is supposed to level that field somewhat and what many are pointing out is a gap through which many gifted students fall through. Then you get behavioral and social problems, as called out in the research.
      • ramraj07 7y ago
        There might be some _very_ unlucky kids who can't even access the internet, but once you can get to Wikipedia and youtube I'm sure a very smart kid can figure out where to find what they want to learn. Now, if they don't get the time to immerse themselves because their household demands their attention on more fundamental survival needs, well that should be addressed whether the kid is smart or not.
        • zekrioca 7y ago
          Social and familiar needs are linked with someone being smart or not. You can’t have one without the other, they are interdependent. You can’t just count on someone — specially an young one — sneaking in to get access to Wikipedia and find the extra resources they need. You minimize negative impacts on the social environment for it to flourish.
        • benibela 7y ago
          You can learn so much on the internet But I wonder if it really helps. I did not have internet or tv as kid and I have learned a lot from books. Now I have internet, and I spend far more time on social media and watching shows than I spend on learning things
          • 7y ago
  • golemiprague 7y ago
    Asians are not necessarily more "gifted" or "talented", they are hard workers and in high school age, because the material is not that difficult, hard work can bring great results. I am not sure we should reward hard work at that age that much, so in some way I can see why de Blasio is not impressed. But I do think grouping hard workers together with other hard workers or gifted with gifted as a good idea. Homogeneity is our strength, not diversity. People do great things when they are in an environment where everybody are synchronised and follow the same rules and conventions. I don't know who came up with this idea that diversity is so great, it has its uses but it's a meme and a stale one at that.
  • dasil003 7y ago
    I agree that better support and acceptance of gifted and talented is important. I'm not sure I'd measure it in funding versus special needs though. Special needs teaching is brutal work, requiring a lot of baseline time and attention costs that can't really be reduced in a humane way. Supporting the high-end of the spectrum is an entirely different challenge. The kids have an ability to excel independently. Yes, facilities and other resources can enhance outcomes, but also consider the difficulty of finding qualified teachers to really challenge them. Our entire Victorian education system is not equipped to handle them, and frankly I think they'll always be held back if we encourage a rigid structure and reliance on a system which is designed for the masses. We'd be better off finding low-case ways to give more open-ended resources and access to centralized specialists and higher education professors who are true experts in their fields.
  • closeparen 7y ago
    The bright children of the upper middle class going on to have great life outcomes are the core of inequality in America. Schools that nurture and socialize these kids with each other are an important mechanism in that outperformance. If you intend to reduce inequality, then that is exactly what you want to disrupt. Secret racism is too easy a copout. This goes right to the core of defining relative inequality (vs. absolute outcomes) as the important issue.
    • refurb 7y ago
      Wait, are you arguing we shouldn’t provide opportunities for gifted kids because it reduces inequality?
      • garmaine 7y ago
        He is saying we should have more equal opportunities regardless of socio-economic background.
        • quotemstr 7y ago
          Which is meaningless, especially with respect to this discussion
      • RobertoG 7y ago
        I think he is saying that they don't get the opportunities because they are gifted kids, but because they are upper-middle class.
        • Viliam1234 7y ago
          It can be both. To be smart is an advantage. To be born in a rich family is also an advantage. Life can be unfair in many ways simultaneously. Ironically, if you deny the importance of IQ, it mostly hurts the smart kids from poor families. Because the rich parents will find ways for their kids to realize their full potential -- whether it is a full potential of an average child, or a full potential of a gifted child. It is the gifted child born in a poor family who won't have a private tutor because their parents can't afford it, but also will be denied by the system because "IQ doesn't mean anything". Smart kids from poor families need even more help than smart kids from rich families, and we deny it to them in the name of fighting inequality. It's no child left behind the minimum requirements of the school system, but many children left miles behind their true potential; especially the poor ones.
  • watwut 7y ago
    I dont think that ratio to special education says all that much. A lot of it is heavily disabled kids who do need expensive tools to even learn to walk and have kids-teacher ratio like 6:1 or even less. Mostly because they need a lot of support to just function - whether they are learning or not. The gifted education is comparatively cheaper. Plus, it is about kids that are bordering to being a danger to themselves or others. They need experts just to function. They are getting special education for the sake of other kids too. And failing their education means more money spend on prisons or social system once they grow. People imagine special education being about slightly slower kids. But these are not costing all that much.
  • jimhefferon 7y ago
    > maybe 1% Honest question, not snide in any way: what would be the right percentage? Surely not 100%? Special Ed folks, folks on the left end of the bell curve for instance, need intensive one-on-ones. But folks on the other end of the bell would not need that same level of support? (I'm not saying 1% is OK. And I understand that you pulled that number out of the air.)
    • barry-cotter 7y ago
      Acceleration as of right instead of enrichment should be verging on free, requiring almost nothing in new expenditure. I’d be pretty happy with that alone to be honest. An early college programme like Bard College at Simon’s Rock in every metro area with over 100,000 people with provision for boarding for those outside commuting distance wouldn’t get you past 2% of education expenditure. That’s under 10% of what’s spent on special education. That would make me ecstatic.
      • Viliam1234 7y ago
        It's not about how much money, but rather how to spend it. Well, okay, to spend money some way you first need it, but the amount could be quite small. Most of the knowledge is already available online for free. (There are still some gaps that would be nice to fill, for example lessons for small kids whose first language is not English.) The problem is rather navigating the abundance of information. First, to distinguish genuine knowledge from crackpottery. Like, most of us probably know that 99% of videos on YouTube containing "quantum" in their titles are pure nonsense. But a smart 13 years old kid doesn't know that yet, and can waste a lot of time gaining negative knowledge (misconceptions that later require time and work to unlearn). We know that in case of doubt, the materials published by MIT are most likely solid. For that kid, even this is not necessarily obvious; it would be better to tell them explicitly. Second, lessons have prerequisites. I can find an interesting lesson, only to realize that I actually can't follow it, because it uses symbols and concepts I don't understand, and I don't even know how that missing part of knowledge is called. It would be great to have some guidance of form "you can learn X by watching Y, but first you need to understand M and N which you can learn by watching P and Q, etc.". A tech-tree of knowledge, kind of. For these two things, you don't actually need a school system. A website could be enough: a page for each topic, internal links to prerequisite topics, external links for educational resources checked for quality. You would need some budget for this, but I assume that for costs similar to running one school, you could serve the entire nation. -- And it wouldn't be only for the smart kids; the average kids could use it, too. Everyone could progress at their own speed. Actually, it would be even better if all the kids would use it, because then you wouldn't have to look specifically for the smart kids and advertise it to them, they would simply learn about it from kids around them. Now you can add extra services, like a silent place to go study if you don't have such place at home, a computer with an internet connection is you don't have one at home. Places to meet people studying the same topic. Etc. This all would be nice to have. I am just saying that the minimum solution that could help maybe 80% of gifted kids could actually be made very cheaply.
• TheBobinator 7y ago
  Question for you. If you were profoundly gifted and had kids who were also profoundly gifted, what kinds of things would you do with them and resources would you provide to them to ensure they were adaquetly challenged? My situation: I'm in my 30's, I take IQ tests every 3-4 years and always score somewhere around 155-165. I come from a multi-generational complex trauma family, my mother has an ACE store of 9, I have an 8, my father is with what I know about him around a 9 and going back generations on either side of the family it seems to be the case on both sides. High ACE scores reduce your IQ and academic performance quite a bit. My Sister scored 167 on a MENSA exam once unadusted for dyslexia and dyscalculia which they mentioned would put her in the 180's. I can't even begin to describe the kind of perceptual maze I've had to navigate overcoming my own issues; cognitive restructuring is a powerful tool I used well before I learned about complex trauma and in the last few years that has been a real renissance for me. I feel in a lot of ways I was raised more by the internet and BBS than my own parents. Decided a long time ago to be celibate because I just assumed my kids are going to go through the same lot in life I did and I wouldn't want to do that to anyone even by accident. Any kind of technique or program to help those kids avoid that outcome would be useful to me. If I have kids I want them to be who they are supposed to be in life. BTW, thank you for posting this.
  • knzhou 7y ago
    I'm just a random guy from the internet in my 20s with no children, so I'm not really qualified to give advice! All I'm going on here is the examples I've seen, which are math focused. From these examples, you don't have to do anything special in the early years besides talking and reading to them (and of course, building a home/family they can feel safe in -- all the stuff that normal parenting advice is about). In the next few years after that, you can add on some enrichment material depending on their interests. For example, Art of Problem Solving has this really nice "Beast Academy" series of workbooks that goes through elementary and middle school math, but with deeper questions. If they really take to a subject, you just keep feeding them more of it. It'll be fun for them, and neither expensive nor time-consuming for you. At some point, their interests will become specific and deep enough that you can't lead them, at which point you should get them in contact with peers or mentors, e.g. through summer camps, competitions, or a magnet school. Once they're in that network, it's smooth sailing: they'll tell you what they want to learn! In other words, in general a parent with a full-time job cannot feasibly guide a talented kid's intellectual development up through age 18 (though of course your still are responsible for their moral development). Intellectually, your job is just to nurture their interests, give them the boost they need to get going, and then cheer for them as they continue on.
• Xelbair 7y ago
  I shall never stop being bitter, as opposite happened to me. In primary school i possibly got the worst math teacher in existence. Even since preschool i could do math in my head beyond my grade(3 years ahead according to psych tests that we all had to undertake), and all of that was killed by a single teacher who had me under her care for 3 years. She just plainly didn't believe that 10 year old child could solve all exercises in head. and forced me to write down each single step - while the exercises themselves were already too easy. I never got into a habit of challenging myself, thanks to her it is quite the opposite, and i now am really bad at doing math in my head. I would say that lack of challenge was the biggest flaw in my education, i went throughout whole education(including university) without studying at home - not because i was so damn good, just because in my formative years the habit of working hard was stripped from me, and C-equlivalent to B-Equivalent was good enough for most subjects. I expected for that to change as i managed to get into top 3 high school for my area.. yet it was mostly the same. I am slowly regaining it thankfully, but it is way, way harder to do so as an adult. And i still wonder where else i could be in life if not for that single person, and what happened to other such children in this post communist country.
  • mydongle 6y ago
    Reminds me of something from Great Teacher Onizuka. There's a girl who is beyond intelligent and was incredibly thirsty for knowledge from a young age. She would always be asking questions and learning as much as she could from her teachers over the years. In no time, she began to surpass them in knowledge, asking questions that those teachers couldn't possibly handle. This caused them to end up resenting her, since she made them feel stupid. One day, while asking a question like she typically does, her favorite teacher became frustrated and ended up revealing a big secret of her to the whole class accidentally. Then some very spicy stuff happens after. You'd have to watch to find out though!
  • auxym 7y ago
    I'm 31 and still remember spending every weeknight doing 1 to 2 hours of long division problems in 5th grade. It was mind nimbingly boring.
    • 7y ago
• etherio 6y ago
  I am in high school and it is true that I have been learning and doing a lot with free ressources (competitive programming, cybersecurity, webdev and advanced high school maths). But the problem is I still need to attend the same boring classes which means I don't really have enough free time to satisfy my curiosity but instead I learn things I have already understood. Although there are some efforts to engage students in school, it's difficult for teachers to go further in the curriculum when I ask them questions because they simply don't have time to answer me and halt the rest of the class. I don't really know what to do...
• mttddd 6y ago
  In high school i took a robotics course that took up part of the school day and went later than typical school. Your comment resonated with me because what i found great about it was that we were given the resources and freedom to build/explore what we wanted. You could come and go as you pleased with the only real deadlines being competitions we entered into. Certainly not the right thing for everyone but i think for a lot of kids the free time needed to explore things they are curious about is huge. Even more so these days given the wealth of content available online