12 ms·

Gifted Children as Hidden Persuaders in the Cold War (2019)

68 points by Hooke 6y ago

Cactus2018 6y ago
This article has an Ender's Game aura.
- RobertoG 6y ago
  It remembers me "Time" by Stephen Baxter (1) with the brilliant kids, being influenced from the future to change present, and the fear reaction to them. (1) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_(Baxter_novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_(Baxter_novel)
yters 6y ago
the secret purpose of reddit and videogames is to neutralize this threat
- rtkaratekid 6y ago
  I don’t know if that effect is intentional, but I do believe it is an effect felt by everyone, not just “G&T”. Distraction from real life.
DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
After reading the opening paragraph I instantly thought of Greta Thunberg (in a good way!), especially this part: > or as dangerous future citizens who might use their unique talents to subvert authority. ...where the authority being subverted is that of a certain country's dominant social class that really doesn't like being told they're in the wrong... ---- More cynically though: almost all of the certified G&T folks I knew in school - and equivalents at university - gave up on their idealism and got degrees to become a city quant. Except for one... he got into UW at 16 and had a head for epidemiology but was also interested in global geopolitics so he tried to major in both subjects at undergrad (uh-oh...) - but being so young at university in a course where social-networking is important meant he simply couldn't attend important events because he was below the drinking age. Anywya long story short he's now a water treatment plant operator and he tells me he's never been happier.
- R0b0t1 6y ago
  I'm unsure how to find the studies but when G&T children are not put in accelerated programs they typically suffer from mental issues and isolation and end up underperforming their peers. Your acquaintance could have been someone great, I guess.
  - CKN23-ARIN 6y ago
    I think water treatment is pretty great.
    - hans1729 6y ago
      If the kid is happy, it is. :-) Reminder that Hawking couldn't be arsed to spend his time with physics and went rowing instead (it was only when he got his deadline that he started to work on physics nonstop)
    - monkeycantype 6y ago
      I met a former nuclear physicist in Oakland, who had moved to working in water treatment who told me 'flocculation, way more complex, far more interesting than nuclear chemistry' he seemed happy too.
    - User23 6y ago
      I also really like safe drinking water. I wish I contributed as much to society.
    - R0b0t1 6y ago
      I do too, but someone of his caliber could probably be doing more good in research.
  - Olreich 6y ago
    Support at home is even more important. Students of all ages really just need as much information as you can feed them. Ever met a four year old? They are all questions and sponge up information. There’s no reason they have to stop at some point, just keep feeding them more info and encouraging them.
phreeza 6y ago
Interesting that this mentions the short story The Veldt, which is also dramatized as one of the radio plays in X Minus one that was on the front page yesterday.
- sitkack 6y ago
  https://archive.org/details/OTRR_X_Minus_One_Singles/XMinusOne55-08-04012TheVeldt.mp3 https://archive.org/details/OTRR_X_Minus_One_Singles/XMinusO... > Yet instead, the precocious children lock their parents into a virtual reality room, where they allow them to be eaten by virtual – yet nonetheless carnivorous – lions. I remember seeing this as an 80s or 90s scifi episode. The children disabled the safeties on a holodeck like system and fed their parents to the lions. It must have been "Ray Bradbury Theater", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Veldt_(short_story)#Adaptations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Veldt_(short_story)#Adapta... double edit, it was. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0683235/fullcredits https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0683235/fullcredits
ComodoHacker 6y ago
>their identification and management was fraught with legacies of bias, discrimination, and conflict. Following this, there was also a significant level of concern about their disruptive potential, and their powerful minds. This came to be negotiated by psychologists, families, schools, and in wider culture. All the same fears and anxieties we have with AI now. Like the exact subject doesn't really matter as much as the process.
- adamsea 6y ago
  Good point about this sounding similar to AI fears. The whole AI fear thing seems weird to me. Not impossible, but, just the level of hype around it combined with who is doing the hyping and now is strange. Kind of like the modern version of Victorian gentry prognosticating.
euroderf 6y ago
Skipping a grade might seem like a good idea for a gifted child but then bullying appears. Not recommended.
- caymanjim 6y ago
  The bullying is going to happen either way. May as well get them out of school sooner by accelerating the entire process.
- yowlingcat 6y ago
  First of all, bullying happens anyways. In fact, it's safer to assume that bullying is the norm rather than a deviance -- some are just better at being subtle than others. With that said, the gifted child is just as likely to treat that as a crash course in how to bully, in large part because they will inevitably become aware that penalties for bullying are more lax for them than for others, and they will be rewarded for figuring out how to outwit the system.
- gen220 6y ago
  I think, like many things, grade-skipping can either make sense or not make sense depending on the school, student, and classmates. I skipped a grade in elementary school (joint decision between my parents, teacher, principal, and at least nominally myself!), and didn't suffer from any kind of bullying. In my case, apparently I was actually creating trouble in my assigned grade, by being a chatterbox. I would finish my work early, and then proceed to hinder my friends' learnings by talking with them (understandably, because I was bored! you can only twiddle your thumbs or doodle for so long). Instead of punishing me, my teacher recommended me for skipping. Through my extended family and their friends, I know many kids who are in the same circumstances these days: straight-A "troublemakers", especially in elementary school. But nowadays, skipping grades is seen as "unfair" rather than as a valid solution to a legitimate problem. Because of something as arbitrary as their birthday, children are restricted from participating in a sufficiently challenging environment. I think we as a society are potentially trending too-rigid, especially in elementary school. I have no comment on skipping 2 or more grades, though; I suspect the benefit of skipping grades drops off exponentially around 1 or 2 "skips", even for very gifted children.
rtkaratekid 6y ago
I’m surprised no one has chimed in with their own experience yet. I was in one of these programs (well, a moderate version of one, I didn’t skip grades or go to college young) and I remember being told all the time that we were the future leaders of the world. I became good friends with many of these people and really, we all turned out really normal. Not much different from folks not in those programs. I think I’ll do more research on the history of these programs because I had no idea that it was a relic of WWII and the Cold War. Really interesting to me.
- indigochill 6y ago
  I didn't have any "gifted child" thing as a young kid (was homeschooled until high school, did quite well but not astronomically in high school). However, thanks to scoring a 1510/1600 on the SAT and having good grades, I did get placed in a fairly prestigious cohort in college. My takeaway from that is that the person's natural talent is just one factor, and not even a particularly important one. It still takes a mix of actual work and capitalizing on good connections (in our case, we got hooked up with good connections thanks to being in this cohort) to get ahead. Maybe half of those kids that entered the cohort washed out or decided to go into other fields unrelated to the cohort (which I did). Some others got very normal jobs of no particular prestige. I know a handful that leveraged it into fairly prestigious jobs in our field. My brother's another data point. He moved through grades in math at about 2x the rate of the rest of us, so clearly had a gift for it. He was tutoring college kids by high school and from then on has been making his living from math tutoring, including some gifted children of the early-college variety. What's a little strange to me is that he seems to have no natural ambition. It's like he's totally dialed into math tutoring to the exclusion of considering anything else. But if that's really his thing as it seems to be, then more power to him.
  - richajak 6y ago
    Also never been considered as gifted for my relatively normal IQ. However for a brief period during my teenage years, I suddenly became the top rank student in my school for an unknown reason that I still cannot comprehend. It was such an experience, as I was a normal student before that. I thought I was a genius who could ace any subject. I managed to enter top university with early admission for my good grades. Too bad, I became 'normal' after that, discovered that a lot of people were smarter than me. It was a humbling experience of not being special anymore. Nevertheless, I am still grateful for that brief experience. I have much more self confidence of my ability to solve any problem since then. Eventually I managed to subtitute my 'giftedness' with hard work.
annoyingnoob 6y ago
My brother was considered gifted. Several of my friends were also considered gifted. Almost all of them have done well enough but nothing really too out-sized or world changing. I know one that is now homeless and another that struggles to keep crappy jobs. From my perspective, the home environment and family values makes a bigger difference in your life later than your IQ when you are little.
curation 6y ago
I was tested and told I was gifted at 11. (IQ152) I had hippy parents who let me do anything. I left home at 15. I retired at 35 to pursue my life's work of being in service of tearing down and re-imagining the Global West pro-slavery democracy. Currently working in The Undercommons (Moten/Harney).

68 points by Hooke 6y ago

Cactus2018 6y ago

This article has an Ender's Game aura.

RobertoG 6y ago
It remembers me "Time" by Stephen Baxter (1) with the brilliant kids, being influenced from the future to change present, and the fear reaction to them. (1) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_(Baxter_novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_(Baxter_novel)

yters 6y ago

the secret purpose of reddit and videogames is to neutralize this threat

rtkaratekid 6y ago
I don’t know if that effect is intentional, but I do believe it is an effect felt by everyone, not just “G&T”. Distraction from real life.

DaiPlusPlus 6y ago

After reading the opening paragraph I instantly thought of Greta Thunberg (in a good way!), especially this part: > or as dangerous future citizens who might use their unique talents to subvert authority. ...where the authority being subverted is that of a certain country's dominant social class that really doesn't like being told they're in the wrong... ---- More cynically though: almost all of the certified G&T folks I knew in school - and equivalents at university - gave up on their idealism and got degrees to become a city quant. Except for one... he got into UW at 16 and had a head for epidemiology but was also interested in global geopolitics so he tried to major in both subjects at undergrad (uh-oh...) - but being so young at university in a course where social-networking is important meant he simply couldn't attend important events because he was below the drinking age. Anywya long story short he's now a water treatment plant operator and he tells me he's never been happier.

R0b0t1 6y ago
I'm unsure how to find the studies but when G&T children are not put in accelerated programs they typically suffer from mental issues and isolation and end up underperforming their peers. Your acquaintance could have been someone great, I guess.
- CKN23-ARIN 6y ago
  I think water treatment is pretty great.
  - hans1729 6y ago
    If the kid is happy, it is. :-) Reminder that Hawking couldn't be arsed to spend his time with physics and went rowing instead (it was only when he got his deadline that he started to work on physics nonstop)
  - monkeycantype 6y ago
    I met a former nuclear physicist in Oakland, who had moved to working in water treatment who told me 'flocculation, way more complex, far more interesting than nuclear chemistry' he seemed happy too.
  - User23 6y ago
    I also really like safe drinking water. I wish I contributed as much to society.
  - R0b0t1 6y ago
    I do too, but someone of his caliber could probably be doing more good in research.
- Olreich 6y ago
  Support at home is even more important. Students of all ages really just need as much information as you can feed them. Ever met a four year old? They are all questions and sponge up information. There’s no reason they have to stop at some point, just keep feeding them more info and encouraging them.

phreeza 6y ago

Interesting that this mentions the short story The Veldt, which is also dramatized as one of the radio plays in X Minus one that was on the front page yesterday.

sitkack 6y ago
https://archive.org/details/OTRR_X_Minus_One_Singles/XMinusOne55-08-04012TheVeldt.mp3 https://archive.org/details/OTRR_X_Minus_One_Singles/XMinusO... > Yet instead, the precocious children lock their parents into a virtual reality room, where they allow them to be eaten by virtual – yet nonetheless carnivorous – lions. I remember seeing this as an 80s or 90s scifi episode. The children disabled the safeties on a holodeck like system and fed their parents to the lions. It must have been "Ray Bradbury Theater", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Veldt_(short_story)#Adaptations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Veldt_(short_story)#Adapta... double edit, it was. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0683235/fullcredits https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0683235/fullcredits

ComodoHacker 6y ago

>their identification and management was fraught with legacies of bias, discrimination, and conflict. Following this, there was also a significant level of concern about their disruptive potential, and their powerful minds. This came to be negotiated by psychologists, families, schools, and in wider culture. All the same fears and anxieties we have with AI now. Like the exact subject doesn't really matter as much as the process.

adamsea 6y ago
Good point about this sounding similar to AI fears. The whole AI fear thing seems weird to me. Not impossible, but, just the level of hype around it combined with who is doing the hyping and now is strange. Kind of like the modern version of Victorian gentry prognosticating.

euroderf 6y ago

Skipping a grade might seem like a good idea for a gifted child but then bullying appears. Not recommended.

caymanjim 6y ago
The bullying is going to happen either way. May as well get them out of school sooner by accelerating the entire process.
yowlingcat 6y ago
First of all, bullying happens anyways. In fact, it's safer to assume that bullying is the norm rather than a deviance -- some are just better at being subtle than others. With that said, the gifted child is just as likely to treat that as a crash course in how to bully, in large part because they will inevitably become aware that penalties for bullying are more lax for them than for others, and they will be rewarded for figuring out how to outwit the system.
gen220 6y ago
I think, like many things, grade-skipping can either make sense or not make sense depending on the school, student, and classmates. I skipped a grade in elementary school (joint decision between my parents, teacher, principal, and at least nominally myself!), and didn't suffer from any kind of bullying. In my case, apparently I was actually creating trouble in my assigned grade, by being a chatterbox. I would finish my work early, and then proceed to hinder my friends' learnings by talking with them (understandably, because I was bored! you can only twiddle your thumbs or doodle for so long). Instead of punishing me, my teacher recommended me for skipping. Through my extended family and their friends, I know many kids who are in the same circumstances these days: straight-A "troublemakers", especially in elementary school. But nowadays, skipping grades is seen as "unfair" rather than as a valid solution to a legitimate problem. Because of something as arbitrary as their birthday, children are restricted from participating in a sufficiently challenging environment. I think we as a society are potentially trending too-rigid, especially in elementary school. I have no comment on skipping 2 or more grades, though; I suspect the benefit of skipping grades drops off exponentially around 1 or 2 "skips", even for very gifted children.

rtkaratekid 6y ago

I’m surprised no one has chimed in with their own experience yet. I was in one of these programs (well, a moderate version of one, I didn’t skip grades or go to college young) and I remember being told all the time that we were the future leaders of the world. I became good friends with many of these people and really, we all turned out really normal. Not much different from folks not in those programs. I think I’ll do more research on the history of these programs because I had no idea that it was a relic of WWII and the Cold War. Really interesting to me.

indigochill 6y ago
I didn't have any "gifted child" thing as a young kid (was homeschooled until high school, did quite well but not astronomically in high school). However, thanks to scoring a 1510/1600 on the SAT and having good grades, I did get placed in a fairly prestigious cohort in college. My takeaway from that is that the person's natural talent is just one factor, and not even a particularly important one. It still takes a mix of actual work and capitalizing on good connections (in our case, we got hooked up with good connections thanks to being in this cohort) to get ahead. Maybe half of those kids that entered the cohort washed out or decided to go into other fields unrelated to the cohort (which I did). Some others got very normal jobs of no particular prestige. I know a handful that leveraged it into fairly prestigious jobs in our field. My brother's another data point. He moved through grades in math at about 2x the rate of the rest of us, so clearly had a gift for it. He was tutoring college kids by high school and from then on has been making his living from math tutoring, including some gifted children of the early-college variety. What's a little strange to me is that he seems to have no natural ambition. It's like he's totally dialed into math tutoring to the exclusion of considering anything else. But if that's really his thing as it seems to be, then more power to him.
- richajak 6y ago
  Also never been considered as gifted for my relatively normal IQ. However for a brief period during my teenage years, I suddenly became the top rank student in my school for an unknown reason that I still cannot comprehend. It was such an experience, as I was a normal student before that. I thought I was a genius who could ace any subject. I managed to enter top university with early admission for my good grades. Too bad, I became 'normal' after that, discovered that a lot of people were smarter than me. It was a humbling experience of not being special anymore. Nevertheless, I am still grateful for that brief experience. I have much more self confidence of my ability to solve any problem since then. Eventually I managed to subtitute my 'giftedness' with hard work.

annoyingnoob 6y ago

My brother was considered gifted. Several of my friends were also considered gifted. Almost all of them have done well enough but nothing really too out-sized or world changing. I know one that is now homeless and another that struggles to keep crappy jobs. From my perspective, the home environment and family values makes a bigger difference in your life later than your IQ when you are little.

curation 6y ago

I was tested and told I was gifted at 11. (IQ152) I had hippy parents who let me do anything. I left home at 15. I retired at 35 to pursue my life's work of being in service of tearing down and re-imagining the Global West pro-slavery democracy. Currently working in The Undercommons (Moten/Harney).