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> If we do not take advantage of the more capable students because of equity, what will the future of the country be without people who can do the sorts of thi
by mmarq 5y ago
> If we do not take advantage of the more capable students because of equity, what will the future of the country be without people who can do the sorts of things that require highly capable individuals?
> No iphones, electric cars, or covid vaccines, for example.
Do we have any data on the correlation between high-school admission criteria and inventing the Covid vaccine or whatever?
We are not talking about taking advantage of excellence, which starts to become visible after highschool. We are talking about 10-year-olds who go to school to be taught the fundamental theorem of arithmetics.
> Even the communists realized that when you've got smart students, take advantage and educate them as best you can.
> The third reich idiotically drove out their best scientists, who wound up working for the Allies developing the technology that defeated the reich.
I don't know what the communists and the nazists have to do with changing the admission criteria of a high school. I suppose it's a way of expressing disagreement in American English?
- WalterBright 5y ago> Do we have any data on the correlation between high-school admission criteria and inventing the Covid vaccine or whatever? Caltech requires good grades as criteria for admission. Caltech graduates have a disproportionately high percentage of Nobel prizes. https://www.caltech.edu/about/legacy/awards-and-honors/nobel-laureates https://www.caltech.edu/about/legacy/awards-and-honors/nobel... BTW, I think the mRNA vaccine technology is worthy of a Nobel Prize. Don't you?
- mmarq 5y ago> Caltech requires good grades as criteria for admission. Caltech graduates have a disproportionately high percentage of Nobel prizes. Caltech requires 10-year-old kids to write essays? Again, are we talking about enrolling 10-year-old kids in highschool or are we talking about hiring microbiologists?
- WalterBright 5y agoFirst, high school starts with 14 year olds, not 10. Second, people don't suddenly learn how to write a competent essay at the last minute. Writing a good one is a combination of many skills learned over many years. BTW, I did not take any college prep courses prior to Caltech, and found myself way behind the other freshman who did. I found out many years later that the admissions committee had taken a chance on me, and they were very nearly wrong. I came that close to flunking out. If public schools dump their gifted tracks, inequality will only increase as the top schools will wind up drawing only from private schools.
- mmarq 5y agoAdmission essays are a literary genre of their own, like the weird language used by some state bureaucracies. Knowing how to write these essays is a splinter skill. Anyway, so you should not have been admitted but you succeeded anyway without being a gifted kid? It seems like you have proved my point.
- cassalian 5y ago8th graders are typically 12-13 years old, not 10 - 10 year olds are typically in the 6th and 7th grade.
- hef19898 5y agoWasn't the most successful mRNA vaccine developed by migrants working in Germany?
- mmarq 5y agoThe CEO of BioNTech, when he was 10, wasn't considered good enough to attend a Gymnasium.
- hef19898 5y agoComing from a family of turkish Gastarbeiters, I am not surprised. You still have that problem in Germany, and I think it only got worse during the pandemic. Edit: The Biontech founder comes from a turkish family, I don't. But I see that happening a lot, first during my school days. And now at my children's schools.
- mmarq 5y agoMaybe it didn’t get worse, but it still demonstrate what’s the result and maybe the objective of these strict selection criteria: that discriminated minorities end up being excluded. Let it be children with foreign origin in Germany (which doesn’t stop after a generation) or whatever minority is being excluded from this very important American school. And given that people leave high school barely capable of reading newspaper articles (otherwise Breitbart or the Daily Mail would even be a thing), I don’t see what this selection is for.
- throwaway210222 5y ago> that discriminated minorities end up being excluded. Let it be children with foreign origin in Germany (which doesn’t stop after a generation) Except of course for the founders of BoiNTech: Uğur Şahin, and Özlem Türeci. Included to the point they got German government-funded PhDs and then other native Germans helped co-found their company. Perhaps you hypothesis needs more data and less feelings?