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I’m not gifted at all (well around here at least). When I was a kid my parents found a retired Russian maths professor to tutor me. In reality he was more like

by Gatsky 5y ago

I’m not gifted at all (well around here at least). When I was a kid my parents found a retired Russian maths professor to tutor me. In reality he was more like a mentor, he was the first ‘intellectual’ I had ever met. He spent time building telescopes, translating Pushkin into English and producing educational maths videos (this was long before youtube or MOOCs). He introduced me to astronomy and computers among other things (we didn’t have one in the house until he told my folks they must buy a Macintosh Classic). He really had a big influence on me. I still remember with great fondness eating Russian dumplings at his kitchen table with his asthmatic dog Boris at our feet. He was one of the few adults in my life to whom I wasn’t related that I spent time with. I realise this is quite rare actually - families seem to have become more insular in the last 25 years, a lot of kids don’t have any relationships with other adults who aren’t family. Anyway, I think that many, perhaps most kids need mentors/coaches. Parents can only do so much, and teenagers don’t want to listen to their parents anyway. Gifted learners surely aren’t any different. The ‘content’ problem seems solved - there is just so much interesting stuff out there, and so many great resources. The guidance and encouragement and diversity of influences is what is missing. This seems very hard or impossible to scale up.

ckemere 5y ago
I really appreciate prefacing the comment, "I'm not gifted".
hutzlibu 5y ago
"Anyway, I think that many, perhaps most kids need mentors/coaches. Parents can only do so much, and teenagers don’t want to listen to their parents anyway" There is an old saying: it takes a village to raise a child. So I am looking forward for the villages to revitalize with smart people ..
amatecha 5y ago
As I've gotten older I look back and wish I had any sort of mentor in my life for certain areas I struggled to learn in myself -- programming especially. I REALLY wanted to learn languages like C when I was a kid but it was just NOT happening. I was starting from nothing, borrowing library books I couldn't even remotely make sense of. I know for sure I could have learned, but it just wasn't going to happen by reading a textbook (especially when they all assumed I was running DOS, Windows or UNIX and I only had a Mac -- so the compiler disk they included was always completely useless to me). If I had a mentor in my life, even a junior/intermediate one, it would have been completely different. For this reason, I work especially hard to mentor people when I can, and open doors for them to show what's possible.
- gezfrg321 5y ago
  Yes, and I really wish our primary education had any other IT classes than learning powerpoints, emails and making those funky 3D titles in word(I think this might be changing?). When I was 13 I was playing a cave flyer with my friends that had weapons programmed in lua files. We had so much fun copy pasting different weapons together, we even made an unofficial weaponmodpack that was popular for a few weeks. We didn't know any programming and it was basically just number tweaking and if there was a crash you would start from scratch. There was one older guy we know from an MMO we played who developed a "bananabomb" for us, and I wish we would have had more time to be mentored by him, but he was quite busy with a developer dayjob. From that experience we felt like programming was just some magic behind the curtains, something out of reach, something we couldn't do. 10 years later after I went to UNI and learned Hello world it all clicked and felt so simple. Why didn't anyone teach me/tell me how to learn the very very basics for 23 years? Why didn't I just google it? I don't know, but I think a mentor would have helped! I don't regret the path I took to where I am now, but occasionally wonder what if.
  - nefitty 5y ago
    It's really clear to me that short feedback loops and visual output are what make programming accessible. In middle school I was in the most advanced computer class offered. It involved lots and lots of typing practice and basically just doing office-work projects in random Mac programs. My biggest regret was that the promised "programming" lessons consisted of typing printed Java code from a piece of paper and into a text file. No explanation of what the symbols were, what Java was, nothing. I was pissed. I failed that module. I felt so misled that I flat out refused to do the assignments. From then on I resolved to teach myself. I somehow convinced my mom to buy us a computer. Once we got dial-up, I struggled with VBA, Flash Actionscript, C++, Tcl, Python and on and on. None of it had a manageable learning curve for me. One day, I discovered Game Maker. The day Mark Overmars introduced the C++/JS mash-up that is Game Maker Language changed my life. I learned how to plan projects, how to invoke spells of hyperfocus, how to read technical documentation and on and on. It taught me algebra concepts way before I knew what algebra even was. That was all possible because I could type some stuff into the editor, and within a few minutes, actually see sprites move around and respond to my input. Damn. It's been 20 years. I feel like I should be a coding God now. It's funny because I don't expect myself to be Shakespeare just because I've been writing words my whole life... Anyways, my mind wanders. Oh, tutors. I never had a tutor. If you want to make your kid a genius, get them a 1:1 tutor. That provides social modeling, mentorship, immediate feedback and personalized lessons. I would venture to say that tutors may still be valuable, even to adults...
steve_adams_86 5y ago
I like to read child psychology and a recurring theme is that children, especially as they reach adolescence, benefit greatly from mentors outside of their immediate family. Whether it’s an uncle or a retired Russian maths professor, it tends to offer something parents often can’t at those (and sometimes all) stages of development. I’ve found that somewhat liberating as a parent. We should all embrace and encourage that if we can find it for our kids.
- HarryHirsch 5y ago
  Yes, but with the widespread hysteria about pedophiles many potential mentors will decline. Already the suggestion that to work with children under public supervision you need a background check is an insult.
  - steve_adams_86 5y ago
    It is a serious deterrent. I became a volunteer scouts leader for my son’s scouts group some years ago and the process was unnerving. Background check from police, tested on generally not being a predator for a significant portion of the written application, literally not allowed around kids until it’s fully reviewed and approved. I get it. Bad stuff happens sometimes. The message is clear though that (especially as a male), I’m not trusted around kids until confirmed and on record to be safe. That’s not conducive to natural relationships with kids - you’re constantly on guard and cognizant of the fact that you’re a perceived threat. edit: That was a little negative. I should add that it's still worth doing. There's no way to change that perception other than by doing good and reassuring people. More importantly, kids having good experiences because people make the time for them matters more than resenting being perceived as a creep all the time. Yeah, it's a drag, but mostly I ignore it and hike with the kids, teach them knots, or whatever. It's fine.
- allmodelsRwrong 5y ago
spoonjim 5y ago
One part of this is the rise in sex predator panic. I am well aware that child sexual abuse is a severe problem but one thing I will never do is spend time alone with children who are not mine. Not even my nieces, because one time my eldest niece lied about me doing something that I didn't, and I can't take that risk. In contrast, when I was a child, I regularly spent time alone with men of my father's age.

by Gatsky 5y ago

ckemere 5y ago

I really appreciate prefacing the comment, "I'm not gifted".

hutzlibu 5y ago

"Anyway, I think that many, perhaps most kids need mentors/coaches. Parents can only do so much, and teenagers don’t want to listen to their parents anyway" There is an old saying: it takes a village to raise a child. So I am looking forward for the villages to revitalize with smart people ..

amatecha 5y ago

As I've gotten older I look back and wish I had any sort of mentor in my life for certain areas I struggled to learn in myself -- programming especially. I REALLY wanted to learn languages like C when I was a kid but it was just NOT happening. I was starting from nothing, borrowing library books I couldn't even remotely make sense of. I know for sure I could have learned, but it just wasn't going to happen by reading a textbook (especially when they all assumed I was running DOS, Windows or UNIX and I only had a Mac -- so the compiler disk they included was always completely useless to me). If I had a mentor in my life, even a junior/intermediate one, it would have been completely different. For this reason, I work especially hard to mentor people when I can, and open doors for them to show what's possible.

gezfrg321 5y ago
Yes, and I really wish our primary education had any other IT classes than learning powerpoints, emails and making those funky 3D titles in word(I think this might be changing?). When I was 13 I was playing a cave flyer with my friends that had weapons programmed in lua files. We had so much fun copy pasting different weapons together, we even made an unofficial weaponmodpack that was popular for a few weeks. We didn't know any programming and it was basically just number tweaking and if there was a crash you would start from scratch. There was one older guy we know from an MMO we played who developed a "bananabomb" for us, and I wish we would have had more time to be mentored by him, but he was quite busy with a developer dayjob. From that experience we felt like programming was just some magic behind the curtains, something out of reach, something we couldn't do. 10 years later after I went to UNI and learned Hello world it all clicked and felt so simple. Why didn't anyone teach me/tell me how to learn the very very basics for 23 years? Why didn't I just google it? I don't know, but I think a mentor would have helped! I don't regret the path I took to where I am now, but occasionally wonder what if.
- nefitty 5y ago
  It's really clear to me that short feedback loops and visual output are what make programming accessible. In middle school I was in the most advanced computer class offered. It involved lots and lots of typing practice and basically just doing office-work projects in random Mac programs. My biggest regret was that the promised "programming" lessons consisted of typing printed Java code from a piece of paper and into a text file. No explanation of what the symbols were, what Java was, nothing. I was pissed. I failed that module. I felt so misled that I flat out refused to do the assignments. From then on I resolved to teach myself. I somehow convinced my mom to buy us a computer. Once we got dial-up, I struggled with VBA, Flash Actionscript, C++, Tcl, Python and on and on. None of it had a manageable learning curve for me. One day, I discovered Game Maker. The day Mark Overmars introduced the C++/JS mash-up that is Game Maker Language changed my life. I learned how to plan projects, how to invoke spells of hyperfocus, how to read technical documentation and on and on. It taught me algebra concepts way before I knew what algebra even was. That was all possible because I could type some stuff into the editor, and within a few minutes, actually see sprites move around and respond to my input. Damn. It's been 20 years. I feel like I should be a coding God now. It's funny because I don't expect myself to be Shakespeare just because I've been writing words my whole life... Anyways, my mind wanders. Oh, tutors. I never had a tutor. If you want to make your kid a genius, get them a 1:1 tutor. That provides social modeling, mentorship, immediate feedback and personalized lessons. I would venture to say that tutors may still be valuable, even to adults...

steve_adams_86 5y ago

I like to read child psychology and a recurring theme is that children, especially as they reach adolescence, benefit greatly from mentors outside of their immediate family. Whether it’s an uncle or a retired Russian maths professor, it tends to offer something parents often can’t at those (and sometimes all) stages of development. I’ve found that somewhat liberating as a parent. We should all embrace and encourage that if we can find it for our kids.

HarryHirsch 5y ago
Yes, but with the widespread hysteria about pedophiles many potential mentors will decline. Already the suggestion that to work with children under public supervision you need a background check is an insult.
- steve_adams_86 5y ago
  It is a serious deterrent. I became a volunteer scouts leader for my son’s scouts group some years ago and the process was unnerving. Background check from police, tested on generally not being a predator for a significant portion of the written application, literally not allowed around kids until it’s fully reviewed and approved. I get it. Bad stuff happens sometimes. The message is clear though that (especially as a male), I’m not trusted around kids until confirmed and on record to be safe. That’s not conducive to natural relationships with kids - you’re constantly on guard and cognizant of the fact that you’re a perceived threat. edit: That was a little negative. I should add that it's still worth doing. There's no way to change that perception other than by doing good and reassuring people. More importantly, kids having good experiences because people make the time for them matters more than resenting being perceived as a creep all the time. Yeah, it's a drag, but mostly I ignore it and hike with the kids, teach them knots, or whatever. It's fine.
allmodelsRwrong 5y ago

spoonjim 5y ago

One part of this is the rise in sex predator panic. I am well aware that child sexual abuse is a severe problem but one thing I will never do is spend time alone with children who are not mine. Not even my nieces, because one time my eldest niece lied about me doing something that I didn't, and I can't take that risk. In contrast, when I was a child, I regularly spent time alone with men of my father's age.