3 ms·

A famous example of this that absolutely blew my mind is Uğur Şahin. For those not familiar, he is the founder of BioNTech, the German researchers who develope

A famous example of this that absolutely blew my mind is Uğur Şahin. For those not familiar, he is the founder of BioNTech, the German researchers who developed Pfizer's SARS-COV2 mRNA vaccine. Uğur moved from Turkey to Germany at age 4. At the end of primary school his teacher had assigned him to 'hauptschule'. It was only because of a neighbour's intervention that he was later put through 'Gymnasium' i.e. on track to study 'higher' studies. The rest is history, after med school he did a doctorate in Imunotherapy, he founded a 18billion revenue biotech company and saved countless lives with what we now call the Pfizer mRNA covid vaccine. Had that primary teacher's decision been held it really would have been a 'butterfly effect' of catastrophic proportions for Humanity.

School-Cotton 4y ago
You don't know the counterfactual, though: how many Americans' talent is wasted because they are forced to sit through watered-down school until age 18 before they can begin serious studies?
- DoingIsLearning 4y ago
  Absolutely fair. This one example just stuck with me when I read it because of how serindipitous his mRNA research turned out to be during an all out worldwide pandemic.
- Czarcasm 4y ago
  This is probably the best counterargument to raise in response to the "late-bloomer" anecdotes that many people raise. For every unit of societal productivity created by a late bloomer that is saved by a common-stream system, I would personally argue that there is an order of magnitude more societal productivity lost by holding back the more typical high performers. Late blooming intellectuals aren't the norm. Most highly intelligent people begin performing as such from a young age.
  - School-Cotton 4y ago
    Yes, and it’s not just the high-performers who are being held back in American-style systems, but low-performers too, people who are either unsuited for or uninterested in academic work are forced to waste their time on something that doesn’t benefit them.

School-Cotton 4y ago

You don't know the counterfactual, though: how many Americans' talent is wasted because they are forced to sit through watered-down school until age 18 before they can begin serious studies?

DoingIsLearning 4y ago
Absolutely fair. This one example just stuck with me when I read it because of how serindipitous his mRNA research turned out to be during an all out worldwide pandemic.
Czarcasm 4y ago
This is probably the best counterargument to raise in response to the "late-bloomer" anecdotes that many people raise. For every unit of societal productivity created by a late bloomer that is saved by a common-stream system, I would personally argue that there is an order of magnitude more societal productivity lost by holding back the more typical high performers. Late blooming intellectuals aren't the norm. Most highly intelligent people begin performing as such from a young age.
- School-Cotton 4y ago
  Yes, and it’s not just the high-performers who are being held back in American-style systems, but low-performers too, people who are either unsuited for or uninterested in academic work are forced to waste their time on something that doesn’t benefit them.