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> Who needs a better teacher? The gifted student or the remedial student? Both “gifted” (well prepared) and “remedial” (poorly prepared) students benefit drama

> Who needs a better teacher? The gifted student or the remedial student? Both “gifted” (well prepared) and “remedial” (poorly prepared) students benefit dramatically from expert teaching. The well prepared students can continue to progress very quickly through challenging material. The poorly prepared students can get help finding and correcting their weaknesses and misconceptions, and practicing underdeveloped prerequisite skills. The ideal is for everyone to get significant weekly 1:1 attention from a dedicated tutor/coach, who can help the student to deliberately practice. This significantly outperforms even the best classroom, and students with direct coaching improve probably 2–3 times faster than students without. Essentially all world-class performers in competitive events (sport, music, chess, math contests, ...) have significant amounts of 1:1 coaching. Unfortunately as a society we don’t have the budget/manpower to provide hours per week of skilled tutoring for every student for every subject. So we try our best to balance available resources with students’/society’s needs.

rand85632 4y ago
It’s disingenuous to try to call it well prepared vs poorly prepared. Some people are just naturally more academically gifted
- jacobolus 4y ago
  Take almost any “academically gifted” student and start looking into their biography, and you’ll find a shitload of preparation. As a general rule (to which, sure, you can find rare exceptions if you really hunt) the more “gifted” the student, the more hands-on help and attention from experts they had. Even for those without significant expert help, the “gifted” students are the ones who spent a ton more time thinking about the subject than their peers for whatever reason. The international math olympiad winners I took courses with in college were incredibly well prepared, and while clever and hard working, are by no means superhuman. Preparation is not the only relevant factor that goes into what gets called academic “giftedness”, but it’s the vast majority of it. It’s similar for other fields. Nobody can compete in sport at a world-class level nowadays without significant amounts of excellent coaching. Etc. For instance, the reason my kid learned to read before he was 4 and most of his peers did not is because we spent many hundreds of hours reading books together aloud, and maybe 50 hours over 6 months on direct instruction in reading per se. Not because he’s biologically any different than his peers. The reason he’s really good at making stuff out of Legos is that he really likes it and spends hours per week doing it, not because he’s some kind of Lego prodigy. He’s not particularly skilled at drawing or dancing or playing the guitar or sewing, because those are things he did not practice very much yet.
  - TexanFeller 4y ago
    Passion for a subject can indeed propel you far ahead of your peers in that subject, but intelligence is what allows passion to continue and grow. No matter how much time you spend preparing the dumb kids they will struggle with difficult(or often easy) subjects and get frustrated - because of this passion will never develop, and it’s entirely reasonable to not become passionate about something you’re not capable of doing well at. I was a very smart kid, although very far from a genius. My parents were young earth creationists who knew nothing about science or computers and shielded me from science because of themes like evolution. The town I grew up in was in poor rural TX, so my teachers barely knew more. I certainly wasn’t well prepared to understand science, but yet I developed a passion for that and computer programming and became a voracious reader of everything I could find on it in the school library, acquiring knowledge far beyond my grade level. The less smart but wealthier and better prepared kids I knew growing up never caught up to me.
    - jacobolus 4y ago
      > developed a passion for that and computer programming and became a voracious reader of everything I could find on it in the school library, acquiring knowledge far beyond my grade level This is a huge amount of “preparation”, as far as I am concerned. It’s not as effective as working with an expert tutor/coach, but it still adds up over time. (And good job preparing yourself without much help!) The wealthier kids in your town who spent their time on whatever else were less well prepared than you (academically; they might have been better prepared for schmoozing or playing sports or whatever). But if you had wanted to be a child prodigy or world-class competitor in something as a teenager, you likely would have needed significant expert help. > No matter how much time you spend preparing the dumb kids they will struggle If the kids are dramatically struggling, they are likely significantly under-prepared for the work they are expected to do. But it is not true that no matter how much time you spend you cannot make a difference. Kids testing in the 10th percentile can if tutored 1:1 for a year or two surpass the 80th percentile kids taught in an ordinary class. Regular 1:1 tutoring is extraordinarily much better than other methods of instruction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_2_sigma_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_2_sigma_problem
  - 4y ago

rand85632 4y ago

It’s disingenuous to try to call it well prepared vs poorly prepared. Some people are just naturally more academically gifted

jacobolus 4y ago
Take almost any “academically gifted” student and start looking into their biography, and you’ll find a shitload of preparation. As a general rule (to which, sure, you can find rare exceptions if you really hunt) the more “gifted” the student, the more hands-on help and attention from experts they had. Even for those without significant expert help, the “gifted” students are the ones who spent a ton more time thinking about the subject than their peers for whatever reason. The international math olympiad winners I took courses with in college were incredibly well prepared, and while clever and hard working, are by no means superhuman. Preparation is not the only relevant factor that goes into what gets called academic “giftedness”, but it’s the vast majority of it. It’s similar for other fields. Nobody can compete in sport at a world-class level nowadays without significant amounts of excellent coaching. Etc. For instance, the reason my kid learned to read before he was 4 and most of his peers did not is because we spent many hundreds of hours reading books together aloud, and maybe 50 hours over 6 months on direct instruction in reading per se. Not because he’s biologically any different than his peers. The reason he’s really good at making stuff out of Legos is that he really likes it and spends hours per week doing it, not because he’s some kind of Lego prodigy. He’s not particularly skilled at drawing or dancing or playing the guitar or sewing, because those are things he did not practice very much yet.
- TexanFeller 4y ago
  Passion for a subject can indeed propel you far ahead of your peers in that subject, but intelligence is what allows passion to continue and grow. No matter how much time you spend preparing the dumb kids they will struggle with difficult(or often easy) subjects and get frustrated - because of this passion will never develop, and it’s entirely reasonable to not become passionate about something you’re not capable of doing well at. I was a very smart kid, although very far from a genius. My parents were young earth creationists who knew nothing about science or computers and shielded me from science because of themes like evolution. The town I grew up in was in poor rural TX, so my teachers barely knew more. I certainly wasn’t well prepared to understand science, but yet I developed a passion for that and computer programming and became a voracious reader of everything I could find on it in the school library, acquiring knowledge far beyond my grade level. The less smart but wealthier and better prepared kids I knew growing up never caught up to me.
  - jacobolus 4y ago
    > developed a passion for that and computer programming and became a voracious reader of everything I could find on it in the school library, acquiring knowledge far beyond my grade level This is a huge amount of “preparation”, as far as I am concerned. It’s not as effective as working with an expert tutor/coach, but it still adds up over time. (And good job preparing yourself without much help!) The wealthier kids in your town who spent their time on whatever else were less well prepared than you (academically; they might have been better prepared for schmoozing or playing sports or whatever). But if you had wanted to be a child prodigy or world-class competitor in something as a teenager, you likely would have needed significant expert help. > No matter how much time you spend preparing the dumb kids they will struggle If the kids are dramatically struggling, they are likely significantly under-prepared for the work they are expected to do. But it is not true that no matter how much time you spend you cannot make a difference. Kids testing in the 10th percentile can if tutored 1:1 for a year or two surpass the 80th percentile kids taught in an ordinary class. Regular 1:1 tutoring is extraordinarily much better than other methods of instruction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_2_sigma_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_2_sigma_problem
- 4y ago