4 ms·

The smartest kids I knew were those with very intellectual, but hands off, parents. I always thought it was misguided to advice parents to demand homework be d

by psbp 13y ago

The smartest kids I knew were those with very intellectual, but hands off, parents. I always thought it was misguided to advice parents to demand homework be done at a certain time or enforce certain metrics (test scores, volunteer hours, etc), rather than just having intelligent conversations about, well, anything!

mbell 13y ago
> The smartest kids I knew were those with very intellectual, but hands off, parents. Parents are one part of it, but teachers are another. I grew up in a very rural but fairly rich community, not because the people were rich (quite the opposite actually), rather because there was a nuclear power plant in town that paid 98% of the towns taxes. I don't remember the exact prompt but I do recall writing a paper for 10th grade english class about quarks. My english teacher went and talked to one of our science teachers because she thought I made up the entire thing, she didn't think quarks were real. That in itself is fine, this was 1998, I doubt many english teachers would be aware of them. What bothers me is that I'm fairly sure that the only reason my paper wasn't just thrown out was that we were lucky enough to get a science teacher who was an ex-Harvard associated researcher whom moved 'out to the sticks' for family reasons. It was this chap that my english professor asked, thankfully, since I'm relatively certain that no one else in the school, let alone the rest of the science department, would have had a clue. Without that stroke of luck I'd have probably been given an F and not even considered writing outside the box papers again, or at least delayed writing another one. Side note, but this random teacher I had was amazing, he really changed a lot of the way I look at things. From his profession (biology), to thinking entrepreneurial, to learning the basics of the stock market when I was 14...I learned a lot from that guy. All because we were just lucky enough to have someone of his caliber there to glean knowledge from. It's amazing what a single teacher can do to change someone very early in their life.
- ef4 13y ago
  Quarks were proposed in 1964 and observed in the lab pretty unequivocally by 1977. By 1998 they weren't some weird new theory. Which is to say, your (depressingly typical) English teacher shouldn't be given the benefit of the doubt on this. She probably had a dictionary sitting in her classroom that could have told her what "quark" means and that they come in six flavors. But she didn't even think to reach for it. Nevermind actually going to the library like she probably orders her students to do. Nobody can be faulted for not knowing everything, but not even trying to learn is unforgivable in an alleged teacher.
  - mbell 13y ago
    She was a 50 year old high school english teacher in 1998 rural America. If you expect her to keep up to date with high energy particle physics then your expectations are ridiculous.
    - pedrosorio 13y ago
      But you should expect her to retain the ability to browse a dictionary, no?
      - mbell 13y ago
        Assuming it was in the dictionary. We're not talking about a time when going to webster's dictionary website was really an option, as in the internet wasn't really much of a thing still, at least not in my area. They had the ability to dial into their e-mail (a BBS called First-Class) via modem, that was about it. The dictionary in the library was about 5 inches thick and probably 25 years old, I doubt it had 'quark' in it.
        xiaoma 13y ago
        This is completely at odds with my memory of 1998. Not only did people use online dictionaries, but we also used online maps (mapquest.com), movie listings (moviefone.com), greeting cards (bluemountain.com) and hundreds of other online services. Netscape had already hit its peak and was on its way down. High school textbooks spoke of the internet. I don't think I knew students who hadn't used instant messengers like Yahoo!, AIM or ICQ. I was in a town of about 100,000 people in Colorado.
        mayneack 13y ago
        Fits well with my memory of rural MO in 2000
      - vacri 13y ago
        It takes a theory at least 10-15 years to make it into university textbooks, let alone a general English dictionary.
Dwolb 13y ago
I wonder how intrinsic motivation is developed or cultivated. Another question I have is if intrinsic motivation can he created by external influence.
- psbp 13y ago
  It's extremely obvious that it is.
quaffapint 13y ago
Problem is kids are are built differently - the whole nurture vs nature. I'll see some kids that are just naturally wanting to excel, and others given the option would do nothing - my kids being in the middle. I could let them fail, and maybe that's the right choice, but in today's competitive college admissions, failure isn't really an option that I would wish on them.
mathattack 13y ago
Good point. Small data set, but.... The #1 and #2 ranked students in my high school class both were single kids (no siblings) with helicopter parents who would intervene when they got poor grades. Both underperformed later in life. The outperformers did get a few Bs along the way (or many) but to your point had intellectual parents. In some cases they enforced studying. In others it was providing early access to computers.

by psbp 13y ago

mbell 13y ago

> The smartest kids I knew were those with very intellectual, but hands off, parents. Parents are one part of it, but teachers are another. I grew up in a very rural but fairly rich community, not because the people were rich (quite the opposite actually), rather because there was a nuclear power plant in town that paid 98% of the towns taxes. I don't remember the exact prompt but I do recall writing a paper for 10th grade english class about quarks. My english teacher went and talked to one of our science teachers because she thought I made up the entire thing, she didn't think quarks were real. That in itself is fine, this was 1998, I doubt many english teachers would be aware of them. What bothers me is that I'm fairly sure that the only reason my paper wasn't just thrown out was that we were lucky enough to get a science teacher who was an ex-Harvard associated researcher whom moved 'out to the sticks' for family reasons. It was this chap that my english professor asked, thankfully, since I'm relatively certain that no one else in the school, let alone the rest of the science department, would have had a clue. Without that stroke of luck I'd have probably been given an F and not even considered writing outside the box papers again, or at least delayed writing another one. Side note, but this random teacher I had was amazing, he really changed a lot of the way I look at things. From his profession (biology), to thinking entrepreneurial, to learning the basics of the stock market when I was 14...I learned a lot from that guy. All because we were just lucky enough to have someone of his caliber there to glean knowledge from. It's amazing what a single teacher can do to change someone very early in their life.

ef4 13y ago
Quarks were proposed in 1964 and observed in the lab pretty unequivocally by 1977. By 1998 they weren't some weird new theory. Which is to say, your (depressingly typical) English teacher shouldn't be given the benefit of the doubt on this. She probably had a dictionary sitting in her classroom that could have told her what "quark" means and that they come in six flavors. But she didn't even think to reach for it. Nevermind actually going to the library like she probably orders her students to do. Nobody can be faulted for not knowing everything, but not even trying to learn is unforgivable in an alleged teacher.
- mbell 13y ago
  She was a 50 year old high school english teacher in 1998 rural America. If you expect her to keep up to date with high energy particle physics then your expectations are ridiculous.
  - pedrosorio 13y ago
    But you should expect her to retain the ability to browse a dictionary, no?
    - mbell 13y ago
      Assuming it was in the dictionary. We're not talking about a time when going to webster's dictionary website was really an option, as in the internet wasn't really much of a thing still, at least not in my area. They had the ability to dial into their e-mail (a BBS called First-Class) via modem, that was about it. The dictionary in the library was about 5 inches thick and probably 25 years old, I doubt it had 'quark' in it.
      - xiaoma 13y ago
        This is completely at odds with my memory of 1998. Not only did people use online dictionaries, but we also used online maps (mapquest.com), movie listings (moviefone.com), greeting cards (bluemountain.com) and hundreds of other online services. Netscape had already hit its peak and was on its way down. High school textbooks spoke of the internet. I don't think I knew students who hadn't used instant messengers like Yahoo!, AIM or ICQ. I was in a town of about 100,000 people in Colorado.
        mayneack 13y ago
        Fits well with my memory of rural MO in 2000
    - vacri 13y ago
      It takes a theory at least 10-15 years to make it into university textbooks, let alone a general English dictionary.

Dwolb 13y ago

I wonder how intrinsic motivation is developed or cultivated. Another question I have is if intrinsic motivation can he created by external influence.

psbp 13y ago
It's extremely obvious that it is.

quaffapint 13y ago

Problem is kids are are built differently - the whole nurture vs nature. I'll see some kids that are just naturally wanting to excel, and others given the option would do nothing - my kids being in the middle. I could let them fail, and maybe that's the right choice, but in today's competitive college admissions, failure isn't really an option that I would wish on them.

mathattack 13y ago

Good point. Small data set, but.... The #1 and #2 ranked students in my high school class both were single kids (no siblings) with helicopter parents who would intervene when they got poor grades. Both underperformed later in life. The outperformers did get a few Bs along the way (or many) but to your point had intellectual parents. In some cases they enforced studying. In others it was providing early access to computers.