The Prodigy Puzzle

theodp writes "Once neglected, the NY Times reports that America's smartest children have become the beneficiaries of a well-organized effort to recognize their gifts and develop their talent. Programs like those offered by the Davidson Institute, run by Bob and Jan Davidson of Math and Reading Blaster fame, have sprung up to nurture the intellectual development of profoundly intelligent young people. But do we know how to identify the child whose brilliance might change the world? And do we really want to?"

Comments

The children will ask themselves

[vijayiyer]

When children say things like "This is boring" or "Will I learn anything this year in school?", their needs should be accommodated. It seems criminal, yet all too often such children's pleas simply go ignored.

Re:The children will ask themselves

[Have Blue]

That's because most of the time it really is that they just don't feel like paying attention. The ones who are "so smart the class is not engaging their attention" are the rare exception.

Re:The children will ask themselves

[MarkRose]

I was one of those gifted kids (nothing exceptional, just precocious). I found school itself rather accommodating. For the most part, I was either giving more challenging work or simply challenged myself. The real issues I had were dealing with peers. I simply could not relate to anyone my age as they were all interested in mentally unstimulating things. Of course, I have adjusted in my adult years and now get along with just about anyone, but I wish I had had more like me growing up. Finding things ridiculously easy did have its effects. Until I went on to post secondary education, I had a great deal of hubris. Not having needed any studying skills for the very relaxed pace in high school, I was quickly blown by by those who high school was geared for. Of course, I could have done the work, but didn't. I am not blaming the system, but I think the system could use adjustment. Smart kids are definitely left out.

Re:The children will ask themselves

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but personally I think the whole thing about "gifted kids being underserved" is overblown. Fact is, smart kids will generally do quite well for themselves - that's the advantage of being smart. Those who are also ambitious will do great things - but I don't think ambition is something that any kind of "gifted" program can really inculcate.

But of course, I'm an unambitious bright guy who hasn't really accomplished anything (but has used his smarts to enable his extraordinary laziness), so what do I know?

Re:The children will ask themselves

[mattwarden]

If a super smart kid can't figure out a project of their own, how smart are they?

If that's the logic we're using, why are they in school at all? If they can't develop their own lesson plans, how smart are they?

The point is: no matter how apt someone is, the ability to succeed at a task is limited by that person's experience. That's why we have teachers who have gone through the education system and then learned how to re-teach what they learned those 12 years. They can draw on that experience, plus direct teaching experience as their career continues.

To me it's a little like math classes: you never really know what you're doing in a class until you get two or three classes beyond it. Likewise, a child can't be expected to both learn material and piece it into the bigger picture, most of which has not been exposed yet.

You might think I'm taking your comment too far, and I probably am. My point is just that the child would benefit much more from guidance on those projects. After all, maybe the student projects were "REALLY REALLY stupid" because the students were never given a hint about what makes a good project.

Re:The children will ask themselves

[Kafka_Canada]

For the most part, I was either giving more challenging work or simply challenged myself.

It's a shame those challenges didn't include English grammar. ;)

Re:The children will ask themselves

[droptone]

It isn't a matter of the kids being unable to find projects to "entertain themselves", because they will surely do that. It is a matter of using the child's interest in learning/education and guiding them. Before you can learn anything in subjects like physics or math you need to know what to learn, because each step builds off of the previous steps. This is where, I feel, the school systems/teachers need to step in. If the child is catching onto basic math quickly, do not tell the child to sit down and wait for the other kids to finish. You are punishing them for being good at something. You don't need to neglect the others kids, if you make sure the exceptional children are mentally stimulated. I don't expect a child to know what he/she needs to learn. Sure, learning on your own is fine for certain subjects (and god knows plenty of people have done just that, e.g. Srinivasa Ramanujan). That does not mean all can do that. You really shouldn't be fatalistic about education, especially if you want any results at all.

Re:The children will ask themselves

[fafalone]

You really, really don't understand how different the minds of exceptionally intelligent people work. I'm not talking about the "gifted" people way down there in the 125-140 IQ range, and the article isn't either. First of all people in the 99.9th percentile and better (145+) typically have a range of other mental problems, most famously in the social skills area. Coming up with good ideas for projects and entertaining yourself have very very little to do with intelligence. I have an IQ of 151, and thanks to the public education system, even in the gifted program, I lost all will to learn anything outside of the few topics that are extremely interesting to me, none of which I had any exposure to academically until college since even the gifted programs are aimed to the lowest common denominator, which is the 125-135 people, who aren't too bright. I don't get straight As. The problem in college is, topics that don't interest us still require learning of simple facts, which we are not necessarily motivated to exert the effort to learn.
Being a genius does not imply being a good student, and vice versa.

Re:The children will ask themselves

[norton_I]

A few comments: learning to come up with ideas is the hardest that people can do. Among physics PhDs (a reasonablly intelligent bunch, on average) it is typically to get 12-14 years of training after high school before you are ready to be a professor (or other PI) and come up with your own research ideas. Even exceptionally bright kids will be hard pressed to come up with a complete project that they can do in their free time. In order to cultivate their talents, they need adults to help guide them. Second, most of their time is spent in classes which they are not permitted to leave or ignore even if they had something to do. Their time outside of classes must be divided between whatever extra projects they might be doing and sports, social activities, and family interaction, all of which are also important.

I personally found ways to entertain myself throught grade school which mostly involved reading books in class, which landed me in both the behavior modification program and the gifted and talented program (I think the only student in both).

Finally, while even the smartest kid will learn things in their mundane classes, it is still boring to master they days lesson in 10 minutes and have to sit around doing boring excercises while waiting for the other students to figure it out.

Re:The children will ask themselves

[MarkRose]

It's a shame those challenges didn't include English grammar. ;)

Yeah, I noticed giving/given after I submitted my post. Really though, it was just an attempt to related to the average Slashdotter. Surely you can relate.

Re:The children will ask themselves

[EnronHaliburton2004]

I have an IQ of 151, and thanks to the public education system, even in the gifted program, I lost all will to learn anything outside of the few topics that are extremely interesting to me,

Or maybe you're just fishing for excuses, and are a little too attached to the idea of you being an unappreciated genius? Learning requires effort, and sometimes you need to work harder to learn stuff outside your own interest. Even the boring, simple facts. I had to take classes that I hated because it led me towards a goal that I wanted.

I mean no disrespect, but you can't pin all your problems on someone else. It seems like you like feeling sorry for yourself. I went to PUBLIC school K-12. In PUBLIC high school my IQ was 145. My school was not exceptional. I never got straight-As. People teased me because I was smart. I did fine because I found my own motivation and did other stuff outside school.

Now I have a wife, kids, home, career and make 6 figures doing something that I mostly enjoy. I quit my old job on my own terms and start a new job next month.

Yes-- school could have been much better and productive, but I'm happy I went to public school rather then some isolated elitist school for the new Reich. I got REAL experience.

Re:The children will ask themselves

[Anonymous Coward]

"which is the 125-135 people, who aren't too bright. I don't get straight As. The problem in college is, topics that don't interest us still require learning of simple facts, which we are not necessarily motivated to exert the effort to learn.
Being a genius does not imply being a good student, and vice versa."

Wait, the 125-135 people aren't too bright, but because you don't get straight A's as log as you got that IQ score of 154 you are somehow a genius? IQ is an outdated measure of intelligence, I scored highly on most IQ tests but I flunked many courses, so does that mean I'm a genius? Whoever still uses it as a total measure of ones intelligence or potential to succeed is a moron. I know people dumber then the brightest people I know that make much more money then they will in their entire lives. So you may be intelligent but that's not correlated to 'success' (i.e. see william james sidis for example).

Re:The children will ask themselves

[EEBaum]

The problem is the all-or-none way that "gifted" programs are run. You are declared uber-smart and placed in an uber-smart class, proclaimed average and placed in an average class, or labeled a moron and placed in special ed. Because, of course, there are only 3 tiers of ability, and they apply across the board.

This leads to both isolation of people at each level from the people at other levels, and boredom some of the time at all levels. Someone may be really good at one topic and awful at another, but the classes are taught at just one of the three levels. Rather than giving you something for further enrichment, teachers seem more likely to give you something "to keep you busy while everyone else catches up."

Also, including people generally pigeonholed at different ones of these artificial levels tends to be better for all. A "special ed" person who is included in a "normal" class will learn how to be around "normal" people, and the "normal" people will learn the material better by helping the "special ed" person along.

It seems that how much a person learns in school has been quantified to "how many bucketloads of facts you can remember." People in gifted programs are given bucketloads more, people in special ed bucketloads less. Never mind that this tends to have little bearing later in life. The people in the harder classes just become more adept at spewing smart-sounding BS.

/Dropped honors for regular english 2 years into H.S., not because it was too hard, but because it included countless hours of random busy work that wasn't worth the time.

Re:The children will ask themselves

[HoboMaster]

He's speaking in general, and I agree with him. My biggest problem with school is that it was all just so incredibly boring that I gave up. I tested to have an IQ of 186, but have trouble in classes because I can't bring myself to do the incredibly repetitive homework when I've learned it by watching the teacher do it once. I've found that this is generally true of people with very high IQs, though not always. When you spend 12 years doing something that is neither interesting nor challenging to you, yeah, you tend to just stop caring. In fact, that's the reason I'm taking a year off of college. I need some time to refresh and prepare myself to continue this. I go to a very good and "difficult" tech school (University of Texas at Dallas, easily the best tech school in Texas and the surrounding states), and after my second year of college, I've yet to take a class that actually challenges me, so I'm having hte same problems. The best I ever did in school was the year my teacher just let me take the tests at the beginning of each unit and spend the rest of my time reading. I got straight As that year. And, in case you're wondering, I never got moved ahead a grade because of my bad grades. Ironic, I think. Medication helped me to actually do my work, but it wasn't worth it to me to change my personality (which it did... drastically and definitely for the worse) for my grades. You know something's wrong with your schooling system when it sucks the life and motivation out of the brightest kids.

Re:The children will ask themselves

[HooliganIntellectual]

Well some of us are smart enough to understand that IQ tests are only good for measuring somebody's ability to take a specific type of test. Throwing around your IQ on Slashdot is pretty funny. So you are good at taking tests. Some of us understand that intelligence is something more complicated than a test score.

Re:The children will ask themselves

[Ironica]

All I'm saying is if the kids are so fucking smart they should be able to figure out how to entertain themselves.

Bitter much?

I never had any trouble entertaining myself in school. The trouble I had was stopping entertaining myself and actually doing what someone else expected of me, especially if it was way below my challenge level.

I'll never forget the day I had a sub for math in fourth grade, and when I asked to get my workbook (which was 5th grade level) to work from instead of doing the (stupid) worksheet she'd handed out, she took an attitude with me. So I tossed it right back, and told her the recent results of the IQ test they'd put me through. "Oh! Well you ought to be able to finish this in no time then!" she said, tossing the worksheet back at me.

Guess what? Tedious is tedious. If it's also difficult, then at least there's some thrill of accomplishment, but how many of you do long division for fun just to prove you can these days? I created an impressive doodle on the margin of the paper, and didn't do a single problem. Why should I? The teacher wasn't going to look for my worksheet when she got back, because I wasn't supposed to be in that class. And to this day, I still remember the total lack of respect I had for that sub, who obviously didn't think that it was important for me to actually learn anything.

No, it's not a child's job to both (a) do the tedious busywork the teacher expects them to do and simultaneously (b) come up with their own challenging and fun projects to work on. We have teachers for a reason... because raw intelligence doesn't do you any good without some education. In fact, some careful studies have found that you actually gain IQ from formal education (or lose it by missing out). To control for self-selection bias, they studied the effects of multi-year school closures in a few places, due to disease outbreaks or fear of desegregation. The difference is small, but significant.... I think it totaled to about 10 IQ points over 12 years of school. (Source: What's Going On In There , by Lise Eliot.)

Re:The children will ask themselves

[HermanAB]

Oh, man, you sound like a spoilt brat to me...

We can safely assume that everybody who read Sloshdat are in the 120+ category and that IQs above 140 are common too.

I tell my son that he needs to learn to do things he doesn't like as well, since a project only pays off once it is completed and all the menial litle details are taken care of.

Re:The children will ask themselves

[toddbu]

I've yet to take a class that actually challenges me

I spent a year teaching in college, and I have to say that one of the most difficult things to do is pick a good target when teaching. If you teach to the top 10% then the rest of the class suffers, and the same is true when you teach to the bottom 10%. The problem is greatest at the entry level, where you have everyone from the student who thinks that maybe they'd like to learn how to program a computer all the way up to the kids who have been coding since they were ten years old and know at least six computer languages. My solution, which some might criticize, was to target something around the top 25%. My goal was to keep the class exciting for those who understood the material, and to use those students who picked up the material quickly to help the others along. To some degree it worked, but I also failed nearly 1/3 of the students in my very first class. I suspect that most of them never had the heart for it anyway, but you always wonder about those few students who may have succeeded had the class not been so tough.

When you spend 12 years doing something that is neither interesting nor challenging to you, yeah, you tend to just stop caring.

Or maybe you just got lazy. At the end of the day, there are plenty of things that a kid can do to keep themselves occupied. In math class, I used to go to the end of the book and do problems that I knew we'd never get to in class. Then I'd visit the teacher after class to verify my answers. It was a great way for me to send the message that I was bored. It never changed anything, and after a while I also became lazy, but I really could have kept myself challenged if I wanted. When I was teaching I always used my assignments as a "minimum" for my students. I'd say something like "Here's what I want you to do, but if you do more then that's great. I'll look over the code, but you don't get any extra credit. In fact, if you screw up the original assignment then your grade will go down. I want you to do more because you want to, for the pure enjoyment." I often had students take me up on the offer, and I think that they benefited from the exercise. Often, I think recognition of work that's well done is more of an incentive to a student than getting a good grade.

Re:The children will ask themselves

[solarrhino]

My brother teaches at a vocational school, where all the issues are a bit starker, and he puts it this way: "Some kids will fail no matter how much I help. Some will succeed no matter how little I help. That's why I focus on the ones in-between - because that's where I can make a difference."

Re:The children will ask themselves

[toddbu]

Yeah, it's true that a kid could keep himself occupied doing math problems, but how many kids are actually going to do that?

It really is just a matter of discipline. I watch my daughter work on homework at school in the gym while the volleyball game is going on, totally oblivious to what's going on around her. She makes it a priority, even though she's plenty smart enough to skate through her classes without any real effort. To her credit, she knows at age 15 what she wants to do in life and is preparing herself for what's ahead. And I think that's a problem with most kids who are smart. They have so many options to chose from that they can't pick just one thing and stick with it. So I'd suggest that you consider finishing your studies, even if the only thing you'll get is a sense of accomplishment. I suspect that taking time off may just be an excuse for not fulling committing to the task at hand. If you're really serious about coming back and just need a little time to rest then you'll probably be ok. But if you still need to "find yourself" then you may have a problem with commitment.

Re:The children will ask themselves

[19thNervousBreakdown]

Is this a troll?

Look, unless you have some other mental deficiencies, your 151 IQ should be nothing but a boon to you. Social skills are something that is just as readily learned as riding a horse. Just because it's not hard science doesn't mean you can't apply your brain to it. And your excuse about "losing the will to learn" and not wanting to memorize facts is just a cop-out. If you're such a genius, figure out a way to make memorization easy. Sure, it's mind-numbing, but if you're a genius you'll realize that a 4.0 GPA has a good chance of getting you a free ride through college and a good job afterward, instead of years of student loans and shitty jobs. The X number of crap hours you put into memorizing shit you don't care about is well worth the increase in the odds that things will pay off.

I'm sure there's plenty of people out there with IQ's up in your range that have no problem with either social skills or motivation. I may not be a 151, but I have tested as high as 146, can pick up new concepts so quick it scares people, and am still fun at a bar and have no problem getting laid. And shit, I moved around so much until 5th grade I was pretty much a poster-child for maladjusted socially stunted kids everywhere. Take your big-ass brain and apply it to real life, and stop making excuses. Learning how to deal with people is not some magically different subject that's impossible for smart people to figure out. Hearing crap like that is what kept me a socially retarded little fuckhead until halfway through high school.

Most people would love to have an excuse like yours. "I'm too smart to deal with normal people and normal subjects." Do you have any idea what a dickhead that makes you sound like? Parents love to shove that down your throat because it makes them feel special. Teachers love to shove it down your throat because you're not threatening if you're some idiot savant freak instead of just being way smarter than them and able to see through their bullshit. Some genius who applies their intelligence to social skills and reading people is a teacher's worst nightmare, unless you turn the charm on full blast and make them like you. You know what though? If someone likes you, they'll never think you're a genius, at best they'll think you're really smart.

Stop with the BS excuses. Even if you do actually have some kind of deficiency, with your IQ you should at least be able to pull off normal. Try it, you'll have more fun.

Re:The children will ask themselves

[AuMatar]

Or maybe you just got lazy.

You hit it in one. I know where the guy's coming from. I did the same finish in my sleep job in grade school, high school. Hell, I was famous for not going to any classes my senior year of college. And still being able to tutor my classmates on the subjects better than some of the profs. The problem in all that is I learned nothing in life takes effort. I'm extremely lazy, and procrastinate everything, getting by at the last minute because I'm that good.

Is this school's fault? While they might have done things to prevent it, no. The fault is mine. I'm the lazy one, I'm the procrastinating one. The OP needs to admit the same thing to himself, and then decide wether to fix it or not. If he's happier the way he is fine, but stop blaming other people for his problems.

Re:The children will ask themselves

[Anonymous Coward]

Coming up with good ideas for projects and entertaining yourself have very very little to do with intelligence. I have an IQ of 151, and thanks to the public education system, even in the gifted program, I lost all will to learn anything outside of the few topics that are extremely interesting to me, none of which I had any exposure to academically until college since even the gifted programs are aimed to the lowest common denominator, which is the 125-135 people, who aren't too bright.

Wow, that borders on arrogantly condescending, but as I don't think you meant to be, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. :-)

Here's a thought, though - consider that perhaps you're not really a genius. My IQ has been measured at 156 and 160, the only two times I've been formally tested (30 minute free tests on the internet don't count). And while I know I'm smart, a natural problem solver, one very clever dude - I know that I'm not a genius.

As different as I am from most other people, I'm more like than dislike them. To me, true genius is manifested by remarkable originality and insight into something - anything, could be physics or math or music or science or even pseudoscience like psychology :-). I'm not talking about savants, who are profoundly deficient in all other areas.

I think genius starts a hell of a lot higher than 145. The 99.9th percentile isn't all that special; you're still talking about 1 in 1000, or two at the high school I went to, or millions of people worldwide. You and I are smart, but we're still a couple standard deviations short of the genius bit of the bell curve.

I don't get straight As. The problem in college is, topics that don't interest us still require learning of simple facts, which we are not necessarily motivated to exert the effort to learn. Being a genius does not imply being a good student, and vice versa.

Speak for yourself. I hated organic chemistry, most of my "general education" requirements ... and yet I still was able to motivate myself to do well in them, because I was mature enough to realize that I needed a high gpa in order to have a strong application for medical school. And here I am, years later, done with school and happy in every way with my life.

It's possible to be a lazy, undisciplined genius. You're not even that, though. You're a lazy, undisciplined pretty-smart guy who thinks his relatively high IQ makes him a genius and justifies his laziness. Quit making exuses for your lack of motivation.

You're not a genius. Get over yourself.

Re:The children will ask themselves

[TheoMurpse]

Also, including people generally pigeonholed at different ones of these artificial levels tends to be better for all. A "special ed" person who is included in a "normal" class will learn how to be around "normal" people, and the "normal" people will learn the material better by helping the "special ed" person along.

No, that is complete fucking bullshit, and is partly responsible for the decline in public education in the US. That does not happen -- instead, the teacher must go over the same material over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over, until she finally gives up, and the year is over. The normal kids have learned the little material the teacher was actually able to go over that year, and the special ed kids have still not learned it. Take it from someone with teachers in the family -- mixing levels in the classroom does not work. It merely slows down those who are gifted; it does not accelerate those who are not.

Re:The children will ask themselves

[tacocat]

No it's not.

And Bush's "no child left behind" has made it worse.

In order for everyone to Pass, you have to teach down to the lowest common denominator to the class, meaning that 90% of the students are bored and 30% are bored off their ass and asleep.

I believe the right approach would be to actually fail people out of grades until you did have 16 year olds sitting in the third grade and simply eject anyone from the school system who can't graduate by their 20th birthday.

Getting an education requires some investment on the students part.

I'm not so worried about these uber-smart kids. I'm more worried about the rest of us. As a nation we are quickly falling into a second world tier of educated nations and it is only getting worse.

Re:The children will ask themselves

[LainTouko]

You make it sound so simple. Truth is that there's a lot more to the way your brain works than just whether you're smart or not, and so you can't deduce that someone will be able to do something just because they're smart. I've been trying to learn "social skills" for a few years now, without much headway, largely because I don't think it is a question of skills, in my case. It's more like the "average person" being far away in a place which I don't want to go anywhere near. But you're clearly a very different person to me, what you describe as your accomplishments sound to me more like some sort of horrible trap. To socialise with someone, you need to be able to connect, and that means being a pair of "person-types" which are in some way compatible. I think the "person-type" which I am and which I want to be is one that isn't compatible with that many others.

Re:The children will ask themselves

[D-Cypell]

The idea of "No child left behind" is a sensible one. The problem comes when trying to define "Ahead and Behind".

It's funny, I've read this thread up to this point and every single post thus far speaks in terms of acheivement in education as success in the acedemic subjects. We have posters saying how "gifted" they were at school, gifted at sports? gifted at wood/metal works? I suspect not.

What the education system needs to do is provide the core skills, basic (and I do mean basic) mathematics and language skills (reading and writing to a level that allows a person to function in modern society), after that, specialisation is required. Trying to teach a future labourer, sportsman or even salesman advance calculus is a waste of everyone's time.

My personality type is 'problem-solver'. I enjoyed basic to intermediate maths (never really got into the advanced stuff, didnt see it as practical) and of course, IT. If my education had been focused on this then I would be a far better software developer (my choosen career) than I am now. Instead, I wasted hours analysing poems or running in circles around a damn field.

When we accept that children have their own strengths and weaknesses, and we cater to them, then we can say that no child is being left behind.

Re:The children will ask themselves

[(SM) Spacemonkey]

I wonder who this article will please more, the exceptionally bright or those with narcissistic personality disorder? Slashdot seems to have more than its share of both. Put me in whatever category you wish, but here is my story.

I went to the best high school in my city. They had a program for gifted students although no one as exceptional as the students in the NYTs article. As I guide, I was about the median of the group and my IQ is 148. I did nine subjects final year high school including three first-year University courses. Then I went straight into electrical engineering. I was bored then and little has changed now. I haven't been to a lecture in 2 years. I rarely hand in an assignment earlier than three days late and always write it during the day before the 4:30pm deadline. I study for exams the night before and do the rest on general knowledge and logical extension. After initial success and a high GPA this is my 5th semester of straight passes. I have used twice as many electives as I am allowed on, literature, law, managment, communications, international relations, journalism, etc. I have two part time jobs neither challenge me. One quality analysis for an engineering firm. All my work there is done in the last hour of my sixteen hour week. The other is working for security at nights to fill in time I rarely use to sleep anyhow. Both allow me to listen to music, read and write.

Not content with decribing the physical world and applying that knowledge to design I started reading. I am now so socialised with the 'western cannon' that real people are starting to bore me too. For instance, I read all of Shakespeare's 38 plays last semester and quoted the 'tis sweet and commendable in your nature' to my mother when her father died. (As an aside 'As You Like It' is more humourous than any Swartzwelder Simpsons episode and if you changed the character of Isabella in Measure for Measure to a male it would make a nice commentry on the current gay panic in America.)

The University is demanding I complete three more core subjects and then graduate. I have little ambition to be successful in the traditional sense even though I have more than enough job offers. Of the students in the program in highschool, one went to London to become an actor, failed and now owns a pub. Another went to Prague didn't find any great truths and now is studying law. Another got a very modest job working for a telco and married a pre-school teacher. Few are all that happy and any reunion is likely to be sad and dismal affair of finding the easy way to the middle. I don't blame anyone for being bored and frustrated, yet just sometimes I think that raw intelligence has little advantage in our soceity.

Re:The children will ask themselves

[flyinwhitey]

"No, that is complete fucking bullshit, and is partly responsible for the decline in public education in the US. That does not happen -- instead, the teacher must go over the same material over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over, until she finally gives up, and the year is over."

You just nailed it.

I am leaving public school teaching for two primary reasons.

1) Mainstreaming. This is the worst god damned idea in the history of education, worse than corporal punishment, worse than rapping knuckles, etc. It's an incredibly bad idea, that has never been shown to help students, for the reasons you mention.

2) ESOL. This is the second worst idea in the history of teaching, namely that you can take a non-english speaker and turn them inot an english speaker simply by putting them in a room full of other english speakers. IF YOU CAN"T SPEAK ENGLISH, YOU NEED TO LEARN THAT FIRST. Why is a student in Chemistry, when they can't even converse about the weather? Give them the tools they need, or else they have NO chance.

Re:The children will ask themselves

[wealthychef]

Education reform is difficult precisely because of this question. "What is education, anyhow?" Good luck answering it on Slashdot. :-)

However, I just want to point out that while I agree with the gist of your comments, your "solution" of giving each child an "emphasis" is problematic because we don't know who is going to be a laborer or not when they are older, and also because the definition of a specialization itself is a limitation on knowledge. I think most kids are interested in multiple "subjects" (sometimes seemingly arbitrary categorizations of knowledge). Also, people change, you see, and their interests fluctuate. Children are very difficult to raise and teach because they are individual human beings. You cannot make a one-size-fits-all program that does a good job with everyone.

I agree we should have a "core set of competencies" we expect all children to develop. We should try to make the system of navigating these competencies as flexible as possible, perhaps allowing kids to choose emphases that suit their desires each year, and asking that they stick with their interests for at least a year at a time. I don't know, I'm not an "educational expert," but I know that we need to throw a LOT more at this problem. Another issue is the fact that kids need strong guidance. So you have to balance this need for direction with the need for creativity. Kids should be forced to work on hard on *something* in school, but I guess what that is might be up to them?

Re:The children will ask themselves

[garyrich]

As someone else with teachers in the family, I agree 100%. It's not even the teacher ratio, primary school ratios here are typically ~ 20:1. As long as the entire focus is on the standarized test scores and minimizing at any cost the percantage that fail - you get stuck. You can't teach, all you can do is re-drill the things that will be on the test that 15% of the students still are not getting.

The 15% are unteachable, not primarily because they are "stupid", but because they have no support structure at home at all. A kid that hasn't eaten dinner or breakfast is not a good learner. That kid with a parent that always gets the kid to school late can't get the school's free breakfast. Teacher's, in the real world, have no power to change those things.

As someone with gifted kids in the family, I can tell you that those programs don't help. My kids schools have a "gifted and talented" pullout program. They are supposed to be excused from drudge work in the normal class to do mare challenging work in the pullouts. That doesn't happen. The drudge work is still required but there's now additional work. The work is typically not useful - a class project on a borking book that's a couple grade levels higher, no additional science education but a requirement for a science project. The message is clear "shut up and be average or we will assign you more work". To no surprise, my kids no longer want anything to do with those programs.

Re:The children will ask themselves

[tabrnaker]

When we keep people confined to one area then we have failed. Life is growth and learning.

You want to teach how to make better cogs, we need to focus on giving individuals the tools to become better individuals.

Re:The children will ask themselves

[tabrnaker]

Genius is finding a solution for a problem. Regular schooling is memorizing solution patterns worked out by other people.

How can anybody be suprised at the outcome of the school system when it's not geared towards learning?

Re:The children will ask themselves

[cloudmaster]

I'm sorry you did poorly in school. I generally did OK, and found things to entertain myself, but it really works better if there's some direction given by someone who's already picked up some knowledge. Yeah, the bright kids can find ways to entertain themselves, but the schools don't just "not provide" a means of extra learning, they actively stifle it. Say I'm sitting in a "science" course while the instructor repeats the same friggin' lecture as was given yesterday, because a couple of people weren't paying attention (and aren't paying attention again today). Now lets say I coudl be doing somethign constructive, like reading another book. Nope, then *I* get scolded for not paying attention in class. Just for example. Or, imagine PE. I played basketball and kept in decent shape outside of school, but no, the state somehow requires that I attend PE, rather than using that hour to learn something. Or, the teachers say so, later I found out that it's not a state requirement.

Not that any of this really happens to me. I've been out of high school for a long time now. But somehow I'm guessing that things haven't changed *that* much in rural IL. Yeah, I did alright, because my parents weer somewhat encouraging. I hate mentioning my IQ, becuase I put little stock in that alone, but it seems like tests generally put it in the upper 160s to the lower 170s - I think I tested at 177 in gradeschool (I guess I'm getting dumber as time goes on ;)). Whoopie, I'm a gosh damned genius. I'm not paying the $50 (45, whatever) Mensa charges to get the "I'm better than you" card with membership in the pompous ass club, and I'm not throwing it around - this is the first and last time I expect that empty number to appear on /. - but I'm mentioning it here because it's relevant. I'm in the upper less-than-one percent as far as that "testing" claims, and the public school system *actively* wasted my time. I badly wanted to learn and do more all through school, but merely doing "good enough" was all that school would allow me to do. Now I volunteer when I can to help other kids who might be in a similar situation. I do that because I know that there were other pretty smart kids in school with me whose interst in learning had totally atrophied by the time high school was through. One guy's done time in prison for stupid shit (I'm sure that's what the arresting officer wanted to cite him for), one of the girls lives in a trailer while working a checkout somewhere. This is largely because their desire to learn was stifled by an unsympathetic school system, and they didn't have anywhere to turn. I'm hoping I can prevent that by providing a modicum of guidance. That guidance is what really needs to be provided, IMHO, since the "average" people will find a way to get by without special attention. This I also know, because average people have been making it without personal attention for centuries.

Brilliant kids have different goals.

[MsWillow]

Back in my youth, every year every kid took the Iowa test. Eventually, my grade school district used those test results to start a program for gifted kids. They took the top-scoring 3 percent of all kids in the district into this class. Both I, and my younger sister, made the cut.

My IQ tested out about 165-ish, until I got multiple sclerosis. Now it's down to just 148. Frustrating loss.

Did my intelligence change the world? Nope. I never wanted to change the world. I just wanted to be left alone to tinker with computers and gemstones. I rather suspect many other brilliant kids will share those ambitions. BTW, my brilliant sister is now an RN. No world-changer there, either.

Re:Brilliant kids have different goals.

[Pantero Blanco]

Hear, hear.

When I was a kid, people asked me if I wanted to become "the next Bill Gates". Most seemed to think that money or power was my end goal in life.

While there are bright kids that seek that, I'd say the majority of them would rather pursue interests in some field of study that appeals to them. Most of them don't have the disposition that they'd need in the business or political world, because 1: they don't like to screw people over and 2: they aren't willing to compromise their ideals. Knowledge for knowledge's sake, good for goodness' sake.

Re:Brilliant kids have different goals.

[Anonymous Coward]

Your IQ has probably stayed about the same. Children are usually given a version of the Stanford-Binet test which tops out at around 170 with a standard deviation of 16. Adults usually take a version of the WAIS which has an SD of 15 and tops out at 155.

I've given hundreds of IQ tests and this experience has led me to the conclusion that scores above about 140 are fairly meaningless. I don't think you need to be worried about a 'frusterating loss'.

Also, IQ tests tend to weigh short and long term memory and duration of concentration very highly, while not really measuring complex analytical ability. It's not just the horsepower, is how you drive the car.

It's not a game

[daeley]

We'll know the most brilliant -- and useful -- ones if they *don't* get totally freaked after they find out the 'simulated' games were real and contact the queen.

And do we really want to?

[shmlco]

"But do we know how to identify the child whose brilliance might change the world? And do we really want to?"

Do we know how to identify all of them? No. But better to identify the ones we can, and give them every advantage we can, rather than simply running them through a system that, to them, would proceed at a glacial pace.

Re:And do we really want to?

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

Otherwise just get the exams and see how well they do.

That's a great idea. Just give them the material, say that if they want out they have a week to learn it, then give them the final. They get a slight curve on it (since it's impossible to learn all of the subject in a week), and if they pass, they can go to the next level.

Of course they'll learn from those classes. They can just learn it much faster, and the system is failing the student if it keeps him/her there for eight months more than needed.

Re:And do we really want to?

[Strenoth]

I'll tell you what the smart kids won't leanr in standard classes: Good study habits. As an example of myself: in my high school English class, I was reading my own novels for entertainment, cause it was painful lsitening to other students stumble through reading the assigned story out loud, that I had finished the first night. I never studied for ANY tests. I cut an entire week of school between tests for my Econ class, and got a perfect A on the next test, despite nto having even been present for any fo the material. I figured it all out on the fly. (not that high shcool econ is exactly hard) When I actually got to the math classes where I had to do the homework and study to learn the material (Trigonomy and above), I stumbled hard for a while, because I wasn't adapating to the need to actually practice this stuff.

Re:And do we really want to?

[shmlco]

I had a high school class where you were supposed to read the book and complete all of the workbook exercises for a semester's credit. I read the book the first week, and completed the workbook the next two. Teacher graded the workbook, gave me an A+, gave me an oral exam just to make sure I hadn't cheated somehow, and transferred me then and there to the advanced class.

Had she not done so, I would have suffered through the remainder of semester, staring at the ceiling.

That's the kind of "boring" class we're talking about. Not a boring subject (no such thing), but one paced so the average--or even below-average--student can keep up.

"The idea is that every student has a chance to be at the same level as they enter the next grade..."

And that's the real problem, as not every student IS at the same level. But we continue to grind them through a system that's seemingly designed to stamp out identical, mass-produced, interchangeable parts.

Re:And do we really want to?

[nonlnear]

I don't care how smart your kid is they're GOING to learn something in their "boring" classes. Otherwise just get the exams and see how well they do.

You clearly don't have a clue what you're talking about. True, everybody is going to learn something in the mainstream classes, but what?

I'm sure I speak for many "above average intelligence" people when I say the only thing I learned in school was that hard work is pointless, my peers are dullards, and I am a freak of nature.

If you have a clue about socialization processes, you'd realize that smart kids will be more "normal" if you let them interact with as many of their intellectual equals as possible. After all, it's these people with whom social interraction is the most stimulating.

Re:And do we really want to?

[thedave]

Well, you see class, you click this underlined word that says "NY Times", and your browser will display a page from the New York Times. If you want to go back to Slashdot, and see the flame war, click that arrow button. Not the one that points right, but the one that points left.

Now, I am going to this with the link that says "http://www.imaluser.com/". Look! The browser now shows us the Luser page.

Now, let's all try clicking on "SourceForge" and see what happens.

For tonight's homework, I want you to click on 4000 addresses, and click the back button to go back to your original page. Turn in your browser history at the beginning of class.
Tomorrow, we're gonna talk about the "Forward" button.

For most of us we got the idea at the first example. The rest was excruciating.

That's what arithmetic was to me.

I had it from the first class. It was just clear to me. I had basic addition on day 1. Carrying and multi-digit math, 1 day. Multiplication and division, after the first example.

But, we did hundreds of problems under the premise of a solid foundation.

Long division and multiplication were the worst though. We were expected to show our work, when you could just look at the problem and give the correct answer.

So, instead I read books. I even read an encyclopedia (because I was right beside it, and I could sneak them out). I got in a lot of trouble in class because I never had any idea what was going on. I always finished my schoolwork in 1/10th the time of my class mates, and basically wasted a 5 out of 6 elementary school years waiting for the slow ones to finish reading, or working math problems, or getting that a-ha look on their face.

And, the excuse parents, teachers, counselors and psychiatrists always gave was, "The extra repetition and explanation will give you a solid foundation."

The truth is the extra repetition is just extra repetition if you don't need it.

Extra repetition and detail is great if you are struggling with the basics, and need to reinforce the pattern of the work in your head. Or, if you get hung up on the basic ideas. Or, if you're still sounding out the words in your head. But, once you get it, and you can do 100 repetitions without error, or read 50 pages an hour and understand the content, more repetition is just torture, and it drives the joy out of learning.

Perhaps needless, mind-numbing, detail and repetition are good training for board meetings, or political debates. But, they are not good for productivity and above all they are not good for learning.

I believe that if you can prove proficiency and efficiency in a subject, you should be able to move on.

Re:And do we really want to?

[littlerubberfeet]

I agree wholeheartedly. This isn't just an issue for younger students either. My girlfriend (a college senior by credt, Junior by year) had to have a paper peer-reviewed in one of her classes. She got a grand total of two comments on the 15 page paper. One was about a semicolon, the other told her to split a well-crafted introduction into two parts because it was 'to long' and 'took up most of the first page'. We talked about it, and I told her that it wasn't a peer review. She should take it to the graduate class she was auditing.

I always gravitated towards the grownups as a kid, as I'm sure many did. I was the kid who listened to NPR, and skipped down the street singing Boutros Boutros-Ghali because of the alliteration.

What we also don't realise, is that smart kids who aren't challeneged can self-destruct, or do dangerous irresponsable things. In highschool, there was a group of maybe 7 of us out of 2,000. We all ended up dealing with our boredom by doing illegal things. We had school blueprints, schematics for the security system, more random hardware then could be hidden safely in our houses, and we forced a change in the rule book. because of us, the plenum spaces above the drop ceilings are now off limits. If somebody hadn't moved the keys at the last minute, we would have had 4 drivers-ed cars inside the gym, in front of the stage, up on blocks the night before grauation. We had the doors open, and the cars ready to roll, but no keys, nor the time to hotwire the cars safely.

Anyway, the point is, if we were had the opportunity to build MOSFET based circuits, carbon soap box racers, or work on any type of school-sponsored project at our level, it would have been better for everyone involved

Re:And do we really want to?

[Hosiah]

Or do you fear that bright kids will bring about the downfall of civilisation?

*Giggle* Do we really have to explain this one?
"After all, people in authority will always be inconvenienced by schoolchildren or workers or citizens who are prickly, intelligent individualists -- thus, any social system that depends on authority relationships will tend to helpfully ostracize and therapize and drug such 'abnormal' people until they are properly docile and stupid and 'well-socialized'."
http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/weaknesses.ht ml

See, smart people don't go along with every war. They don't pacifically accept their cell-phone billing plan. They install Linux and hack it for free. They do their own mechanic work. Ever been hired and discovered quickly that you were the smartest person on your team? If so, you know your ass is grass at that point, because everybody from the janitor to the CEO will fear you, believing that you're going to take their job.

Smart people. are. intimidating. People recoil from you like you had the head of Cthulhu. "God, what if s/he gets mad at us?" Now look at the media stereotypes. Do you ever see a buff, handsome villian with a highschool-yearbook smile and a room-temp IQ up against a smart, quiet hero who works in a laboratory? Nope, always the maniacal genius whose plans for world conquest are foiled by the tough guy shooting his gun. No, I'm not laying the whole blame for smarty-stigma on Mad-Scientist stereotypes. The opposite is true.

I have a secret I'll share now: once during a string of odd jobs, I took a job that I knew would be temporary, and I tried an experiment: I acted almost medicatedly stupid. Think Forest Gump and post-lobotomy Jack Nicholson from "One Flew Over The Cookoo's Nest". I was just real mellow, didn't talk much, carefully spoke only in words of six letters or less (and very slowly), and peacefully went to do whatever I was told, even if it was stupid. I even messed up things on purpose, and was instantly forgiven! I wish I'd never done that experiment, because I learned things about human nature I wish I'd never known. It was the only time in my life when I was just accepted as a regular person. Everybody I met, I felt just INSTANT LOVE! For the first time (except for the blessed few in my life who've understood me), I was not feared. For God's sake, I even had women hitting on me who ordinarily wouldn't have come near me!

Re:And do we really want to?

[Peter La Casse]

But, we did hundreds of problems under the premise of a solid foundation.

Long division and multiplication were the worst though. We were expected to show our work...

Ugh, yes. I can remember a turning point in my life that occurred sometime around third grade. We were assigned lots of problems of multiplication and long division where we had to show our work, just as you've described, and I sat in my room staring at them, a seemingly impossibly huge tremendously boring task that I thought I could never finish. The turning point part came when I realized that the easiest way to make it all go away was to just finish it as quickly as possible. Had it gone the other way (had I learned to make it all go away by simply not doing it), my life might have been very different.

Typical ... help the top 3 percent screw the rest

[Bluesuperman]

Hey, I understand that the more enlightened children should be groomed or challenged to help them reach their potential but they are still children and should be given time to grow. Also what about helpping out the other 97 percent. I think America would be better off with 97 percent average or above children then 3 percent genius and 97 percent retarted. ... then again .... Michael

Neglect?

[mattwarden]

Once neglected, the NY Times reports that...

If you ask me, the Times asked for it with all that required registration crap.

It's about time.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm posting anon so no one can claim I'm bragging. My IQ was pegged at 176 when I was 5. This was enough to get me a scholarship to a private school. By the time I was 8, I'd not done well enough in the private school to keep the scholarship and transferred to publich school, which was no better, despite scoring 188 on another IQ test. Why? Because despite the better curriculum, there was still the cookie-cutter, assembly-line, mass-production mentality of teaching: "All kids are the same, churn them through the machine, no one needs special treatment." And that's not true. Really smart kids need special attention just like kids with learning disabilities or mental handicaps. Later in my school career, I did manage to find some teachers who recognized different kids perform differently, and with some adjustment, I wound up with 100+% scores at year's end.

With the proper attention paid to these smart kids' needs, we can help their brilliance flourish, and we WILL find ourselves in a better world for it. I knwo my life would have been significantly different had the proper resources been spent on my development. Not every kid grows up with two rich parents who can spend the amount of time/money to tailor an academic curriculum to their kids.

Hell, in general the US could use a major overhaul of the educational system. It's way too focused on conformity and process than on results.

Re:It's about time.

[adrianmonk]

Hell, in general the US could use a major overhaul of the educational system. It's way too focused on conformity and process than on results.

Well, I hate to break it to you, but conformity and "proper" socialization are primary goals of the public schools. They may even be a higher priority than learning.

I hope I don't sound like the type wears a tinfoil hat to block and/or magnify my brain waves, but I really do think that is what the schools are set up to do. And for what it's worth, it's not an entirely bad thing to include some of that in your goals as a school. Society will work better if kids who beat up other kids learn they'll be punished, if people are taught to show up on time and be respectful to others (not just those in authority), if they're encouraged to be organized and dress neatly and all that. The problem happens when learning goes out the window in favor of all those other goals.

Its not the smart kids that change the world

[ryg0r]

IMO, its not the smart kids. Its the kids that are motivated and put in the effort into doing something.

Sure, there is a certain amount of smarts required for those nifty inventions, those startling revalations and those 'hot damn why didn't I think of that' moments, but more often then not its about having the motivation. My sister who isn't too bright and barely grasps the concept of shared printers, got a UAI of 99.3, and was working 2 jobs, while studying at Uni. Me on the other hand, prefered to read slashdot and ended up working as telemarketer for a couple of months.

Motivation is what changes the world. Attitude is central to survival, not always intelligence.

Riiight.

[Chowderbags]

How long until every parent asks why little Johnny or little Mary isn't in the "gifted" program. Surely they are the smartest in their class. Why does it seem like we hear about some sort of drive for the gifted every few years, but then it amounts to nothing? I'd bet that it's simply that people are unwilling to tell parents that their kid doesn't know jack, if only because of the lawyers.

I wish I had been in something that would've challenged me when I was younger, rather than simply being bored to tears after either already knowing things or figuring them out after 30 seconds. Yes, it's a shame that smart kids are still relegated to the same level of classes as the below-average kids, but can you really blame school districts for not wanting to go out on a limb and classify students? How many lawsuits would that bring up?

Instead we get education that suits neither the brightest nor the dimmest, nor pretty much anyone for that matter. We just get simple, boiled down cookie cutter lessons for everyone. No wonder public education sucks.

Do we want to?

[PIPBoy3000]

Is the implication that the next Doctor Evil might be out there among the prodigy? Kill the smart ones first I say!

Re:It is not IQ

[blincoln]

It is a good thing we have ritalin to fix them.

I have AD(H)D, and I take Concerta (time-release Ritalin) because it lets me focus on things long enough to actually get them done. It hasn't made me less creative, or less odd, just less flakey.

I'm an adult, and I never tried it when I was a kid. But I wish I'd had the opportunity to, because I know I would have done a lot better in school. It's what let me focus enough to work with math, finally =).

Me...

[friedmud]

As a beneficiary of "gifted education" throughout my elementary and junior high years, I can say that these types of programs are wonderful.

I am not sure that I would have done as well in school if I didn't have a place to go and be challenged... the normal classes were just too slow and I found myself just treading water most of the time. My Gifted classes offered an environment that was both challenging and encouraging while also providing a place for me to be among other people that understood how it felt.

I don't know if they are still doing "Gifted Ed" out there in public schools (I know that in my home town the program got killed shortly after I left Junior high... due to budget constraints)... anyone know? Anyone have a child that is currently in a public school program built specifically for higher IQ children? I'd be interested in hearing about it.

Friedmud

PS - I guess I never really explained what "Gifted Ed" was... basically it was a bunch of kids that were determined to have higher than average IQ's... once a week we met and learned about "other" subjects in "different" ways... I "tested in" when I was in 3rd grade (as did most of my peers)

Slackers, timid kids and smart kids.

[EnronHaliburton2004]

Well, there are several kinds of "This is boring"-types of kids.

- The dumb slacker or jock, who doesn't bother trying.
- The timid kid who is scared to try and fail (my sister).
- The smart kid who is unchallenged by the course.

It is sometimes very hard to distinquish which kid is which.
- The unchallegned smart-kid may try to find entertainment in smoking pot, and end up a slacker-- when I was in school it wasn't cool to be smart.
- Nobody admits to being timid, so they act like a cool slacker instead.
- Some dumb slackers like to pretend that they are smart slackers and are just too cool to care.

We need to help all children, certainly. But there comes a time when the kids need to help themselves as well. If you're a 16-year old slacker who doesn't bother trying, I see no reason to give you special treatment because you're old enough to know better. Grow up, or you're going to be pumping gas when you're 30.

It's Thanksgiving and I'm going to go back to my hometown. I get to go see some slackers and jocks who never tried hard enough-- they'll be pumping the gas.

If I was bored in school, I simply found other things to do. I did Boy Scouts, track, marching band and concert band. And I read alot.

We didn't really have this Interweb thing back then, but I probably would have geeked out a fair bit if I had the chance.

Re:Slackers, timid kids and smart kids.

[pipingguy]

  It's Thanksgiving and I'm going to go back to my hometown. I get to go see some slackers and jocks who never tried hard enough-- they'll be pumping the gas.

Really? Or is that just a convenient way for you to remember them as you get your revenge.

I detect a bit too much hubris and I'm sure you must be a big hit with your generation, what with the showing up in Ferraris with supermodels and stuff.

If everyone was an intellectual rock star like yourself, well, the guy that gave you wedgies way back when would just continue to do so while quoting Hegel.

Be sure to flip the unwashed plebe a quarter after s/he fills the tank and polishes your fender.

Re:Slackers, timid kids and smart kids.

[anagama]

We need to help all children, certainly. But there comes a time when the kids need to help themselves as well. If you're a 16-year old slacker who doesn't bother trying, I see no reason to give you special treatment because you're old enough to know better. Grow up, or you're going to be pumping gas when you're 30.

I basically never studied in high school, didn't really have to. I can't recall studying anything. So I went to college and then spent 3 years on and off academic probation. The only thing that kicked me into gear was when my mom died -- I realized I had to do for myself from that point on. I went from 1.99 GPA to a near 4.0 (damn drawing class - got a B). Eventually I went to law school but by then, I had developed the perfect study plan (my girlfriend hated me and I her -- I stayed at the library till 10 every night just because I wanted to get home after she fell asleep -- well, there isn't that much to do in the library but study even after talking with friends, shooting pool, or playing Ramparts -- my grades rocked ... then she left and I liked going home).

I don't know what the answer is, but I know that I learned my poor study skills between the 1st and 12th grade. It's something I struggle with to this day. If something is interesting, I'll get obsessively involved. If it's dull -- getting myself to do it is a major ordeal.

Dubious Methodology

[orson_of_fort_worth]

I thought Professor Lucas had once and for all established that measuring midichlorian counts in the child's blood are the only true way to determine if said child is in fact a prodigy. Please see the Jedi archives for further reading on the subject.

Intelligence isn't everything. Not even close.

[LtDrebin]

I know a lot of very smart people. Unfortunately, most of them will not amount to much. I mean, they'll be moderately successful, but they won't make the news or anything like that. Why? They have no ambition and no work ethic. What was that quote? "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration."

Leave them to their jobs as patent clerks.

[nick_davison]

But do we know how to identify the child whose brilliance might change the world?

We've been identifying those we think of as brilliant and world changing for centuries. We've also been laughing at those who think of themselves as brilliant or world changing and telling them to go back to the patent office or selling their lousy paintings and hanging out in Munich's beer halls.

This implies:

1) What we see as brilliant or world changing (whether world changing is good or bad) often isn't. What we don't understand and therefore, in our arrogance, can't identify as brilliance often is.

2) Ever notice how the truly brilliant ones are the ones who faced adversity? The ones who make a real difference seem to do so because they've learned to fight damn hard. The ones we tell are geniuses tend to expect things to be handed to them, are obsessed with their own genius, and rarely seem to really do anything that truly amazing - as opposed to simply being pretty successful and massively bipolar.

Given the second, perhaps the best thing we can do is not identify those poor kids? Adversity seems to harden the amazing ones; over attention seems to lessen them.

Re:Leave them to their jobs as patent clerks.

[po8]

True brilliance is (by definition) extraordinarily rare. Thus, it is difficult to exclude the possibility that the majority of brilliant folks we see are those with both brilliance and the ability to overcome adversity, while many other more delicate geniuses wither on the vine. My experience with life has been that whatever adversity doesn't kill me nonetheless makes me weaker. Seems to me that the guy famous for reporting the opposite experience is widely considered to have been mentally ill.

What do we want from them?

[identity0]

In a previous story about a brilliant Korean kid, there were a lot of Slashdotters who were like, "Well, most prodigies probobly don't amount to anything", or "How do we know if they'll contribute much to society". I think that is looking at this from the wrong perspective.

What we should be trying to do isn't trying to get the most out of these kids like we're shareholders in a company, what we should be doing is helping them go where *they* want to go. I am reminded of Dilbert's trash man, who is more brilliant than Dilbert, but works collecting garbage. If he's happy doing that, why should we lament how much "talent he's wasting"? You or I are probably not living up to our potential, either.

Some people were saying that putting kids in advanced classes were a waste because it doesn't lead to smarter adults in the end. I think that's not the point. Imagine doing 5th-grade level math for a whole year, when you can do much harder math. Even if it's easy, you'd be bored to tears and intellectually starved. It's thins kind of thing which leads a lot of bright kids to underperform or become discipline problems. For their sake, I think we should let them go to classes at their level.

But what if...

[nonlnear]

a child gets... left behind?... :)

And do we really want to?

[DMouse]

That saddens me. Why would you not want to help bright kids acheive their full potential? Are you afraid of change? Do you really prefer this current state? Or do you fear that bright kids will bring about the downfall of civilisation?

I am truly at a loss to understand that state of mind. Really.

Re:Typical ... help the top 3 percent screw the re

[Anonymous Coward]

I think America would be better off with 97 percent average or above children

Oh, wait...

child benefits despite annoying parents

[deltacephei]

Both of my level whatever boys have gained from participation in their respective gifted programs. One displayed the hubris mentioned earlier, and became quite lazy due to never being challenged. It was a good awakening for him to interact with other talented kids doing more difficult problems. The other spent all of second grade being mostly playfully teased that he was the smartest kid in the class; now that he spends some time with kids who are even smarter than himself, he's feeling much more at home in his own skin. Plus, his MO occasionally includes some off-nominal behaviors and lots and lots of intense energy. Prior to his entrance into the gifted program, the early teachers just wanted to get him into special ed and drug him up. Now he is accepted and is loving school. Benefit to society? Probably not, just happier, more engaged kids.

meh

[Dun Malg]

But do we know how to identify the child whose brilliance might change the world?

Non-sequitur. Most world-changing is done by loud, charismatic jackasses of only average-plus intelligence. Those few world-changers who make great scientific discoveries aren't generally super-ultra genius material, but rather tend to be the hard-working, driven variety of the more common "lesser" genius. "Super-genius" people tend to not be able to apply themselves at education to build a knowledge base from which to make such discoveries.

Advantage?

[vhold]

I think the major problem with this kind of thinking is that gifted programs generally are mostly just trying to take up more of a kid's time. They basically just seem to give extra homework, and are maybe advanced by a year or so in terms of what they are studying.

I don't know anybody who's public school 'gifted program' gave them what they really needed, self expression. Smart kids generally will give that to themselves, but gifted programs, in my opinion, actually stifle their ability to do so by trying to fill up all their time with academic busywork, as if somehow rigid structure is going to make them smarter.

Intelligence is next to nothing without creativity. The benefits of being a couple years ahead of your peers academically diminish greatly as you age. Missing out on the freetime of youth is something very difficult to make up for.

Re:smartest-kids-read-slashdot

[itwerx]

I've heard more intelligent and original discussion over trucker band cb radio.
I've got an uncle who was a trucker for 40 years and his IQ is off the charts...
      Then again you probably wouldn't have heard much from him on the CB, he always said he liked trucking because it was the only job where 99% of the time he didn't have to talk to anybody! :)

Don't hold us back... but don't push us, either.

[cperciva]

When I was 13, I had a choice: I could either stay in high school, or I could drop out in order to attend university full-time. I decided to stay in high school -- which is to say that my time was divided roughly equally between high school and university mathematics courses -- and I think this is one of the best decisions I ever made. Over the following four years, I learned far more at high school than I did at university, and while I ended up graduating from university at age 19 instead of age 17, I came out knowing vastly more.

No, I'm not going to talk about the merits of a well-rounded education, or the benefits of socialization. Over those four years when I split my time between high school and university, I learned far more mathematics at high school than at university. What very few people understand is that smart people learn as much by thinking as they do by being taught. By spending half of my time in a completely unchallenging environment, I was (albeit not by design) allowing myself the time I needed to discover mathematics on my own which went far beyond the undergraduate curriculum.

If my parents had pushed me into studying full-time at university, I'd have finished at age 17 with a 4.0 GPA, but I wouldn't have become a Putnam fellow, calculated the quadrillionth bit of pi, discovered a new algorithm for polynomial GCDs over number fields, published research concerning floating-point rounding errors in the FFT, or developed any of the ideas which have become central to my ongoing research. Aside from being a few years younger than average, I would have turned into a completely normal mathematics honours student.

Obviously, I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with a 1st class honours degree in mathematics; but in terms of changing the world, a 19 year old doing brilliant research is a far better position than a 17 year old who knows the undergraduate curriculum but has never had to think for himself.

Re:Typical ... help the top 3 percent screw the re

[adrianmonk]

Also what about helpping out the other 97 percent. I think America would be better off with 97 percent average or above children then 3 percent genius and 97 percent retarted.

I don't mean to be mean, but I think if you think the lower 97 percent can be average or above, then your math skills might not be that great.

Re:as someone lumped with the prodigies for awhile

[RembrandtX]

I second your theory on this .. I was tested several times in a G.E. program when I was young, and was given an I.Q. that I am always embarrised to share in mixed company, lets just say its a signifigant number.

That out of the way, I SWEAR I have gotten dumber as I have gotten older.

First there were girls,
then money,
then 'advancing my career'.

With each step on society's ladder, i've shed IQ points like water off a duck.

I recently had a kid, He seems pretty bright, and thus will probably bring be down to a nice society average I.Q. in record time :)

Smart people, simple jobs.

[TapeCutter]

Your Uncle is in good company. Einstien was working as a patent clerk because he couldn't find a University that would take him. Getting a formal education and a "good job" has a lot more to do with persistence than IQ. Also there are many differing opinions as to what a "good job" actually is. If your Uncle enjoyed his 40yrs of driving he is not only smart but wise too.

Re:Smart people, simple jobs.

[sgt_doom]

While I don't disagree with the gist of these postings I wish to clear up that urban legend about Einstein - that patent clerk job he had was a very prestigious job at that time - the term "clerk" meant something entirely different in the context of that period - it would be more akin to a patent attorney - or head of the patent office - today. And FYI, Einstein was a straight "A" student - I once saw his early school records in a display case in a German library years ago when I was bumming around Europe.

Re:Intelligence isn't everything. Not even close.

[adrianmonk]

I know a lot of very smart people. Unfortunately, most of them will not amount to much. I mean, they'll be moderately successful, but they won't make the news or anything like that. Why? They have no ambition and no work ethic.

Unless your parents make you do LOTS of chores, the vast majority of your work up until your teens is learning. Your job is to learn, and it is pretty much a full-time job. If you are a really gifted kid, the learning you're typically called on to do is easy. Even trivial.

For example (not to toot my own horn), in elementary school, I was recognized for academic achievement at some kind of school-wide assembly. The principal or whoever was presenting said something like, "I bet you spend a lot of time studying, don't you?". And I said, "Not really." He got annoyed (I wasn't setting a good example or he thought I was being flip), but I was just telling the truth.

Anyway, the point is, if most of the "work" you're called on to do for the first 15 years of your life is trivially easy, then you don't establish very good work habits. You have no need to. Necessity is the mother of invention, and the necessity doesn't exist.

So, in my mind, that is one reason why a gifted kid program could be valuable: they can present you with mental tasks that are difficult enough that you do learn to work. With some luck, you'll establish good habits.

"Genius" and high IQ are different animals

[jgrabyan]

Preface: The profession for which I am currently receiving training (Ph.D in Neuropsychology; look it up) involves the measurement of cognitive functioning; the assumption that there is some meaning inherent to these sorts of tests is part of my bias. Also, I'll be refering to intelligence as defined by the Western world. Different cultures have different ideas of what constitutes an "intelligent" individual. What many in this discussion fail to realize is that genius and IQ are two very different things. In addition, the way IQ is measured is very important for this discussion. "Genius" is a social construct. Genius is defined as one who has significant acumen in a certain area, while simultaneously being prolific in their participation in that discipline. Einstein is properly labeled as a genius because of the amount of significant work he published in 1905, NOT because his IQ score was 180 or some such arbitrary number. Currently, it would be very inappropriate if a psychometrician were to label someone as a "genius" based solely on their test scores. IQ is a number, supposedly measuring overall intellectual ability. The Weschler Intelligence Scale for Children III (WISC-III) is the most effective measure we have for measuring intelligence in children. HOWEVER, it has been repeatedly shown that the accuracy of this test breaks down past the fourth standard deviation in the upper range; that is, anything past 160. What I'm trying to get across is that genius is a label given by society, while a high IQ is something that is earned by scoring well on a test. Someone who is a genius need not have a high IQ, as IQ measures very specific things, and one can be a genius without excelling in those areas. Likewise, an individual with a very superior IQ need not be a genius; the main character from "Good Will Hunting" spent his time as a janitor in the beginning of the movie (if memory serves), and thus would not be considered a genius at that time. Jon

KISS

[TapeCutter]

"I have yet to meet a genius who knows what KISS means"

I belive genius is an overused category. I am 46 and I don't think I have met anyone who would qualify as a genius. As far as I can see there are only ever a handfull of geniuses alive at any one time. These people are considered great minds specifically because they have revolutionised our thinking by simplifying existing explanations, eg: Maxwell, Einstien, Newton, Turing. All the great scientific minds I can think off belived that the Universe must be governed by simple and elegant rules.

Lawyers on the other hand have a financial interest to strive for complex and contradictory rules, as do many of the other "geniuses" running the planet.

Re: I'm really really smart

[po8]

First off, IQ is quite poorly defined above about 125, because the set of 15 or 20 skills that make up the IQ spectrum become increasingly uncorrelated. I won't say what my IQ is, but let's just say that that my score on a test of verbal IQ is way different than on a mathematical test, and way way different than on a test of visual reasoning. So I'm not really buying your distinction (or Mensa's for that matter) between 99th percentile IQs and 99.9th percentile IQs. At any rate, if you quote your IQ as "151", I think you need to go examine some material on significant digits: it's an easy concept, and someone like you should get it right off.

Second, if you believe that "Coming up with good ideas for projects and entertaining yourself have [sic] very very ["Substitute 'damn' every time you're inclined to write 'very'; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be." --Mark Twain] little to do with intelligence," I think you probably are overestimating your own intelligence (perhaps with professional help). All of the brightest people I've known (and I've known some scarily bright ones) are full of this kind of creativity and energy.

One thing you said that did resonate with me, though, is the idea that it might be better to help gifted students develop coping skills for their unique societal situation rather than simply help them further develop their intellectual capabilities (which they can usually do fine on their own anyhow). My biggest problem in childhood was mild episodic depression resulting from getting taunted and beat up a lot and excluded from the society of my peers. Teaching me basic psychology and sociology to help me handle relations with my peers, together with effective self-defense for when that other stuff didn't work :-), might have been a vast improvement for me. I don't know.

Certainly providing a physically and socially safe school environment is at least as important to gifted kids as to the general populace. I find it amazing that many parents put up with sending their kids to schools that can't even guarantee simple safety from physical brutality. Fortunately, my boy's public school seems to be first rate in this regard so far. I'm having huge fun watching this immensely gifted kid learn like crazy and really enjoying himself.

Brilliant kids have different goals - Knowledge

[TiggertheMad]

Knowledge for knowledge's sake, good for goodness' sake.

I think that this comment is an accurate description of the ethos that motivates highly intelligent people.

I was chatting with a friend of mine awhile back, and he made a comment that all that really matters in terms of a person's achievements in life is knowledge. Intelligent people achieve the thing they value: knowledge. Sometimes this might lead to diseases being cured or physics being revolutionized, or sometimes it might just lead to someone becomming the world champion on Jepoardy.

ATP

[Cycon]

When I was in grade school (East Coast US) I was put into a program called "ATP" (Academically Talented People). Basically they gave everyone in Kindergarten and later the 1st grade half of an IQ test in the classroom. The kids who did well were called into an interview to complete the test. Kids over a certain threshold were put into the ATP program.

Once a week we would leave our regular classroom, and board a bus for a spare classroom in another school, along with kids from other schools in the district. We would study things like Dinosaurs, try to work out puzzles and riddles, and do special "creative" projects like breaking into groups and writing, drawing, and filming our own cartoons using drawings or cutouts and a mounted camera. In 5th grade we were asked to do a project on any topic of our choosing, alone or in a group. I think one of the groups learned how to tie-dye shirts and that was their presentation.

The program also afforded us a second special "class trip" each year, to a museum or something generally educational. I think in the end the jealously from the other kids over this second class trip, plus the physical distinction of dissapearing once a week on the bus balanced favourably against the benefit of the specialized education.

In later years I was diagnosed with ADD (not ADHD), after trouble with grades and paying attention. The high school I attended put me into the "second track" because of it - mainly with the jocks and average students. The "smart" kids were placed in the first track. I think that too happened a just the right time. I spent most of my high school classes in the back of class reading novels, paying just enough attention to get reasonable grades. The jocks looked at me as one of the "smart" kids but I never acted like I was "above" them and made it through all four years without anyone giving me so much as a hard time - despite being a generally shy person.

In the ATP program I learned that I was "smart" and was rewarded with more interesting material and an extra class trip. In high school I learned that I wasn't "better" than anyone else and in a way it was "smarter" to get good grades without having to try hard, since in the end colleges didn't have any concept of which "track" I was in - it looked like I was putting in more effort than I really needed to.

Oh, this criminal behavior again...

[JumpingBull]

Frankly, I think that streaming kids because of intelligence is a criminal act.
This is probably a contentious, inflammatory statement to the slashdot crowd, but there are good reasons behind it.
It has been my experience to watch the results of this misguided, hunchbrained thinking. They are not pretty.
Merely developing intelligence is a cowardly act of dastardly proportions because people are more then just a disembodied intellect. If the entire person is not cultivated, then the classical "brain" shows up; socially inept, emotionally shallow and oblivious to the consequences of their actions.
Contrast this with some of the more colorful characters that established new grounds: Claude Shannon ( Information Theory), Richard Feynmann ( quantum electrodynamics) and others.
These people had real personalities, were socially aware of the rules they were breaking, and why those particular circumstances could accept that challenge in the playful spirit it was offered.
Frankly, enriching the sterile classroom environment would benefit all learners, even if they were a bit slow. This is especially needed at the elementary level, when the realisation of the world as having both order and mystery can forge the best from every person.
Lose the calculators, use the slide rule which gives a tremendous feedback as to the "feel" of arithmetic. Make it real, not abstract and the illiteracy, innumeracy and "common nonsense" bugbears suffer a major blow.
Or, keep the things as they are and we can have our surgery done by educated fools.
Your call.
JB

Re:Saw that movie!

[tacocat]

Haven't you ever read Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy?

It's fairly obvious that those who want to run for public office are not qualified to do so. Consider the intelligent people who never stood a chance or voluntarily turned it down. Consider the people who hold the positions today versus those who held it in the past. Lincoln would probably not be even considered today. Quayle was ridiculed out of the chance not because he's ignorant (he's not really, he's actually quite smart) but he couldn't surivive the assault of the media. Gore is a very intelligent person but also could not manage the media presence. All of these people do not have a good presence on the television/radio.

It's not about politics, it's about marketing appeal and sales.

I.Q. is bunkus and has been proven so many...

[OneSmartFellow]

times to be a totally unreliable predictor of intellectual acheivement that it should be banned as a means of determining elidgability for Govt. funded programs.

The main problem with I.Q. is that it seems to be more of a measure of education and diet than intelligence (see The Milwaukee Project). Secondly it was developed to discover mental deficiency, not identify super bright people.

It is also interesting to note the popular misconception about I.Q. scores. I.Q. values between 80 and 130 comprise about 90% of the population, so if you are within these values you are defintely simply 'normal' - note I didn't say 'average', in I.Q. terms that's a score between 90 and 110. You are not anything special until you have a score significantly above 130 (130 is still a surprising - to some - large segment (2.5%) of the population - in the U.S. there are about 7.5 million people with a score of 130 or above, so 130 is hardly exceptional !), perhaps 150 or above and you are starting to be a real stand-out.

Of course, the opposite side of the coin is true too, you would need to have a score below 70 to be considered 'extremeley low' intelligence..

There are many other problems with I.Q. tests, namely that they rely upon linguistic abilities that many people do not posses, or acquire until later in life - since in order to answer a question correctly you must not only understand what is being asked, but also communicate your answer. It has been shown that females acquire linguistic prowess more rapdily in life than males, yet no-one would suggest that it makes sense to say that females have higher I.Q.s than males at the same age - or if they do, they fail to grasp the purpose of I.Q. tests.

Re:smartest-kids-read-slashdot

[zanderredux]

Heh. Maybe, that's the true measure of smartness: being able to know what you really like, get a job that fulfill those requirements and be able to extract joy and happiness from it, despite what other people think.

What good is an astronomical IQ if you have to drag yourself around everyday doing what you hate and getting underpaid for it?

Actually..

[TubeSteak]

Actually, conformity and socialization are not the primary goals of the education system.

Things were rejigged back in the early 1900's to produce good factory workers. Hence the bells, report cars, raise your hand, ... blah blah blah

http://reason.com/0110/fe.dp.schools.shtml

aylorism -- the management philosophy, named for efficiency expert Frederick Winslow Taylor, that there was One Best Way of doing things that could and should be applied in all circumstances -- didn't spend all its time on the job. It also went to class. In the school, as in the workplace, the reigning theory was One Best Way. Kids learned the same things at the same time in the same manner in the same place.

Don't forget... Part of the reason nobody wants to change the education system is that most people can't envision a system other than the one they went through.

Every country's school system represents the values that country holds. Chinese citizens are taught to quite, respectful, non-disruptive, etc. The poor bastards won't raise their hands in class to ask a question because it would disrupt the teacher's lecture. Now I've had classes like that, but not an entire educational system.

If you didn't notice, most educational systems do not place the priority on education.

"genius" vs. "very, very smart"

[The Fun Guy]

I once read one of Turing's colleagues describing him as a genius. According to this account (uncited because I can't remember where I read it, despite my own 168 IQ), there were a lot of very, very smart people working at Bletchley Park, but Turing was the only genius. He said the difference was that when you are very, very smart and see someone else who is very, very smart do something very, very smart, you think, "Oh, well, right, I would have come up with that eventually." When you see a genius do something that is an act of genius, you realize that you could have worked on it for the next 20 years and not come up with that. Geniuses, he said, are very inspring and very annoying.

Most people who are very, very smart are usually the smartest person in the room at any given time. It's only under special circumstances that a collection of very, very smart people are brought together, and it's even rarer for there to be a true genius among them.

How to deal with kids of different intelligence

[paladinwannabe2]

Let kids take classes in elementary school and middle school like they do in college and high school- able to pick the classes that they want to take. Then you don't need three levels per grade for smart, dumb, and average kids. If someone flunks 7th grade math they can take it over again. If someone feels their 6th grade english class is too easy they can take 7th or 8th grade english. My school let me take 8th grade Science classes in the 6th grade- and I actually learned something in my science class for the first time in years. Upping the grade level is usually all that is necessary to make a class challenging for someone. (Sometimes you need to go 2 or 3 levels higher, but it's still basically the same idea).