
Why there’s no such thing as a gifted child - jansho
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/jul/25/no-such-thing-as-a-gifted-child-einstein-iq
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slackingoff2017
This has to be paid placement for the book, shame on you Guardian.

Also it's laughable. Intelligence is basically something you're born with.
Around half is inherited, the rest is, IMO, luck, but still determined very
young or in the womb.

Giftedness is measurable young, possibly at the beginning of speech (gifted
children almost always talk earlier than average). This raises doubt that it's
something developed by training.

Some studies also, controversially, show that final IQ can't be easily
manipulated by learning. That IQ is fixed at a young age and remains static
through a wide variety of future up brining.

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belorn
The article uses three terms: "gifted", "intelligence", and "high
performance", but it seem to be as doing a rather poor job at distinguishing
them in the beginning. The article seems to acknowledge that intelligence is a
spectrum where people are born with everything from intellectual disability to
intellectual giftedness, but then focus primarily on performance. A gifted
child, as define by the article, is a high performing child.

Seems similar to people who would look at a tall child and proclaim that they
will be high performing baseball player, and then get disappointed when they
don't end up in major league. I find it rather obvious that most of the
tallest children in the world won't end up as professional baseball players,
similar to how most of the highest intellectual gifted children won't end up
with a Nobel prize. Instead I predict that children on any extreme end of a
spectrum will face a long list of unique challenges in a society which is
designed for the median, resulting in a wide range of performance results.

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woodpanel
Just recently did a hackathon for teenagers. The differences in abilities were
krass.

And not just programming knowledge but also mental agility, self assurance,
independence, problem solving and social as well as soft skills.

Some couldn't even speak up. Others seemed like born problem solvers - 16 yr
olds you could directly employ. Some were a fountain of creativity. One kid
had an ego so big, that made him unpopular with us grown ups but I have to
admit, he'll have a great future at any start up. Probably his own.

Kids aren't born equal - but the role of psychology and possible neurochemical
makeup is IMO under-appreciated in how we educate people.

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jwilk
> [Einstein] failed the general part of the entry test to Zurich Polytechnic

Yeah, let's leave unsaid the fact that he was 16 at that time.

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OnlyTruth
And mainly failed because - coming from Germany - he only had very little
education in french (as opposed to the other Swiss kids who had several
years.)

Einstein was exceptional: [http://www.einstein-
website.de/z_kids/zeugniskids.html](http://www.einstein-
website.de/z_kids/zeugniskids.html)

6 in Switzerland is excellent and very few kids have a 6 in their High School
Diploma, not even talking about five of them! (a 6 is generally much, much
harder to achieve than an A in the US for example.)

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randyrand
It's amazing how far people will bullshit for their equality narrative.

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magic_beans
I'm all about treating all people equally, but to claim all children are
intellectually equal??? That's absurd. Walk into any kindergarten and you'll
be able to tell immediately who the smart kids are.

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stephengillie
The theoretical "IQ" represents just a maximum of an individual's potential
intelligence. We don't always operate at that level, as many factors - such as
hunger, lack of sleep, and frustration - may subtly and temporarily reduce the
quality of our cognitive output.

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hu3
What about this kid (supposedly 8 years old) teaching Haskell and uni level
math? Sadly, non-english video:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLLm8JaLqq8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLLm8JaLqq8)

~~~
have_faith
How did you find this video?

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libeclipse
> Even Einstein was unexceptional in his youth.

Citation needed.

~~~
YCode
That applies to most of what's being said in this thread as well.

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carsongross
IQ is 50-80% heritable.

There is such a thing as a gifted child.

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kleborp
"So, is there even such a thing as a gifted child? It is a highly contested
area."

This seems to be at odds with your title, The Guardian.

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mindcrash
This article is bullshit, and I can tell from experience because I learned to
read all by myself when I was about three years old.

My IQ is also at least good enough to get through the official Mensa pre-test
(which you need to take to know if you should even consider taking the
official one).

