
Many gifted children fail academically - tokenadult
http://www.nouvelles.umontreal.ca/udem-news/news-digest/many-gifted-children-fail-academically.html
======
hristov
That seems right. I think that a lot of the educational curriculum is just
targeted to the average, so if you are smarter, it can just all seem
incredibly boring.

One example which really pissed me off when i was a student is how so many
math classes in college base a huge portion of your final grade on tons of
mind numbing homework. This of course is targeted to the average idiot: the
university has figured out that most students have trouble with math and in
order to avoid high failing grades they create homework which is a way for
people to get points toward their grade by solving the same simple problem
over and over and over again. And of course you do not need to understand the
material to do the homework, because if there is a problem you cannot do you
can just ask the TA, etc. Thus, they replace true understanding with
memorisation and dull grinding work. Of course most smart people I knew would
more or less blow off the homework and just ace the tests, and thus they would
often end up getting a B- even though they probably understood the material
better than anyone else.

~~~
jgg
I hate "me too" posts, but when I saw what you wrote I really did want to give
you more than one "upvote". I'm a mathematics (and computer science) major at
a large, middle of the road university and I can say my experience has been
exactly this. I gave my full rant in another comment (
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1312043> ). Basically, real mathematics
takes a lot of mental resources, so in order to appeal to the masses
universities have to make the material mind-numbingly stupid. Remember: it
would be unacceptable to large corporations if only 1% of the current
engineering graduates were graduating, regardless of how much smarter that
smaller group would be.

> Of course most smart people I knew would more or less blow off the homework
> and just ace the tests, and thus they would often end up getting a B- even
> though they probably understood the material better than anyone else.

My Calculus II class graded mostly on the stupid homework (from James
Stewart's book, no less) and _attendance_!

Unless you care enough to work hard in highschool and have enough money to go
to a school like MIT, "higher" education is a huge joke.

~~~
nostrademons
MIT is free if your parents make less than $75k/year.

~~~
jgg
If I had known that, I would have actually tried in highschool.

~~~
nostrademons
That's why I'm trying to spread the word. :-)

------
spudlyo
I tested very highly in grade school and was invited to take part in a gifted
student program. I didn't have a chance to enroll however, as my family moved
that summer. After that I started doing very poorly in school, mostly because
I just stopped doing any of the work which I considered pointless busy work. I
was both bored and lazy.

In high school I started skipping classes and found refuge in the back of the
school library. Later I became bold enough to leave campus all together. I
would take the bus to the local university where I would pretend to be a
student. I mostly hung out in an isolated area of the 'terminal room' where I
would log in to my various hacked student accounts and work on programming
projects. I dropped out of high school my sophomore year. I spent some time at
same university studying computer science as a non-matriculated student before
leaving to join the tech industry where I've been ever since.

While I feel I've been reasonably successful in life, I am an academic
failure. My high school GPA was I believe 0.62. I have never bothered to earn
a GED.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Wow. I imagine I could have ended up very much in the same situation as you
had things gone somewhat differently.

I would highly recommend earning a GED, by the way. Also, I think you might be
capable of being more than merely "reasonably" successful if you put in the
effort.

------
DanielBMarkham
A lot of this resonated with me.

There is a hidden assumption, however, that somehow a gifted child is failing
if they do not get some post-grad education. Lots of gifted people become
autodidacts. I would be more interested in gifted people who gave up on
learning than I would be gifted people who didn't complete some formal
education system.

The title is correct. The value system underlying the study is debatable.

~~~
lotharbot
> _"The title is correct."_

Perhaps a modification would be appropriate:

 _Many gifted children fail at the commonly accepted academic standards._

The value of the commonly accepted academic standards is debatable.

Given my IQ, I could be considered a failure because I stopped with a Masters
instead of finishing a PhD. I might be considered a _huge_ failure because
I've devoted myself to raising my son (and learning lots of interesting things
along the way) rather than to a technical career. But I'm not a failure, I'm
simply succeeding on a different path from the expected one.

~~~
tokenadult
_I might be considered a huge failure because I've devoted myself to raising
my son (and learning lots of interesting things along the way) rather than to
a technical career._

Not by me. I've been following much the same path. Learning more about my
children's interests has helped prepare me for a more challenging career now
that my children are growing up.

------
jrockway
Gifted students fail because the system is setup for hard work, not
intelligence (or results).

I went to a special high school (Illinois Math & Science Academy). It was very
difficult and very engaging; I learned a lot and enjoyed every day.

Taking hard classes, though, is not good for college -- I was mostly a B
student (but in things like number theory, linear algebra, electricity &
magnetism), and was being compared against the A students from average high
schools when it came to college admissions. The result was that I didn't get
in anywhere really great, went to an average school, and was so bored that I
basically failed out. (Technically, I withdrew without credit after the second
semester. The first semester was great, because I took classes that I wanted
to take instead of "required classes", including DJB's UNIX security course.
If every class was like that, I would have never wanted to leave college. But
sadly, most classes involved little more than showing up and reading 1000
pages of boring books.)

If the college classes had been more interesting than kindergarten, I would
have gone... but the reality was that the professors didn't speak English, the
students didn't speak English, and I already knew everything they were
teaching me anyway. It wasn't going to work. It depressed me, so I had to
leave.

The good news is that once you get out of academia and into the real world,
the odds shift very greatly in favor of the gifted. Nobody cares how hard you
work, they care that you solve their problems. Seems like every year, a new
job offer comes around that wants to double my salary -- not exactly what the
academic establishment would say about long-haired hippies that get up at noon
and dropped out of college.

But the programming world is an odd one :)

~~~
alain94040
_If the college classes had been more interesting than kindergarten, I would
have gone... but the reality was that the professors didn't speak English, the
students didn't speak English, and I already knew everything they were
teaching me anyway. It wasn't going to work. It depressed me, so I had to
leave._

There is being gifted, and being arrogant (and young?). It's hard to tell them
apart when reading comments on HN. How do we know if really you knew those
thousands of pages already, or if you only thought your knew them.

~~~
jrockway
Why would I tell you I knew them if I didn't know I knew them?

------
derefr
I was considered "gifted" throughout elementary school. Around the beginning
of high school I put my mind to work—and realized that as long as I continued
to _pass_ , no one was going to look at my _high-school_ marks besides
university acceptance committees. Further, it was both easier and cheaper to
attend Low-Status Community College A, get a high CGPA, and use that to
enter/finish at High-Status University B by course transfer, than it would be
to try to be accepted by B from the start, given that the first few
undergraduate years of A and B are basically the same (there's really a limit
to how much you can learn in a Calculus I course, no matter how well the
teacher is being paid or how many grants they've received.)

I promptly stopped being "gifted." (That is to say, I invested much, _much_
less than my full effort in anything asked of me from that point on.)

~~~
notauser
Things I wish I had known when I was younger...

The current education system is essentially a massive gift to people* who are
willing to make the most of it.

You get a ton of free time which you can use on any project you like. People
(in education, business and especially government) are willing to put in a
huge amount of time and effort to help you if you ask. Any (business) mistakes
you make, even quite serious ones, are treated with leniency and there is no
stigma to failing and starting over.

For a good portion of that time trivia such as cooking and cleaning can be
entirely delegated to someone else, provided you are engaged on a venture that
can be described in a way that makes it meet with parental approval.

The only thing you have to do to stay in this paradise of self-determined
education and exploration is to turn up to some classes (40 hours a week!
that's hardly a full work load) and occasionally pole vault over a final exam.
If you really are so smart you should be able to do that with ease.

Frankly I think that people who think that the current educational system let
them down probably failed to hack it to their best advantage. I know I didn't
take full advantage of it, but I acknowledge that it was my problem and not
the fault of the system.

*At least, people with parents willing to help you work out how to pay the bills.

------
Qz
In my experience, school was incredibly boring for the most part. I'm far
better at teaching myself than other people are at teaching me.

~~~
PostOnce
Figuring things out on your own takes longer than having someone simply tell
you what they already know. Learning alone is often reinventing the wheel.
Sometimes that is good for you, sometimes it isn't.

I think the issue here is that average teachers aren't good at teaching above-
average students. What you need is an above-average teacher. Someone on your
level, but older and wiser.

Also, you can find teachers outside of schools. I consider a few of my friends
to be mentors. Older, wiser people are very much worth paying a great deal of
attention to.

~~~
jacquesm
Yes, but figuring things out on your own are lessons that stay for a lifetime.
Having someone tell you stuff is easy come, easy gone.

Learning by doing is not all bad, even if it is a bit slower.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Learning on your own is not necessarily significantly different than studying,
especially in the modern day of omni-available media (e.g. wikipedia).

Many years ago when I was in high school (before the web) I discovered that
reading things like national geographic and scientific american on my own time
was a perfectly adequate and often superior replacement to a full year long
course in biology (which I didn't take and yet still managed to be at the very
top of my class in AP biology). And I didn't start to outstrip my home grown
knowledge of particle physics until I started taking 400 level Chemistry
courses in college.

------
julio_the_squid
That's because the school system, and especially the social system embedded in
it, fails us thoroughly. As far as I could tell, it's actually designed to
discourage gifted children from realizing their potential.

------
user777
For these I usually casually nod, but it's actually a bigger problem than I'd
normally like to admit.

I have read seriously less books than is healthy and have memorised as little
as humanly possible from a young age on the logic that I should simply
compensate with creating enough intelligence to work it out (no joking).

Didn't start learning any reactions in science until very late on the basis
that we couldn't _possibly_ have to memorise all reactions that could be made,
therefore why learn just a few arbitrary ones in class.

Scored a standard pass in mathematics at 16, naturally went into the standard
mathematics class for the next two years instead of the advanced class. Found
the mathematics more interesting at this level (though still quite arbitrary)
and scored a high grade. The point isn't that I scored high, but that I
could've taken the more interesting further mathematics, had I taken an
interest in mindless long division methods earlier on.

The sad part is that I'm not even the smartest guy in the room, I'm just so
damn insistent on doing things logically.

Anyway, I'm posting this anonymously because it's more than I'd like to admit
to, but am throwing it out there in case anyone else has taken this style of
learning to such absurd levels (and I'll re-iterate, I'm not blowing my
trumpet, I'm not especially smart).

~~~
GeneralMaximus
I hear you. I've always insisted on figuring things out instead of memorizing
them.

Here's an anecdote: back at high school, my class was told to write all of the
basic sine-cosine formulae 100 times. The homework was worth 5 marks. I found
I could derive most formulae myself, so I didn't do the homework. The result?
Not only did I lose 5 marks, I also scored badly on the test because it was
rigged. You could only solve the test questions if you had crammed every one
of those trigonometric identities. (I did manage to solve most of those
questions, but deriving the formulae from scratch took time. The test
consisted of a lot of questions, each of which was worth very few marks.)

This has happened to me over and over in the past four years, in both high
school and college. And no, I'm not "gifted". I'm just an average student who
likes to understand how things work.

~~~
foldr
The two aren't mutually exclusive. Just because you understand how to derive a
formula doesn't mean that it's not useful to memorize it.

~~~
GeneralMaximus
Aye. That is what I do these days. But my long term retention rate for math
formulae is nearly zero.

I just came home from a math exam. During the exam, I could recall almost
every formula I had crammed last night. By tonight, I'll forget nearly half of
them. In two weeks, I'll only remember 10% of the stuff I learned, and that
too merely because some of those formulae were strikingly obvious or
wonderfully symmetrical.

I guess I just have a terrible memory.

~~~
MHordecki
You're not alone in this department. Repetition is the key.

More: <http://www.supermemo.com/english/princip.htm> (the whole site is pretty
decent at explaining the process of learning)

------
frou_dh
You can be a stealth failure, too, by breezing through Podunk University
instead of challenging yourself. Probably requires low personal/family-imposed
aspirations to go unquestioned.

~~~
cdr
Going to Podunk University has little to do with challenging yourself. Most
people (including "smart" people) would likely be better off taking a free
ride at Podunk U than an $80K+ degree at a "prestigious" private school.

~~~
tokenadult
How much of an academic difference do you think is WORTH a difference in out-
of-pocket cost? Some people take out loans to study at a particular college,
viewing attending that college as an "investment." (My oldest son, having just
had that choice, chose to attend our state flagship university. He essentially
will be paid to study at State U.) Is it reasonable to suppose that some brand
names of colleges (even if not all) might be worth more up-front expense?

------
trjordan
I understand that they're using a specific definition of gifted in the article
(mental age > 1 + physical age), but the tone still bothers me. If a child is
gifted, and does not succeed, does that not mean they are not gifted? Or, to
phrase it as a solvable problem, doesn't this mean our metrics for determining
success at an early age are flawed?

We've known for a long time that IQ does not guarantee success at any level in
life, so I'm not sure why it is a surprise when high-IQ children do not come
out on top. Even worse, they don't explain how they calculate mental age, and
why this should translate to success throughout the school years.

The thesis here ("Initially promising children often underperform") might be
correct, but there is nothing in the methodology that supports this point. It
seems too fluffy and full of assumptions to take seriously.

~~~
cj
_"If a child is gifted, and does not succeed, does that not mean they are not
gifted? "_

It depends on your definition of success. Most people would not define success
in life by their GPA. This article is telling us that high-iq children are not
_academically_ successful (as measured by their school grades).

 _Even worse, they don't explain how they calculate mental age_

"Mental age" can be synonymous with IQ. I assume thats how the author of the
article was using the phrase. Some variations of IQ tests present IQ as a
ratio of mental age over chronological age, especially useful for testing
children who are expected to be underdeveloped compared to an adult.

~~~
trjordan
Then there seems to be something missing here. I agree -- academics is only
one area of success. But if gifted does not correlate with academic success,
what kind of success are they talking about? Marking certain kids as gifted is
a useless exercise unless that information actually translates into some kind
-- any kind -- of success. If there is no predictive power to the test, then,
at best, the test is useless.

------
InclinedPlane
This reflects my own personal experience. Despite participating in the
occasional extra-curricular gifted student program and a voracious appetite
for knowledge I did relatively poorly in school up through middle school. I
was horrible at completing homework or projects regularly. Had one or another
of various factors (such as my parents, my personality, my group of friends,
etc.) been different there's a very significant and non-zero chance that I
would have dropped out of school before completing high-school (and a very
real chance of becoming a juvenile delinquent as well).

Instead, at some point during my freshman year in high school while I was
contemplating why I had fallen onto the average track for english and science
(and hating the boredom of it) I said to myself "fuck this" and decided to do
something about it, working the system as hard as I could to my advantage and
putting in a significant amount of personal effort. Ultimately I graduated as
one of the top students in my high school (after completing 7 AP courses) and
I went on to achieve a Bachelor's degree in Mathematics only 2 years later.

However, not every student is lucky enough to have the parents, school system,
etc. that I had. And not every student has the personality or the moment of
epiphany to turn things around. A lot of gifted students find themselves at
odds with a school system that increasingly turns its backs not just on gifted
students but on teaching itself. I don't find it shocking in the least that so
many gifted students are ill served by the modern school system and find
themselves at odds with it.

------
DavidSJ
Many gifted children are failed academically.

------
OmIsMyShield
There seems to be an assumption that academic success leads to successes in
life in general; and it's assumed that the converse is also true. I don't
think that this is necessarily true.

Some people fail academically but feel that they have good lives later on, and
I'm sure there are academic successes (however you define "academic success")
that end up living lives they never wanted.

Some experiences (or often, failures) outside the sheltered educational
environment might just teach some lessons that could lead to success.

Disclaimer: not saying we shouldn't try and nurture the gifted, but formal
education isn't the be all and end all in life.

------
grk
I'm an example of that. Started school a year earlier, but could start at 3rd
grade (didn't because of emotional development worries etc). Everything was
easy, nothing required any heavy work. Until I started university. Now
everything is at reasonably high level, but I'm not used to studying. But
still, I can get by on low grades, so that's what I'm doing. No one will look
at them anyway.

------
varjag
My grudge with this line of thinking is it encourages one to stay a failure
while considering themselves an unrecognized genius.

~~~
mirasombra
Amen, brother !!

I have asked a lot of people in my life: Every single person I meet consider
itself above the means!!, and when things don't work as they want, they make
excuses.

It is so easy to blame the school,college, university system and don't accept
personal responsibility. I met people with enormous success in live(social,
economical, and personal) and they worked a lot in what makes them special
before getting results.

Of course, you need to be special in something, like good on math or writing,
but then you need to work in this area. It takes risk.

I recommend "the tipping point" if you are interested on this area, it talks
about the creator of IQ test and its experiences(he tried to prove that
"gifted children" would success in live, so he made a study in California and
the people that won Nobel prices were dismissed as non gifted by him when they
were children).

~~~
tokenadult
The two subsequent Nobel Prize winners who were passed over by the Terman
longitudinal study because their childhood IQ scores were too low were William
Shockley and Luis Alvarez, both Nobel laureates in physics. No student
included in the Terman study ever won a Nobel Prize.

[http://www.amazon.com/Termans-Kids-Groundbreaking-Study-
Gift...](http://www.amazon.com/Termans-Kids-Groundbreaking-Study-
Gifted/dp/0316788902)

------
cbernini
I'll second the opinions of the people who felt lost in the college. I work
since I finished high school, and the best colleges in Brazil require full
dedication, so no time to work. I regret the fact that I decided for
continuing my career instead of dedicating myself to get into a public
college, right now I just can't do that, because I'm 22 and would have to
spend an extra year working on the admission exam preparation.

So now I have to pay for whatever college I can afford, in order to get a
degree ASAP. And man, they are totally tedious, not to say stupid considering
it's a college class. What's left for me is work hard on my Masters once I get
my Comp. Sci. degree, this time in a good institution, hopefully.

------
helwr
I failed academically, does it mean I'm a gifted child

------
robryan
Getting an IQ test also informs the child that their "gifted", meaning that
they are less likely to put in the same effort later on as their peers
assuming that their superior intellect will get them across the line.

Sure there are problems with the education system, but whatever path you take
I think you need to show some intelligence in knowing what you need to do to
achieve what you want. If you do want a degree, follow the rules of the
degree, it may not be the best education, but it's what you want. If you
don't, well great go that way. Sometimes you have to work within the
limitations of the system to get to your goal.

Needing a degree as a tick off prerequisite for some jobs is of course another
problem entirely.

~~~
TeHCrAzY
Children whom underperform are also IQ tested.

------
rjurney
I've never seen such a concise description of my academic life.

------
Heston
Perhaps Intelligence never did define success. Perhaps it was this unrelated
_determination_ that drove people to succeed regardless of their graded
abilities.

------
chrischen
> _Despite their high levels of curiosity and hunger for learning, many of
> these children lag when it comes to writing. “For these children,
> psychomotor development doesn't develop at the same pace,” says co-
> researcher Cassandre Bélanger-Legault. “This is sometimes at the root of
> academic failure.”_

I found this bit new and interesting. Does anyone know about any more research
or info on this topic (psychomotor)?

~~~
bmj
I don't know specifically about this, but we've researched neurodevelopmental
delay therapy (which asserts that many issues are caused by the delay of the
proper development of certain brain functions).

[http://www.neurodevelopmentaltherapy.ie/whatisdevelopmentald...](http://www.neurodevelopmentaltherapy.ie/whatisdevelopmentaldelay.html)

The therapist we talked to noted that many very smart kids who have delay
issues (which may manifest themselves as "simple" eye tracking or gross motor
skills issues) will eventually struggle academically because they reach a
point where their brains can no longer compensate, and generally this
manifests itself with writing issues.

------
RevRal
School was painfully slow for me. Especially with math.

I never used the textbooks for my math classes, and never did my homework. I
would never show up for the classes, except for chapter tests and finals. I
used cliffs notes. I only looked over the material for the test during the
break before the class, and I always scored highly.

This school system really wore down on me. I just didn't give a crap at all,
and my GPA suffered.

------
araneae
Alternate explanation:

We suck at telling who is _actually_ gifted from early performance.

See ch. 5 of _Nurtureshock_ : "The Search For Intelligent Life in
Kindergarten"

~~~
tkahn6
It depends how you define 'gifted'.

If you define 'gifted' to mean someone who is adept at manipulating the system
and/or playing within the system, an IQ test or other aptitude tests might not
be the best metric.

I interpret 'gifted' to mean 'inherent intelligence, critical reasoning
skills, and curiosity'. I believe these things, for the most part, are
completely unnecessary if one desires a successful academic career.

~~~
araneae
That might be how you define gifted, but if that's the case, then it would be
erroneous for you to draw any conclusions about the "gifted" based on these
data.

These data are based on standardized testing of young children. _Nurtureshock_
makes the argument that because performance on these tests is a bad predictor
of later success, early testing and tracking are doing children a disservice.

This article makes the assumption that its the _latter education_ that's
flawed, and that the tests are accurate.

------
javajones
The other problem is that not all teachers are able to handle a class full of
normal or even problem children AND meet the needs of a gifted student.

The teacher spends their time dealing with majority of the class leaving
little challenge for the student who needs more.

------
ww520
Forget gifted. Genius = 99% hardwork 1% smart.

------
joubert
in my high school, sci, math, and english classes were streamed, putting
brightest students together for accelerated learning.

~~~
tokenadult
What was the most difficult mathematics class at your high school? At what
grade level did its students take that class? How many students were enrolled
in that class?

~~~
WarDekar
I'm not the parent commenter, but where I went we had up through multi-
variable calc and linear algebra, though really I thought the toughest was
Prob/Stat in HS but that's probably because the teacher wasn't very good at
motivating students. P/S was required on the 'accelerated' track- the
accelerated track prepped you to take the BC Calc AP exam which will test you
out of Calc and Calc 2. The Multivariable and Linear classes were both
elective credits and only half a year each, and also there were no AP tests so
you had to convince your college to let you test out of them on your own
(though I can't imagine anyone had any problems with that). Both those courses
had maybe a dozen kids in them (in a class of 400ish), and it was taught by
the same teacher we had for Calc and Pre-Calc our Junior year.

Truly the best teacher I ever had without any doubt, had a passion for the
math, the students, the teaching, and did an amazing job motivating a few of
us that were used to doing the bare minimum and gaming the system (which as
has been noted is what ends up happening to a lot of 'gifted' students). If
only all our teachers (or hell, most) had half (or a quarter) the passion she
had, our schools probably wouldn't be failing like they are. Not to take
anything away from the great teachers out there, they exist, but the system
just drives away the best ones.

