

Are We Failing Our Geniuses? - karthikv
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1653653,00.html

======
motoko
My mother is the director of gifted education in a major midwestern city's
public school district. She doesn't believe in evolution.

There are quotas for minorities. Many otherwise qualified students are denied
acceptance because their places are reserved. And not just a few... many.

Logistically, kids need to be bused from other schools, but transportation is
uncooperative and the schools resent the hassle. There is also an additional
bureaucratic and testing cost. These costs are in addition to running the
programs themselves, but _these_ costs specifically antagonize other political
entities in the school district.

And of course... unlike special ed, teachers resent busing away their best
students. They fight over dumping the worst, of course.

Politically (within the district) gifted education is a career for pariahs.
They create hassle for the "normal" (aka "real") teachers and they have no
power to deter neglect or abuse. The teachers and staff in the department are
paid less than require more education than "real" teachers. This drives away
the best teaching talent and firmly entrenches the some least ambitious
teachers within the department.

The curriculum is a petri dish of all sorts of inane pet political agendas.
Especially in science and math, the teachers don't know the subjects
themselves, so these subjects simply aren't taught beyond a pre-packaged
lesson plan.

The consequence: the most qualified students leave the district (if they can.)
Instead of integration, communities become more and more segregated. Fact is,
if you don't "segregate" special resources for the best within a community,
the best will leave. School districts only have incentives to reduce
segregation with their local district. But segregation is inevitable, and
failing to deal with it merely bubbles the segregation to higher levels.

Hence, I'm writing this from Silicon Valley and not the midwest.

 _Update_

So nerd education is the nerd of education.

If you were a nerd in school, and you remember how _you_ were treated, doesn't
that seem like a plausible extrapolation?

~~~
palish
Religious belief is orthogonal to the ability to teach well. You just have to
leave beliefs out of it.

~~~
motoko
Maybe, but teach what?

Also, director means choosing curriculum and teacher selection.

And I'm not trying to derail the conversation, I'm suggesting anecdotal
evidence about educational priorities (or lack of them) in public schools.

------
sanj
I'm embroiled in parts of this debate with myself. By most measures, I'd be
identified as a smart person. Perhaps even "really, really" smart. But back in
the 4th or 5th grade, I wasn't selected as "gifted".

The practical upshot is that instead of going to a different school and being
surrounded by teachers who were in tune with my needs, I stumbled through a
public suburban high school replete with all the drama that Judd Apatow can
fit onto the screen.

I consider this a very lucky occurence.

Why? Because it forced me to keep _myself_ occupied rather than expecting
anyone else to do so. It freed me from a mindset of educational entitlement.

By spending this years in a regular school, I was able to learn take on a host
of other activities that I found interesting at my own pace and at my own
behest. My intellectual development and curiosity drove me forward.

And it forced me to learn how to navigate elements of the "real world" that
end up being speedbumps along the way. _Isolation from that is a mistake._
I've many friends who've learned that the hard way.

Now I'm a happy adult with a precocious son. I'm getting worried about his
teachers in kindergarten are going to deal with a child who happily decides if
numbers are primes and points out square roots.

How do I teach him to learn for himself. To realize that his school gives him
a starting point for his education, and not the entireity. To help him end
become a ferociously curious individual who gets stuff done, not in some
isolation chamber gifted bubble, but in the real world -- omplete with
alliances and politics and emotions and conflicts.

It's hard. It was hard to live through as the student, and I expect it to be
hard for me to live through as his guide.

But it is absolutely the right place to end up.

~~~
jey
I agree that it's very important to learn how to navigate the real world, but
I really think there's a comfortable compromise between destroying the egos of
a significant fraction of gifted kids and sending them to some exclusive
school with an artificial environment. I stopped doing homework in the third
grade, and scraped by for the rest of my time in the school system. I somehow
managed to get admitted to university, but was kicked out after two tortuous
years for failing too many classes. I pretty much had 11 unhappy years, from
third grade until I got kicked out.

I always enjoyed learning interesting things, but school had nothing to do
with learning. School was a place you went to maximize your GPA by doing rote
busy work, and any learning done was just an accidental side-effect while
pursing grades.

I never considered myself smart while in school; I saw myself as a worthless
slacker with an unhealthy programming obsession. This was the image instilled
in me from my teachers, school administrators, and parents constantly chiding
me to do my homework. I didn't have the perspective nor the self-image to seek
out the kind of help I needed. I also don't think an 8 year old should be
expected to come up with theories of why he's failing in school.

The theories that the school administration came up with were just based on
one observation: Jey doesn't do his homework. Solution: make Jey do his
homework. There was no thought given to root causes, nor any experimentation
with different strategies. It always just came down to keeping a notebook of
homework assignments and making sure I did them that evening. All this
bullshit just made me consciously give up on the educational system and write
it off as worthless and ineffective.

I still don't know how exactly I should have been helped, but a _huge_ problem
is that the educators themselves are not aware of the pattern I was
exhibiting. It's well documented that many "gifted" kids exhibit the same
symptoms: extreme abrasive cynicism, defiance and hatred of authority,
lackluster school performance, and depression. Part of the problem is that
these kids will be pretty rare; gifted kids are rare to begin with, and these
kids form a fraction of the gifted population. There should be some effort to
educate educators of this pattern, and research on what kind of help works for
this population. I think any solution that would have worked for me would've
had to capitalize on my high level of curiosity and harnessed it in some way.
Assigning more bullshit busy work (a la AP and Honors classes) wasn't the
solution. If I had a teacher who engaged me in the material, and presented
material as _interesting_ and _challenging_ rather than as _work_ , I think I
could've done better. AP and Honors classes seem to make the classes harder
mostly by increasing the volume of work. On the other hand, this could just be
wishful thinking and maybe there is no strategy that could've made me get
through formal education. I don't know, but I think it's worth doing the
studies to find out, as I'm not a one-off oddball case.

Getting kicked out of university was the first step to recovery for me, and
it's the best 'disaster' that has ever happened to me. I'm now a happy person,
and really enjoy who I am and what I do. I just wish there had been a less
painful way to get here. Going to public school and suffering through the crap
did help me develop socially and form healthy friendships, something that I
would've completely missed out on if I had been homeschooled.

" _How do I teach him to learn for himself. To realize that his school gives
him a starting point for his education, and not the entireity. To help him end
become a ferociously curious individual who gets stuff done, not in some
isolation chamber gifted bubble, but in the real world -- omplete_ [sic] _with
alliances and politics and emotions and conflicts._ "

Engage his natural curiosity in the learning process. Make learning fun and a
process of discovery, not a process by which a bunch of facts are memorized to
appease some authority figure. My dad did this by using the socratic method,
and encouraging me to ask questions. Feynman tells a similar story about his
experiences with his dad in the first chapter of "The Pleasure of Finding
Things Out". [http://www.amazon.com/Pleasure-Finding-Things-Out-
Richard/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Pleasure-Finding-Things-Out-
Richard/dp/0465023959/ref=ed_oe_p/105-6747349-8129269)

~~~
sanj
I have made a pact with myself about my son. I answer his questions (as
appropriate for a 5 year old) until I just can't. And then I say "I don't
know." So far, he believes me.

The only time I ran into a hitch was when, while having to turn off a portable
DVD player because the aircraft was landing, he loudly asked:

"But Daddy, _why_ does the movie interfere with the nabigational [sic]
equipment?"

It didn't seem like a good time to talk about that particular topic.

------
palish
Assertion: The American K-12 school system is broken in huge ways. Let's talk
about it!

~~~
gibsonf1
When accountability to the customers (students/parents) is removed, and the
ability to select from alternatives is removed (choosing between schools), you
get what we have - a complete chronic mess. The only solution I can think of
to solve the problem is to completely deregulate education.

Imagine - a large market open to innovation - education startups!

(We send our daughter to private montessori)

~~~
nostrademons
I don't think _complete_ deregulation is a good idea. Problem is, the results
of education don't show up for about 10 years. Capitalism gives you what you
want _now_ , not what you need 10 years down the road.

As a general rule, markets are good when they transmit information (like the
relative scarcity of goods) and bad when they hide information (like the
chance of default on subprime mortgages). I think it's far more likely that a
free-market educational system will behave like the latter than the former,
because it's much more difficult to ascertain the quality of an education than
the quality of a laptop.

I do think more choice and accountability is necessary. I went to a public
charter school, and it was the best decision I (well, my parents) ever made.

~~~
gibsonf1
Hmmm, think of the tech industry 10 years ago and now.

~~~
nostrademons
Now imagine the tech industry if it took 10 years for people to see that
browsers are better than desktops...

~~~
gibsonf1
I think the big change there is bandwidth - browsers were _SLOW_ 10 years ago.
It wasn't possible to do much beyond the basics on a 64K dialup. (actually,
wan't it even slower than that in 97?)

------
patrickg-zill
Isn't it obvious that the answer is yes? No disrespect to the many people who
have Down's or other syndromes, as many of them are wonderful human beings;
but the current attitude is that they would rather spend $100K on special
assistants so that little Danny can be taught to use the bathroom by himself
by the time he is 14, rather than spend that same money encouraging 100 smart
kids.

------
motoko
"And for reasons that no one understands, African Americans' IQ scores have
tended to cluster about a standard deviation below the average--evidence for
some that the tests themselves are biased."

 _sniff sniff_

Like evidence "for some" that the tests work when you like the results ---but
don't when you don't?

~~~
rms
Do you think African Americans are a standard deviation dumber than average?
Or just that this proves that IQ tests are useless?

~~~
BrandonM
This probably won't be a popular opinion, but from a truly objective
standpoint, I think it's possible, for the same reason that non-blacks are a
standard deviation worse at athletic endeavors. Two factors of evolution point
me to this conclusion. Europe became civilized long before Africa, which I
would guess leads to a natural selection for intelligence in Europe (as
opposed to physical abilities in Africa - hence better athletic abilities for
them) starting longer ago than in Africa. The second factor is Africans'
earliest days in America, when they were actually bred for physical ability
while the intelligent dissenters often were killed or not encouraged to have
children.

See, I told you it wouldn't be a popular opinion. I don't think it's something
that should just continue to be ignored, though. Turning a blind eye to
possible facts just because we don't want to believe them doesn't make them go
away.

~~~
Darmani
Immunity to disease was much more strongly selected for than intelligence in
Europe. Hunting requires more intelligence than farming, so intelligence was
more strongly selected for in Africa. That modern African Americans were
descended from slaves bred against intelligence is more likely to be true.

However, even if that is true, it still may be the case that some small amount
of bias does indeed exist in IQ tests. For example, I was given an anecdote
about a Chinese boy, who, when shown a picture of people using umbrellas on a
dry day and asked what was wrong, responded that nothing was wrong with the
picture. Apparently he interpreted the umbrellas as parasols, something
Americans would be less likely to do.

~~~
BrandonM
Regarding your first point, you're probably right, and I likely overstepped my
ideas and/or didn't express them completely. I also had another consideration
that I didn't express in my first comment. The Africans that ended up as
slaves in America were the ones who had been defeated in tribal battles. On
average, I would say they would likely be less intelligent than those who win
battles or avoid them altogether.

Regarding intelligence of agriculture vs. hunting, I would argue that hunting
may require more skill, but in agriculture, intelligence (and creativity) has
a greater reward (than in hunting). That is, it is very difficult to automate
tasks in hunting (beyond things like inventing guns, which they obviously
hadn't done), but agriculture has been steadily getting more efficient with
creative inventions from iron tools to plows to the cotton gin and so on.
Hunters today still use very similar methods to ancient times. For that
reason, I believe that an agricultural society selects more strongly for
creative thinking, while a hunting society selects for physical skill and
quick thinking. The creativity required to change society in order to
accommodate more crowded conditions also undoubtedly requires intelligence.
Anyways, enough of that...

I do agree with you that there is likely a small amount of bias in tests like
these, and your example is a good one. Another I have heard was about a
question which involved the "knowledge" that lemons are yellow. In Latin
America, however, lemons are more often green, obviously giving Latin
Americans a disadvantage on that particular test question.

------
trekker7
All these smart kids should just do startups, get rich, and skip school
entirely, provided they can learn the basics themselves, and their social
lives aren't too screwed up by this. If college students can start companies,
why not brilliant high school and jr. high students?

~~~
jsnx
That has much to do with connections as it has to do with ability.

------
AdamG
So Time thinks that not letting an already arrogant kid skip two grades is
"failing" her.

The most important thing for a school age kid is to become well-socialized.

The correlation between skipping grades and turning out well is just a
correlation - it may be that those who were not allowed to skip were so messed
up socially already that they were less likely to convince their schools to
let them skip grades. In contrast, if you're well-adjusted and smart, it's
more likely that you'd be able to convince school administrators to allow you
to skip a grade. And, of course, Time misses that distinction, making it into
a clear case of "the more grades skipped the better."

~~~
mark-t
I actually have experience on both sides of this issue. My principal would not
allow me to skip 3rd grade, despite my teacher's and parents' requests. On the
other hand, in junior high, I was allowed to test out of three years of math.

I can assure you that any negative effects of skipping grades are far
outweighed by the effects of holding students back. The latter fosters
resentment and frustration, which doesn't help social aspects much. For the
former, as long as you're sharing classes with advanced students in higher
grades (and why wouldn't you be?), the older students are very welcoming.

Also, arrogance isn't a negative quality in talented math/science students --
it's essential. You just can't get really good at math unless you believe you
can figure out difficult problems yourself. Maybe you don't have to admit it,
but there's a point where denying your abilities looks foolish. The "I've
played a lot of Number Munchers" line only works for so long.

~~~
BrandonM
'The "I've played a lot of Number Munchers" line only works for so long.'

I don't often make comments like this, but LOL, for real :-).

------
auferstehung
One aspect that bothers me about the educational system is the educational
system's education for educator's. Educational "theories" seem to follow fads
that wax and wane in popularity every decade or so. (Reminiscent of the latest
"Quality System" fad: the nuts and bolts remain the same but they are arranged
differently.) One would think that educational techniques would converge over
time rather than bouncing around. An educational degree strikes me as largely
a waste more suited to a minor.

------
davidw
And here we go with the politics...

------
auferstehung
Reason's for public education:

1\. An educated citizenry is critical for a functioning democracy.

2\. An educated citizenry is critical to the economy of a nation.

------
gojomo
Ironically, one of the ways to "fail" a genius is to label her so:

"The Power (and Peril) of Praising Your Kids"
<http://nymag.com/news/features/27840/>

But, you also can't hide from someone that they're not being challenged by the
same academic work as their age-peers, so you'd better be ready with some
special challenges for them.

