

How do you spot a genius? - cclark20
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/streams-of-consciousness/2012/10/18/how-do-you-spot-a-genius/

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numeromancer
How do you write a stupid article?

* Present it as a “How to...” article, provides a few vague sentences on how you might be able to begin to plan to do it, then quickly devolve into an article on what must be done “for the childrenz!”.

* Use lots of emotionally charged nonesense words and phrases, like “gifted”, “radical ideas”, “enabling the genius within”, “renewed commitment to excellence”.

* Make it all about the childrenz.

* Be sure to add some complaint about lack of funding for projects related to your sparkly notions.

* Make the use of everyday judgement sound like a complicated process only safe for use by experts.

* Support the statement of your opinions with references to other articles stating the same opinion, but do it in the fashion of a scientific reference.

... and many more!

~~~
sageikosa
Good to know that Scientific American hasn't changed since the early mid 1990s
when I stopped reading it. There was a time that Scientific American had
articles on research and experiments (the first 150 years or so of its
existence), rather than agenda-based editorial pieces.

EDIT: "has" -> "hasn't" in first line.

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kiba
_This failure has consequences. America ranked 31st of the 56 countries that
participated in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) study,
which assesses the academic skills and knowledge of 15-year-olds._

Two "easy to fix" reasons why our school sucks: Summer vacation and sleep
depriving school schedule. Sleep is necessary for learning, but high school
students don't get enough of it because their biology collides with school
schedule. Summer vacation have a reputation for destroying education gain,
because they're not spending time reviewing what they have learned. Review is
crucial to the learning process, since our knowledge decay due to little or no
use. That's why adults will have rusty math and know a lot less than high
school seniors unless said adult is an engineer or a doctor.

They are easy to fix, in theory. All you have to do is distribute summer
vacation days into the rest of the school years. All you have to do is shift
starting time to something more reasonable like 8:30 AM or 9:00 AM.

However, they are hard, because of politics and culturally mandated stupidity.

~~~
casca
Summer vacation is only detrimental to poor kids. In wealthier households, the
children get sufficient mental stimulation so as to come back to school
without fallen behind.

The problem with changing school hours is that getting children to school
needs to work around parent's work hours. This is less of a problem in other
countries where young children can walk to school on their own or in groups,
but would require massively changing American society to work.

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cowsaysoink
I don't even know how you can justify the "only detrimental to poor kids."

It is far more an effect of the parents and household than it is economics of
the house.

And that of the school hours is kind of wrong when you reach high school
because that is when children take the bus or ride with friends with cars and
drivers licenses.

Hours for school where I went (in the US):

    
    
        Elementary:    8:30am - 3:10pm
        Middle School: 8:20am - 3:00pm
        High School:   7:30am - 2:20pm
    

There is a huge difference in the high school, especially in bus in areas
where buses come at anywhere from 6-6:45am. This isn't an issue caused by
parent schedules or you would see similar times for middle and elementary
school.

~~~
akavi
Wait, high schools starts _earlier_ than Elementary?

I'm... dumbfounded by the idiocy of that (And a quick google indicates this
isn't uncommon!).

Who on earth thought this was a good idea? Flip the ordering around and I'd
bet you'd see significant improvement for practically no pain.

~~~
shardling
Typically it's because it's still dark out for the earlier block. Parents
dislike having elementary school kids walk to school in the dark. (I have no
idea whether it is actually less safe, but that's certainly the perception.)

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timr
_"Only four states currently mandate services for gifted students and fully
fund those mandates. The failure to develop the talents of our children
deprives all of us of a stable of future innovators, creative thinkers,
leaders and outstanding performers."_

Except that clearly, it doesn't. We know this because a) we had plenty of
"genius" before we had any "gifted education", and b) the nature of the thing
implies exceptionalism that overcomes cultural boundaries. (I also strongly
suspect that "gifted education" has never been demonstrated to increase
"genius", but that's just my speculation.)

If you look at what public education is designed to do (provide for a well-
educated populace), it makes sense that most of our resources _should_ go
toward the under-performers: it's far more important to have a baseline level
of literacy and numeracy for 95% of adults, than to nurture the development of
the top 5% of people who will probably excel regardless.

I say this as someone who did "gifted education" in elementary and middle
school, and found it to be mostly useless. In retrospect, I'd rather that my
school district invested the money spent on gifted education in more AP
classes, better funding for the arts, computers or early language instruction.
It's almost negligent that a school system can afford to pay a full-time
"gifted" instructor, but not provide for foreign-language instruction starting
in kindergarten.

~~~
nicholas73
I was also put into a "gifted student" class in elementary school - it was
little more than extended play time. The problem is alluded to in the article
- it's not really agreed on how to systematically produce brilliance. At most
a school does is shunt the smarter kids into classes a bit higher than their
level. That might save those kids from some time wasting, but still isn't
developing them above from what they naturally are. IMO brilliance is a mix of
ability, effort, long term planning, and guidance - and each have dozens on
variables for maximization. Frankly I wouldn't want public schools as they are
doing any long term planning and guidance for my kid. They aren't doing well
enough teaching the basics as it is.

~~~
CrankyPants
Not my experience. The gifted classes I attended were far better than the
regular ones, and allowed me to study some JHS and HS-level material. The
major failure in my education happened during that wasted period between
elementary and college.

~~~
timr
There's a world of difference between "gifted" classes, and classes that cover
more advanced material. You'll notice that I said I would prefer AP courses
over gifted education -- there's real value to allowing _all_ qualified
students to take advanced coursework.

The situation gets messy when you try to segregate "gifted" kids into special
education from a young age. Of the kids who ended up in AP courses with me
high school, way less than half were pre-identified as "gifted" at the
elementary and middle-school level. We're just not good at identifying
intellectual potential in first graders.

~~~
CrankyPants
Sorry I wasn't clear. These were classes set aside for so-called "gifted"
children. Not just classes that covered more advanced material. (Though they
did.) Nearly everyone in there was really, really smart. I'm sure many kids
fell through the cracks and weren't selected, but other than the odd inclusion
of some musically gifted children who quickly fell behind and dropped out, we
didn't really have any false positives.

That said, I totally agree that all students who can and are interested in
advanced coursework ought to be able to benefit from it. I don't really
understand why elementary school isn't more like college. If a 3rd-grade
student reads at a 9th-grade level, but only does math at a 3rd-grade level,
why compromise his experience?

And, as one who had teachers who couldn't always answer my questions, I don't
really think asking one person to teach many types of subject matter is always
a good idea, either.

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incision
My time in a gifted program was certainly valuable, a close second to the free
lunch program that kept me fed.

I attended and later worked in and around the public school system. I have a
lot of ideas about what's wrong with it that would impossible to fully
articulate here. However, I can say that I wouldn't put "nurturing nascent
genius" particularly high on the list.

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tnuc
I read this article as "My children are gifted and the government should
fund/educate them and forget about all other kids."

From the article: >America ranked 31st of the 56 countries that participated
in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) study, which
assesses the academic skills and knowledge of 15-year-olds.

So how exactly is nurturing genius kids going to help that? Shouldn't
education for everyone be the goal?

>First of all, we need to train teachers to spot giftedness....

How about training the teachers to teach? There seems to be a lack of good
education in the US, at least for people who are poor.

~~~
kiba
_I read this article as "My children are gifted and the government should
fund/educate them and forget about all other kids."_

No, the article notes that people don't spend much money on gifted kids.

 _So how exactly is nurturing genius kids going to help that? Shouldn't
education for everyone be the goal?_

Scores isn't everything. If your scores is in the last place but you have
silicon valley and lot of genius or talents cultivated by your school system,
who cares? Moreover, cultivating genius isn't mutually exclusive to ensuring
everyone get a shot at a good education.

 _How about training the teachers to teach? There seems to be a lack of good
education in the US, at least for people who are poor._

How about don't make the teacher spend time every year doing the same god damn
live-lecture every year? Just record the video, and get all the teachers
together to vote for the best one. Record all questions students have.
Incorporate it into the next video lecture competition.

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ckluis
Summary: genius is a complex relationship of ability & accomplishment and is
both a nature & nurture issue.

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anonymoushn
jenniewong, you seem to be hellbanned. I assume this is for your submissions
rather than for you comments.

~~~
ckluis
I've only submitted like 2-3 articles. None of them were related to me and at
least one was in direct response to another article I read in the top.

Although, most of my comments aren't exactly award winning poetry - I would
hope that they show some level of engagement on here. How do I de-hellban?

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nikunjk
While reading the article, I couldn't help but think that the title should be
"How do you spot a Sheldon?"

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thatusertwo
My uncle once told me "You're a genius. Keep doing what you've been doing".

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dschiptsov
it is a self-controlled and self-aware madness.)

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braum
Go to a Mensa meetup!

~~~
RockofStrength
I agree - kids need intelligent role models. The modes of entertainment kids
engage in (tv, movies, videogames) do not glorify intelligence - books are
much better for that.

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walshemj
Well taking just TV Stargate had several very intelligent characters as role
models Sam, Daniel, Jonas, Rodney and Jeannie. and NCIS has Abby and Tim.

And the BBC's new sherlock also has a hyper intelligent character.

~~~
SIULHT
times are a-changin'

seriously though, being geek has become cool

contrast steve urkel with blah blah it's all those shows i don't watch but
probably the ones you mentioned.

