
For gifted children, being intelligent can have dark implications (2015) - prostoalex
http://calgaryherald.com/life/swerve/gifted-children-are-frequently-misunderstood
======
scotty79
I think that there's plenty of intelligent kids who are able to devote part of
their intelligence to noticing the whole lord of the flies going around and
figuring that it's better to not raise you hand when teacher asks question
(because answering it won't give you anything (besides grade which is useless)
and can paint crosshair on your back) and figuring that it's better to be
useful to reasonable group so you can hide among them, and figuring whom to
hide from and how. I don't think intelligent kids are more maladjusted to
average environments. It's just this is much more visible when smart kid is in
trouble. When average kid fails to pay attention to their surroundings they
are just bullied looser kids. I think there's proportionally more of such
people than bullied looser geniuses.

Schools are just not healthy environments. Not only for gifted.

~~~
Lawtonfogle
>I think that there's plenty of intelligent kids who are able to devote part
of their intelligence to noticing the whole lord of the flies going around and
figuring that it's better to not raise you hand when teacher asks question

I think these come from different sorts of intelligence. You can be
intelligent in regards to knowing the right answer but be stupid in regards to
knowing that you shouldn't be a know-it-all. Or you could lack the ability to
evaluate the advice of adults and thus fully believe what they say at face
value (which when combined with the peer-pressure is evil message can lead to
optimizing social interactions in some of the worst ways possible).

Those who are gifted socially and in other ways are likely to have far less
trouble. I think the gifted who have problems are those gifted in some way,
but who are below average in terms of social skills, because the ways they are
gifted leads to adults missing that the ways they are challenged.

~~~
scotty79
I know that people say that there are various kinds of intelligence because
you can get varying performance when you measure it for various activities.

But IQ correlates with widest range of performance measurements of various
activities. There is a strong variability but IMHO it's just because you
perform best in things that interest you. So even very intelligent person
won't perform better than average person in activity s/he's vastly less
interested in than average person.

My hypothesis is that being socially maladjusted is no more prevalent in
gifted kids than it is in average kids. You could disprove it by showing that
for example that bullied kids IQ profile is shifted toward higher values. I'm
not aware of such studies but I think it won't be the case.

~~~
mercer
> My hypothesis is that being socially maladjusted is no more prevalent in
> gifted kids than it is in average kids.

I'm becoming more and more convinced that the problem with gifted kids, or
those of higher intelligence in general, is indeed not that they're more
likely to have certain problems, but rather their rational _awareness_ of the
problem, combined with a stronger reliance on that rational side of their
brain. This can make problems worse for them.

I've had a number of friends who are not very intelligent. And I started
noticing that it's primarily their _response_ to problems that differs from
mine and other more highly-educated friends of mine. I notice a general lack
of awareness, introspection, and analysis of the problem.

This applies to fitting in socially, but also to many other 'typical' problems
we humans tend to have: career paths, breakups, fights, work stress, difficult
friendships, and addiction.

For better (and also worse), I notice that the less intelligent a person is,
the more likely they are to just _feel_ bad, confused, angry, fearful, and
then shrug it off and move on. The upside is that they're less likely to get
caught up in over-analyzing and identifying with their problem (which in my
experience doesn't solve anything). But the downside is that they might never
face and try to fix or learn to handle such a problem.

I used to think that this downside is a very big one, and 'intellectual
awareness' is mostly a good thing. But now I'm not so sure anymore. Ignorance
can be bliss, and it's really, really difficult to think clearly and
objectively about our own problems anyways. Perhaps our 'awareness' is really
just a more elaborate and ultimately ineffective way to deal with these
problems.

Intelligent people are better, in general, at rational thinking (pattern
recognition?). But underneath that we still have all the subconscious,
irrational machinery, primitive urges and 'lizard brain' emotions. Perhaps the
problem is that smart people overdevelop the rational side, which perhaps is
also culturally encouraged, and never learn to just feel bad and move on.

For example, the friends that I would consider clearly less intelligent are
more likely to just yell or get mad in a fight. They'll vent about what the
other did wrong, how they were treated unfairly, etc. They might ignore this
person, or engage in various forms of meanness. And then one day they're okay
again, and they act as if nothing happened. They don't need to understand
exactly what happened, and they seem on average less likely to carry grudges.

The more intelligent of my friends will engage in long conversations diving
into the psychology of the situation: freudian underlying causes, patterns of
behavior in this other person, past events and what they mean, future
implications, labelling ('Well, I think she's kind of bipolar'), the
contextual factors ('Well, he's going through some tough things at work').

On an intellectual level we now understand the situation and even sympathize
or empathize with the person who did something bad to us. We feel pretty good
about how reasonable we are. Our rational side is happy. But emotionally we're
just mad, or scared, or upset and confused. Because we don't give these
feelings space (unless we understand them, which is often difficult), we don't
learn how to just have those feelings, and we build up complex coping
mechanisms that _appear_ to work, but easily lead to all kinds of bigger
problems.

It reminds me a lot of the mechanics of addiction. The solutions are
relatively simple (not easy though!), but in my experience those who stay
stuck in addictions the longest are those who are overly rational about it.
They might even have deep understanding of addiction, but paradoxically that
knowledge seems to make it easier to remain addicted.

(As an aside, since this is a long-ass comment already, I can strongly
recommend David Foster Wallace's biography. Reading it was confronting _and_
enlightening, as it highlighted how a brilliant dude with exceptional
knowledge of human behavior and addiction could nonetheless stay addicted and
rationalize his behavior in some very dumb ways.)

------
adrusi
A point not raised in the article: some areas have gifted programs that are
simply too large. I was enrolled in one in Fairfax County in northern
Virginia, and nearly a fifth of the student population was part of it. I moved
away before high school, but in high school, the program ended, and the
expectation was that gifted children enroll in the Thomas Jefferson magnet
school for science and technology — which looked at GPA (of eighth graders) as
a deciding factor in admissions — or simply continue taking ordinary honors
classes in high school, which were essentially opt-in-to-more-homework
classes.

The correlation with eccentricity is not nearly as strong, in my experience,
among children who are one standard deviation above average, as in children
who are two. Teachers who are actually talented at teaching gifted children
see their efforts spread too thin, with only 1–3 children per class who could
really benefit from this teacher over other good teachers.

And the eccentric children don't ever get the insulation from other kids'
bullying they need; they often avoid even making friends among themselves
because they see that as a way of cementing their low social status. Gifted
children can make friends with — for lack of a better word — normal children,
but some of them, at least, can only get the social stimulation they need from
real intellectual conversation with their peers, which other children are
either incapable of or uninterested in.

I don't believe we should isolate gifted children from the rest of the
population day in, day out. That would only serve to create an echochamber and
leave them woefully unprepared when they inevitably leave the bubble. But I do
think they need to be given significant time amongst themselves so that they
can develop the friendships and confidence they need to survive in the general
population, and the special academic attention which might hopefully stimulate
them enough to help them flounder less in regular classes.

~~~
stinkytaco
An anecdote:

The gifted program at my school was genuinely fun and interesting. They spent
the year on a theme, say astronomy, and explored that theme through a variety
of projects. For example, they designed a game about space travel, they built
a model of the solar system, etc.

I was not in it until the 6th grade, the last year before "gifted" meant "do
more homework" in my school system. I got in because the previous year I built
a fairly impressive lego castle for my entry project and maybe they thought
that because they were doing architecture as the theme that I would do well. I
really did enjoy it and looked forward to it every week.

But I was not, and am not, an exceptionally hard worker or particularly
motivated to excel. I probably have an above average memory and was thus able
to do well in school despite my laziness (I graduated high school with a 3.3
GPA). Even if I was "gifted", you wouldn't know it from my work. But given the
opportunity to engage in something, I took that chance and looked forward to
it.

I'm not sure that this addresses the children in the article, but I feel it's
sort of a pity that the weekly "explore your interests" classes are no longer
part of the gifted program in my child's school district. Not because she's
necessarily gifted, but because I think she'd find it fun.

------
byuu
I could say a lot about the quality of education: the lack of a challenge, the
boringness of the one-size-fits-all curriculum, etc. But boredom isn't that
big of a deal. I made up for that by studying what I wanted to outside of
school, instead of doing homework. Even with the vindictive teachers that made
homework 30% of the final grade, it was still cakewalk to pass their classes
without doing a single assignment.

The real root of the reason school was a living hell for me was the bullying.
We all like to tell kids that "the teachers will help you", but they either
don't care or feel they can't do anything. Either way, the net effect is they
are completely useless. We tell kids, "it builds character!", but that's
nonsense. I don't care if it _is_ the secret to my success, I'd rather be
average today than to have experienced a tormented childhood. Those were
formative years, and those scars run deep.

The worst mistake I ever made was deciding I wouldn't be a part of that Lord
of the Flies bullshit. I kept thinking it'd get better as we got older, but it
only got much worse. I never stuck up for myself, never learned how to fight,
never worked out to become stronger to defend myself. And that's easily my
biggest source of regret. Every day my mind recalls terrible memories from
those days, and I find myself constantly thinking, "if only I had fought back
here or done this there ..."

Bullying mostly targets the gifted, but it would help everyone if we took it
seriously, instead of just saying, "well I went through it and lived; so the
next generation can too!"

Also, it's bordering on a different topic, but bullying very much extends to
the home as well. Abusive parents, siblings, etc. Some kids have literally no
escape from it for 18+ years.

~~~
SixSigma
If it makes you feel any better, if you fight back you will get hit harder.

~~~
bonesmoses
Potentially. I deterred many bullies because I simply didn't give any fucks. I
grew up pretty poor and moved a lot, so I was always the new kid, and I also
stood out because I usually immediately rose to the top of the class. That
usually painted a target on my chest, but it didn't last long.

The few times I was bullied was always the first few weeks after I arrived,
and they quickly found out I would fight back pretty aggressively. Was that a
"being poor" thing? Was it my notorious "punched a kid in the face for cutting
in front of me in line when I was five" temper? Was it simply because I wasn't
an "easy" mark?

I can't rightfully say, but one of those things definitely reduced my
propensity for being the target of bullies.

------
ajuc
I was bullied for 8 years in primary school. I made the simple mistake of
showing off how much smarter I am than the rest of the class (I was kind of a
prick about that, looking at it now), and it was impossible to fix it later.
Having visible skin condition, walking around bandaged for months, and asthma
had not helped either.

I've learnt how to adjust when I was in hospitals and sanatorium, changing
einvironment a few times is great for that. In middle school everything was OK
already (also it was much better school, so there were more kids like me
there).

I also think being on the receiving end of ostracism is valuable experience
(but not for 8 years, a few months would suffice). It works as a vaccine
against tribal thinking.

~~~
mseebach
> I also think being on the receiving end of ostracism is valuable experience
> (but not for 8 years, a few months would suffice). It works as a vaccine
> against tribal thinking.

Peter Thiel said something about this once, speculating on why "disruptive"
(pretty sure that was not the word he used) start-ups are disproportionally
run by awkward social outsiders, and his theory is that "normal" kids
instinctively seek validation from peers, and for these "disruptive" start-
ups, they are saying that it's insane, it can't be done (go work in
law/finance/management consulting instead). The awkward kids don't care (as
much), and are therefore able to focus on actually doing it.

------
foxly
I'm from Calgary, and I went through the GATE program covered in this article.

While some of my classmates were certainly a bit ...eccentric... the vast
majority were wonderful, completely normal people and many of them went on to
do incredible things.

I've since moved to San Francisco, and I've gotta say, SF and the GATE program
seem to have a lot in common: both fill me with the feeling that anything is
possible; coupled with the nagging suspicion that everyone else is smarter,
harder working, and more successful ... :)

------
delineator
The article discusses people who may have a trait Dr Elaine Aron calls "highly
sensitive". She has been researching the highly sensitive since 1991.

She says the trait is normal. It is found in 15 to 20% of the population. She
writes:

"While being easily overstimulated and aware of subtle little things may be
what most parents notice first about their Highly Sensitive Child, depth of
processing is really the underlying trait."

See her 2014 summary of scientific research on highly sensitive children here:
[http://hsperson.com/pdf/Authors_note_HSC.pdf](http://hsperson.com/pdf/Authors_note_HSC.pdf)

For more information see Dr Aron's website here:
[http://hsperson.com/](http://hsperson.com/)

------
onion2k
There's a reason why "outsider feels lonely, outsider is needed, outsider
saves the world" has been a recurring theme in fiction for decades - it's
something that _everyone_ can identify with and everyone dreams of. It's
normal. This isn't something that's limited to "gifted children".

~~~
kalzium
This XKCD comes to mind: [https://xkcd.com/610/](https://xkcd.com/610/)

------
batz
Intelligence is disruptive to the way people organize. Any trait that is
disproportionately out of balance is in effect, a deformity. We used to say
about gifted special education classes, "we're not retards, we're more like
_super_ -retards."

So we have a bunch of intellectually unbalanced kids whose deformity happens
to be a mystical trait that modern society irrationally worships. Kids who
have no control over the thing they are rewarded for learn to balance out
their intellectual difference with new psychological defects.

You can see how this gets stupid really fast.

Like that comic character in the movie, I realized early on that gifted
classes were not there to insulate me from the other kids, but rather to
insulate them from me.

Do your gifted kids a favor and keep them out of special programs that isolate
them from peers, and teach your kids to take their rightful place leading
them.

~~~
rustynails
That advice resonates with me.

My wife and son are Aspergers. I put a lot of effort into teaching social
skills to my son (via myself and through courses) and by proxy, my wife has
benefitted too. We also put my son into a regular and high performing school,
despite his gifted ability (WISC tested).

I've had several friends tell me that I saved my son, which I think means that
focussing on socialisation and behaviour was of more benefit to him than
solely driving his academic performance.

He went from a troubled boy to reasonably accepted in a few years. While it's
feigned behaviour (eg. He mimics being like others), it helps him socially.
I've seen other Aspergers kids be broken by their peers because they don't try
to (or can't) conform.

I spoke with his teacher last week and said "I expect the same respect and
treatment for my son where possible" and highlighted a bad example where my
son was singled out in front of the class "you can't treat an Aspergers like
that".

------
InclinedPlane
This resonated with me. Growing up I always felt like an alien around other
kids, my mindset was just so different. I put a lot of effort into fitting in
though, which I think helped somewhat. Even so, I very nearly dropped out of
school and could quite easily have gone down a dark path (likely ending up
homeless or in prison or worse). Luckily I went to one of the best public
schools in the country and ended up with some pretty good teachers, but I
learned as much on my own as I did from school, and had things been different
I might have lost patience. As it was I nearly ended up stuck on a remedial
track for most subjects on entering High School (due partly to the fact that I
just didn't do homework, 20-some years later after discovering that I have
ADHD a lot more things make sense). Somehow at 13 I had the maturity to
realize I needed to fix that and luckily the school system rewarded my efforts
(ultimately I graduated with special honors among a handful of top students in
my class, and entered college as a sophomore).

I imagine a lot of other folks who are just as smart as I was but didn't luck
out with the same circumstances have been severely let down by the system over
the years. Things just aren't setup for people who learn differently, or at a
different pace, or have a different form of cognition than the archetypal
student that everything is built around. Which ends up ill serving a lot of
students across all intelligence levels.

------
tdsamardzhiev
I know smart people that had difficulties in school and smart people that
steamrolled through school. Smart people that were bullied, smart people that
bullied others, smart people that didn't have anything to do with bullying. I
don't think any of the issues described has much to do with being smart per-
se. There's this kind of people that just don't feel OK at school, smart or
not.

------
brendonjohn
I have a friend that is considered incredibly intelligent. When he attended
kindergarten he realised he was different from the other children and so
deduced he must be an alien. Fortunately his hypothesis was just a phase.

~~~
epimetheus
This strikes home, though I'm pretty much "only" upper normal (110-120 -
several results in that range; never tested as a kid), but I had this fantasy
from like 2nd grade until 5th or 6th grade. I probably annoyed my parents to
no end.

------
h0l0cube
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_Disintegration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_Disintegration)

~~~
eliboy
That was a nice read. Thanks!

------
jokoon
I don't know if I'm gifted (I score 125 at some IQ test on abstraction when
applying at a company, but still IQ is not always a correct to measure
intelligence, so take this with a grain of salt), but my psychiatrist tells me
I'm intelligent (he might say this to agree with me, maybe he doesn't think so
and it's for another goal).

Yet I'm unemployed, 30 year old, and can't manage to get hired or to do work
that is given to me. I don't want to tell people I'm just a special snowflake
or something of that matter (since many people easily come down on you for it
when they can), but I always hated school because I felt it was formatting me,
and not stimulating me. I recently went into some school program for web
programming, I hated it and failed it, yet I was considered to know things
already.

I'm a little tired of people telling me it's a personality problem, to be
frank.

In my view, school is not meritocratic, because its aim is to be efficient and
teach important basics to the most people, which politically is a good thing.
But is it for everyone? No, and people who are intelligent and care about what
the learn actually have more chances to fail, simply because learning program
are tailored to be taught easily.

I remember meeting a jury for some project at this school program, and they
were pretty judgmental towards my behavior or my opinions when they were
asking me specific questions about me.

I think Good Will Hunting precisely describes this problem. Society doesn't
know how to pull people up according to their capabilities, because not
everything is known about psychology, but also because society often tends to
perpetuates its error because of social models which are built on belief.

I think there is no real opportunities for people who might have better
capabilities than other. Maybe it should be treated as a handicap or special
need, but it's true that politically it's hard to explain such thing when
there already is a debate about inequality.

~~~
throwaway_65536
I'm in similar situation. I finished MA and never really had to work hard for
anything. Had IQ at around 130. Probably less now cause I had not done
anything challenging for decade.

I hate my job, have no achievments whatosever and I balance on doing bare
minimum not to get fired. Changed job 4 times and it's definitely me. That's
despite the fact that I was always going to be a programmer since I was 10,
and I loved programming. I'm lazy as hell and I'm astonished every day they
won't fire me. Any dreams of success in mine choosen callign are long past.

I also had huge problems with social interactions, married first girl that
could look past it (she has similar problems). It wasn't a good decision.

My wife has even bigger problems with employement, but she declines to agree
it's her fault (she changes job every year and it's always "them"). We are
codependent and use each other not to be alone. We hurt each other a lot. I
don't think it's love, but then I find love to be hard to define (I mostly
feel "I should be feeling this" instead of actually feeling this, not only
towards her).

I should really leave her, cause she isn't happy with me (nor am I with her),
but she has her life wasted, in some party because of me, and she depends on
me at least economicaly at this point. Or maybe it's rationalization because
it's more convenient to continue this.

I'm addicted to internet and gaming, and I'm well aware of the fact that I'm
wasting my life. I just don't care. No right to complain really, I had it
better than most people, and it's entirely my fault I'm wasting it all. And
yet I do, because nothing worthwhile seems achievable and vice-versa.

BTW I know I sound arrogant and selfish, that's because I am. I wondered many
times if maybe I'm just stupid (that would explain a lot). In the end it
doesn't really matter, results matter and I don't have them.

I probably could get depression diagnosed, but I don't want to cure it even if
it's true, because it would mean I have to actually do sth. So my best
diagnosis is "chronic laziness".

~~~
jokoon
I'm exactly in the same type of relationship problem, except she is the one
working.

I'm currently trying a behavioral cognitive therapy, so far it's working a
little better than whatever else I tried with psychiatrists.

What is making me hold to life, is to try to do some stuff I know how to do:
programming, etc at a minimal pace and scale (I have this small video game
project I'm trying to do). Even though it won't solve my problems (or at least
immediately), I still believe in what I do or can do, and it prevents me from
giving up everything.

If you have skills and like to do certain things or if you are attracted to
certain things, go do them, it's not a waste of your time, even if the task
seems daunting or hard. In a way, you can reason it as being some kind of
possible contribution to society, and for me that's how I maintain a minimal
amount of self-esteem.

~~~
throwaway_65537
(Un)mployment/skills/salary is just one peculiar property of the world you
live in, making too much identity out of that seems unhealthy. Frankly, the
first time I recall thinking about myself in such terms was when, as a young
stupid kid, I wanted to punish some kids whose envy pissed me off by
deliberately bragging how great I am. So, don't treat yourself the way I did
my schoolyard enemies :)

To me, no matter how you think and try to rationalize your worth, the sense of
worth seems to be strongly connected with empathy. You may experiment with
things like making people happy just for the fun of it when you stumble upon
some right opportunity for that. I think this slowly improves _my_
relationships with some people.

And I mean actually happy and actually fun - you see, others have empathy too
and they know if you are sacrificing yourself for them. This may be
appreciated in the short term, but not always in the long term. Sometimes you
may paradoxically make them feel better by slowing down a bit, if they can
handle that.

These processes are slow, all you do is maintain vigilance and use
opportunities as they come. It would be hard to engineer one quick action
which fixes everything, humans are weird and unpredictable.

------
Mikhail_Edoshin
It can be the other way round. A child may strive to learn things and achieve
academic success because he is deprived of normal love and unconsciously
believes that when he proves himself smart and successful, people will
recognize and love him. I.e. it's not that being gifted leads to suffering; it
may be that these kids already suffer and just try harder to survive.

~~~
Nav_Panel
This was definitely the case in my situation. I grew up gifted AND
overweight/obese at an athletics-focused public school in a Northeast US
suburb. I was bullied. A lot of my thought processes were "it doesn't matter
if I'm fat/how I look/how my peers treat me because at least I'm smart and
someday I'll be better than them..."

So I spent my high school inside WoW, where nobody can see you, and I went to
a good college and worked really hard to get an education, lost some weight
there (and developed socially, somewhat), and now I'm a full-time software
developer (graduated school last May). I'm realizing that (a) I'm not actually
an "introvert," I just never had a chance to develop socially, and (b) the
reasons that initially attracted me to software development (specifically, the
ability to just "get in the zone" and escape from reality for hours and hours)
are now considerably less appealing to me. I'd much rather be in a job that
exposes me to some sort of social interaction beyond my manager, although
perhaps the grass is always greener...

Anyway, to relate back to OP, I really, really wish someone had pulled me out
of my public school and let me develop with a group of other "misfits." I
eventually fell into that social group anyway, in high school (mostly artists,
turns out), but the damage was done. I had a "challenge math" class in
elementary school that was fun (and all the other kids I remember from that
class either went to ivy leagues or ended up in software or both), but beyond
accelerating our math education and offering AP courses, there was no support
for giftedness in my school system.

------
timwaagh
luckily not everyone who is smart is necessarily a wreck, but some are. i was
too. still am but now i'm a more powerful wreck and some people actually need
to listen me.

~~~
selimthegrim
I know it's incredibly immature of me to applaud this, but this sounds like
music to my ears too.

~~~
qb45
Sure, but you may want to keep an eye on situations when this attitude limits
you.

Stubborn power freaks tend to be excessively self conscious when they know how
others are going to react once they "finally" make some big mistake.

------
deadprogram
Here is a great page of resource links that mostly avoids commercial things:
[http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/social_emotional.htm](http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/social_emotional.htm)

I also recommend [http://sengifted.org/archives/articles/overexcitability-
and-...](http://sengifted.org/archives/articles/overexcitability-and-the-
gifted)

------
mirimir
Aikido instruction helps kids from being bullied, and from becoming bullies.
It's also fun.

------
dawnbreez
Many, many things about public school are terrible; honestly, a ground-up
restructuring is in order, but nobody is sure what to do with it, and no one
wants to step up and say "let's tear up the public education system and start
over!".

To borrow from G.K. Chesterton, we love school enough to want to see it
changed, but do not hate it enough to change it (yet).

------
kalzium
Reading through all the comments posted it here - it almost seems that around
half of the commenters are sociopaths. Mh!

------
tokenadult
I see this interesting article from Canada in 2015 was submitted while I was
catching up on sleep after my third son applied the previous evening to a
summer science research program for high school students. Most of my
employment, research, writing, and parenting for the last decade or more has
been related to the concerns of third-party-identified highly gifted children,
for example children who are part of the Davidson Institute for Talent
Development Young Scholars program[1] or the long-term, longitudinal Study of
Exceptional Talent (SET).[2] For practical knowledge for my own challenges in
daily life, in teaching, and in parenting, I have taken care to read
thoroughly in the published literature on Lewis Terman's long-term
longitudinal study of gifted children.[3]

The Hacker News participant who kindly shared the article that opens this
thread is a user whose user name I recognize from the many good articles he
submits for discussion here. That said, permit me to not entirely agree with
the opinion expressed by the Canadian teacher profiled in the article that
"our most brilliant children are among our most vulnerable." That is actually
not what the research shows. I agree with the several comments posted before
this comment that say that age-segregated, lockstep curriculum school[4] is a
particularly toxic environment for gifted learners, and not a good environment
for any learner. But I learned, after majoring in Chinese language in
university and living in east Asia after graduation, that there are varying
cultural perspectives on how a smart person fits into human society. Growing
up in the United States, in junior high I read a story by Philip K. Dick,
which I have tried to find again but have not yet found in his collected
writings, in which he expressed the opinion that the higher one's IQ is above
the population median, the fewer true friends one can have, an opinion
expressed in a top comment in this thread. I fully agreed with that opinion
when I was a child, and it became a self-fulfilling prophecy, as I isolated
myself from "average" people in my school and neighborhood environment. But
when I lived in east Asia, I learned that Confucius said, 三人行，必有我師焉 ("wherever
three persons are walking, my teacher is surely among them"). The east Asian
Confucian philosophers were very clear than human beings vary in how smart
they are, but they also deeply believed that any human being can learn from
any other human being. The job of a smart person is to use brainpower to
understand other people and make society better. As soon as I adopted those
east Asian perspectives, I found it much easier to make friends. Now I
proactively tell my four children and the gifted young people I teach in my
supplemental mathematics program that they can find rapport with anyone, if
they are willing to listen. And I spread this same message internationally
among parent email lists and social media groups for parents of gifted
children.

To sum up, the article makes strong claims that high IQ is strongly associate
with social maladjustment and psychological disturbance. That is not an
invariant property of high IQ, and I know many exceptions. All research on the
topic confirms that many high-IQ people do fine in social interaction with
other human beings, and some who do not start out that way can learn better
social adjustment. School has a lot of toxic features for most learners,[5]
but gifted children need not fear being social misfits for life.

[1]
[http://www.davidsongifted.org/youngscholars/](http://www.davidsongifted.org/youngscholars/)

[2] [http://cty.jhu.edu/set/](http://cty.jhu.edu/set/)

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

[https://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/magazine/article/?artic...](https://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/magazine/article/?article_id=40678)

[4]
[http://learninfreedom.org/age_grading_bad.html](http://learninfreedom.org/age_grading_bad.html)

[5] [http://www.johnholtgws.com/](http://www.johnholtgws.com/)

[http://learninfreedom.org/system.html](http://learninfreedom.org/system.html)

~~~
untangler
Thank you for the Confucius quote. Humbling and uplifting.

I suppose the inverse would be the parent who constantly tells their child how
clever he is, and actively discourages him from mixing with other children.
Unfortunately this does happen.

------
lutusp
Quote: "Reed’s entanglements serve as an apt metaphor for the school life of
severely gifted children."

Ah, "severely gifted" \-- what a meme. What a commentary on the times in which
we live. I can imagine psychologists surveying this new frontier with barely
concealed joy, in particular now that the DSM is being abandoned.

People need to understand that, in modern times, to avoid one or another
mental illness diagnosis, you can't be too smart or too dumb, you can't be
hyperkinetic or hypokinetic, you can't be extraordinary in any way. You have
to be the very definition of dull and unimaginative. You have to be a
psychologist.

~~~
mzl
The diagnosis criteria for most mental illnesses include that the patient is
negatively affected by their specific symptoms.

Or regarding the specific quote, in the context of going to a normal school,
"severely gifted" might be the right word for describing these children. If
these children are given something meaningful to do in school instead, then
the moniker would not be apt.

~~~
da1
> The diagnosis criteria for most mental illnesses include that the patient is
> negatively affected by their specific symptoms.

Even if this were true (which it isn't) the psychiatrist can always argue that
the fact that someone else doesn't like the symptoms negatively affects the
patient and therefore he is ill.

Circular reasoning like this is common practice.

~~~
mzl
> Even if this were true (which it isn't)

Maybe I was being too general, but the diagnosis criteria I remember from when
I've looked at such (including ADHD, Autism spectra disorders, and Depression)
have included such qualifiers, IIRC.

Checking ASD, the following is one of the criteria:

    
    
        The deficits result in functional limitations in effective communication, 
        social participation, social relationships, academic achievement, 
        or occupational performance, individually or in combination.
    

While the word "negatively affected" is not specifically used, I would at
least argue that the above is morally the same.

Of course the diagnosing psychiatrist could always fudge the facts, but
arguing whether or not psychiatrists accurately apply diagnosis criteria is a
different matter to arguing that "to avoid one or another mental illness
diagnosis, [...] you can't be extraordinary in any way".

~~~
lutusp
> whether or not psychiatrists accurately apply diagnosis criteria is a
> different matter to arguing that "to avoid one or another mental illness
> diagnosis, [...] you can't be extraordinary in any way".

But that happens to be true and easily verified. If you're bright, you're
assured of the Asperger's diagnosis unless you insist on avoiding the company
of psychologists, increasingly difficult in modern times. If you're gay, it
was the same thing -- until the public demanded that psychologists stop
handing out mental illness diagnoses to gay people.

The history of psychology is punctuated with examples in which obviously
appropriate behavior was falsely labeled as evidence of disease, including the
infamous example of "drapetomania" \-- slaves who ran away from their masters
were obviously mentally broken and in need of professional help to reunite
them with their owners.

Psychologists don't wait for people to appear and ask for help -- they issue
press releases announcing the discovery of yet another imaginary ailment from
which many are claimed to be suffering in silence. Example:

[https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/mental-
wealth/201207/el...](https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/mental-
wealth/201207/electronic-screen-syndrome-unrecognized-disorder)

------
leoc
I love Martin Prince from the Simpsons: such a deadly accurate
characterisation.

------
jensen123
I don't think our democratic society is very good for gifted/talented people.

Democracy is kinda like 1 human and 10 chimpanzees living together, with the
chimpanzees insisting that everybody are equal, and threatening violent
sanctions whenever anybody behaves otherwise.

~~~
dragonwriter
> I don't think our democratic society is very good for gifted/talented
> people.

I think it is better for gifted/talented people than any alternative anyone
has proposed would be if an attempt were made to implement it with real people
in the real world.

> Democracy is kinda like 1 human and 10 chimpanzees living together, with the
> chimpanzees insisting that everybody are equal, and threatening violent
> sanctions whenever anybody behaves otherwise.

I'm a "gifted/talented" person by most standards (by IQ test scores,
PSAT/SAT/LSAT all at the highest reported point in the distribution -- 99 or
99.9 percentile, depending on what the particular test reported at the time --
etc.)

And, frankly, I find it quite likely that anyone who thinks that the
relationship between humans and chimpanzees is even a remotely appropriate
analogy for the relationship between gifted and talented people at the ~91%
percentile and the rest of society is someone who is inclined to behave in a
way such that forceful sanctions are appropriate and necessary.

------
Mikeb85
This kind of hits home because I a) live in Calgary and b) was in a 'gifted'
school program for a year or so (at public school). I also graduated early.

Personally, I'm against the idea of segregated classrooms. In our 'gifted'
program, we did get to do some cool things. We assembled a small robot (this
was in the mid 1990's when that was just becoming a 'thing'), used computers,
and did other 'gifted' things. But the problem was, we just saw it as a way to
get out of doing normal homework (we'd still write tests in the classroom with
the 'normal' kids), and eventually still got bored with it because the
teachers didn't really have a well defined curriculum to teach. In the end, I
not only went back to regular classes, but never did any 'advanced' classes
again. And the truth was, those 'gifted' classes never really taught us
anything that a bit of time in the computer lab or a science project (both of
which were part of the 'regular' curriculum) couldn't.

I also made some poor life decisions (some good ones too, like playing sports,
starting hobbies and making poor decisions/having fun), and today I'm quite
happily adjusted, married, in University as an older student, albeit with
kinda shitty job prospects in Canada.

And about the article, I'd also surmise that many of those 'gifted' kids may
have some sort of mental health issues. Sometimes the two go hand-in-hand. And
social conditioning is important.

Also, the regular school system in Canada is much better than most people
realize. As part of the 'regular' school system, I learned French (immersion
from kindergarten), learned basic computer programming (in 9th grade, still in
the 1990's!), we did all sorts of cool science projects (which I hope my kids
will still be able to do), used power tools in shop class, got plenty of
computer lab time (much of which was spent playing multi-player games over the
network of Apple IIs whilst ignoring the teacher), played countless sports,
got to learn how to ski (which otherwise my family could have never afforded,
and today I do a lot of), and band class was forced on everyone which was nice
because even the bullies had to bear the embarrassment of being terrible at
playing an instrument (actually everyone got quite good in the end). Assuming
the public school system hasn't got worse, I definitely plan on sending my
children there.

Anyhow, just some random thoughts on the matter - I believe in a strong system
for everyone, if someone is a little ahead, maybe they can pick up a hobby, or
use that time to learn a sport. The 'regular' system was quite good, the
'gifted' program was a bad afterthought, and making friends with 'normal' kids
was definitely good for my mental health and general happiness.

------
draugadrotten
> The vibe I'm getting from Sweden (I lived there for a while, learned the
> language and still follow the news), is that it's moving to a more and more
> class-segregated country. Sure, everybody can look for the best school for
> their children, but only parents from higher socioeconomic classes will do
> that.

Hear, hear.

The school system decline is also a political "hot potato" because of the
connection to increasing immigration. Since free immigration is considered a
holy sacrament by many Swedes, it is a political no-no to connect school
problems to immigration (just wait and see if I get any comments to this
statement on here)

For the ten worst performing schools in Sweden, where students have the lowest
grades in 2015, these are the stats:

Rågsveds skola, Stockholm (90 percent immigrants) Ryaskolan, Göteborg (93
percent immigrants) Vättleskolan, Göteborg (84 percent immigrants) Västra
Engelbrektsskolan, Örebro (82 percent immigrants) Hjällboskolan, Göteborg (99
percent immigrants) Kronan, Trollhättan (98 percent immigrants)
Sandeklevsskolan, Göteborg (98 percent immigrants) Apelgårdsskolan, Malmö (99
percent immigrants) Nivrenaskolan, Sundsvall (22 percent immigrants)
Rinkebyskolan, Stockholm (98 percent immigrants)

It would appear that the Swedish school system is not able to properly educate
immigrants.

And as you say, Sweden is "moving to a more and more class-segregated
country." It very clear from the above list.

The 32-year old minister of education, Mr Fridolin, recently went on record
saying the government will NOT implement further restrictions on immigration.
He also said he would fix the school system in 100 days.

Source of statistics:
[http://www.svt.se/nyheter/regionalt/vast/skolsituationen-
aku...](http://www.svt.se/nyheter/regionalt/vast/skolsituationen-akut-i-
kommunerna)

Asbestos suit ready. Flame on.

~~~
dang
Internecine Swedish politics are becoming their own circle of hell on Hacker
News.

> _Asbestos suit ready. Flame on._

Please don't do this here. I don't just mean talking blithely about flamewars,
but conducting them at all.

We detached this subthread from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11087694](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11087694)
and marked it off-topic.

~~~
qb45
I see GP's allusions to flamewars more as rhetorical figures than actual
invitation to flaming.

But whatever, you are the boss :)

~~~
dang
Not the boss, and normally I'd agree, but one of the odder discoveries of HN
moderation is that internecine Swedish political subthreads turn out to be
virulent.

------
clentaminator
Ah yes, the monthly link to an article about intelligent/gifted children and
the troubles their talents cause them, leading to all the self-proclaimed
gifted HNers coming out of the woodwork declaiming "Me too! Me too! Finally
someone who understands me!".

Not dismissing the article itself, but it's definitely a pattern on HN.

~~~
belorn
Most people intuitively understand that a person with 25 points lower IQ than
the average population is going to have unique problems and go through life in
a slightly different path and order than the average. However, for some
reason, this is not easily understood regarding people with 25 points _over_
the average.

It's also a pattern on HN because it really is a rather new concept. In
Sweden, the law that dictates that every child should have a education that
match their ability came into reality 2010 (2010:800, 3§). Before that, the
goal was to target the lowest common denominator that would create a passing
grade for everyone. This meant that school material targeting IQ around 75 was
also put in the hands of children with around IQ 125, and unsurprisingly, this
caused problems with under-stimulation and children that go through school
without any training in studying.

~~~
goodJobWalrus
> However, for some reason, this is not easily understood regarding people
> with 25 points over the average.

I'm not sure how accurate this is. All the exceptionally talented kids/young
people I knew growing up were nice and well-liked, well-adjusted people. All
the weird kids I knew were just weird, not really especially talented.

I'd like to see the numbers behind those anecdotes. There was recently an
article here that discussed why extremely academically gifted children rarely
become grown-up geniuses and people who move their fields forward. They stated
that it's not because they are troubled, most of them are socially well-
adjusted, but I can't find that article now for the lie of me.

~~~
true_religion
I think it's orthogonal to the article. Under a system designed to the lowest
common denominator, those on the low end have to put X amount of effort in
order to pass. Those who are gifted have to put in X-Y effort where Y can
almost nearly equal X (leading to kids not ever learning how to study).

The Swedish system basically begins with the proposition that all students
should put out X effort. Gifted children get more advanced work, or more
quantity of work till they are putting out X effort.

This isn't designed to make them better adjusted, or less 'weird'. It's just
there to equip gifted students with more skills relative to the mean.

~~~
goodJobWalrus
What does it take to get into a gifted class in the US? Where I grew up,
anyone can apply for these schools (not everyone gets in of course).

~~~
yardie
I was nominated by my counsellor and teachers in 5th and 6th grade. This was
South Florida, other schools districts are different. I took an exam of
puzzles, math, and wordplay. A few days later I received a later saying I
qualified and to meet the ESL/gifted counsellor.

At the time I had 8 classes. 6 of them were required: math, english, history,
etc., and 2 were free electives: sports, music, technical (computers and
woodshop). As a 11yo these were the few freedoms we were allowed in school and
the work didn't feel like work. I enjoyed making music. I enjoyed making
stupid, wooden gifts for my family and friends. So the counsellor says we're
dropping your 2 electives so you can have take our gifted classes. And that is
when I hoped right out of it.

Now that is the gifted (also called ESL) program in none exceptional schools.
It's usually just an extra class. There are schools of excellence, governor's
school, magnet school, etc. Which focus on different curriculum. These will
have an emphasis around math, language, arts, sports. You apply by filing an
application or submitting a portfolio. Some, you have to be nominated by your
teachers.

------
tajen
Maybe because its a pattern in real life? Popularized by movies? e.g. Malcolm
in the Middle.

Maybe with the 3rd wave of feminism, men feel that they must voice their
problems if we want to exist in society?

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Er, what does this have to do with men? It's not like this only afflicts boys.

~~~
da1
Everything that relates to outlier characteristics will disproportionately
affect more boys than girls. The more extreme the outlier the much more likely
it will be a boy.

This is just basic human biology that like the GP mentioned is routinely
deliberately ignored by feminism.

~~~
andrelaszlo
Are you referring to these Bell curves? :P

[http://www.slideshare.net/terriko/how-does-biology-
explain-t...](http://www.slideshare.net/terriko/how-does-biology-explain-the-
low-numbers-of-women-in-cs-hint-it-doesnt/21-Dont_believe_me_Heres_the)

~~~
evanpw
I think the GP is referring to differences in standard deviation, not mean,
which causes the larger-deviation population to dominate at both the left and
right tails.

~~~
Lawtonfogle
I'm not saying the theory is right or wrong, only that people seem to have a
much harder time understanding a theory based off of same means but different
standard deviations than a theory based off of different means.

