The Trouble with Bright Kids • Hacker News Board

Re: The Trouble with Bright Kids

#121

Post by nknight » Mon, Nov 28, 2011, 4:49 PM UTC

lutorm wrote: post #112

nknight wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We say, "nice work, you must have tried really hard!" and she replies, a little confused at us, "no". Yeah, in my case that was confusing up until it became insulting, probably somewhere around 7 or 8. Into the teens and adulthood, it might end up encouraging someone to reducing their efforts until they just squeak by, depends on the personality. I'd focus more on figuring out what she actually finds hard or easy,…

that particular statement acts like everything should be hard If it wasn't hard, why should you be praised at all?

Look up "positive reinforcement", it's a critical piece of context for the discussion at hand. The point is to make sure it's actually reinforcing the desired behavior without undesirable side effects.

Re: The Trouble with Bright Kids

#122

Post by cperciva » Mon, Nov 28, 2011, 4:53 PM UTC

cletus wrote: post #115

mikeash wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the use of the capital-G God, he probably means a specific one, not a deity in general.

Apparently this needs addressing. Up until 10-12 I was relatively religious I guess as that was how I'd been raised... sort of. Well, my mother and her side of the family were religious. My dad wasn't. When we drive 30+ miles on Sunday to go to church (before we moved when I was 9) my dad would sit in the car while the rest of us went in. The first revelation (excuse the pun) I had was that these religious people aro…

FWIW, I agree with you: There's no logical reason to believe that there is a god, and Occam's razor argues in favour of believing the contrary.

My point was just that in a strict logical sense you can't prove that this belief is correct -- or put another way, I'm more militantly logical than I am militantly atheist.

Re: The Trouble with Bright Kids

#123

Post by mikeash » Mon, Nov 28, 2011, 4:57 PM UTC

cperciva wrote: post #122

cletus wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently this needs addressing. Up until 10-12 I was relatively religious I guess as that was how I'd been raised... sort of. Well, my mother and her side of the family were religious. My dad wasn't. When we drive 30+ miles on Sunday to go to church (before we moved when I was 9) my dad would sit in the car while the rest of us went in. The first revelation (excuse the pun) I had was that these religious people aro…

FWIW, I agree with you: There's no logical reason to believe that there is a god, and Occam's razor argues in favour of believing the contrary. My point was just that in a strict logical sense you can't prove that this belief is correct -- or put another way, I'm more militantly logical than I am militantly atheist.

Do you apply that to other areas? Do you avoid saying that e.g. invisible pink unicorns do not exist?

I think it is reasonable to take everyday speech saying "does not exist" as meaning "appears not to exist, and if it does exist this is indistinguishable from not existing".

Re: The Trouble with Bright Kids

#124

Post by cperciva » Mon, Nov 28, 2011, 4:58 PM UTC

xibernetik wrote: post #98

cperciva wrote: post #79

Yes, praising students for their effort is a good way to encourage them to keep trying. But is this necessarily a good thing? I see far too many students entering postsecondary education who shouldn't be there. No matter how hard they try, they just can't grasp the basic concepts. And when they inevitably fail, they fall back on what they were praised for as children -- "but I worked so hard!" -- as if they deserve t…

I'm not going to disagree with the meaning behind your post, but I am going to disagree with the wording. Calling kids who shouldn't be in university dumb is incredibly harmful and reinforces the idea that you need some sort of Bachelor's degree to be successful, not-stupid, a real adult, etc. That attitude only encourages people who really should enter a trade get a random arts degree instead which causes them far m…

Calling kids who shouldn't be in university dumb is incredibly harmful...

Only because you attach a value judgement to the word. I'm just calling a spade a spade; problems only arise when people think it's impossible for stupid people to be happy or successful (despite large volumes of evidence to the contrary).

Re: The Trouble with Bright Kids

#125

Post by cperciva » Mon, Nov 28, 2011, 5:02 PM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #123

cperciva wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, I agree with you: There's no logical reason to believe that there is a god, and Occam's razor argues in favour of believing the contrary. My point was just that in a strict logical sense you can't prove that this belief is correct -- or put another way, I'm more militantly logical than I am militantly atheist.

Do you apply that to other areas? Do you avoid saying that e.g. invisible pink unicorns do not exist? I think it is reasonable to take everyday speech saying "does not exist" as meaning "appears not to exist, and if it does exist this is indistinguishable from not existing".

Do you avoid saying that e.g. invisible pink unicorns do not exist?

Come to think if it, I'm pretty sure I've never stated "invisible pink unicorns do not exist". On the other hand, I've never had to avoid saying it either; oddly enough, I've never felt any urge to comment on the possible existence of invisible pink unicorns until now.

But this is immaterial to the issue at hand, which is one of logical arguments, not mere validity of statements. I don't believe that invisible pink unicorns exist, but I would never state that I had logically proven that invisible pink unicorns do not exist.

Re: The Trouble with Bright Kids

#126

Post by BrandonM » Mon, Nov 28, 2011, 5:19 PM UTC

The problem with pop psychology is that it often is not quite right. A half dozen decades ago, the "new idea" was that kids should not be beaten, but encouraged (spare the rod and spoil the child). In the last decade or two, we've learned that the kind of praise you employ is important, and the advice now is to praise effort rather than innate ability.

Once you get into the real world, though, you learn that effort isn't as important as doing the right things well. School itself is teaching us the wrong thing, and this effort-praising business is compounding it. Trying really hard at History when you don't like it isn't going to make your life much better in the long run, it's just going to be hours and hours that could have been spent furthering some other ability or otherwise enjoying childhood.

In a couple more decades, we'll have a shiny new experiment that shows that praising effort has ruined a couple generations, teaching them that life is nothing but hard work, soldiering through undesirable situations without considering importance or relevance. We'll learn that we need to teach children reflection, to foster creativity, and to encourage curiosity. Then we'll learn that those kids don't work hard enough, and the parenting industry will roll on...

Rural parents have had it right for generations. Making kids play outside, giving them real responsibilities (e.g., necessary farm chores), and teaching them a variety of skills outside the classroom is practically guaranteed to result in well-rounded, well-adjusted children. You don't need to read the latest parenting mumbo-jumbo to know how to raise a kid.

Re: The Trouble with Bright Kids

#127

Post by tryitnow » Mon, Nov 28, 2011, 5:27 PM UTC

cletus wrote: post #40

Like others who have posted here, I have s story similar to this. By the sounds of it, I wouldn't call myself as "gifted" as some who have posted here but, relative to the environment I was in, I was "gifted". I grew up in three small towns. For the first 9 years, in a town of less than 1,000 where the 3rd and 4th grades (for example) were in the same class. When I was 8 I was doing the same work as the 7th graders w…

I'd like to think the Internet has changed this to some extent. My guess is that I would have found it a godsend. I remember trying to learn advanced statistics and getting frustrated because all of the software was expensive. Nowadays you've got a huge amount of free software and even more importantly strong active communities around it. I am cautiously optimistic that this will help connect lonely smart kids to others in the world who share their interests.

Re: The Trouble with Bright Kids

#128

Post by yummyfajitas » Mon, Nov 28, 2011, 5:35 PM UTC

qlkzy wrote: post #118

yummyfajitas wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'Raw Smarts' is a slightly odd concept. I'm no psychologist, but I think that the majority of current research points towards the idea that ability in almost anything is essentially a consequence of practice and experience. As far as I'm aware, ability is generally considered to be something along the lines of practice x innate talent. So while it's true that ability scales with practice, it's not true that talent do…

(See my other reply for more on my understanding of innate ability) > As far as I'm aware, ability is generally considered to be something along the lines of practice x innate talent. Right, but it's not a simple multiplication (AFAIK/IMO). The research suggests that ultimately practice dominates. I can't think right now as to how to cast that as an equation, but it has more non-linear terms. As to the IQ chart, I'm…

I didn't mean to propose an exact multiplicative relationship. I merely used it to illustrate how the two claims

a) innate talent exists and is important

b) practice is also important

are not incompatible.

As for correlation between IQ and various professions, not to mention wages, there is plenty of statistically significant data on this. See for example [1], which shows excellent correlations between AFQT (the US Army's IQ-like test) scores and post-military wage (not to mention many specific objectively graded tasks within the armed forces).

(Note that IQ test-retest scores tend to be highly correlated - it's rare that a child scoring 1 stdev below the mean will later score 1 stdev above the mean.)

In the particular case of math proofs (which I think you're referring to) you have the additional issue that (I think - I'm not a mathematician) proofs often require intuitive leaps...Teaching intuition/pattern-matching is of course really hard.

True. But nevertheless, some students pick it up immediately while others never do. The question arises, why?

Also, as for what is "well accepted", there are lots of things in the field of education that are well accepted but false. For example, people widely believe that test prep significantly improves SAT scores [2]. They also believe school quality (rather than % of Asian students) explains many of the differences in test outcomes between US schools and Asian schools [3]. See also Bryan Caplan's book [4] which shows lots of evidence that most of what is done to children before age 18 has little effect on adult outcomes.

So if you have evidence that public schools and private schools significantly affect outcomes, go ahead and post it. But most of the evidence I've seen suggests school quality is dwarfed by non-school factors. People just ignore the evidence because they don't like the conclusion.

[1] Handbook of the economics of education, by Hanushek and Welch

[2] Studies funded by parties other than Kaplan tend to disagree. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124278685697537839.html

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trends_in_International_Mathema...

[4] http://www.amazon.com/Selfish-Reasons-Have-More-Kids/dp/0465...

Re: The Trouble with Bright Kids

#129

Post by lutorm » Mon, Nov 28, 2011, 5:43 PM UTC

nknight wrote: post #121

lutorm wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that particular statement acts like everything should be hard If it wasn't hard, why should you be praised at all?

Look up "positive reinforcement", it's a critical piece of context for the discussion at hand. The point is to make sure it's actually reinforcing the desired behavior without undesirable side effects.

But that's my point. You want to reinforce desired behavior, which in this case is effort. If you do something without effort, then what is there to warrant praise?

Whether the task would have required effort by some other hypothetical person isn't really relevant to the point. It would be appropriate to praise me for completing a marathon, but not Haile Gebrselassie.

Re: The Trouble with Bright Kids

#130

Post by nknight » Mon, Nov 28, 2011, 6:14 PM UTC

lutorm wrote: post #129

nknight wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look up "positive reinforcement", it's a critical piece of context for the discussion at hand. The point is to make sure it's actually reinforcing the desired behavior without undesirable side effects.

But that's my point. You want to reinforce desired behavior, which in this case is effort . If you do something without effort, then what is there to warrant praise? Whether the task would have required effort by some other hypothetical person isn't really relevant to the point. It would be appropriate to praise me for completing a marathon, but not Haile Gebrselassie.

I think the disconnect here is that you're starting from the premise that effort is the only thing that should be praised.

To start with, that fails to account for things like moral and ethical choices that don't require significant effort, but should still be praised when the correct choice is made.

More seriously, it distorts self-esteem and worldview. Results become unimportant, it is effort alone that matters. A child raised in such an environment will get its ass kicked in the real world where nobody cares about effort, only results.

Effort must be encouraged as a means to an end, not the end itself.