Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How do you spot a genius?

blogs.scientificamerican.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 49 posts

Re: How do you spot a genius?

#31

Post by akavi »

cowsaysoink wrote: post #27
casca wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

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.

Re: How do you spot a genius?

#32

Post by shardling »

akavi wrote: post #31
cowsaysoink wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

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.)

Re: How do you spot a genius?

#33

Post by shardling »

timr wrote: post #16

"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 exce…

>I say this as someone who did "gifted education" in elementary and middle school, and found it to be mostly useless.

That makes little sense -- you can't use an anecdote to compare the experience you did have to the one you didn't.

Re: How do you spot a genius?

#34

Post by irishcoffee »

akavi wrote: post #31
cowsaysoink wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

High school sports/after-school activities play into this timing

Re: How do you spot a genius?

#35

Post by CrankyPants »

nicholas73 wrote: post #21
timr wrote: post #16

"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 exce…

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 n…

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.

Re: How do you spot a genius?

#36

Post by timr »

shardling wrote: post #33
timr wrote: post #16

"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 exce…

>I say this as someone who did "gifted education" in elementary and middle school, and found it to be mostly useless. That makes little sense -- you can't use an anecdote to compare the experience you did have to the one you didn't.

What now?

I did gifted education, and plenty of "regular" education. The gifted education was basically useless.

Re: How do you spot a genius?

#37

Post by timr »

CrankyPants wrote: post #35
nicholas73 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 n…

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.

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.

Re: How do you spot a genius?

#38

Post by sageikosa »

numeromancer wrote: post #20

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 th…

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.

Re: How do you spot a genius?

#39

Post by walshemj »

RockofStrength wrote: post #19
braum wrote: post #4

Go to a Mensa meetup!

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.

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.

Re: How do you spot a genius?

#40

Post by halefx »

kanamekun wrote: post #7
kiba wrote: post #5

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 bio…

> How would that work... would working parents have to take off those days to watch their kids?

They'd probably do the same thing they do now during the 2 months of summer vacation..
Post reply on HN