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Curse Of The Gifted (2000)

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Re: Curse Of The Gifted (2000)

#161

Post by TacticalCoder »

"Another is your refusal to use systematic version-control or release-engineering practices."

And then Linus went on to use Git. I'm not a native english speaker so I may be wrong on this one but I feel like there's quite some irony there: Linus got criticized for not properly using version control and... A few years later he went on to write the most succesful version control system ever!

The same person created both Git and Linux ffs! ESR was probably right: Linus is the 2nd coming of Ken ^ ^

Re: Curse Of The Gifted (2000)

#162

Post by rohunati »

bunderbunder wrote: post #103
ejk314 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Straight As can mask a lot of problems. I've got a room mate who was put ahead a grade in middle?late-elementary school and missed the whole foundation of algebra. They did so because he got straight A's so obviously he's smart enough; he could just skip that. (They promised to give him a text book so he could learn on his own that summer, but never got around to giving it to him.) Of course, he started struggling i…

I have never, ever, ever met someone who was well-served by skipping a grade. Myself included. Ever. Skipping a grade means giving up a full year of education. If that proposition doesn't give you pause, you probably don't have enough respect for the value of education. Even if you you get absolutely nothing out of that year aside from the soft skills you develop by sitting in a class with other kids and listening to…

I don't think you can make such a strong, categorical statement. It's wholly dependent on the student's environment and largely, if they are mentored. Let me share with you a story of one of my good friends.

He started school a year ahead by being skipping Kindergarten. He progressively began testing out of math courses, and eventually took BC Calculus when he was in 9th grade. He then decided to skip tenth grade, but since he was already so far ahead in math, he really just had to test out of three courses -- English, Chemistry, and World History. He ended up graduating valedictorian, and he finished his undergrad in two years. He's now completing his masters in physics at Cambridge. He will likely do his Phd there as well.

Interestingly, he couldn't speak as a young child. But his father was able to teach him math, which he soaked up like a sponge. Most notably, his father instilled in him the importance of what my friend calls "the grind." He was taught that he couldn't be truly successful in mathematics unless he practiced hard, and this discipline has served him well to this day.

Re: Curse Of The Gifted (2000)

#163

Post by joehillen »

Linus' signature is shockingly relevant these days:

"...The Bill of Rights is a literal and absolute document. The First Amendment doesn't say you have a right to speak out unless the government has a 'compelling interest' in censoring the Internet. The Second Amendment doesn't say you have the right to keep and bear arms until some madman plants a bomb. The Fourth Amendment doesn't say you have the right to be secure from search and seizure unless some FBI agent thinks you fit the profile of a terrorist. The government has no right to interfere with any of these freedoms under any circumstances." -- Harry Browne, 1996 USA presidential candidate, Libertarian Party

Re: Curse Of The Gifted (2000)

#164

Post by mgkimsal »

thisrod wrote: post #117
mgkimsal wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost exact same here, except I failed college calculus - twice. It's always been a sore point for me that people who are obviously not as 'smart' as I am somehow all managed to pass it - I couldn't even understand it. Can I lay a little blame on bad professors? perhaps. others complained about the profs too, but ... they still managed to grok enough to pass. I only managed to satisfy degree requirements by taking '…

Did you ever read Calculus Made Easy ? If you just want to understand enough calculus to know why a thrown ball follows a parabola, that really isn't hard. The typical university course aims higher than that - it's trying to instill a way of thinking that's required to progress towards a third year course in Generalised Nonsense Theory. That way of thinking is quite unnatural, and makes the calculus course harder tha…

no - have not revisited it at all. I've been encouraged to, and may do that later this year or next depending on my schedule. thanks for the tip.

Re: Curse Of The Gifted (2000)

#165

Post by mcv »

bunderbunder wrote: post #103
ejk314 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Straight As can mask a lot of problems. I've got a room mate who was put ahead a grade in middle?late-elementary school and missed the whole foundation of algebra. They did so because he got straight A's so obviously he's smart enough; he could just skip that. (They promised to give him a text book so he could learn on his own that summer, but never got around to giving it to him.) Of course, he started struggling i…

I have never, ever, ever met someone who was well-served by skipping a grade. Myself included. Ever. Skipping a grade means giving up a full year of education. If that proposition doesn't give you pause, you probably don't have enough respect for the value of education. Even if you you get absolutely nothing out of that year aside from the soft skills you develop by sitting in a class with other kids and listening to…

My dad was well-served by skipping a grade. He went to university when he was 16, and eventually got a PhD. I think I would have done better if I'd skipped a grade. By the time I got to university, I'd grown so lazy I couldn't deal with courses that required actual work. A bit more challenge a bit earlier would have served me well.

My son goes to a Montessori school that has two different grades in each class, so you hear not just the stuff for your grade, but also for the next (or previous) one. I think that's a perfect environment for skipping grades, because you get to condense two years into one.

Re: Curse Of The Gifted (2000)

#166

Post by SilasX »

bunderbunder wrote: post #103
ejk314 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Straight As can mask a lot of problems. I've got a room mate who was put ahead a grade in middle?late-elementary school and missed the whole foundation of algebra. They did so because he got straight A's so obviously he's smart enough; he could just skip that. (They promised to give him a text book so he could learn on his own that summer, but never got around to giving it to him.) Of course, he started struggling i…

I have never, ever, ever met someone who was well-served by skipping a grade. Myself included. Ever. Skipping a grade means giving up a full year of education. If that proposition doesn't give you pause, you probably don't have enough respect for the value of education. Even if you you get absolutely nothing out of that year aside from the soft skills you develop by sitting in a class with other kids and listening to…

>you probably don't have enough respect for the value of education

I value education, just not schooling, despite the attempts to equate the two.

>Parents, please, this is one marshmallow test you and your kids really don't want to fail.

Except that pushing yourself harder and earlier is analogous to waiting for the two marshmallows, not eating the one.

Re: Curse Of The Gifted (2000)

#168

Post by jakobe »

bane wrote: post #107

edit a little stream of consciousness follows Curse of being gifted is very real. I wonder sometimes how many people couldn't break out of it and have ended up in bad jobs, or worse. Probably like many HNers I also suffered from it mightily in K-12 and by the time I realized what was going on, I was already so far behind that escaping school, rather than redoing years of what I missed, was the easier option. It took…

> the kinds of problems most people have seem trivially simple to me

This sounds a bit narcissistic. If you think other people's problems are trivial, maybe you're just not being empathic enough to understand their full scope.

If everything looks like it follows simple patterns, maybe you just aren't looking close enough.

When you learn something new, there's often this point where you feel you understand it all. If you're a quick learner, you will reach this point quickly. But things only seem simple because you don't understand them fully yet. You have to continue learning, specialising, looking at the details, and only then will you learn that the subject isn't quite as simple as you thought.

You get bored when you figure out what kind of car someone has, or what color their furniture has. You think you have them all figured out. But if you continue talking to these shallow people, you might see there's something beyond these superficial details.

Re: Curse Of The Gifted (2000)

#169

Post by bradleyjg »

chao- wrote: post #120
bunderbunder wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never, ever, ever met someone who was well-served by skipping a grade. Myself included. Ever. Skipping a grade means giving up a full year of education. If that proposition doesn't give you pause, you probably don't have enough respect for the value of education. Even if you you get absolutely nothing out of that year aside from the soft skills you develop by sitting in a class with other kids and listening to…

It's not entirely a marshmallow test and I disagree with your blanket categorization of it as such. During elementary school, a friend and I got a hold of a Math review book meant for college-age folks who didn't really grok Math in High School. We enjoyed competing with each other in learning math, but it resulted in us going into 6th grade knowing everything we would be learning for the next three years. In Math al…

You skipped two grades in one subject with a peer so you weren't by yourself among the older children. I can certainly believe that worked out fine.

Maybe even in the more extreme case of a child skipping several grades altogether by himself, that's the best of a bad set of choices. But we shouldn't be offering only bad choices. At least in/near any decent size city, there should be a large enough population to create classes of a reasonable size of same age students at roughly the same level.

Re: Curse Of The Gifted (2000)

#170

Post by hcarvalhoalves »

j2kun wrote: post #135
hcarvalhoalves wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can relate to that. College-level calculus burned me so much , I didn't had the algebra background necessary to grok it, much of it is memorizing heuristics and "tricks", and college professors (specially in my public uni) didn't had much patience either. I even did well in other math-related classes, but calculus was a chimera. Unfortunately, I fell so much behind the curriculum that I had to drop out of college t…

It is very rare for an incoming calculus student to know algebra. In fact, I often tell my students that the first goal of college-level calculus is to make them actually learn algebra. It's an extremely sad state of affairs for me (a mathematician). Relevant (an article I wrote): http://j2kun.svbtle.com/you-never-did-math-in-high-school

I can vouch for your article. I believe you captured the problem with school-level math.

As an anecdote for you, since you're a mathematician: during school I had zero patience for math. I would often study just enough to get a passing grade. On the other hand, I enjoyed physics classes a lot, it involved more problem solving and holistic vision than memorization (since you can just memorize a couple formulas and derive everything else you need - e.g. the second and third equations of motion from the first). Maybe I would have enjoyed math classes more if it involved more intuition and less rote? I'm sure you'll come across kids like I've been during your voluntary lectures.

PS: I'll be following your blog.

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