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How do you spot a genius?

blogs.scientificamerican.com

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Re: How do you spot a genius?

#11

Post by bromang »

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…

this might help improve performance (though probably the effect will be much smaller than you think), but it doesn't explain the comparative weakness of american PISA results.

Re: How do you spot a genius?

#12

Post by kiba »

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?

For small children, that is an issue. Maybe they'll hire babysitters or send the kids to "fun" school or to daycare centers.

Teenagers and high school students can take care of themsleves.

Re: How do you spot a genius?

#14

Post by kiba »

bromang wrote: post #11
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…

this might help improve performance (though probably the effect will be much smaller than you think), but it doesn't explain the comparative weakness of american PISA results.

Why not? Sleep deprivation and long summer vacations will add up over time.

Re: How do you spot a genius?

#15

Post by kiba »

tnuc wrote: post #6

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 ev…

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.

Re: How do you spot a genius?

#16

Post by 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.

Re: How do you spot a genius?

#20

Post by 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!

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