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Curse Of The Gifted (2000)

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Re: Curse Of The Gifted (2000)

#131

Post by saucetenuto »

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…

Sup.

But I was one of the oldest in my grade (so I was still sorta in the right age band), and it was the second grade (so our social structures weren't all that well-developed).

Re: Curse Of The Gifted (2000)

#132

Post by mitochondrion »

hcarvalhoalves wrote: post #115
taternuts wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I definitely remember the first time I could no longer slack off, take 0's on homeworks, and ace tests to get a C+/B and it was in high-school :( I jumped to AP Calculus without taking the pre-requisite AP class everyone else had taken, and I thought I was so cool and smart. By the weeks end I no longer felt so cool and smart - I was completely lost.

Calculus sucked more for me because here in Brazil the education system doesn't include it in the high-school curriculum, so unless you're on some top private school, you only first hear about "calculus" in college. In the USA and other places there's exposure to it prior to college, which I believe is sensible. As a side note, I can't stress enough how bad the education system is in Brazil (in the sense of lack of s…

From my experience, there's probably much less calculus-taking going on in American high schools than you think. Of that, even less is anything resembling calculus.

Re: Curse Of The Gifted (2000)

#133

Post by revelation »

ArkyBeagle wrote: post #88

This is really how to fix this: http://carymillsap.blogspot.com/2011/01/axiomatic-approach-t... I was an undergrad with Cary, and he got A's, I got B's with the odd C and this is exactly why. Until I took the Discrete Math course ( w/ the Eggers book - which is fantastic ) , I was floundering. I knew what the rules were, roughly, but I didn't KNOW know them. I'm not name-dropping Cary. It's just a coincidence, but I…

That seems like a positively annoying and pointless thing (see the line where they eventually just start referencing them by number; it's become just another 'thing to do').

Not the value of teaching math through axioms and deriving everything you do from them! That's very useful and proper preparation for higher math.

But just because I can express everything in propositional logic with just NAND, I don't do that. Just as I would prove the mean-value theorem once and then simply invoke it when appropriate, I define conjunction, disjunction, negation etc. once and move on with the world. This is the lecture you are trying to teach, after all: you can deconstruct the universe into very simple blocks.

Re: Curse Of The Gifted (2000)

#134

Post by mitochondrion »

hcarvalhoalves wrote: post #85
austenallred wrote: post #18

I am miles away from Eric or Linus, but the "curse of the gifted" is very real. Thankfully I wasn't smart or gifted enough that I could ride it for long, but when it comes to math and problem-solving I rode it well into my high school years. I never learned to do algebra "by the book," because I didn't need to. Or maybe because I wasn't smart enough to. The math teacher would teach "3x + 6 = 9." Basic algebraic probl…

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…

Out of curiosity, whose online math have you done?

Re: Curse Of The Gifted (2000)

#135

Post by j2kun »

hcarvalhoalves wrote: post #85
austenallred wrote: post #18

I am miles away from Eric or Linus, but the "curse of the gifted" is very real. Thankfully I wasn't smart or gifted enough that I could ride it for long, but when it comes to math and problem-solving I rode it well into my high school years. I never learned to do algebra "by the book," because I didn't need to. Or maybe because I wasn't smart enough to. The math teacher would teach "3x + 6 = 9." Basic algebraic probl…

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

Re: Curse Of The Gifted (2000)

#136

Post by everyone »

Working on an OS is an enormous job where teamwork, good communication, planning and so on are paramount. I am the only game coder for a small adver-game company. The projects are small and I have total control, so I will never hit that wall and have to do all that boring stuff :) (One of the reasons I chose such a job)

Re: Curse Of The Gifted (2000)

#137

Post by dccoolgai »

mgkimsal wrote: post #89
austenallred wrote: post #18

I am miles away from Eric or Linus, but the "curse of the gifted" is very real. Thankfully I wasn't smart or gifted enough that I could ride it for long, but when it comes to math and problem-solving I rode it well into my high school years. I never learned to do algebra "by the book," because I didn't need to. Or maybe because I wasn't smart enough to. The math teacher would teach "3x + 6 = 9." Basic algebraic probl…

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 '…

This story sounds almost exactly like my own...except I failed r times...got a B the 4th. The funny thing is that I probably remember more calc 15 years on than most oothers that passed because I took it 4 times :)

Re: Curse Of The Gifted (2000)

#138

Post by stephencanon »

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 benefitted massively both from skipping a grade, and from skipping ahead in math, science, german and french. I was obscenely bored, and wouldn’t have learned a thing (except for how to goof off more effectively) and would have distracted my fellow students to boot. You develop the soft skills of sitting in class whether or not the other kids sitting there with you are a year or two older than you. I don’t think ego enters into it at all.

Re: Curse Of The Gifted (2000)

#139

Post by mindslight »

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 skipped both 5th and 8th, and while I obviously don't have an external perspective, it still feels like it was the right thing to do.

Fewer years of "writing/literature" could have weakened my writing skills, but I think that was primarily from my non-application due the incestuous lit-crit regurgitate-the-themes-the-teacher-says educational approach, and more of this certainly wouldn't have helped. I applied myself just fine when I was in technical classes in college and therefore had something real to write about.

Socially, I actually did better when being placed with the older kids. There was less Idiocracy-style jockeying for social position, or at least I just wasn't involved.

In science/math, most school years involved spending half of the year "reviewing" the previous year's material. My recollection of elementary arithmetic class is that you learn multiplication tables up to 6 one year, up to 10 the next, and up to 12 the next. For someone who gets it, will remember it, and just wants to move on, I'd say being held in these doldrums is more harmful than simply letting them go closer to their own pace.

Re: Curse Of The Gifted (2000)

#140

Post by BlackDeath3 »

socrates1998 wrote: post #119
OldSchool wrote: post #113

I'm surprised nobody's mentioned this curse's endgame: getting a typical corporate job. Everything about it is against your nature: fixed schedule, dictated product and process, micro management and arbitrary accountability compared to the creative freedom of your life when delivering academic performance on a timescale of weeks or months was your only responsibility. Worse still, it's not an "X year work program," i…

This is so true. I hated my life for years because I knew if I could have just been more disciplined, then I would have been free from all the horrible, mind numbing, soul crushing stuff I had to do at my corporate job. It took me years to finally leap into self-employment.

>It took me years to finally leap into self-employment.

What do you do? How did you start?

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