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

California's most neglected group of students: the gifted ones

latimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

401–410 of 553 posts

Re: California's most neglected group of students: the gifted ones

#401

Post by Dylan16807 »

PittleyDunkin wrote: post #276
snerbles wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can also learn outside of school, too. As someone who spent time in all three, I felt that my academic time was utterly wasted in public school. Sure, "learning outside" is always available, but that doesn't regain the time served in government mandated kid-prison. > In my experience all that people talk about how private and homeschooling affects your ability to socialize with normal people is true. In my expe…

> I felt that my academic time was utterly wasted in public school No it wasn't! You learned how to interact with normal people. That's a lifelong skill. > "You're so well-adjusted", is a frequent refrain. Sure, some people make it work. I don't think this invalidates the broad observation that private and homeschooled people are frequently socially... off. I myself had a homeschooled kid in our town who transitioned…

> No it wasn't! You learned how to interact with normal people. That's a lifelong skill.

If that's the main thing you learn, it's only worth an hour or two of the school day. So it's not all wasted but it's mostly wasted.

Re: California's most neglected group of students: the gifted ones

#402

Post by wat10000 »

gowld wrote: post #133
cogman10 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Taking resources away from those who move society forward and spending them on those who are unlikely to "pay it back" is a way your culture dies. What does this even mean? To me, the measure of a healthy society is how that society treats those that are "unlikely to pay it back". The most unhealthy societies treat unwanted humans as disposable refuse. For example, I don't think we'd call the culture/society of the…

You can't imagine interpreting the parent comment for its clear face value -- that supporting outlier high achievers helps everyone in society? The inventor of a vaccine or a microchip or a sculpture doesn't hoard the invention for themself. Meanwhile, societies like USSR and Communist China, that persecuted their geniuses, collapsed their previously great societies.

Russia was a backward, underdeveloped nation that couldn’t even beat Germany’s B team, and then collapsed into civil war. 25 years later, the USSR beat Germany’s A team and effectively conquered half of Europe, holding it for nearly half a century.

China before the Communists got pillaged by a succession of outside powers, culminating in basically a failed state that barely had a national government. China after the Communists became prosperous and strong, with the world’s second largest economy and no prospect of being invaded.

I’m no fan of Communism and I think a better system of government could have taken these countries farther, but “collapsed their previously great societies” makes no sense.

Re: California's most neglected group of students: the gifted ones

#403

Post by TeaBrain »

couchdb_ouchdb wrote: post #236
frmersdog wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what way are you certain that she's gifted?

In Seattle, there's actually a test you can take to get you into the "HCC" program which is the gifted program in Seattle Public Schools. Seattle, however, has been trying (successfully) for years to dismantle it. So even if you pass the test, there's not very many places that you can go to get these services.

Was this a test that a child could be voluntarily signed up for by their parents? In my district in a different state, the students were first selected based on standardized testing to then take the IQ test like exam to get into the program.

Re: California's most neglected group of students: the gifted ones

#404

Post by echoangle »

jmyeet wrote: post #37

With most problems in society there is a huge stumbling block that people aren't actually interested in resolving because it conflicts with their other interests. For example: homelessness. The number one cause of and solution to homelessness is... housing. Housing is too expensive. Housing needs to be cheaper. But too many people have a vested financial interest in maintaining and growing high prices. Interestingly,…

> For example: homelessness. The number one cause of and solution to homelessness is... housing.

Is that true? Without having a deep insight into the subject, homelessness seems to often be a symptom of mental illness and substance abuse. I don’t think having cheaper housing would really fix the issue of homelessness.

Re: California's most neglected group of students: the gifted ones

#405

Post by bparsons »

The argument against these programs is that they directed scarce resources toward the students who least need it. The mandate of public schools is to get as many people to a baseline of education.

There are many jurisdictions that can afford to do both, but most are not in that position.

There is far more wasted potential in the case of the hundreds of thousands of kids who fall through the cracks because of a crummy education system. Many states already create an uneven playing field by funding each school system based on the quantum of local taxes collected in their particular communities. Poor kids shouldn't have to further compete for resources within their own, poorly funded institution.

Re: California's most neglected group of students: the gifted ones

#406

Post by teachrdan »

tomr75 wrote: post #208
TrackerFF wrote: post #131

Some countries, like the Nordics, have few (to no) options for gifted students. The mentality there is that it is better to raise the average, than to focus resources on a small % of the population. Seems to have worked pretty well for them, all things considered.

How has it worked well? Europe is having issues with productivity — too expensive to live there AND higher paying jobs in the US. Eg People have to leave Norway to start businesses due to the tax system

You're making a generalization about all of Europe vs just Norway, the country OP mentioned.

Check out the link below to be educated on how incorrect your assumption is. No offense intended -- I didn't realize how much better the life of an average Norwegian is compared to that of the average American!

What really stood out to me is that, by comparison, an American is > 10X more likely to die in childbirth, and 24% more likely to be poor. It seems like the Norwegians must be doing something right!

https://www.mylifeelsewhere.com/compare/norway/united-states

Re: California's most neglected group of students: the gifted ones

#407

Post by teachrdan »

elzbardico wrote: post #157
rcpt wrote: post #3

It's not because of BLM. It's because of Prop 13.

So paying incompetent administrators and teacher even more than what they make in California will somehow improve things magically? The solution is to always tax more, that's it?

Funny how HN never assumes that paying software developers more money is pointless. It's just those greedy teachers trying to make enough money to buy a home!

Re: California's most neglected group of students: the gifted ones

#408

Post by Aloha »

zozbot234 wrote: post #195
phil21 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Killing truly progressive programs for the purpose of virtue signaling is a loss for society It's not just a loss for society. It's society-killing. Taking resources away from those who move society forward and spending them on those who are unlikely to "pay it back" is a way your culture dies. Conquerers in the past used this strategy to win massive empires for themselves. It's a ridiculous self-own. This is perha…

> spending them on those who are unlikely to "pay it back" If only. The school system is actually terrible at helping the most disadvantaged and marginalized students. These students would benefit the most from highly structured and directed instructional approaches that often have the pupils memorizing their "lesson" essentially word-for-word and getting prompt, immediate feedback on every question they answer[0] -…

As an adult, I've taught myself five programming languages, I read 20+ books a year, and while in school I was reading at a college level by the fourth or fifth grade.

However, because I have ADD/ADHD, I was shunted into the special education program, and told point blank in high school that I was not 'college material', I was not allowed to take advanced math.

I did in fairness have a great deal of trouble doing a lot of the busywork that school presents to you - because I saw little point in it, I knew the material, I'd read the book, I could write about it and often passed tests on it with flying colors.

If I'd been given an opportunity to do more engaging learning, and less information regurgitation style learning, I wonder where I would be. Like an introduction to computer programming class, would have completely changed the trajectory of my life - yes I'm a working engineer today, but it took me a long time to work my way up from a low wage service job.

Re: California's most neglected group of students: the gifted ones

#409

Post by TexanFeller »

sangnoir wrote: post #184
gowld wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't imagine interpreting the parent comment for its clear face value -- that supporting outlier high achievers helps everyone in society? The inventor of a vaccine or a microchip or a sculpture doesn't hoard the invention for themself. Meanwhile, societies like USSR and Communist China, that persecuted their geniuses, collapsed their previously great societies.

> The inventor of a vaccine or a microchip or a sculpture doesn't hoard the invention for themself The built-in assumption is that those outlier high achievers & inventors were gifted students. Is there any evidence for this prior? As a devil's advocate, my counterpoint is that "grit" was more important than raw intelligence, if so, should society then prioritize grittiness over giftedness? A few months ago, there wa…

Grit is not more important than raw intelligence for making world changing discoveries, that’s nonsense on its face. It’s a necessary but not sufficient condition, it takes BOTH incredible intelligence and extreme grit combined to make world changing discoveries. An average IQ person could never accomplish what Newton, Darwin, Einstein, Paul Dirac, Richard Feynman, or Leonard Susskind did with grit alone and our modern world would not exist without them. With a few notable exceptions the giants of history mostly had great financial and social privilege as well, allowing them the time to apply their grit and intelligence to problems that didn’t have any immediate economic payoff.

I will say that math and hard sciences are unnecessarily difficult for outsiders to approach due to overly confusing terminology and not enough thought toward pedagogy. Great contemporaries like Sean Carroll and Leonard Susskind are demonstrating how to make the sciences much more accessible to people like me. But no matter how much more accessible you make it it’s inconceivable that average IQ people will ever contribute to the frontiers of it.

Re: California's most neglected group of students: the gifted ones

#410

Post by bradrn »

euroderf wrote: post #140
bobfromsf wrote: post #90

As a father with a son with IQ over 160, I can tell you unequivocally that California thinks gifted kids are the enemy. Gifted children, especially profoundly gifted kids like mine are special needs. He can’t function in a regular class because he would become bored and would act out and constantly get in trouble. Since my kid was a toddler we have had to completely rely on ourselves to figure everything out and we w…

> We have had to go to private school because California does not skip grades even though it’s obvious the child doesn’t belong in the grade level for his age. Be careful what you wish for. Skipping 2nd grade led to bullying hell until I stayed for a second year of 6th. I think what you want for your kid is to skip N grades ahead in select subjects but otherwise stay in age peer group.

On the other hand, I skipped three grade levels and feel that it was absolutely the best option for me. I don’t think there’s any one answer here about the best thing to do — it depends entirely on the student, the school, and the grades to be skipped.
Post reply on HN