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Comment by testmonkey | Hacker News Reader

If you were to design your own high school curriculum for gifted students, what would it look like?

I would work on the early grades for all students, especially gifted ones. The epistemological stance you wind up with gets set fairly early -- not in stone but also hard to work with -- and the early grades are where we should be putting our resources and efforts.

What topics, methods, or activities would you see more of?

Which less?

Is there any specific cognitive, childhood, intellectual, educational, etc., development model that this is based on?

How would you account and adapt for different proclivities and/or interests?

So many of the questions point up the problems with the format and media for an AMA. So many of the best questions are out of the scope ...

But, let's just pick one biggie here: how about taking on "systems" as a lingua franca and set of perspectives for thinking about: our universe, our world, our cultures and social systems, our technologies, and the systems that we ourselves are?

This would be one very good thing to get 21st century children started on ...

Your systems-as-a-lingua-franca suggestion seems straight up David Christian's "Big History" concept:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_History

"Big History is an emerging academic discipline which examines history from the Big Bang to the present. It examines long time frames using a multidisciplinary approach based on combining numerous disciplines from science and the humanities,[1][2][3][4][5] and explores human existence in the context of this bigger picture.[6] It integrates studies of the cosmos, Earth, life, and humanity using empirical evidence to explore cause-and-effect relations..."

I'm rather a fan, though I've only explored it quite briefly.

If you're not familiar with the Santa Fe Institute and its work, I suspect you'll find it fascinating. The general rhubric is "complexity science", applied across a large number of fields. Geoffrey West and Sander van der Leuuw are two other fellows. Founders included Murray Gell-Mann and Kenneth Arrow.

"SFI's original mission was to disseminate the notion of a new interdisciplinary research area called complexity theory or simply complex systems. This new effort was intended to provide an alternative to the increasing specialization the founders observed in science by focusing on synthesis across disciplines.[4] As the idea of interdisciplinary science increased in popularity, a number of independent institutes and departments emerged whose focus emphasized similar goals."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Fe_Institute

I keep discovering that the most interesting people -- in multiple fields -- I'm running across are quite often affiliated.

Related to my other question: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11941965

And, since many of your responses point at challenges to the AMA (or HN) format, what would your preference be? Is there an existing platform or model that fits, or is there a set of requirements that

I will just reply that many of my best friends wound up at SFI and I've had a long association, etc.

And that -- I think you realize this -- what I was advocating is something simpler than the "Big History" idea ...

On friends winding up at SFI: that's good to hear multiple ways -- for your friends, your familiarity, and yet another endorsement of the Institute.

Thinking in Systems (and not just Meadows' book) is something I'd also like to see developed more fully. Big History is more than that, but it's also one logical development -- systems pervasive throughout the academic curriculum. I think that's a powerful concept.

There's also the possiblity that many people don't and cannot get systems thinking. Another author I've been reading, William Ophuls (most especially Plato's Revenge) discusses this in the context of Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development, and comes to sobering conclusions regarding facing social challenges based on typical population cognitive foundations. Basing your Solution to the World's Problems on "all the children are above average" is bound to fail.

Thanks again for your time.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com