"while browsing the MIT Department of Materials Science and Engineering’s website, a site she said she checks weekly to see “if there’s anything new.”
does anyone believe these stories? they seem to be popping up more often.
does anyone believe these stories? they seem to be popping up more often.
It takes a child of remarkable interests and aptitude to win a national competition, of course. That's why you're reading about her specifically. It also takes unusually supportive parents. A sizable minority of American families with children could afford a home lab, equipment, and supplies if a child were so inclined and the parents encouraged it, but I suspect it's rarer for parents to OK funding it than other costly-but-more-common extracurricular activities or adult hobbies. Half of the battle is just having parents who understand you well enough to support what you want to do.
On the other hand, I think it requires natural and insatiable curiousity. For instance, myy kids, while quite smart, certainly don’t have the same thirst.
Although you can force and manipulate them into doing things (and, sometimes it makes sense to do so), at a certain point one realizes that motivation is very personal. That is, you can setup the environment to encourage interest. But, if there’s still no interest, even incidental, the outcomes won’t match the expectations.
For a silly example, imagine a parent with a passion for collecting dust. They try every trick to make their children also enjoy it. But, whatever they try, the kids would rather play baseball. What does the parent do? They can make everyone miserable by continuing to force dust into every aspect of life. Or, they can learn to enjoy baseball.
Fortunately, a very curious parent can easily learn to enjoy things that they normally wouldn’t enjoy.
Thanks!
But I’m willing to be more forgiving when it comes to younger people who may not have had the opportunity yet to learn the wisdom of years.
So, for example, if you are 50 or younger, I would be likely to be more forgiving of your response to the high schooler.
;)
wtf? learn and be curious. Have fun.
It can be upsetting to read these things if one feels that they'd have thrived in such a supportive environment, but instead only had indifferent teachers/a school with little budget/etc and had to do without such support. But it's not a reason to doubt the veracity of any of it, or hate on the kids; these kids are sharp and hardworking and doing their best, they just happen to also be much more privileged than average.
I had some old college-level comp sci books I was getting rid of (C++ by Stroustrup, etc.) and thought I would call a the magnet tech high school in the local inner city. The books were old editions, but why not ask? A teacher was indeed interested and even personally came to my home and picked up the books. He told me that if I had any old computer equipment - anything at all, even if it didn't boot - they could use that too. This is the tech magnet high school. What opportunity do those kids have? How much talent is lost? It's sickening.
It looks interesting, and the articles are accessible to an intelligent 11 year-old without being written to appeal to that age group. It's easy to forget how stifling it is to be young and have so much of what you're given to read tainted by pedagogical writing style.
Of course your reaction isn't unusual either. As people get older they learn not to talk about interests that are too specific until they know people well.
Elite education (Ivies, Stanford, MIT, Chicago, Hopkins) historically was almost entirely the playground of the already rich. From the 70s onwards, it became a competitive game for the working upper middle class to send their children there. This elite stamp was necessary for their children to at least maintain working upper middle class status but ideally they'd collide with one of the already rich kinds and enter the wealth not labor class.
As income inequality has grown, admission to these institutions have grown even more valuable and parents have dedicated even more resources to giving their children a shot.
The result is that the children of well educated professionals end up in incredibly well resourced environments at home and in their schools. For context, the neighborhood this girl lives in has a median family income of 109,000 dollars, is 91% white and has only 2% of its population living below the poverty line.
To comment on your question, my favorite past time as a child was walking the aisles of a hardware store or Radio Shack hoping to find a tool or device I had never seen before. If the store had a parts catalog, I would take it home and read every page. The girl in the article is doing the same only in a different format.
It is bizarre that an activity one child finds so fascinating and gratifying is seen as painfully dull and pointless by another child.
--> "You have kids who don't do things like that? What planet are you from?"
I won't be surprised if we see more of the indian child prodigies in coming years when bulk of indian immigrants kids hit that age.
http://www.extremetech.com/electronics/156361-teenage-girl-c...