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Comment by knzhou | Hacker News Reader

I tutor some exceptionally gifted students as a side gig (for scale: calculus at 10, publishing research papers and learning graduate-level general relativity at 14), and I can say that the lessons of papers like these have been taken to heed. Today, there are tons of resources for kids like these, and the explosion continues every year. Professors are taking them for research projects, summer camps are bringing them together, and free online courses are spoiling them with knowledge. We're at the point where full courses are regularly put on Youtube in every field, with better teaching quality than almost all "real" courses! The kids seem to be quite happy for it, and I'm looking forward to the results in a couple decades.

My magnet high school was a smaller example of this. It had a reputation around the area for producing great outcomes for students with rigorous coursework, so people fought like crazy to get in. But once we did, we found that we had almost zero homework and spent half of each school day just sitting around. The real magic was in what we got to do with all that free time!

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> I can say that the lessons of papers like these have been taken to heed.

This isn’t true. Gifted and talented education receives maybe 1% of the funding that special needs education does, if that. In NYC de Blasio is trying to dismantle the existing system because the students are too Asian. Most of the US has nothing approaching that system. Normal high schools are at best indifferent to students who want to go higher than AP; they’re certainly not going out of their way to help and encourage those capable of doing college work to do so.

Face it, at barest minimum 10% of 16 year olds could be in high schools like those associated with Bard College at Simon’s Rock[1], where they graduate with an Associate’s degree having completed half of the coursework for a Bachelor’s. I don’t know what percentage of 14 year olds could do the same or complete a Bachelor’s before 18 but it’s 100s of times greater than those who actually do.

[1] https://simons-rock.edu/

My point is that there's been an explosion in opportunities that kids can use that go around what schools provide. Even when I was in high school, you could get most of an undergraduate education from MIT OpenCourseWare for free, and the situation is even better now. (You couldn't get a credential out of it... but who cares, when either way you'll have the knowledge?)

Though I'm upset about the political drama over NYC magnet schools, it's important to note that their outcomes aren't due to magic teachers or better equipment. The kids are making things happen on their own! The core benefit these schools provide is mostly that they allow the kids to meet each other.

You have to know that MIT OpenCourseWare exists. Many people do, but I suspect an even larger number do not.

Gifted kids can come from all backgrounds. When parent involvement is there and the parents know how the system works and where to find resources, it’s an ocean of opportunity out there.

When parents don’t know the system (immigrants for example), don’t have the luxury of a lot of involvement (work multiple jobs), the asymmetric knowledge/access are now an issue.

Public education is supposed to level that field somewhat and what many are pointing out is a gap through which many gifted students fall through. Then you get behavioral and social problems, as called out in the research.

There might be some _very_ unlucky kids who can't even access the internet, but once you can get to Wikipedia and youtube I'm sure a very smart kid can figure out where to find what they want to learn. Now, if they don't get the time to immerse themselves because their household demands their attention on more fundamental survival needs, well that should be addressed whether the kid is smart or not.

Social and familiar needs are linked with someone being smart or not. You can’t have one without the other, they are interdependent. You can’t just count on someone — specially an young one — sneaking in to get access to Wikipedia and find the extra resources they need. You minimize negative impacts on the social environment for it to flourish.

You can learn so much on the internet

But I wonder if it really helps. I did not have internet or tv as kid and I have learned a lot from books.

Now I have internet, and I spend far more time on social media and watching shows than I spend on learning things

Isn’t this general kids vs adult things? I think most (but not all) people learn less and less as they get older.

For practical, “try at home” things, internet is just making everything so much better. You can read books a lot, but if you want to learn how to make a laser from scratch (for example), no book will be nearly as good as a bunch of blog posts and forum to connect to others.

> I did not have internet or tv as kid and I have learned a lot from books.

Growing up in a TV-free household as a kid was and still is an advantage to develop learning skills, independence, and imagination.

> Now I have internet, and I spend far more time on social media and watching shows than I spend on learning things

That may be, but you have the choice.

The main difference is that you can find way more information than in books, even if you lived in a library. The main problem on top of the continuous distraction is curation.

In order to look for something, you generally need to know it exists. When you live in the given social circle, you tend to develop a point of view on what’s doable/achievable that’s in line with that circle. Some people are not constrained by this and have this almost built-in dream. Others have to learn to dream big.

This even happens in US all the time - kids emulate their parents, neighbors, etc. Even the access is there, but these kids don’t know it and therefore can’t make use of this access.

To support your point, I grew up in a poor urban area, and over 30% of the gifted kids didn’t graduate. Another 30% developed addiction or had teen pregnancies. Being poor is much more disadvantaged than being smart is advantageous.

The problem isn’t access.

Being smart means you're bored a lot. Being bored means you find other things to occupy your time. Being poor means you have fewer good options, and are more likely to settle on the bad ones.

I think being smart and being poor multiply each other's effects. Most of the troublemakers were really smart, and got into shit because they had nothing better to do. Outsmarting the teachers was fun, making jokes meant you had to know exactly what was going on in order to skewer it, sneaking around was a thrill and a show of skill.

Anecdotally, one of the most brilliant kids I went to school with was also a teen mom, because yeah, gotta keep busy somehow. And that was in one of the most affluent and highest-rated districts in the state if not the country. I can only imagine it's much worse where there are fewer resources.

How are you supposed to go around what schools provide and do MIT courses when you are required to sit in school all day and then waste even more time on the pointless busy work they make you do at home?

I totally half arsed school for this reason. There's much more fun (and learned skill) in learning stuff how you want. Personally, I took the route of combining all my subjects (maths, physics, CS) and took the route of building a couple basic physics sims. Best education of my life.

I feel so lucky that my elementary school, in the 80s, had a special-education coordinator who recognized gifted and talented as part of her job, co-equal with developmentally disabled. Not all special needs are remedial, after all.

As a result, my parents had an ally who knew the workings of the system, had resources and connections, and would go to bat for me/us when the rest of the administration had their heads in the sand.

The end result was that I had some time each day to work on my own projects, and my teachers were required to make accommodations. I ended up leaving the school anyway because of one perniciously evil teacher and I'm still in therapy for the sequelae, but there were definitely some bright spots.

I can't say everyone aims 'em right, but there are definitely hammers to swing against the traditional structure and the disservice it does to gifted and talented students. In recent years, I understand that the guidelines around individual accommodation plans have only strengthened. I'd imagine there must be folks out there equally adept at making them work. Some of them might just need a reminder that their job includes this function.

Here's what they used to do at my school( state school, Lithuania,90s): the more gifted ones had a few options: they could skip a year(i.e. from 8th to 10th grade), not follow the curriculum the rest of the class did and simply do something more advanced during that time. I'm not gifted but was probably smart enough to find school easy,but couldn't be asked to do too much,so teachers usually used to leave me alone.

It’s the classic way to treat school. Do your math homework during history class. During math class, prop up your school textbook and read a more advanced one behind it. Avoid any courses that advertise themselves as containing lots of busywork in the name of “rigor”.

I agree that better support and acceptance of gifted and talented is important. I'm not sure I'd measure it in funding versus special needs though. Special needs teaching is brutal work, requiring a lot of baseline time and attention costs that can't really be reduced in a humane way.

Supporting the high-end of the spectrum is an entirely different challenge. The kids have an ability to excel independently. Yes, facilities and other resources can enhance outcomes, but also consider the difficulty of finding qualified teachers to really challenge them. Our entire Victorian education system is not equipped to handle them, and frankly I think they'll always be held back if we encourage a rigid structure and reliance on a system which is designed for the masses. We'd be better off finding low-case ways to give more open-ended resources and access to centralized specialists and higher education professors who are true experts in their fields.

The bright children of the upper middle class going on to have great life outcomes are the core of inequality in America. Schools that nurture and socialize these kids with each other are an important mechanism in that outperformance. If you intend to reduce inequality, then that is exactly what you want to disrupt.

Secret racism is too easy a copout. This goes right to the core of defining relative inequality (vs. absolute outcomes) as the important issue.

Wait, are you arguing we shouldn’t provide opportunities for gifted kids because it reduces inequality?

He is saying we should have more equal opportunities regardless of socio-economic background.

Which is meaningless, especially with respect to this discussion

I think he is saying that they don't get the opportunities because they are gifted kids, but because they are upper-middle class.

It can be both. To be smart is an advantage. To be born in a rich family is also an advantage. Life can be unfair in many ways simultaneously.

Ironically, if you deny the importance of IQ, it mostly hurts the smart kids from poor families. Because the rich parents will find ways for their kids to realize their full potential -- whether it is a full potential of an average child, or a full potential of a gifted child. It is the gifted child born in a poor family who won't have a private tutor because their parents can't afford it, but also will be denied by the system because "IQ doesn't mean anything".

Smart kids from poor families need even more help than smart kids from rich families, and we deny it to them in the name of fighting inequality. It's no child left behind the minimum requirements of the school system, but many children left miles behind their true potential; especially the poor ones.

IQ doesn't matter. Every child deserves opportunities to learn and grow, opportunities that match their aptitude. There's no need for an IQ test when providing that. IQ testing is just used for gatekeeping.

IQ matters in terms of determining the spectrum of offerings that a funding-limited school system (which is all of them, just to different degrees) should provide.

If you measure achievement based on "percent reading at grade level and passing MCAS", then all high-IQ students are, in effect, "left behind". I agree strongly with your 2nd sentence, but disagree strongly with the first and fourth.

In theory, as long as we have some reliable way to measure the aptitude, and we provide the corresponding opportunities, I don't really mind if we avoid mentioning the word "intelligence".

But, you know, the offensive thing about IQ is exactly that it demonstrates that different people have different aptitude. So, in practice, I find it difficult to believe that people fighting against the concept of IQ would be willing to provide sufficient opportunities to children with high IQ.

Sadly, many people's instinctive reaction to a gifted child is throwing some obstacles in the child's way, to "prove" that the child "was actually not that smart". (This is even more likely, if the child is a minority, or autistic, or different in some other visible way.) Some of those people are teachers. I know stories...

Like, there is a girl I know who did math olympiads at elementary school. For some reason, this rubbed her math teacher the wrong way, so the teacher started bullying her in the classroom. Two years later, the girl had phobia of math, and was unable to do even school-level math. Then her parents intervened and transferred her to another school, and with some private tutoring (by me; that's how I know the story) she became a straight A student again, and later successfully completed a university that required a lot of math. She never got back to the competition level, though, because the wasted time made a difference.

This story is less rare than you might hope. Quite many gifted kids, unless they also have superior social skills, are bullied either by their peers or by adults. People are bad at tolerating difference; twice so, if the difference suggests that the different person is somehow superior. And the gifted kids with superior social skills aren't winners here either; when they tell you "I was interested in many things, but I was careful never to mention it in front of my classmates", it makes you wonder what they could have achieved if they were allowed to follow their interests freely.

I don’t know if it is, but i fully agree if that is OPs interpretation. They don’t need any help.

Education is good for society, not just the educated.

I think reducing inequality is a terrible goal because it commits you to positions like de Blasio's. But his actions are entirely consistent with his stated values. Gifted & talented programs push people into the right tail of the distribution, which increases its variance, which is exactly what "rising inequality" is.

You're being downvoted by people who don't like the truth or haven't seen a public school "equity" document recently.

A better solution is to raise taxes on those rich families, not handicap education.

We're talking about people in the ~155-180 IQ band; In a city the size of Chicago you have 20 or so people in that band.

The reason it's called "Gifted" is because you get born with it, just like your skin color. I didn't choose to have a high IQ. Frankly, with the way people have treated me in life and all the pain I've gone through due to it, I'm not so sure I'd want to be this way. I'm sure you know that feeling.

You want to explain performance differences in racial groups, look at complex trauma and cultural phenomina. Conduct an similar ACE study in the south-side and see what you get.

I think what you're going to find is 50% of the population has generational complex trauma they are trying to escape, and their outcomes would be improved draumatically by specialist intervention and I think one that is done, you are going to find out IQ isn't altogether different between racial groups in a country like the US.

I dont think that ratio to special education says all that much. A lot of it is heavily disabled kids who do need expensive tools to even learn to walk and have kids-teacher ratio like 6:1 or even less. Mostly because they need a lot of support to just function - whether they are learning or not.

The gifted education is comparatively cheaper.

Plus, it is about kids that are bordering to being a danger to themselves or others. They need experts just to function. They are getting special education for the sake of other kids too. And failing their education means more money spend on prisons or social system once they grow.

People imagine special education being about slightly slower kids. But these are not costing all that much.

> maybe 1%

Honest question, not snide in any way: what would be the right percentage? Surely not 100%? Special Ed folks, folks on the left end of the bell curve for instance, need intensive one-on-ones. But folks on the other end of the bell would not need that same level of support?

(I'm not saying 1% is OK. And I understand that you pulled that number out of the air.)

Acceleration as of right instead of enrichment should be verging on free, requiring almost nothing in new expenditure. I’d be pretty happy with that alone to be honest. An early college programme like Bard College at Simon’s Rock in every metro area with over 100,000 people with provision for boarding for those outside commuting distance wouldn’t get you past 2% of education expenditure. That’s under 10% of what’s spent on special education. That would make me ecstatic.

It's not about how much money, but rather how to spend it. Well, okay, to spend money some way you first need it, but the amount could be quite small.

Most of the knowledge is already available online for free. (There are still some gaps that would be nice to fill, for example lessons for small kids whose first language is not English.) The problem is rather navigating the abundance of information.

First, to distinguish genuine knowledge from crackpottery. Like, most of us probably know that 99% of videos on YouTube containing "quantum" in their titles are pure nonsense. But a smart 13 years old kid doesn't know that yet, and can waste a lot of time gaining negative knowledge (misconceptions that later require time and work to unlearn). We know that in case of doubt, the materials published by MIT are most likely solid. For that kid, even this is not necessarily obvious; it would be better to tell them explicitly.

Second, lessons have prerequisites. I can find an interesting lesson, only to realize that I actually can't follow it, because it uses symbols and concepts I don't understand, and I don't even know how that missing part of knowledge is called. It would be great to have some guidance of form "you can learn X by watching Y, but first you need to understand M and N which you can learn by watching P and Q, etc.". A tech-tree of knowledge, kind of.

For these two things, you don't actually need a school system. A website could be enough: a page for each topic, internal links to prerequisite topics, external links for educational resources checked for quality. You would need some budget for this, but I assume that for costs similar to running one school, you could serve the entire nation. -- And it wouldn't be only for the smart kids; the average kids could use it, too. Everyone could progress at their own speed. Actually, it would be even better if all the kids would use it, because then you wouldn't have to look specifically for the smart kids and advertise it to them, they would simply learn about it from kids around them.

Now you can add extra services, like a silent place to go study if you don't have such place at home, a computer with an internet connection is you don't have one at home. Places to meet people studying the same topic. Etc. This all would be nice to have. I am just saying that the minimum solution that could help maybe 80% of gifted kids could actually be made very cheaply.

Aren't you basically describing Khan Academy?

It has good education material - including exercises - that you go through at your own pace, and is organised as a tree of learning.

Last time I looked it didn't go into university level subjects though.

Khan Academy is a great project. At least as a general idea; there may be some small technical details (there is some criticism on Wikipedia that seems reasonable, but maybe it was already addressed). I only tried it shortly, so I am not sure how complete it is beyond math.

Now if I may dream, I imagine something like Khan Academy, but:

- containing all lessons from all subjects of elementary and high schools (and optionally some university lessons);

- somehow certified by the state, similarly how textbooks are certified, so you would have some official statement saying "this is at least as good and as complete as public schools" (and if something specific is missing or not up to standards, the problematic topics would be clearly listed);

- with the consequence that if you complete Khan Academy (and take extra courses/exams in the problematic topics), you would get a certificate equivalent to completing the elementary or high school (perhaps after taking an exam to check that it wasn't e.g. your parents doing the tests for you), without having to attend a school, and regardless of your age (so a gifted kid could have high school completed as 10 years old);

- maybe with an option that teachers could upload their own versions of existing lessons or new lessons, and the users would by default use the standard Khan Academy videos, but could choose the optional ones, and based on popularity and administrator decision, the new videos could become the default ones; this is how the content could continuously improve and new topics (e.g. the university lessons) get added; also, repetition is the mother of learning, but instead of listening to the same video again, you could now listen to an alternative version of the lesson;

- with some way to create an individualized study plan, so you could specify e.g. "I want to be a lawyer, but I also want to make computer games", and the lessons that lead you there would be highlighted.

Also, I'd like to see a competitor or two, of comparable quality.

> what would be the right percentage? Surely not 100%?

You say that like 100% is some kind of meaningful threshold. It should be a lot more than 100%, for the same reason that spending on growing crops in China is more than 100% of spending on growing crops in Antarctica, or spending on basketball coaching for men who are six feet tall is more than 100% of spending on basketball coaching for men who are four feet tall.

How about the future value of dollar spent today? What the best and brightest do is advance science, including the science which later alleviates the issues plaguing the the bottom 1%. This is the whole idea of universal education in the first place. It pays for itself in the long run. The top 1% pay super-extra dividends to everyone.

Question for you. If you were profoundly gifted and had kids who were also profoundly gifted, what kinds of things would you do with them and resources would you provide to them to ensure they were adaquetly challenged?

My situation: I'm in my 30's, I take IQ tests every 3-4 years and always score somewhere around 155-165. I come from a multi-generational complex trauma family, my mother has an ACE store of 9, I have an 8, my father is with what I know about him around a 9 and going back generations on either side of the family it seems to be the case on both sides. High ACE scores reduce your IQ and academic performance quite a bit. My Sister scored 167 on a MENSA exam once unadusted for dyslexia and dyscalculia which they mentioned would put her in the 180's.

I can't even begin to describe the kind of perceptual maze I've had to navigate overcoming my own issues; cognitive restructuring is a powerful tool I used well before I learned about complex trauma and in the last few years that has been a real renissance for me. I feel in a lot of ways I was raised more by the internet and BBS than my own parents.

Decided a long time ago to be celibate because I just assumed my kids are going to go through the same lot in life I did and I wouldn't want to do that to anyone even by accident. Any kind of technique or program to help those kids avoid that outcome would be useful to me. If I have kids I want them to be who they are supposed to be in life.

BTW, thank you for posting this.

I'm just a random guy from the internet in my 20s with no children, so I'm not really qualified to give advice! All I'm going on here is the examples I've seen, which are math focused.

From these examples, you don't have to do anything special in the early years besides talking and reading to them (and of course, building a home/family they can feel safe in -- all the stuff that normal parenting advice is about). In the next few years after that, you can add on some enrichment material depending on their interests. For example, Art of Problem Solving has this really nice "Beast Academy" series of workbooks that goes through elementary and middle school math, but with deeper questions. If they really take to a subject, you just keep feeding them more of it. It'll be fun for them, and neither expensive nor time-consuming for you.

At some point, their interests will become specific and deep enough that you can't lead them, at which point you should get them in contact with peers or mentors, e.g. through summer camps, competitions, or a magnet school. Once they're in that network, it's smooth sailing: they'll tell you what they want to learn! In other words, in general a parent with a full-time job cannot feasibly guide a talented kid's intellectual development up through age 18 (though of course your still are responsible for their moral development). Intellectually, your job is just to nurture their interests, give them the boost they need to get going, and then cheer for them as they continue on.

Can you name a few examples of schools or school districts that are magnet schools? Never heard that term before.

I went to [Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson_High_School_f...), which has a pretty incredible program on the STEM side of things- courses like Differential equations, Complex Analysis, Organic Chemistry II all taught within the high school itself. This is our [school profile](https://tjhsst.fcps.edu/sites/default/files/media/inline-fil...)

Have a look at the list here: https://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/national-...

Basically anything in the top 250 is the kind of school I was talking about.

I am going to answer some questions you didn't ask (and one you did). Apologies in advance.

For reference, I was in a gifted program and went to a gifted magnet high school. I have been fascinated by gifted ed since then, and I think much of it is still lacking (on several dimensions).

1. I think the best thing that can be done is keep the kids' ACE scores as low as possible, ideally at a 0 or 1 (that 1 being divorce). The ACE scores you mentioned sent a shiver down my spine. I'm sorry that this has happened to you and your family -- I am glad to see that you are able to mention it.

2. You can stop taking IQ tests unless you just enjoy taking them. The last time I did a deep dive into the IQ testing scene (about 20 years ago), there were not any psychometrically validated tests for adults that could measure over about 150 (that's around the 99.9% level). Also, if you continue taking them and happen to score lower than usual, don't think that you are losing it -- there is probably some external factor (e.g., a bad night's sleep, and particularly tough workout, etc.) that probably negatively impacted your score.

3. The best thing you can teach high-IQ kids, imho, is EQ-related stuff. One of the biggest challenges for many folks at my high school (often the smartest) was interacting with other people, especially people who are not near their level of intelligence. The folks who were smart and had (I am guessing) high EQ have done very well in life in a variety of ways. The folks with lower EQ... not so much.

4. As for education, I would try to introduce them to a wide variety of self-study tracks, ideally ones that can go very deep into a topic. One of the cool things about my high school was (like another poster said) that we had a lot of free and unstructured time. Furthermore, we could self-study a wide range of topics if we could find a sponsor (and there was always a sponsor if you could do the work). Looking back at my time in high school, my one wish is that our sponsors would have encouraged us to look more at graduate level texts. Looking back at my own education, most of the texts that I would consider "good" did not start popping up until upper level undergrad courses and in graduate school. Most, if not all, of the texts were not above the comprehension level of my high school peers, and I think we would have been better off had we been fast-tracked that direction. I would try to avoid any sort of classes that have a lot of repetitive busy work (this is a recipe for disaster with most gifted kids).

4a. One challenge with gifted kids is that they do a lot of things well, and the limiting factor is often times just time. I would encourage you to introduce your kids to a wide range of fields, but I also encourage you to give them some heuristics early on that may help them decide what to focus on. Three heuristics I give to younger people who are interested: 1. choose a field that has people you like to spend time with, 2. choose a field that has work in an area you want to live (e.g., don't choose finance if you are an ambitious American who doesn't want to live in NYC), and 3. choose a field that has interesting and hard problems to work on (and optionally if you care about money, that people want to have solved). These are not perfect heuristics, and there are probably better ones, but these three cut out a lot of fields very quickly.

I hope this helps.

EQ is a load of poppycock; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qi48uZjpJDk

What you are referring to are people with high IQ who are not well socialized and thus develop neuroticism and have emotional instability, which can happen for a variety of reasons but I think it is common among high IQ people and blood lines of high IQ people because of societies inability to understand them.

I was going to post a long tirade (which would've probably traumatized everyone here who read it) as EQ is a particularily onerous topic for me but I think a few short paragraphs will suffice.

In my case, I have high IQ and a near-eidetic memory which means I have what I call a "refactoring imagination"; I could imagine the perfect assembly of a car engine down to each measurement (or a few measurements that would allow me to make accurate guesses of the remainder) then iterate that complex system in my head over and over. That drawing can get put away in the brain and brought back 20 years later if relevant.

Now take a 6 year old child who always has his hand up in the classroom because he's bored, knows the answer from the book after reading it once or what the teacher showed them, and can anticipate what the teacher wants with a high degree of certainty. That child figures everyone else is just like they are is just as bored as they are (because that's the kids think); this goes on for weeks, the teacher becomes bewildered by the other kids (that profoundly gifted child is very good at selling the idea kids are smarter than they actually are to a relatively new teacher who hasn't developed out of that thinking yet) goads them a bit and through no fault of their own, the other kids begin teasing and assaulting him to take out their jealousy.

This snowballs due to an inference pattern of bad situation and that child then becomes what I call "the scapegoat student" for the remainder of their academic schooling.

It takes two parties to make a kid well socialized; the child and society. If society doesn't want to socialize a kid properly, they won't be. The kinds of people who latch on to EQ are the kinds who cannot accept they are "not special" and are also the kinds from whom I derived much abuse.

In the case of primary schools, getting your kid out of that situation requires moving to another district or state because the teachers are there to bring the bottom of society up to a functional level, not to allow the talented and gifted to soar. This produces the incentive, ultimately, to use some students as scapegoats.

The rest of what you mentioned is interesting to me, I'll take the tiem to look into it. Thank you.

I had never heard of an ACE score, it is interesting. I’m a 6 and my wife is a 9. We grew up poor too. We had a kid at 15 (heh, hi ACE score in action). She was an A and B student and I was nearly all A’s. I don’t know if the IQ test I took back then was legit, but I was 150 or 140. I don’t want to get too deep in the woods, but I want to say you are not your numbers. You have it in you to be happy, to be successful, and to have good relationships. My wife and I are still together since 14 years old. Three kids, a good home, I love my career and job, I have hobbies I enjoy. It is not all sunshine and rainbows and life has been HARD. The stats say we should have ended up one way, yet we ended up another. You are not your numbers.

You are not your numbers is a rural sensibility and assumption.

During the Iraq War veterans were coming back with PTSD and seeing psychologists and psychiatrists. Some of them had multiple comobidities; depression, anxiety, Bipolar, with the PTSD and were send to get MRI Scans.

What they discovered is there was no brain damage, but certain areas of the brain weren't as developed as they ought to be; they administered ACE tests and found out everyone had high ACE scores. Other studies were done and are being done and are finding evidence of somatization; when you aren't raised right your brain physically doesn't develop properly.

Pick up a copy of the body keeps the score by Van der Kolk, and Complex PTSD from Surviving to Thriving by Pete Walker. Your wife undoubtedly has gastrointestinal issues from her situation and you have your issues (likely over-resorting to fight, flight freeze or fawn responses), those books will help to cure you. I also reccomend seeing a complex trauma specialist even if you don't think you need to.

What you will end up finding out is that there is such a thing as a complex trauma family and trauma tends to be passed down from one generation to the next and become more severe until the blood line just fails. The CDC study on ACE's shows a score of 4 or higher reduces your average life expectancy by 20 years. There have been a few studies correlating high ace scores, specificially sexual abuse victims, and a specific type of rare cancer.

You will also need to go through a few iterations. I've changed tremendously from the person I was to the person I am now, and in that process, ended up completely forgetting my childhood and some of my early adult hood. Couldn't remember grade school teachers names which is not like me. My brain had repressed those memories because they were incompatible with who I am now and as I remember and re-remember them they get integrated and I gain more emotional and mental self-control and become more capible of handling future trauma.

Good Luck.

I am in high school and it is true that I have been learning and doing a lot with free ressources (competitive programming, cybersecurity, webdev and advanced high school maths). But the problem is I still need to attend the same boring classes which means I don't really have enough free time to satisfy my curiosity but instead I learn things I have already understood. Although there are some efforts to engage students in school, it's difficult for teachers to go further in the curriculum when I ask them questions because they simply don't have time to answer me and halt the rest of the class. I don't really know what to do...

In high school i took a robotics course that took up part of the school day and went later than typical school. Your comment resonated with me because what i found great about it was that we were given the resources and freedom to build/explore what we wanted. You could come and go as you pleased with the only real deadlines being competitions we entered into. Certainly not the right thing for everyone but i think for a lot of kids the free time needed to explore things they are curious about is huge. Even more so these days given the wealth of content available online

I shall never stop being bitter, as opposite happened to me. In primary school i possibly got the worst math teacher in existence.

Even since preschool i could do math in my head beyond my grade(3 years ahead according to psych tests that we all had to undertake), and all of that was killed by a single teacher who had me under her care for 3 years.

She just plainly didn't believe that 10 year old child could solve all exercises in head. and forced me to write down each single step - while the exercises themselves were already too easy.

I never got into a habit of challenging myself, thanks to her it is quite the opposite, and i now am really bad at doing math in my head.

I would say that lack of challenge was the biggest flaw in my education, i went throughout whole education(including university) without studying at home - not because i was so damn good, just because in my formative years the habit of working hard was stripped from me, and C-equlivalent to B-Equivalent was good enough for most subjects.

I expected for that to change as i managed to get into top 3 high school for my area.. yet it was mostly the same.

I am slowly regaining it thankfully, but it is way, way harder to do so as an adult. And i still wonder where else i could be in life if not for that single person, and what happened to other such children in this post communist country.

I'm 31 and still remember spending every weeknight doing 1 to 2 hours of long division problems in 5th grade. It was mind nimbingly boring.

Long division is also where I switched from being ahead on math to running behind. I could do those in my head and only wrote down the tail because I had to. Divisions that would have been hard enough that I couldn't do them in my head would have helped me a lot there.

There was a long interview on youtube from John Taylor Gatto I listened to once where he said essentially creativity must be constrained for society to be stable. Your anecdote reminds me of this. Teachers focusing on test scroes is a great way for this to happen. I'd mod this comment up it I could.

It was worse than just focusing on test scores.

It was actively hammering me down to average level as that was easier for her to work with.

I had misforntne to meet her later on in middle school - as she was chemistry, not math, teacher by education. Whole class had failing or almost failing grade with her.

We got better teacher next year who managed to teach us 2 years of chemistry in half a year while also following normal curriculum .. and most of the class actually understood it and had fun with it.

I seriously wonder how many children have been permanently hurt by someone so inept, but well - she was a product of her times(communist occupation).

Reminds me of something from Great Teacher Onizuka. There's a girl who is beyond intelligent and was incredibly thirsty for knowledge from a young age. She would always be asking questions and learning as much as she could from her teachers over the years. In no time, she began to surpass them in knowledge, asking questions that those teachers couldn't possibly handle. This caused them to end up resenting her, since she made them feel stupid. One day, while asking a question like she typically does, her favorite teacher became frustrated and ended up revealing a big secret of her to the whole class accidentally. Then some very spicy stuff happens after. You'd have to watch to find out though!

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