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Comment by gumby | Hacker News Reader

What if you invert your thesis. Sooner doesn’t necessarily imply “higher standard”:

1 - American school teach the alphabet before grade 1, and push kids to read early. German schools don’t even teach the alphabet until grade 1' yet by the end of that year the reading level of the kids is the same as US kids at the end of grade 1, or better. German Pädagogin justify this by saying there is some neural development issue — I think that is likely bull. But what I do recognize is that instead of being pushed to read before the kids are ready, the kids instead learn other valuable life skills. I happened to learn to read at age 5 (not in Germany nor USA) but that didn’t make me “better” than other kids; they did other things.

2 - kids who have parents who can afford tutors and such can push the kids through the prescribed steps sooner. Kids whose parents each have two jobs to get food on the table, well, they simply can’t. So the former define “higher standards” because they chose their parents well?

3 - To combine the two: if we can open up opportunities for all the kids aren’t we likely to end up with a larger pool of well educated people who will end up being the inventors, leaders, poets etc of the future? How many ramanujans are we leaving behind?

I’m not saying “throw out all the standards” but rather quite the opposite. I think your unidimensional absolutism is narrow and inadequate.

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Your comment changed my mind about the debate in California:

> Sooner doesn’t necessarily imply “higher standard”

To be clear: I don't know enough detail about the proposal in California to judge it, but the idea that most children might be better off learning certain subjects at a later age, when they are more mature, cannot be dismissed a priori, without facts, based on ideological arguments.

Your comment reminds me of this passage from an old article about Finland's educational system, widely considered to be one of the best in the world:

> Children [in Finland] spend far more time playing outside, even in the depths of winter. Homework is minimal. Compulsory schooling does not begin until age 7. “We have no hurry,” said Louhivuori [a Finnish teacher]. “Children learn better when they are ready. Why stress them out?”

Text in brackets is mine. I highly recommend reading the whole article:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/why-are-finlands-s...

> the idea that most children might be better off learning certain subjects at a later age, when they are more mature, cannot be dismissed a priori, without facts

Neither should it be accepted a priori. It would be a compelling reason to delay math instruction, if supported by evidence - but is there any evidence to support it?

And if improving education by delaying instruction until students are mature enough to handle the material is truly the goal, why delay instruction for students who are already mature enough to handle it sooner? Holding back students who are ready doesn't improve education for anyone.

No, you shouldn't delay those who can (and want) to handle it earlier. That doesn't help anyone.

But maybe what should be changed is the expectation. If the vast bulk of 8th graders aren't ready to handle algebra, don't create an expectation that "the smart kids" are taking algebra in 8th grade, because parents are going to be pushing their kids to be one of the smart kids (as measured by when they take algebra), and you're going to get a bunch of kids who aren't ready.

But this brings up a problem. Who decides if a kid is ready? The parents? The teachers? The school bureaucracy? On what basis do they decide?

Teachers seems like the best bet (they observe kids in the classroom all day), but they also have biases, blind spots, laziness, and so on. I don't know that it's possible to build a system where it happens "as it should" all the time.

> Your comment changed my mind about the debate in California:

>> Sooner doesn’t necessarily imply “higher standard”

Thanks! The critical word in my comment was necessarily. Seems like most of the comments have been polar.

> To be clear: I don't know enough detail about the proposal in California to judge it

It is available online as are interviews with some of the people who wrote them, which include mathematics professors and other educators. Seems like most of the objections are from people who are reading the headlines and drawing immediate conclusions based on their preconceptions.

Thanks. Yes, I agree: Most of the comments here have been polar so far, and most of the objections seem to be based upon little more than reading the headlines.

I have a nagging suspicion that the only way to reach broad agreement on whether the plan will work (or not) is... by trying it. Perhaps it can be tried on a small number of schools at first, and then gradually expanded to more schools if the results are promising, or nix the whole plan and revert to the old ways otherwise. I would propose starting with the schools that enroll children closely related to the authors of the plan.

If you move certain topics to later age, you should make sure there is enough time left, because school isn't forever. The knowledge can be a prerequisite for another knowledge, which is a prerequisite for yet another knowledge, so if you move things too much, it can lead to "oops, no time to teach this at high school at all", and then you teach formerly high-school stuff at university, which again means you need to cut corners at some university topics. (It also means that kids who don't go to university, will not learn the formerly high-school stuff.)

Whether this indeed is the case, need to be discussed separately for each topic.

> Finland's educational system, widely considered to be one of the best in the world

Finland achieves good education of the average student by sacrificing the potential of the best. For example, look at their results at international mathematical olympiad: the last (and only) time they had a gold medal was in 1981. They are below-average not just compared to the developed countries, but globally. This is intentional; Finnish students who are "too good" at math are strongly advised to focus on other subjects instead.

https://www.imo-official.org/country_team_r.aspx?code=FIN

Now, we can discuss whether it is better to focus on the average students, or on the best student. (In my imaginary utopia, we would provide the best individually tailored opportunity for both. In reality, no country seems able to achieve both.) An argument in favor of the best students is that we need people to invent new things.

Exactly.

The thing is that you have to adjust curriculum to the developmental stage of the INDIVIDUAL child. Teaching someone too early only wastes the time, resources and money of that teaching. Too late and you lose future options.

I didn't learn to read until 1st grade but many of my peers learned in kindergarten. Individuals do NOT all reach the same learning readiness phase at the same time or same age (two different things).

BTW this "teacher's credential 101".

Systems like Montessori focus on this dynamic and thus have fairly open-ended schedules for things. Falling behind is defined by not meeting ANY learning goals but being on schedule is meeting enough learning goals.

Naturally customization of education like this does not fit well into a "School as a Factory; Child as a manufactured Part" model or the efficiency metrics that factories typically have that are similarly applied to public schools in the US (standardized testing is akin to process control; you do want some type of testing but it has to be structured with more nuance because children are not factory parts with narrow distributions of variance).

At this point, home schooling probably can't be worse. But more focus on customization of education is pretty essential. US Schools are 80%-90% focused on the bottom 10%-20% of IQ based on actual school budgets and funding. And for those not in that bottom group, it's all 100% uniformity and low budgets. One size can never fit all.

Part of this is simply a function of specialization. Teaching high school let alone first grade to an extremely high academic standard doesn’t actually achieve anything significant for society. It’s arguably much better to give kids reasonable minimum standards and plenty of free time and the capacity to explore their interests. This avoids burnout and generally keeps people interested in their passions rather than simply getting through the slog.

On the other hand getting as many people as possible especially those with developmental issues to a minimum standard allows them to function in society. That pays real long term dividends and is worth significant investment.

What if the students are interested in learning a subject to a high academic standard and will be bored otherwise? I was getting lower grades at my easy "teach to the bottom 10%" public school than the very difficult private school I moved to. By just dismissing academic rigor, you are alienating the high-performers who WANT to care. That's a bad group of people for a society to ignore.

You're missing the point. The purpose of public school is to provide a basic education. If you want to do more work, or your parents want you to study more, you're free to do so.

In your very own example, you went to a private school and did well. That's great, that's what's supposed to happen. What's currently happening in public schools is that too many resources are being allocated to the over achievers and not enough to the under achievers. There's not enough money to fund all programs, so you have to ensure you fund the most needy first.

Except one thing - even if you're in private school you have to pay for both. For public via taxes and private from your own pocket. It sound more like double tax for smart kids - knowledge for rich only. And just to remind that school price can be on par with University.

I don't think that's particularly fair. We all pay into the basic social programs. I don't have children but I'm still paying into the public system and I don't believe I'm being unfairly taxed. To be able to afford to pay into the private school is a luxury.

So if you have smart kid but don't have money you won't be able to help him. Poor will be always poor :(

Plenty of help to send poor kids to collage, masters, and then PHD. It’s just spending public money early on that’s at issue.

That is always the struggle, isn't it? You're granted a certain level of education/health care/security/fire services/road maintenance via taxes, but in order to get services in addition to that you need to spend your own money.

The problem here is economic disparity. If people can't afford to send their children to the school of their choosing, then it's a signal wages are too low. This also applies to public schools, you can be the smartest kid in certain inner cities, and you're unlikely to do well compared to an average kid in a higher income area.

But even if we have unlimited funding for lower education, what's the purpose? The vast majority of society isn't fit for a traditional university education. And even if they are, the vast majority of university students go on to achieve what, exactly?

Sure, some kids might not be able to achieve their dreams, welcome to the club. Is the dream of a life being a scientist or some such any better than the dream of being a professional skier or race car driver? We're not robots, we're people. The obsession with academic excellence has to end.

Arguably the point of public school was to develop all bright kids, not just the rich ones. Providing everyone a basic level of education is a very different goal, and I question whether a college-oriented curriculum is good for educating the masses.

The fact that my parents had to pay for both the public school and some tuition for private school (I had financial aid) left a really bad taste in my mouth. On top of that, full tuition at the private school was less than the per-student cost of public school! To me, that is ridiculous.

The point of public school is to educate the society. I still get a return on my investment (taxes) when some kid invents the new Google. I also do if that kid just works at McDonald's. The problem is treating everyone like they are the same and not as individuals.

Let's also mention that education is one of the best ways to climb the socioeconomic ladder. Advanced and higher education shouldn't only be available to those that are wealthy and/or have time to send their kids to extra schooling. Ensuring a high quality education in disenfranchised neighborhoods is one of the best tools we have for helping those people.

No matter how you frame it, I want children getting the best education that they can get. So if they're ready to achieve more, give it to them. We all, as a society, benefit.

> I want children getting the best education that they can get.

Again, the funding is not unlimited. We're sacrificing some less than average students' learning for the sake of the small minority of above average students.

> Let's also mention that education is one of the best ways to climb the socioeconomic ladder.

Currently, that is true. But, does it have to be true? Should the only way to leave poverty be an above average education? There used to be plenty of blue collar jobs that paid a comfortable middle class wage, now there's not. You know the guy that started KFC? Did he go to college? No, he dropped out in the 7th grade. You used to be able to work hard and be successful.

> No matter how you frame it, I want children getting the best education that they can get. So if they're ready to achieve more, give it to them. We all, as a society, benefit.

Not every kid wants or needs more education.

“alienating the high-performers”

And that’s a bad thing because? You where receiving exactly the kind of minimum education that was seemingly enough even if your grades where poor.

Remember life doesn’t hold your hand, self motivation is just as important for long term success as innate intelligence. Hand holding the academically gifted to cram as much as possible into young minds has been traded before it doesn’t actually seem to accomplish anything of note beyond excelling in artificial milestones like the Putnam.

Do you really think that it is NOT bad for a society to demoralize and demotivate the people who might otherwise be very productive knowledge workers? There are arguably two goals to the public education system: giving a minimum education to everyone and raising up lower class folks who can't otherwise afford an education. It sounds like you only want the first one.

Cost vs benefit.

Considering how many of todays highly effective knowledge workers where demoralized and demotivated in public school, you are talking about a short term effect. Personally I and many people at know greatly befitted from an easy public school education that enabled me plenty of free time to dive extremely deep into various personal projects. In comparison I took plenty of difficult electives in collage like Differential Equations for the fun of it, but thinking back I would have been better served with more free time.

I still remember coming up with the equivalent of the Bit Torrent algorithm in collage before BT was a thing, and thinking I just don’t have time to build it. In the wider context not a big deal, but don’t assume you can simply ramp things up without any cost.

>The thing is that you have to adjust curriculum to the developmental stage of the INDIVIDUAL child.

While I agree with this, I suspect the social winds that led to this change, wouldn't put us on the path of creating individualized curriculum like you wanted. As gp mentioned, this change was motivated by social justice, and the same movement has called for getting rid of AP or other advanced material classes on the basis they're discriminatory (blacks/hispanics are underrepresented in them). I remembered a school district doing this sort of thing, but I can't find the link right now. That said, I did find a link of an entire province (!) dropping advanced classes under similar justifications: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-ontario-to-en...

Current Californian high school math classrooms may have sizes of 1 teacher to 40 students, with classroom size penalties ending at middle school. This is also true of the more prestigious areas mentioned in this forum. I cannot imagine a successful Montessori experience with 1:40 ratios.

When considering the issue of individual variability in math ambition and readiness, it's more plausible to have a student who is ready for Geometry to move into a classroom where a teacher has already been polishing a year-long discourse on Geometry, as opposed to expecting any teacher to be ready for a discussion on Geometry.

Under Equitable Math this will not be possible. Instead, all students must always be at the same level up until the last year.

Wealthy parents will still define higher standards, because they will send their kids to private schools where more advanced math is taught (e.g. Phillips Exeter Academy teaches calculus to all students and offers linear algebra, statistics, and discrete math to advanced students.[1]).

Instead of opening up opportunities for all the kids, this will ensure that no poor student can compete because the courses won't even be available.

1: https://www.exeter.edu/mathematics-beyond-core-courses

My crappy public highschool had calculus, it was just called AP.

As someone who went to Exeter and did higher-level math there, you didn't have to even start calculus in order to graduate. Also, the calculus taught there is roughly the same level as a decent public school. And you can probably get the same level of education at a local college.

After retaking calculus at Berkeley (which I admit is not exactly a local college), IMO they teach it here more rigorously (e.g. they introduce epsilon-delta fairly early, and they are precise about details like domains of functions, etc.)

The real place where Exeter shines is for competition math and for second/third year college math courses. But most of the people who seriously study competition math there have a strong math background to begin with, so I find it unlikely that someone who is inexperienced in math would actually pick up competition math as the culture is intimidating.

Also, very few students take second/third year college math. When I was there, they offered one term of topology and one term of real analysis. Each of these classes had one section of ~10 people. But in all honestly, only a few students in the class actually were mature enough to understand most of that material. Even though I was on the stronger side of students, I don't think I internalized the material at all.

I'm honestly really skeptical of pushing students to learn more and more "advanced" material because getting good at math isn't about being able to memorize mechanical rules for derivatives or integrals. Learning math should be about learning the process of discovery -- playing around with problems until you are able to tease out some insight or a solution. The skill of "distilling" a problem to its essence is one that has served me much more usefully than being able to find an integral.

Agreed. At some point not long after high school, the syllabus explodes and there's just a huge amount of topics to learn. There's no one thing that you must learn, and there's nothing that you won't be able to learn, it's just that you probably won't have time to learn all of math/science/engineering.

The way I'd put it is the kids all need to learn things close to the pace that they can go. If there are kids who can go really fast, let them do that, find a teacher who teaches real analysis or whatever and let them get on with it.

On the other end of the scale, kids with difficulties need help too. Dyslexia needs to be discovered early, and anxieties related to learning need to be resolved.

Whether you think algebra is coming in too late or too early is not really the issue IMO, the idea of one-speed-fits-all is the real problem. I always wondered why education wasn't just a bunch of ladder steps. Pass a given course, get put on the next one asap. For all subjects, without cross-restrictions. For instance I'm still a relative beginner in creative writing, and I'll likely stay there, but I should be able to take some advanced math and coding courses.

I'll probably end up implementing this myself for my older kid via tutors, since he's interested in a lot of things above his year, but I think everyone would benefit if the system worked this way.

On point, but its even worse than that.

As you mention, poorer students are denied the opportunity to take more advanced classes. But even those who do are faced with a massive disadvantage.

See, top tier private schools shamelessly pass students unwilling to actually learn [1]. These same schools and parents subsequently leverage connections, wealth, etc. to insert their students into prestigious schools...where they continue to not learn math (and ultimately are hand-held to high-paying, white collar jobs, but that's another story)

Net result is unfilled higher math seats filled, and with that less math competence across society. Fewer thinkers advancing our perspective, etc.

Opportunities to access these materials is key, but providing consistent standards is just as important. If we can't do that with math, where?

[1] prior work with NE boarding schools, witnessed the contortions these institutions would go through to pass / give top marks to obviously unqualified students.

It is so ironic that you mention Germany,where kids are split (at age 10, 12?) into hauptschule (lower ability), realschule (medium ability), and gymnasium (higher ability).

To think ramanujans of this world would benefit from lower standards is also having no idea or never knowing one in real life.

The system you refer to is and in many regions had been phased out as it turns out that the splitting around 6th grade isn't really working well.

Also even before you had schools which covered multiple of this schools and allow students to "move" between them, sometimes in a per-course level.

There also always had been ways to get the same degree as from a gymnasium even if you initially ended up on a hauptshule, through it was a often shitty path and potentially took you a bit longer. While a few people which state out in a realschole doing it was the norm, for people on a hauptschule it was very very very unlikely.

Don't get me wrong the German school system is a mess, especially if composed to some of the Nordic states but it still beats the US.

The problem with that sort of tracking is that no one wants to be stuck teaching kids with "medium" and "low" skills. So these kids are going to get matched to the worst, lowest skilled teachers, and no chance of realistically getting back on the "high" track! You can of course fix that by rewarding the best teachers and training them better in effective instruction methods (i.e. nope, the kids aren't going to just "learn stuff on their own"!) but guess what, both of these are political anathema in the public schooling system. Especially in the U.S.

No. You can take a course to upgrade from middle to high tier after the fact. A friend of mine did the middle track first and after working a bit he then went on to university. He's now doing AI programming.

The system is quite fluid if you put in some effort.

Exactly. I would add that the spirit of system is realising that people have different abilities and training them accordingly to their potential, and there is nothing wrong with that. Realschule and Hauptschule are not there to try to get everyone back into gymnasium track. The merits of Realschule and Hauptschule are well established in society since they are the pipeline of people that end up in practical and technical jobs e.g. doing machine maintenance in factories and so on.

Some snark: it is mostly intelectuals that dread at the thought and possible implication that not all people are meant to get an university degree.To achieve that goal they are willing to degrade all standards so that anyone can have a pretty paper in wooden frame.

> they are the pipeline of people that end up in practical and technical jobs e.g. doing machine maintenance in factories and so on.

These jobs are going away in the near future. Nowadays the only people who work in factories are highly skilled engineers with complex e.g. CNC skills and a heavy math background.

How are you so sure about all that? I don't see which upcoming development would make machine setup, maintenance and repairs go away. It's exactly the stuff that computers are not good at. It's things that require high dexterity, improvisation, interaction with business functions etc - things that computers and robots are not good at.

I have a personal corollary to the Dunning-Kruger effect: If you don't understand why something is difficult, you are completely clueless about it. And most things are difficult in some way.

Chesterton’s fence as applied to Dunning-Kruger? I love it!

A CNC mill is a machine that needs to be maintained and operated by someone, and that someone is more likely to have learned the necessary practical skills in an apprenticeship and/or at a vocational school than at a university. You don't need a university degree to be a highly skilled worker, especially for jobs that require more practical experience than theoretical knowledge.

Oh my god!!! Sorry to react like this... Other people already commented that... That is sooooo much disconnected from reality it shows you never went to a factory floor. You never seen anything being produced in mass scale. Even the poster wall robot arms doing welding work need hundreds of people taking care of their set up, maintenance and much more. And those are complex machines. Even simpler machines such as steel presses that take in steel rolls and make steal parts of all shapes and sizes (e.g. car breaks, fridge doors, anything with steel actually) take a huge amount of set up work, management and maintenance. In Germany (which I know well) you see plenty of kids (18yos) in factories learning all these detaild skills from older workers. Takes them some years to become good and they are very sought after. Companies do worry if can get good high school kids to take their aprentiships. This has ZERO to do with higher math or bachelor's degree engeneiring education.

When I was In New York City public grade school (~1992/3) there was a similar system. It added the so called "top" classes for higher ability students and special education classes for lower ability students. These students were called "tops" and "speds" respectively with sped being a pejorative term. All that system did was pile every student with behavioral problems in special ed and all the kids who parents were on the school board in tops classes. Everyone else just went to class.

The system is less about ability than which social class one belongs to. Affluent -> Gymnasium Poor -> Hauptschule Realschule gets some of both

Is the stratification by social class an example of correlation or causation?

This could be rephrased as: Are poor people less able?

You seem to discount that as a possibility a priori. Why? There is a plausible connection between one's ability to thrive in a knowledge or skills-based economy and one's socioeconomic status.

I don't want to discount that as a possibility, it is much more a matter of fact. A lot has to do with wealthier people being able to afford better education and generally being able to invest more time in the offsprings chances on the jobmarket. This all leads to very able people having worse chances because they had bad luck in the socioeconomic class lottery when being born, thus unnecessarily restricting mobility between social classes.

I learned how to read in Spanish, and very shortly thereafter I moved to an English country.

Totally different. You just cant compare a phonetic language to one like English.

My daughter is now learning how to read in the best school in my city and its taking her over year compared to me. We started at roughly the same age, but she and her classmates are struggling through hours of practice.

“Thats a sharp e honey”

“That letter is silent, baby”

“You’ll never sound that out, that words just messed up”

EDIT - punctuation and mistypes

My kid’s school had them start English in grade 1, learning both languages in parallel, with English being complete immersion (not a word of German spoken and even in a couple of cases hiring teachers who spoke no German). The kids learned both languages at the same rate.

My story is just anecdote, not science, of course, as is yours.

I noticed that a number of the German parents had the same concerns as you, because they expected the spelling to be more phonetic. German orthography, like Spanish’s has changed over time to match pronunciation shifts. English does not. As a result English words often hold their roots. The trade off is that you may not knownthe pronunciation of an unfamiliar word but may be able to figure out its meaning. As with all languages, in the end none is “harder” than the other despite folklore: sharp corners are always being knocked off because the tool is so important and in continuous use.

In the most recent German spelling reform, the authors were concerned about this trade off.

Another way to describe it: you can’t approach writing c++ as if it were Java, and vice versa. Quite similar, yet quite different.

Im not at all surprised that they learned at the same rate. Their English reading was bootstrapped by the German.

Likewise, I could mostly read English when I arrived in the new country despite not being able to say or understand a single word. This is because English is, maybe, 75% phonetic and I had already figured reading out.

Reading is not just memorizing characters and phonemes, but being able to join everything into a fluid mental motion. In english, practice of their fluidity is constantly being interrupted by an adult having to tell the kid which sound variation a vowel has

We began algebra in 5th grade in India. In much humbler circumstances.

Luckily, our teachers made it clear that math was about effort, not skills, talents, or parents.

We were all expected to practice a lot of math, including algebra, until we figured it out.

And it worked - the ‘gifted’ students needed less practice, everyone else needed more practice. But by 6th grade, everybody passed algebra and figured out the basics. By 9th grade, when we were doing pre-Calc, it was unthinkable that someone in our class couldn’t do algebra.

Applying ‘Social Justice’ to math is simply the continued dumbing down of California. To what end, I can’t figure out.

To combine the two: if we can open up opportunities for all the kids aren’t we likely to end up with...

Well, maybe, but you're hiding a lot in that "if we can". You're assuming that this possibility is brought to fruition, and using the shiny abstract potential of that optimization to argue against real-world actual practices, and this is apples versus oranges.

In fact, I have approximately zero confidence that your "if we can" could ever come to pass. Consider the crazy levels of funding that's already pumped into education with no discernible benefit, and the extremely powerful lobbies that work night and day to maintain the status quo (modulo the increases in funding).

In a perfect world without competition for scarce resources we might be able to do what you envision. But starting the project from the current political realities, it's not in the realm of possibility. So let's not let the pipe dream interfere with some way to prevent the status quo from sliding down into even worse territory.

> kids who have parents who can afford tutors and such can push the kids through the prescribed steps sooner. Kids whose parents each have two jobs to get food on the table, well, they simply can’t. So the former define “higher standards” because they chose their parents well?

Yes. Kids born in rich families will do better, kids born to better parents will do better and that is a good thing. A lot of scientific research in early years did not come from government funded labs but rich people working on their passions. Note that privileged people will define "higher standards" always no matter what laws you pass and how you twist the public education system. But these sort of social justice solutions damage the very poor people who cant afford kumon.

The German System is also groups children based on their performance, not their age

That is the largest problem with American schooling, is we try to keep all kids in a chronological age based system, instead of a skills based system.

> German Pädagogin justify this by saying there is some neural development issue — I think that is likely bull.

Why would that be bull? Kids brains develops over time.

Good question: I should not have phrased it that way at all.

I mean there isn’t a sharp delineation that magically happens; there are n factors (some large, unknown number) each of which develop at a slightly different rate in each child; there’s nothing magic about reaching 6. My opinion might reflect an accidentally rigid expression of this when my own kid was 6.

Thanks for your comment!

This comment would make sense if the debate was over whether or not students should be forced to take algebra in 8th grade. But it's actually about whether students should be allowed to take algebra in 8th grade.

ad 1) that's caused simply by phonemic orthography of German. English orthography is hell compared to that, it's not surprising that they need to start to learn it earlier.

Uhm, are you sure.

I multiple times heard from exchange students that the standard of the English curses they had in the US hand been below the standard of the English cursed they had Germany...

German 7 years old dont speak fluent English at all.

I think it's obvious that I'm speaking about older children, as I'm speaking about exchange students...

Which yes you could argue is somewhat out of context as the original discussion is for children around age 7.

1. userbinator was discussing the impact of exceptional people on society, and you're citing average behaviors of a people in one narrow educational sphere. Nikola Tesla has zero relationship with the middle of any curve.

2. Children are quite literally extensions of their parents. Their intelligence, beliefs, genetics, et cetera are a product of their nature (100% parental) and nurture (varies, but usually significantly attributed to their parents). Giving your child tutoring is no more cheating than when you pick up a book for yourself. Your children are you.

3. userbinator was in no way criticizing the opening up of opportunities to achieve equality by elevating all people to genius status. He, and most people here, are critical of handicapping the gifted/lucky/affluent/whatever in order to achieve parity at a lower level. The fact is it doesn't matter if you learn AI programming because you're so gifted the knowledge just flows into you easily, or if your parents spent $1mm a year teaching it to you. We need AI programmers, and having none because you thought it was unfair for people to get that education when others can't is nuts.

> I happened to learn to read at age 5 (not in Germany nor USA) but that didn’t make me “better” than other kids; they did other things.

My experience is the opposite. Because I learned to read early, I was able to absorb a huge amount of information previously inaccessible to me. There was simply no comparison - I was far better in every subject that required either knowing some information or processing it. The only exceptions were the subjects where body skill was important (art, PE, etc.) - in these areas I had some competition, I others there was nobody. I believe our chances balanced more or less in the second year of high school.

>2 - kids who have parents who can afford tutors and such can push the kids through the prescribed steps sooner.

Personally I was lucky my dad was running a computer repair business from the 80's onward. Growing up with a computer and a mountain of pirated educational software prepped me more than anything else my parents could have done. They lucked out that I particularly enjoyed learning.

If you're going to compare America vs Germany I'm willing to bet you're going to run into Simpsons paradox.

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