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Comment by bambax | Hacker News Reader

> Among the first talks posted was Sir Ken Robinson’s “Do Schools Kill Creativity?,” which has since become the most viewed TED talk of all time

Here's the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY

At the 7'15 point, the speaker makes a big joke about Shakespeare "being seven, being in someone's English class" and the audience rolls over with laughter -- the joke being, of course, that it's ludicrous to think anyone ever tried to teach English to the greatest English writer of all time. The speaker continues with the same idea and same joke about Shakespeare's father.

But really? Isn't the logical conclusion the opposite? That Shakespeare's English teacher was the best English teacher there ever was, because (he) helped him grow into the author we know now? That his father, or his mother, or someone, probably helped him?

Instead we have this idea that Shakespeare, like Jesus, was born perfect and that what he had to do was overcome the stupidity and shortsightedness (and meanness) of everyone around him, until he could explode and really be himself.

This idea is a tale for little kids. But it's not just absurd, it's destructive.

View on HN

Our culture is overly obsessed with the concept of certification as being a necessary precursor for professional legitimization. Shakespeare did not have anything close to what we'd interpret as a modern education and it's interesting that you regard some imaginary English teacher as a major influence. Artists for the majority of history learned most of their trades on the job. We mythologize the education system as the only legitimate venue for learning when it's a fairly new invention. Robinson's point wasn't attacking teachers, but the bureaucratic factory farm of universal education that does more to categorize and institutionalize labor, then foster creativity and critical thinking.

I didn't bring up Shakespeare's English teacher; Robinson did. But there have been teachers since at least Antiquity. And speaking of Antiquity, where do you think Shakespeare learned about Caesar, Cleopatra, Alexander? (Not by watching Youtube videos.)

Here's an extract of a critic of the book "How the Classics Made Shakespeare" by Jonathan Bate:

> Bate reminds us that in Shakespeare’s day, a boy from a solidly middle-class family like his would have gotten a rigorous classical education even at a regional local school in Stratford. In Elizabethan England the core of education was learning Latin and then reading and translating into English the Roman classics, including Ovid, Horace, Virgil, and Cicero. It was thus largely the classics that initially shaped Shakespeare’s basic conception of literature, offering him models of lyric poetry, comedy, and tragedy that he followed throughout his career.

https://isi.org/modern-age/shakespeare-and-classical-antiqui...

I took my son out of school in 4th-5th grade and did absolutely zero formal education with him. He entered college at 15, and has since noped out (at 18). Very sharp kid who is not terribly inspired by the prospect of working for any of our institutions. I'm quickly joining him.

What's he doing instead?

Playing around with Blender. Writing.

I hate my job and would like to "nope out", but I don't see anything better out there. I have to support myself and my family too. Are there other options?

This is wrong. Of course Shakespeare had a formal education.

"If William Shakespere had the grammar school training of his day - or its equivalent - he had as good a formal literary training as had any of his contemporaries. At least, no miracles are required to account for such knowledge and techniques from the classics as he exhibits. Stratford grammar school will furnish all that is required." Baldwin, T.W. William Shakspere's Small Latine and Lesse Greeke.

You could have just opened a history book book to find this out. One of those skills you learn in a bureaucratic factory farm.

You also learn to frame all previous learning within modern equivalents. Don't be surprised if academics choose to wedge their professional identities as the predetermining factor of genius.

What counted as formal education of the past is barely applicable to the education systems of the present. Shakespeare didn't spend half of his teen years getting coached in state and national examinations, nor were his teachers subject to performance targets that demanded test results from their students above all else.

Perhaps we should adopt the Elizabethan school system then. All lessons were in Latin and students were punished for speaking English. 'Memorising texts and performing endlessly tedious translations of Latin phrases was the norm [...]. Creating situations of competition between pupils with an atmosphere of fear of physical punishment and humiliation was the usual approach.'[1]

Modern students might find a few exams preferable to this.

[1] https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1583/education-in-the-e...

He also lived in a society they made more sense in some ways at the micro level.

Artisans would learn on the job, but recall that 90% of the population were peasants with rudimentary skills.

It’s popular to bitch about the school system, but the reality is we churn out nurses and doctors and programmers and engineers by the millions. Many/most of the problems are really about broader social issues that schools cannot address.

> Artists for the majority of history learned most of their trades on the job. We mythologize the education system as the only legitimate venue for learning when it's a fairly new invention.

People in this discussion keep bringing heavily educated individuals as examples of "schooling not needed". I don't know about Shakespeare specifically, but people use Bach or Einstein or Mozart as examples. People who had top education and/or came from families that made sure they were learning from early age - with teachers, tutors and formal schools.

If there is mythology alive, it is that these people had no schooling and went by raw uneducated talent purely. People just assume so and are so certain they dont even bother to verify.

Those people had teachers but no "schooling" i.e. mass produced education. No person prior to the twentieth century had the schooling that you have and yet schooling has now monopolized the legitimization of competence and learning.

They actually did. They went to actual schools - with standard programs all fellow students had to go through. Einstein specifically went to mass produced education and lived in twentieth century.

> No person prior to the twentieth century had the schooling that you have and yet schooling has now monopolized the legitimization of competence and learning.

Compulsory schooling did not started in twentieth century. It existed since 18th century. Austria has it since 1774.

>> Our culture is overly obsessed with the concept of certification as being a necessary precursor for professional legitimization.

This! When I was a kid, no one thought making video games was a job, people made jokes about that. I was lucky enough to get to do it and have some success and work with many very successful people in that field. They all figured it out as they went along. Now my children are old enough to major in something that is approximately video games in college, although the name is fancier. By the way, teaching has become a great second career for my friends.

I think it is always useful to learn to think critically about anything and video games are worthy of that criticism. But I think to really succeed in a medium you have to above all else really want to do it a lot and try things no one can teach you. School can only teach you a few things you would pick up quickly if you were actually doing it.

What people are obsessed with is the idea that someone's "good at" something as an inherent trait, as opposed to skill being learnable and, therefore, transferable. «Shakespeare was "good at" writing, therefore he must have the "good at writing" trait from birth», as opposed to «Shakespeare was a skilled author, so, while he had some amount of innate talent, he learned to write at some point, got progressively better at writing over time, and what we have is the end result of a learning process» which is the much more sensible interpretation. I'm old-fashioned enough to think there probably is such a thing as general intelligence, but g doesn't mean you're born knowing how to write a three-act play with believable character development and enough sex jokes to keep everyone amused. Ramifying whatever raw talent you have into an actual skill takes training.

>What people are obsessed with is the idea that someone's "good at" something as an inherent trait, as opposed to skill being learnable and, therefore, transferable

I use to coach high school policy debate in a major metropolitan public high school and the level of "I can't do this, I'm just not good at this" that shows up the minute kids encounter difficulty/obstacles, and specifically in non-physical labor, is mind-blowing.

We tell children "anything is attainable if you put your mind to it" then turn around and imply to children through our actions, cause they're good at reading those, that some people have "it" and most don't, e.g. sequestering the smart kids into completely different tracks from the regular kids; math teachers demonstrating disappointment that a student doesn't understand something while praising the kid who grasps it much quicker.

What's striking to me is that social media, and specifically IG culture, has made strides in tearing at this contradiction in the domain of personal appearance, e.g. not only weight loss/fitness transformation but even the celebration of 'confidence is all you need' for women with more robust bodies. But in the final analysis, I find physical accomplishment in our culture to still be a distinct domain from mental accomplishment.

I agree up to a point and up to a certain level of achievement. But, for example, while I was good enough at math to get through an engineering program at a good school, I'm pretty confident that a physics or math degree would have been very tough and I doubt I could have done it. If I tried really hard and spent lots of time with the TAs? Maybe but I doubt it.

Oh I agree, and I hope my wording didn't convey some sort of unbound ceiling if you just "put your mind to it". I more wanted to point at the first bump in the road.

Both sides sour into toxicity if taken too far, which can happen if a corrective is applied too broadly:

If someone is saying they can't learn a skill they're manifestly capable of, then focusing on how they can likely do more than they think is the correct corrective to apply. However, everyone does have limits, and ignoring those limits and insisting that the same level of attainment is possible for everyone through effort is a toxic mindset which implicitly (or explicitly!) punishes people for being human as opposed to idealized automatons.

On the other hand, if someone is insisting that they can learn everything up to the highest levels and become a 21st Century Renaissance Genius, focusing the replies on how limited time is and how much there is to know is the proper corrective to apply. Apply that corrective too broadly and it's crab-bucket or tall-poppy mentality, and anti-intellectual bilge.

We do need to tear down the idea that people are inherently "good at" learned skills, however. That's never a proper corrective, it's always nonsense, and it devalues the hard work the successful people put in while demoralizing the people who wish to become successful in something.

Indeed, the former corrective is more what I wanted to get at. I wanted to point out that the "you can be anything if you put your mind to it" narrative is doubly harmful as children very much observe the contrary in reality but nevertheless still have the naive platitude repeated to them. I think this contradiction contributes to making the first bump in the road, never mind getting into AP Trig or something, so much more intolerable.

> the joke being, of course, that it's ludicrous to think anyone ever tried to teach English to the greatest English writer of all time

This isn't the joke exactly. It's a joke about what could have happened should Shakespeare at age seven had a miserable english education like many current people's experience. His argument throughout the talk is not anti-school or anti-teacher, his contention is with the arrangement of these elements that produce what we think of today as the schooling system. He's not advocating for children not to have teachers.

> Isn't the logical conclusion the opposite? That Shakespeare's English teacher was the best English teacher there ever was

If it was down to the brilliance of the teacher then that teacher could just produced more Shakespeare's throughout their career.

I think you are correct and I am struggling to understand why lots of intelligent people are missing the logical fallacy in their responses. I don't know the formal description but the logic is:

Shakespeare didn't have a teacher and became a genius, therefore nobody should have teachers and they will become geniuses.

It doesn't follow. Sharespeare like random other people were gifted in some way. If what others are saying is true, everyone in the olden days before widespread shooling would be amazing too. They weren't.

Why?

Because education is related to a whole load of variables. The support/lack of parents and the community they operate in. E.g. middle-class vs working class. Their nutrition level and ability to concentrate; the other kids in their classes who might support or detract from learning; the quality of the teaching in the school; and many other things.

Clearly the best way to learn is to hang around people who are passionate about their subjects but probably the next best thing is a school where you can get a balanced education that is hopefully partially related to the basic skills you need to get around in life.

This talk is using "feel good about yourself" playbook, that's why it is the most viewed one.

- You cannot succeed unless you try. ( This is misinterpreted by average joe as "if I believe/try enough I will succeed, if not I didn't try enough )

- If you are a failure, it is not your fault. ( This one is the basic blame the system playbook )

Examples of exceptional people chosen specifically, Sharespeare, The Dancer, etc. Everybody thinks they have some undiscovered talent, nobody wants to be the average.

There will be some exceptional people, and with current schooling some exceptional talent will be lost, but it is much better than having less than average educated majority.

I think the genius story is not only false, it is elitist and dangerous. What the joke says, in essence, is that a teacher's job is to identify the Shakespeares, and then prevent anyone from getting in their way.

And what do we do with the non-Shakespeares? I guess we just dump them and move to another part of the world... Just like little Sarah, the girlfriend of the speaker's son he mentions at 8'15.

> He [James, the speaker's son, who was 16 at the time] said 'I'll never find another girl like Sarah.' And we were rather pleased about that frankly, because she was the main reason we were leaving the country.

Audience laughs and laughs at this.

I don't care for that joke either.

Yet the interesting part here is that, in some cases, it's apparently ok to intervene in your children's life -- as opposed to letting them do their thing and pursue their creativity.

Isn't it possible however, that James and Sarah would have had a child who would have become another Mozart, or Einstein?

We'll never know.

> Isn't it possible however, that James and Sarah would have had a child who would have become another Mozart, or Einstein?

At least genetically this is unlikely. Several hundred genetic variants explain a good fraction of intelligence and a random mixing of Sarah and James’ variants will include ones that increase and decrease intelligence. Getting a really good random mix of several hundred variants is unlikely. That is, intelligence regresses towards the mean.

That is a lot of pseudoscientific bullshit, if you don’t have the stats to prove it.

How is it bullshit?

There is plenty of science to backup the claim that intelligence is heritable [0]. From there the rest of what I said is basic population genetics statistics.

0. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29335645/

I have literally no idea how you can think that's what they're trying to say. I believe you, I'm not saying it's BS, I just can't see the path to it. Somebody slightly-awkwardly making the point that (they believe) modern schooling is doing more harm than good to the development of children in no way implies the claim that children should not have teachers, or be taught, or that somehow shakespeare didn't need to learn lessons from people about english or life. These counterpoints to an idea that isn't present are the worst form of strawman.

I think the whole point is erasure of the all the variables that might help make a person a success (education, parents, wealth, community, nutrition, etc.) The success a person has achieved is somehow an innate part of who the person is, these other variables merely distract or (in the case of Shakespeare's teachers) hold them back. If the world would get out of their way, these people would have been even more successful even earlier. How amazing would the world be if that was the case?

An obvious corollary is that these successful people don't owe anyone anything: all of these variables don't really matter. I don't think that's mentioned in this talk, however.

I honestly do not think that the logical conclusion is that Shakespeare's English teacher was the best English teacher of all time.

I interpreted the implication of the talk as being that Shakespeare's formal schooling, or lack of it, was at best irrelevant to his development as a great creative writer. This still supports the thesis of the talk - that the price children pay to participate in formal schooling is not worth it.

"price children pay to participate in formal schooling is not worth it."

It should be more like:

"If you are an exceptional child, price you pay to participate in formal schooling is not worth it"

Is there historical reason to think that? That Shakespeare's would be better off without schooling and that his teachers and parents were crappy? Or that if Shakespeare's parents enforced bed time, it was at detriment?

In non-writing arts, I know for a fact that there is lineage of famous artists - each learning from predecessors.

Even if it was true that every bit of schooling hurt Shakespeare, that effect is dwarfed by the contributions to his career made by the various mediocre talents who wrote stuff like Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland (where he got so much of his historical material) and the other playwrights in the revenge genre.

Same with Einstein, he had his problems with institutions but his breakthroughs relied on the work of their legions of average minds who developed physics and mathematics over the centuries.

We should think about how we can best support the handful of geniuses who are held back by the educational system, however I wouldn't be surprised if the kind of education that works for the >99.999th percentile would be terrible for the other 99.999%.

It seems pretty clear that those in the upper 10% (to pick a random number) of broad intellectual curiosity, motivation, home environment, etc. would likely be much better off with more self-directed learning than a rigid program--with some exceptions like probably languages.

> But really? Isn't the logical conclusion the opposite? That Shakespeare's English teacher was the best English teacher there ever was, because (he) helped him grow into the author we know now?

I'm sure he had help, but if it were due to the teacher, there would have been hundreds of Shakespeares from all the pupils that teacher taught throughout their career. That wasn't the case though. Out of all the pupils that Shakespeare's teacher had, only one of them became Shakespeare.

It can be both: that the teacher helped a _gifted_ boy grow into the author we know now, and the boy wouldn't have become the author we know now without them.

Just because their other pupils didn't turn out to be legendary doesn't invalidate the teacher's contribution, which is to say, doesn't mean the joke was in good taste.

> if it were due to the teacher, there would have been hundreds of Shakespeares from all the pupils that teacher taught throughout their career.

They would not. Because many of those kids would move on to do something different. And also because success is more then just ability. Economy can not have hundreds of famous play writers, there are not enough theaters.

You're also assuming that Shakespeare had only one teacher. His environment was simply set up in a way to tap his inherent aptitude. The notion that having inherent aptitude implies that it will manifest itself to the world regardless of the quality of one's environment is at best toxic and at worse insulting.

To quote Stephen Jay: "I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops".

For example, I grew up in a broken family, living with a stepmother who did her best to trip me until my father gets convinced that I should live with my mother instead. As a result, when my father was away, I received no help in my homework. Her kids did. In this scenario, the "nature over nurture" debater will argue that if I was meant to be good in math then I would be able to push through on my own without external assistance when needed. But when I didn't, my lack of understanding snowballed, my confidence got hit and I ended up being a gang member who avoids school to waste time in the arcade, smoke and pinball.

Don't make the mistake of thinking that what I'm saying is that I would have been the next Einstein or that I'm ultra-talented and I blame my stepmother for not having a math phd. But maybe I would have been good enough not to repeat the same school year twice. Maybe having access to someone explaining to me how important mathematics are to programming would stimulate my interest more and would motivate me to try and get good at them instead of dodging my responsibilities.

I dedicate my life in 2 things: Combat ageism and expose to programming as many people as possible. They don't have to want to become developers but, maybe they'll find it interesting enough to change their life or their workflows. Because I am not just a person, I'm also part of someone else's environment.

The joke is about imagining a famous historic person as a child instead of an adult. I think it's just in there to lighten the presentation up rather than make a big point about Shakespeare.

I think the idea you are presenting is a straw man.

A long time ago I read Dan Simmons series article “Writing well”, where he argued that Shakespeare greatly profited from his education in a - very uncreative -grammar school, which emphasised learning of latin and imitation of latin rhetoric.

https://web.archive.org/web/20170411075439/http://www.dansim...

It's pretty irrelevant to derive any conclusion about mass public education systems based on extreme outliers.

No one will "become Bach" by attending a school with good music curriculum, and no school could have input a Bach-level talent and output a median musician.

That's the all selling point of the talk though. System is hiding potential outliers ( like the dancer example ) Although it is conveniently ignoring the failure examples.

Bach has gotten tons of schooling. He got born in family of musicians and was taught by them. When his parents died, he lived with brother that continued to teach him.

And when he was 15, he went to prestigious school.

Also, classical music in general involves a lot of theory. It is not just about "make nice sounding tune by intuition".

Not just classical composition either, I really should not be at this point but I’m regularly surprised about “contemporary” (50s and forwards) musicians having a strong classical (playing) or formal background.

Youtube has really opened my eyes on the subject as well: there are truckloads of jazz players discussing musical theory.

Which makes a lot of sense in hindsight: properly deconstructing and playing with structures is difficult if you don’t deeply understand those structures. But I’m not really musically inclined and I’ve never been fond of jazz so I never saw this.

Yeah, Jazz is heavy on theory too. Especially for improvisation and jamming, you really really need to know what you are doing and which tone will match what the group is doing at the same time.

But to play folk or rock music for example, you do not need that much of it. If you can read music sheet, you can reproduce the song. You can kinda create similar own going by intuition. But, creating the stuff Bach was creating absolutely does require tons of knowledge.

I dunno. Maybe the joke is spot on. Sure we can chicken-and-egg the problem, but someone has to be the first to make scientific discoveries just as much as reach new heights in poetry. And we surely have enough known examples of luminaries who had absolutely horrendous parents or teachers or life circumstances. We don't have great records about the historical Shakespeare, and I don't dismiss your PoV out of hand, but I am not sure it's totally correct either. We have to leave room for natural genius and insight.

>the joke being, of course, that it's ludicrous to think anyone ever tried to teach English to the greatest English writer of all time

I didn't take that as the joke. Not much is known about Shakespeare's childhood but if you look at someone like Mozart he was coached by family from an early age. By seven if he had had a music class at school he probably would have been way better by the teacher. If I was to bet on it I'd guess Shakespeare was taught English way before seven.

Is that Jeff Bezos in the audience at 14:59, laughing at the joke about a man speaking his mind in the woods?

You may criticize TED, but here we are, having a debate on one of the most popular talk.

Isn't it the point ?

> the joke being, of course, that it's ludicrous to think anyone ever tried to teach English to the greatest English writer of all time

That's not the joke.

The joke is, you can't imagine some teacher today tolerating Shakespeare-like talk.

See his intro anecdote. Someone fidgeting and being unruly is more likely to get medicated than educated.

> But really? Isn't the logical conclusion the opposite? That Shakespeare's English teacher was the best English teacher there ever was

Do you know that he wrote because he had the greatest English teacher? Or was it his own passion? Or did he just hate someone's guts enough. For example Harlan Ellison hated his writing teacher. I think the teacher even threw Harlan out of the class. So Harlan being the tiny ball of spite, as he was, mailed mentions of his rewards to the man, some letters even found him post-humously. Because Harlan forgot to check up on him.

>See his intro anecdote. Someone fidgeting and being unruly is more likely to get medicated than educated.

I'd imagine a fidgeting and unruly student in a 16th century grammar school would get beaten.

I'd say brusies come and go but medicating something can alter neurochemistry on a much more fundamental level. Especially in children/teens.

Generally, they were just beaten and dropped out as soon as possible hating the school.

> This idea is a tale for little kids.

You might even say, as Shakespeare would, that it is a "tale told by an idiot / Full of sound and fury / Signifying nothing."

I want to go to the school you went to.

I'm not so sure. My OK brother-in-law was decrying the state of his primary education. He mentioned it took a full year of remedial tutoring to be ready for college at 18.

I asked "So, an entire primary education can be recapitulated in a few months by an 18-year-old. Why then do we torment children with 12 years of schooling? If it isn't necessary?"

He had no answer, being a teacher himself. But I wonder.

> So, an entire primary education can be recapitulated in a few months by an 18-year-old.

That’s not exactly fair. During his primary education, he learnt enough to complete it in a few months. This does not tell how long it would have taken had he never gone to school at all.

One year of one teacher tutoring one student contains far more attention than 12 years of one teacher teaching 30 children.

Also, school is as much a daycare so the parents can go to work, as it is a place of "learning".

Furthermore, you study specifically to pass tests. Actual learning is a secondary side-effect of education.

Curiously if we stopped trying to teach infants for 12 years, there would be enough teachers to tutor 18-year-olds with proper attention.

Daycare exists already. If that's what we want, that's what we should pay for and get. Seem like theatre to combine the two.

A great deal of postmodern civilization indeed seems suspiciously much like theatre :)

It's way faster to learn by yourself than from someone teaching you because you can go directly to what you need to understand etc. So it's more suitable for geniuses.

Counterexamples to your point: Mozart, guy was copying whole compositions by memory at age 14

Adrian Lamo: didn't finish high school

Einstein?

And many others

Einstein had a degree in Maths and Physics and did his PhD as an external student while working at the Patent Office. How is he an example of schools killing creativity?

The 12-year-old Einstein taught himself algebra and Euclidean geometry over a single summer.

Einstein also independently discovered his own original proof of the Pythagorean theorem at age 12.

And more at Wikipedia. Point is geniuses learn way faster by themselves than going to a class. It's a huge waste of time to sit in a lecture of someone speaking at turtle pace, I would fall asleep. Sorry if you went through that.

> Point is geniuses learn way faster by themselves than going to a class. It's a huge waste of time to sit in a lecture of someone speaking at turtle pace, I would fall asleep. Sorry if you went through that.

You're generalizing from some poorly taught class, whereas it's unlikely that a genius would remain in such a class, and also unlikely that the education would not also be supplemented with other forms of teaching.

Terence Tao was a child prodigy the likes of which are rarely seen, and his bio is full of classes/teachings.

Eh. It depends on the kid and their circumstances.

I was a child prodigy (I'm a much less impressive adult), and since I was from a rural area with divorced parents without much time for me, I spent plenty of time in 'normal' classes in addition to supplemental classes and educational opportunities.

The difference between me and my (non-prodigy) siblings was that the teachers normally didn't expect me to pay attention/I was allowed to do pretty much whatever I wanted after I finished the assignments. I have to agree with hatsubishi to a degree: It IS boring as hell to be in a classroom setting made for people behind your level, and this is especially likely to happen at early ages.

I don't think it's schools alone that kill the creativity, though. It was interesting going to events/being around other prodigies, because often I was the only kid there whose parents/adults didn't have a career already picked out for them by the time we hit middle school. The expectations of perfection, the sense that you're public property (with great gifts come great responsibility), and the social isolation of child geniuses does more to stunt them than the education system, in my opinion/experience.

> Eh. It depends on the kid and their circumstances.

Absolutely, hence why I phrased it as "unlikely". The wrong environment will kill anything.

It's hard to know whether my experience or Tao's is more representative. There's selection bias going on with regards to people's conception of a typical child prodigy since people are going to be more aware of successful/properly educated prodigies than the others.

> Counterexamples to your point: Mozart, guy was copying whole compositions by memory at age 14

Mozart's father, a professional composer and director, had a lot to do with Mozart's early musical development [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_Mozart

> Counterexamples to your point: Mozart, guy was copying whole compositions by memory at age 14

Mozart’s father was a minor composer, accomplished musician, and skilled teacher (he published a well regarded violin textbook the same year WA was born).

Mozart started picking up musical education through his father teaching his older sister.

> Einstein?

The tutored son of an engineer, graduate of ETH Zurich?

Both of them were geniuses, but in both cases their familial background and educational access were not exactly minor.

If you’re looking for something even remotely close to an actual self-made genius, it’s probably Ramanujan you want. And here you could actually argue formal education was unsuitable and damaging: dude was only interested in pure mathematics so failed out of two colleges (as well as his FA), nearly starved until he chanced a meeting with V. Ramaswamy Aiyer (the founder of the Indian Mathematical Society).

But such stark examples are not common at all. It’s almost certain we collectively missed on a much higher number of Einsteins and Mozarts because they did not have the early access and education to blossom, than we stifled and smothered ramanujans.

Would Jacob Collier exist if he’d been born in a slum of Chennai, on the streets of Bogota, or in a project? That seems doubtful. But how many Jacob Colliers did, and were lost?

> It's way faster to learn by yourself than from someone teaching you because you can go directly to what you need to understand etc.

That is a pretty weak conjecture, I think. I can think of a ton of issues where the fastest way is almost certainly having the guidance and counsel of a great teacher.

Sure it's possible to teach yourself calculus, relativity theory, or even QED. I find it highly doubtful though that any student of Feynman's, for example, would have learned faster in self-study than from sitting in his class.

> Einstein

Einstein went to school, graduated and all that. It was only really at highest level when he went to work at that patent office.

Putting Adrian Lamo between Mozart and Einstein is ridiculous.

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