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Comment by hintymad | Hacker News Reader

I'm not. All I want is that students get trained rigorously. The last thing I want is as what NYT used to report: a straight-A student who dreamed to be a scientist couldn't even pass the placement test of a city college. That shows how irresponsible our school systems became.

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You said a few weeks ago that

> As many countries demonstrated, wealth does not buy good genes. Talented kids stand out, as long as we have a decent public school system, which places a high academic standard and holds teachers accountable. That's how East-European countries and Asian countries produce high-quality students.

What implications does this have for all students getting trained rigorously in the public school system? People that also speak of genes like Charles Murray say this is a fool's errand and that we should effectively just throw them off the ship.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42118967

I'm not sure where the contradiction is. The key to me is "which places a high academic standard and holds teachers accountable", which I equate to "rigorous training". I guess the difference is on how we define "talented". To me most kids are just educable, which means they don't constantly push themselves, they don't take initiatives to dig deeper, nor do they proactively find resources to do more. Or they struggle without careful guidance. Yet they can make leap and bounds when they experience a rigorous program. These kids need nurturing from the teachers. At least that's my personal experience: I was content with my performance, until the problem sets showed that I was not really as good as imagined. Also, I believe that training makes a big difference to people of similar level of talent. That is, wealth can't push a kid who struggles with Algebra II to understand calculus, but may well help a student with sufficient talent to stand out. My personal experience: I went to college, didn't have the drive to push through the tomb of Demidovich. And then my friend got me a much shorter book for challenging problem sets in Analysis. With his help I finished the book, and man, what a difference it made. I stayed top of my class and became a TA on calculus in my sophomore year.

> I guess the difference is on how we define "talented"

Yes, and how we define "bad genes". I'm someone that you definitely wouldn't consider "talented" (since I've never worked at Google etc) and probably have "bad genes", what should be done with people like me?

* Train you to the best of your ability

* giving you a no-shame route up and down so that you can choose your own level of challenge, which entails

* giving you opportunities to try the more gifted programs to see if you'd do well and enjoy them

and also

* giving you the opportunity to choose a less demanding program in which you can find and adequate level of challenge (if you need to)

BUT

* treating disruptive behaviour as a choice to go to a less demanding program

citation needed

I wish I could find it, but unfortunately it was likely ten years ago. The article left a lasting impression on me, though, so I repeated it once in a while in different context, at the risk of totally rewriting what actually happened.

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