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Comment by TallGuyShort | Hacker News Reader

This is purely anecdotal, but it seems like kids are held back in the US primarily by the curriculum. I immigrated to the United States having grown up in a couple of commonwealth countries and I was shocked to go from a school where I had been learning basic trigonometry to a school where basic algebraic principles weren't even taught until the next year. So whenever I see a discussion about all the social issues that impact education, I have to roll my eyes and wander why people just aren't seeing the kids are capable of more. Thoughts?

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We have a subculture of anti-intellectualism and cottling our kids that is perhaps a little less prominent in the countries that out-perform us? Fitting in socially is also heavily emphasized in the US system, so early advancement for high performers is generally frowned upon.

I think the biggest cultural problem we have is the constant search and glorification of the prodigy/wonderkid and the consequent obsession with "natural talent", as if everyone has some special innate skill that they're destined to discover and be the best at.

If you don't understand calculus the first time around, it doesn't mean you're not a "math person", it means you need to sit down and RTFM for a few more hours. Likewise, if you're really uncoordinated and can't hit a baseball, go outside and practice for 2 hours every day. I guarantee you'll improve dramatically. There's not many things that humans do that can't be improved through practice and discipline.

For some background, I say all this as someone who was told up and down during his childhood how smart and gifted he was, all of which came crashing and burning during high school and college when I realized there were actually things I needed to put in effort to learn. I'm still trying to repair my study habits and fill in knowledge gaps to this day, and I truly wish people had congratulated me more when I had put in a lot of effort into something than when I appeared to grasp a concept quickly with no effort.

Great points. My background growing up was similar to yours.

If it makes you feel better, in raising my daughter I'm trying to do things a better way. I do believe my daughter is gifted, but I spend little if any time praising for that. Instead, I talk about how things like hard word, perseverance, and practice are the key ingredients of success, and I point out and discuss examples wherever I can.

I'll let you know in about 10 years or so whether it made a difference. :)

> I'll let you know in about 10 years or so whether it made a difference. :)

To do that you need twins to treat differently. Every experiment needs a control group ;)

Spend time fixing your weaknesses or building on your strengths? Not an obvious choice in my opinion.

I seem to recall that, at least in the Chinese system, unless you meet a certain bar, you are kicked out of school at specified intervals. This would tend to lead to a school system only filled with top-performers.

I would not call it anti-intellectualism, we have a culture which no longer celebrates success over one's peers. For some reason it is offensive to many that some students are better than others and any celebration of such is frowned upon. How do you breed success oriented children who consistently strive to be improve in a system like that?

There are of course other issue, where many students are categorized based on race and/or upbringing and this effectively curtails their educational opportunities.

The anti-intellectualism in this country is infuriating!

And it reaches to the highest levels, with creationist congressman and even anti-vaccination nuts like Dan Brown.

Only in America do people scoff at the work of science and academicians and put air quotes around the word "expert".

Curriculum shouldn't be an issue for much longer. The vast majority of the states (http://www.corestandards.org/in-the-states) have adopted the Common Core. The holdout is publishers: currently, textbook companies have nominal "core standards" texts, but the vast majority of them are old textbooks with minor changes to get out the door quickly. Once actual alternative surface, we can expect a bigger change.

The curriculum didn't occur in a vacuum, though. It's based on what the leaders thought the students could handle. No one wants a curriculum where a lot of students fail.

Part of that is heterogeneous grouping. The curriculum is based on what the bottom 10% can handle, and everyone else must go at their pace lest there be elitism.

There's probably other factors too, though. All students could probably move faster if culture as a whole were encouraging it.

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