The Wrong Way to Treat Child Geniuses
online.wsj.com
online.wsj.com
[prodigies] are not given a lot of opportunities in schools that are designed for typically developing kids
... nor should they be. I was learning calculus in elementary school and writing the Putnam in high school. No matter how hard they tried, there's no way the schools I was enrolled in could have given me those opportunities. What prodigies need it not opportunities in school, but rather schools which are flexible enough to let them access opportunities outside of school -- in my case, starting my days at Simon Fraser University and packing my high school courses into the afternoon.
Those of us who managed sky-high SAT scores at 13 were 20 times as likely as the average American to get a doctorate; let's say, being charitable, that we're 100 times as likely to make a significant scientific advance. Since we're only 1 in 10,000 of the U.S. population, that still leaves 99% of scientific advances to be made by all those other kids who didn't get an early ticket to the genius club. We geniuses aren't going to solve all the riddles. Most child prodigies are highly successful — but most highly successful people weren't child prodigies.
This is probably the most important paragraph in the article. The numbers are unsupported, but I don't think they're so far off as to invalidate the point.
It isn't exactly wrong to say that Terry Tao and other former prodigies like him are geniuses. But it is more accurate to say that what they accomplished was genius. Genius is a thing that happens, not a kind of person.
Genius is both a noun and an adjective describing some people. It's a shame that Dr. Ellenberg felt it necessary to end an otherwise good article with such a piece of pithy nonsense.
Not to derail from the article's point too much, but there are schools / programs specifically for talented youth - although they are not everywhere (sounds like there were none wherever you grew up). I know of one high school where a large number of students write the Putnam. I think it is important to have these schools / programs because pursuing opportunities outside of school is not always possible / easy for disadvantaged youth.
Yes and no. There are schools and programs specifically for kids in the 99th percentile, sure. In a large city, there will be enough kids for that to be feasible (as long as the kids have parents who will drive them across town).
But I'm pretty sure there are no schools dedicated to students in the 99.99th percentile. Even in New York City there are only 10 students per year at that level.
If you're at a higher level than that, you might as well just go to college.
There's also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highly_Gifted_Magnet
I attended this program in elementary school and it seems to have spoiled me socially, since the students in the program were so much more interesting to me than other kids.
I suspect the reason the school district chose to create the program is because of the notoriety of the Mirman School, a lauded K-8 private school which also has top-0.1% admissions requirements.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mirman_School
So at least in some areas, education tailored to the 99.9th percentile has a long track record. But sadly, I have no idea if the practices and knowledge of that experience are available to inform highly-gifted education in other parts of the world.
I do think that paragraph should have been substantially longer, and I suspect it got trimmed for print. But what he's trying to do with it is to summarize the rest of the article.
EX: Apparently, Einstein was an ok chess player and Oppenheimer sucked. Yet, chess prodigy's are often called geniuses even if that's the only thing there particularity good at.
Businesses, Language, Math, Music, Go, Chess, IQ tests, Poetry, Physics, Early development, and Sculpture don't really have all that much in common. In the end it's much more meaningful to say someone is a _ genius than simply calling them a genius because g is closer to a myth than reality.
... except for the people who excel at them. The author of this article is a mathematics professor and an author. I'm a computer scientist and a violinist. And in my time reviewing entrance scholarship applications for my alma mater, I don't think I've ever seen a student who excels in a single academic field and has no other unusual talents or accomplishments.
However, none of the worlds best people in any of those, as in top 5, is also the worlds best any in any of the others. Not to step on anyone toes here. Michael Jordan was an incredible baseball player as in better than 99.99% of everyone that has ever played the game and by the 1:10,000 concept he may have been a dual genius, but that was not enough to be outstanding at the top level. And that is for two vary closely related sports.
So sure you can be outstanding in 2 or 3 of them but good luck finding people that can play at even just the professional level in Go, Physics, Sculpture, AND Poetry.
PS: My point is that collectively they don't share much in common. The Music / Math link while strong is not the same as the Music / Sculpture link.
IMO, making the Hall of Fame is one obvious/indisputable mark of someone who is truly distinguished by excellence in the sport. (He did make the All Star & Pro Bowl, but those are far less distinguished honors, with something like 5-10% of players making those teams each year. So, rather than being a "top 5" type of mark, it's a "top 68" (baseball) and "top 110-ish" (football).)
Why are most of the true Renaissance people underemployed, obscure, and financially mediocre? It's because the only thing that can tell a polymath from a dabbler is time.
If you link this lack of focus in taking profit from your actions in life with a master in a struggling field, you are on your way to an underachiever life. That's me.
>Genius is both a noun and an adjective describing some people. It's a shame that Dr. Ellenberg felt it necessary to end an otherwise good article with such a piece of pithy nonsense.
It's a shame that you felt it necessary to end an otherwise good comment on Dr. Ellenberg's essay with such a literal reading of his last sentence. It reeks of unearned arrogance.
Interesting point, it reminds me of the 60 Minutes story of this kid [1] who showed signs of autism and was starting to become very inward-focused and withdrawn until his parents decided to trash the therapy and encourage his own exploration... Seems to have really changed his disposition to be far more communicative and most certainly affected the direction of his life. (Whole video is decent, but ~7:00 on is his parents)
The article built the point that worshiping individual genius was counterproductive for the majority (non-genius) practitioners of math and science. The last sentence was would not pass as a dictionary entry on "genius" for sure, but that was not the point either. It was a rethorical device. Too bad i chose to start this post with such a piece of pithy nonsense.
As a kid, I was always in the 99th percentile of any standardized test. People complimented me on being smart, but smart isn't something you can control, so I learned tricks to maximize how smart I appeared. That included jumping in to anything that came naturally to me and avoiding anything else. I basically never learned to work at anything, to endure frustration, to sit with failure and get past it.
People meant well, I agree with the author: the common notion of genius as something innate and magical is toxic. By all means, make sure kids are properly challenged. But we should do it for every kid.
This is a pretty common mistake made by parents and teachers during child development:
I have a kid now, he's not going to be sent to a regular school. I wasted about 30 years trying to work out what/how other people were thinking. School wasn't a challenge, everyone in it was - so I initially focused on that.
They'll spend time trying not to offend people. (I really like people, and want them to like me). It's really tiring and difficult to maintain a persona that's compatible with the crowd. Is it even right to do that?
The smarter you are, the less people listen to the 'true' you (boring, being annoying etc). My guess is being around 30% smarter than average is the sweet spot.
They need a framework to cope with the entire inefficiency of everything in society, and the apparent willingness of everyone around them to perpetuate it.
They need to learn to let people they love be, even if it appears they are walking off a cliff. That sucks.
Being smart is wonderful but it's not everything. It means things are easily understandable to you. It doesn't mean you know everything, but it means you can learn almost anything quickly.
If you want a PHD you can get one easily, it's like when you're really rich - things have a different meaning. Many smart people I know don't care about things like 'PHDs' - infact, quite the opposite. Friends and family matter, not PHDs.
TL;DR; IQ is one over-sold metric; teach your kids to be happy first.
As phrased, this is completely meaningless. What are you thinking of here? You think people are best off at the 80th percentile?
Or you could be the 'lucky' one who gets carted around as some genius for 'all to see'
ie: Unless you want to sit in a cave and wire yourself to a computer, an IQ in the top .00001% is useless for being happy on Earth.
Also there is an average IQ (though a poor metric). The average is 100, a 30% increase would be approximately 133 points.
"Intelligence tests are one of the most popular types of psychological tests in use today. On the majority of modern IQ tests, the average (or mean) score is set at 100 with a standard deviation of 15 so that scores conform to a normal distribution curve. This means that 68 percent of scores fall within one standard deviation of the mean (that is, between 85 and 115), and 95 percent of scores fall within two standard deviations (between 70 and 130)."
Therefore, roughly speaking - what I proposed is that being in the top 5% can be either a blessing or (more easily) a serious impediment to a happy life.
And to this point, the parents must learn to be happy themselves. This is a great challenge for most people, who are often torn between social norms and their own internal forces, and never fully resolve these tensions. A parent with a clear understanding of their own nature can do a lot for a kid.
The great barrier to happiness for a parent of a gifted child is ego and vanity. Some parents become afflicted with inordinate pride in their progeny. "Look at how smart my son is!" they exclaim. The parents' peers, friends, teachers, family, tire of hearing about it. This can alienate the kid from these adults, and even worse the kid's ego can also become inflated. In the end, the parents' pride amplifies what is already a terrible alienating, lonely, and depressing existence when no-one really seems to "get" you.
A corollary to this sin of pride is focusing too much on academic performance and ignoring entirely the importance of social learning. Parents in general, and smart kids in particular, might make the mistake of believing that kids are in school to absorb academic knowledge alone. Yes, it is good to encourage native curiosity and satisfy the demands of a budding intellect. But even more important, I think, is for the child to understand his relationship to his peers. He must discover, essentially, what he wants from other kids and what they want from him, and (importantly) what they want from each other. This process of discovery, I think, should be done quietly, deliberately, and consciously. There is nothing more harmful than telling a kid, "You shouldn't care what other people think." Humans are born caring what other people think, and to deny that is just crazy. A smart kid starting with the right premise will be able to accomplish quite a lot - a smart kid given the wrong initial conditions will end up dejected, miserable, and a failure, all because he got bum information from parents who were just plain wrong.
It may seem counter-intuitive, but I believe that a critical element for happiness in intelligent kids is silence. Silence serves (at least) two purposes - first, and most importantly, it can better connect them to what they really enjoy. Sports, for example, can be enjoyed without words. So can music, and art, and even just the simple act of being around other kids. It frees up the kid to just be, and not to think, to not have to try and justify their value, often agonizingly, to a social group. In a similar way, it shows them that even without a brain, they are an intrinsically important, valuable human being - which not only takes a lot of pressure off, but helps them empathize with those that aren't as smart.
Anyway, just some random thoughts. Thanks for the post. :)
Another random thought:
A lot of parents are intimidated by their 'smart' kids, there's absolutely no reason for that. Even the smartest child can learn a wealth of wisdom from the most 'ordinary' (obviously I'm just relating that to IQ) parents. Genius child means high IQ - fast learning ability, not knowledge or wisdom - so school is much less important than loving family values or the wisdom of elders.
"I believe that a critical element for happiness in intelligent kids is silence"
That's just perfect. I never thought of it that way, I'll take this and apply it to the mix! That blew me away, it had never occurred to me and is completely accurate in both an intellectual and emotional context.
Summing up the research, yes, it's good to be supportive rather than oppositional to children developing their special talents in their youth. But the most talented young people will not save the world. We will save the world together through lots of incremental improvements, the kind of incremental improvements we discuss here on Hacker News. Personality traits (one could also say qualities of character) like curiosity and persistence matter quite as much as raw brain power in allowing young people to gain the best development from having good learning opportunities, and good learning opportunities are important for all learners.
[1] [vid] http://mediasite.csom.umn.edu/Mediasite/Play/2eeb0fa1c5f6408...
[2] Related articles: https://my.vanderbilt.edu/smpy/publications/david-lubinski/
How does what you're advocating differ from pure selfishness (perhaps restricted by the requirements to not to hurt others)?
What I have found really humbling in life is how many people have accomplished so much more than I have, without my background. And if you look at the resumes of folks like David Cutler, Linus Torvalds, Ed Witten, etc... these folks didn't rise up through Olympiad events with the genius label their whole life.
I know this is cliché, but it really does seem like building determination and excitement is at least as important than simply pouring skills in child geniuses.
The types of papers published from younger scientists (Einstein, Newton) were more abstract, while those published from the older generation were those that could only be realized from decades of hard work.
I find it interesting that society thinks it's important to "guide" genius children. A question I'd like to ask is: what exactly do these children lack that we need to compensate with guidance? Children who get things done on their own just need space.
He saved the best quote for the end.
But this really hit home for me
> One of the most painful aspects of teaching mathematics is seeing my students damaged by the cult of the genius. That cult tells students that it's not worth doing math unless you're the best at math—because those special few are the only ones whose contributions really count. We don't treat any other subject that way. I've never heard a student say, "I like 'Hamlet,' but I don't really belong in AP English—that child who sits in the front row knows half the plays by heart, and he started reading Shakespeare when he was 7!" Basketball players don't quit just because one of their teammates outshines them. But I see promising young mathematicians quit every year because someone in their range of vision is "ahead" of them.
Being identified as a child genius puts you into the unfortunate default circumstance of always competing with everybody, instead of just competing with yourself like you are supposed to do when learning and growing. You are supposed to be uniquely smart, and when other kids do something better than you you start to question yourself.
Importantly, well meaning educators try to foster the areas you test as exceptionally gifted in, when what they should be doing is teaching you how to work through and overcome areas you are weaker in -- to achieve a better cognitive balance. This can help the child break the "curse of being gifted", where effortless achievement in one area becomes a kind of short-loop positive feedback drug they focus all of their attention on and harder/less obvious areas are ignored much to later detriment.
But it's almost never done, because it's assumed that since you're gifted in one area you're gifted in them all and they'll just focus on the ones you test the highest in. You've been given a magical spark, and they want to capture that spark. The cruel irony is that quite often, the harder they work to grab it, the faster it goes away.
I think one of the problems is that many of the educators responsible for guiding exceptionally gifted children through all this were not themselves exceptionally gifted and have a poor understanding and empathy for what it's like to walk around with all this, often very uneven, nascent intelligence.
I see from many of the comments here that other really bright kids were put in competitive environments where scores and placements became a big focus of their lives: SAT scores, Putnam, IQ scores...I'm sure most of us also did state or regional competitions of some sort or another. The most important thing I learned from all that when I was going through it was that "there's always somebody better than you so don't get all emotional when you have the bad fortune to cross paths with them in the same competition."
Actually, the better lesson I learned was to not bother competing at all and just focus one challenging myself. I'm already in the top 1-2% in whatever narrow subject area according to some test, without any effort, why don't I achieve competency in something I outright suck at? If I'm so smart, I should be able to figure out how to attack and surmount any weakness I have.
I think that little philosophy has gotten me much farther than any of the areas I was identified as being gifted in as a child.
That's a good lesson and its effectiveness is also supported by research.
http://www.csulb.edu/~dthoman/Pubs/ThomanSmithSilvia2011.pdf
As Heidi Grant Halvorson put it: focus on getting better rather than being good.
This isn't gloating at their expense, because I was one. This is a fucked-up society and the "tallest nail" phenomenon ensures that most people like them eventually reach a stage of life where they don't do well, and it's harder to recover once that "golden child" image (untarnished success, monotonic progress) is lost and the world would rather invest in someone else.
Outside of academia, one who I know pretty well (he actually went to IMO, not just MOP) was no-offered at two different hedge funds because of the "tallest nail" phenomenon. When people found out that he'd attended IMO, there was a certain glee with which his co-workers (at least, in one of those two firms) made sure that he failed. After that, he was pretty much unhireable.
My two young children are currently enrolled in a Montessori school and I can draw a lot of parallels between what the many gifted commenters here suggest as a better way to teach and my understanding of the Montessori philosophy.
Emphasis on engendering self-directed learning, freedom to explore their interests, avoidance of intelligence labels/praise such as "you're so smart", etc.
What makes a real genius is absolute honesty, willingness to re-evaluate their core assumptions over and over again, not get deluded by ruling dogma etc. Being able to multiply five digit numbers doesn't help with that.
He was part of the Vanderbilt University study of kids who score at least 700 on the verbal part of the SAT, or 630 in math, by age 13. I was part of the Johns Hopkins program, which is now the Center for Talented Youth which has similar requirements. he scored 800 on the math portion, 680 on verbal at age 12. I scored 800 on the verbal and 530 on the math at 12. He's a tenured math professor and published author. I'm an IT consultant of 20 years and a published author. I think I'm just as qualified to speak on behalf of this group as he is.
Those kids are under-served by the school system to the point of failure or near failure.He's completely right, talent isn't a number, but that number is indicative on an innate skill for knowledge assimilation and synthesis that is greater than average. Given the proper scholastic environment, these kids ARE capable of more than most, and should be allowed to find their niche just as much as the majority.
The problem, in my opinion, isn't that the school system is too rigidly skewed towards the majority, or that there are bad teachers. On the contrary, throughout my school career I've had a number of exceptional teachers that I still admire, respect, and cherish my time with, even the ones with whom I didn't necessarily get along with well (I was a jackass at times).
The school system had always seemed to me to be too cookie-cutter oriented, and was very difficult for anyone who didn't fit the mold. I didn't fully understand why until about 10 years ago when I read an article and then a book by John Taylor Gotto. The article is "The Six Lesson Schoolhouse". http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html is the article. The book is "Dumbing Us Down" for sale here: http://www.amazon.com/Dumbing-Down-Curriculum-Compulsory-Ann... or at any good library.
The problem is the way the school system itself is structured. In the US, we're utilizing a school system that was designed 150 years ago and hasn't changed much since. We created this "modern" system during the industrial revolution's sweep across America. As machines made farming orders of magnitude more efficient, cities grew at an astounding rate, and industrial jobs became the dominant employment sector. The need for rigorous schedules became the norm with time zones and train schedules, and later with the whistles and bells of assembly line manufacturing. Strict scheduling in schools helped acclimate kids to the forthcoming work environment. It was a great thing, and helped build a strong and well educated workforce.
As times changed, however, schools didn't. We acclimated to special needs kids with attention or learning disorders, which is fantastic because we're able to take these kids, and get then up to the level of their average counterparts, and make them into productive members of society rather than ignoring and shunning them. But we don't do nearly enough for the small fraction who are highly gifted. We simply put them into "harder" or "higher level" classes than their peers. This isn't an acceptable solution. We need to stimulate them, to find out where their passions lie then feed them accordingly. Do they react better to lectures, or readings? Do they react better to more solitary studies, or in group environments? Do they need a standard amount of repetition to help boost retention, or does that simply bore them and artificially stunt their natural abilities?
Mr. Ellenberg is right that pressure is not the proper tool to make the most of these young minds, but neither is pretending they're not exceptional, and not giving them the opportunity to see exactly how far they can go.
We should do this for everyone. It's unclear to me why we should not find the passion and best way to teach "average" students too.
The only difference between "gifted" and "average" students is really how quickly they can learn certain material -- and maybe an increase in their ceiling for learning certain material. But I don't think there is a fundamental qualitative difference in how they should be taught.
But, it's the cost issue that makes it a total non-starter. Very few school districts will, across the board, be able to afford the teacher:student ratios required by individualized, customized instruction processes for each student.
There was research that showed that IQ after 120 stops being correlated with success - other factors start being more important.
It's not about what those individuals deserve, it's about the societal return on the investment of their education. The potential return is simply greater.
Sire, but potential and actual are very different.
My answer is that we've decided to make larger per capita investments in "outlier" individuals and the vast middle of the distribution population is accommodated with a standardized curriculum. I'm OK with that, though I'm concerned that we concentrate disproportionate resources on the left side of the distribution without investing enough on the right side.
I don't view the problem as "How should we use our limited resources to most effectively level the playing field?" but rather "How should we use our limited resources to most effectively foster the development of our future society?" It's no surprise that those two fitness functions result in different choices.
Even if the school system could be perfectly tuned for the top genius kids, there's just not enough of them to outweigh everyone else, in terms of long-term social impact.
I was one of "those kids" as well. I attended MO(S)P in 1999, won national writing awards, wrote a card game at 20 (Ambition) that is not just playable but actually played by a lot of people I've never met.
The problem is the way the school system itself is structured. In the US, we're utilizing a school system that was designed 150 years ago and hasn't changed much since. [...] The need for rigorous schedules became the norm with time zones and train schedules, and later with the whistles and bells of assembly line manufacturing. Strict scheduling in schools helped acclimate kids to the forthcoming work environment. It was a great thing, and helped build a strong and well educated workforce.
As times changed, however, schools didn't. [... W]e don't do nearly enough for the small fraction who are highly gifted. We simply put them into "harder" or "higher level" classes than their peers. We simply put them into "harder" or "higher level" classes than their peers. This isn't an acceptable solution. We need to stimulate them, to find out where their passions lie then feed them accordingly.
From first principles, I agree with you.
However, what has changed even less than the school system is corporate employment. If you're a cognitive 0.01-percenter, being a corporate drone is going to be way more painful than a decent public high school. Trust me, I know both.
Now, one might argue that 0.01-percenters are just unlikely to end up in corporate drone jobs, all being tapped to become proteges of the Gordon Gekkos and Peter Gregories (RIP) of the world. The data don't bear that out. The OP stated (a surprising fact) that the median income, at age 40, of these top-0.01% students was only $80,000. (I knew that the average income of prodigies was mediocre, but I was expecting $150-200k.) The number of 0.01-percenters who end up in corporate mediocrity is shockingly high.
The corporate "real world" is indifferent to the cognitive 1% (unless it comes with pedigree) and outright hostile to the correlates and eccentricities that come with being in the top 0.01%. The school system is doing its job. All that awful closed-campus stuff, the bells and no-backpacks-in-classroom rules, the hall passes and rules surrounding them, are inculcating a deference to authority that the corporate world still demands. And high school makes more exceptions for smart kids than any corporation. (Corporations might exempt political favorites from their bullshit rules, but that's a different set.)
If we want to make a world where the cognitive 0.01% actually get to use their talents (and I fully support such change) and have some autonomy/power, we should make haste to fix the work world. A real fix, not this chickenhawking VC-funded bullshit that seems just as willing to fund turds like Evan Spiegel and Lucas Duplan. We should abolish the current corporate system and reinvent capitalism with the right people in charge. That is the best thing we can do for the cognitive 0.01% (and society as a whole, which benefit sfrom their work). Improving the education system is also valuable, but cognitive 0.01-percenters are able to teach themselves so long as they receive a basically reasonable education (and the average U.S. public school qualifies).
I'm well aware. There's a reason I've been independent the vast majority of my career. :)
One of the most painful aspects of teaching mathematics is
seeing my students damaged by the cult of the genius. That
cult tells students that it's not worth doing math unless
you're the best at math—because those special few are the
only ones whose contributions really count. We don't treat
any other subject that way. ... But I see promising young
mathematicians quit every year because someone in their
range of vision is "ahead" of them.
Grothendieck couldn't solve a Putnam problem, incidentally. Not a contest winner. You might be interested to know what some Fields Medalists say about some prominent prodigies. That they are extremely smart, but haven't done truly major work. The facts and the gossip are no consolation: academic opportunities are overwhelmingly and increasingly weighted in favor of the prodigy.
Likewise, elite employers want to hire the math and programming contest winners. Well, if you're not one of them, it is rational to select yourself out. I've gotten calls from recruiters saying that I'd be working such winning individuals. "Will I be doing the work they're doing?" "Uh, no, you'll be doing system administration." "In that case, maybe you should hire a Nobel Laureate. I am unworthy." Cleaning the digital bedpans of the superstars is not my idea of success. "Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven," as one famous antagonist put it.
As long as the STEM subjects remain a zero-sum game, with the overwhelming spoils going to the early bloomers, the winners, like the author, should be satisfied with what they have already won in an unnecessarily and destructively competitive field. The rest of us are doomed to provide them support as members of the economic precariat at slave wages, if we are foolhardy enough to remain in academia. There is no honor in adding to someone else's power law distribution, and I urge the contest winners to hire Nobel Laureates and other members of their own rank to do their support work, and not add to their winnings by exploiting the unworthy persons they elbowed out.
(I did earn a Ph.D. in mathematics, incidentally. This was wasted effort. When I was a toddler, apparently I impressed a child psychologist with my logic; my mother told the woman that she was an idiot for thinking that I was advanced. My experience in academia was not good--I was mostly exploited. I have decided to abandon mathematics and computer science for art.)