We tend to think that gifted children cruise through school destined for university and successful careers, but this is merely what psychologists call survivorship bias.
My IQ was nowhere near as high as Georgios, but even at only two standard deviations above average I experienced all of this. My school district did offer a talented-and-gifted program which allowed us to pursue our special interests two mornings per week in elementary school, which gave me four hours away from the mind-numbingly boring standard curriculum and the constant bullying; but that ended in fifth grade.
I was the sort of gifted child who also had poor executive function, courtesy of ADHD. I adored learning, but the slow pace of the classroom was suffocating and by high school I was skipping class constantly, yet somehow still getting perfect scores on exams. Most of my teachers actively disliked me. I have a vivid memory of arguing with my Honors American History teacher in high school about my grade. I had a 100 percent average on tests and quizzes, but she gave me a C- due to missing homework assignment and unexcused absences. I pointed out to her that the purpose of the homework was to ensure the student mastered the curriculum, and since I had the highest average in the class on tests and quizzes it was obvious that I had already mastered the curriculum - and since her lecture that day contained a factual error and she misspelled a word on the chalkboard, perhaps *I* should be the one teaching the class. It didn’t go over well.
Brilliant article. I’ve long joked that I’m “an adult survivor of a gifted childhood”. Everything in the article is spot on. I’m reasonably happy and successful in my 50s now so on paper it all went fine but boy did it suck a lot as a kid.
My two sons are about as smart as I was (take that, regression to the mean!) and my wife and I have long struggled to help them navigate the process of growing up like that.
I cried a little reading this. Thirty years on from my own version of Georgios's experience, the wounds are still too raw. (My own IQ was estimated at the time to be around 160. An inaccurate and imperfect measure of course, but indicative.)
Depressing reading. Brings back memories of middle school in particular. Rejected by my peers, and having long since learned that speaking up was 'being disruptive'. Nothing to read, and nothing to do but sit and stare out the window, day after day, for years.
I don't judge anyone really. Helping people less fortunate than yourself feels good. Policy makers get to feel beneficent. Helping some arrogant snot feels cold and prickly, even if they did not uncomfortably expose one's own shortcomings. Meanwhile, policy makers seeking to help expose themselves to accusations of elitism.
Just echoing the previous comments in saying how much this article resonated with me. I likely have something approximating brain damage from how much boredom and ostracization I endured in school. I made it to what yanks would call high school until I stopped engaging altogether and fell behind from absenteeism. The school's reaction was (quite hilariously, at least in hindsight) to stick me in supplemental remedial classes with the kind of kids whose reading comprehension made them functionally illiterate, around the same time that I'd scored 140 on an IQ test administered by a psychologist the school referred me to. I soon dropped out entirely and never looked back at academia.
All the way I was made to feel defective by my peers, the teachers and most egregiously my parents - they're not bad people, they were just hopelessly out of their depth and had no one to guide them. It's only now in my thirties that I'm very gradually getting over all the inhibition this childhood instilled in me, working toward that "spreadsheet's eye" expectation. though these things leave a persistent mark. Much of the damage is likely permanent.
Our western educational systems are obsessed with helping the low achievers and not doing anything for high achievers because they have been infiltrated by marxist thought for at least one hundred years. Their marxist thinking wants to bring down every student to the lowest common denominator, intellectually gifted students are seen as a threat to the system and are ignored or mistreated. In Pol Pot's Cambodia, people who wore glasses were assumed to be intellectually gifted (and concomitantly a threat to the system) were massacred by the thousands. While we might not go to such extremes, we should learn from the Chinese, who have thrown off their communist beliefs and now value the intellectually gifted and give them all the nurturing they need. Our inability to take advantage of such a valuable resource results in the Chinese eating our lunch.
I am about to say something that will, no doubt, anger many people. You have been warned.
From the article:
"Let us take a child of average intellectual ability, and when he is five years old, let us place him in a class of children with severe intellectual disabilities, children whose IQs are at least four standard deviations lower than his. The child will stay with this group for the duration of his schooling, and he will undertake the curriculum designed for the class, at the level and pace of the class.
(snip)
If this proposal appalls you, rest easy. Such a study will never be undertaken. No education system would countenance it. No ethics committee would approve it."
I agree. It is HIGHLY unlikely that such a disparity of four SD would be allowed. But a full single SD would not only be allowed, it would be (and has been!) mandated. African-American students average a full SD below White students. One can argue nurture or nature as the cause; frankly after 60 years you would think the matter would have been settled by now. Regardless of the cause, after the adoption of civil rights laws in the 60s (laws that I supported then and still do) the integration of Black and White students into the same classrooms quickly became a source of argument. Black students simply were not performing at the same level as Whites. Of course "structural racism" was initially blamed. Various remedies were tried to "bring up" the Black students. None have succeeded in across the board grade levels or for long periods. The solution? Dumb down standards of behavior, standards of knowledge, standards of success, rates of advancement. Dumb them down until the 85 average IQ cohort had the same chance of graduation as the average 100 IQ group.
Result? We have multiple generations of children, children of ALL races, with an increasing disability to do common math, speak or write grammatically, or understand complex or abstract ideas. The brighter students have been brought down to make the poorer students look average.
Solution? There is none. More accurately, there is none as long as we insist on refusing to acknowledge that different races, on average, have different intellectual abilities. (As well as differing emotional makeup, differing physical talents, and probably other differing attributes.) Me? I wish this were not the case, that these were not the truth of the matter -- but I see no way to objectively look at the past 60 years and not come to this conclusion.
I’m a little late in responding here, but this article really resonates with me.
I’m the father of a gifted son. He never fit in regular schools, so he was mostly home schooled. He’s high achieving in math and science and has written output difficulties that affects his grades significantly.
We’re lucky that he was able to join a special program where he joined other kids like him to finish 5 years of high school in 2 and start university early. He’s currently in is first year of university and thriving.
This program was a life saver for him since he needed the intellectual challenge and couldn’t get it anywhere else.
What the author fails to mention even in passing is that most highly gifted children are just precocious. They don't really have an exceptionally high intellectual potential, but only reach their cognitive maturity a lot earlier than most people. That's why a large majority of child wonders grow into unimpressive adults. An IQ of 145 for a 13 yo translates into a measly 115 for an adult...
The most interesting parts of the piece related the personal interactions with Georgios. Nice work.
Yes, customized education is always a good idea but is expensive.
Society deems high intelligence to be a large asset and gift in itself, and therefore less deserving of support than, for example, a low intelligence, that will face serious obstacles throughout life, deserves. There's some logic to that.
Life is tough for everyone. Try imagining life with a 30-centile IQ. Stop crying about having a big gift, even if it come with some downside.
Cutting of funding for advanced courses, high intelligence children, standardized tests, ... is a trademark of the woke left and is clearly part of their agenda. And it's dangerous.
Thank you for writing this. I'm just reading it for the first time today, and the part about executive functions smacked me in the face: I still suck at those at age 43.
My IQ was nowhere near as high as Georgios, but even at only two standard deviations above average I experienced all of this. My school district did offer a talented-and-gifted program which allowed us to pursue our special interests two mornings per week in elementary school, which gave me four hours away from the mind-numbingly boring standard curriculum and the constant bullying; but that ended in fifth grade.
I was the sort of gifted child who also had poor executive function, courtesy of ADHD. I adored learning, but the slow pace of the classroom was suffocating and by high school I was skipping class constantly, yet somehow still getting perfect scores on exams. Most of my teachers actively disliked me. I have a vivid memory of arguing with my Honors American History teacher in high school about my grade. I had a 100 percent average on tests and quizzes, but she gave me a C- due to missing homework assignment and unexcused absences. I pointed out to her that the purpose of the homework was to ensure the student mastered the curriculum, and since I had the highest average in the class on tests and quizzes it was obvious that I had already mastered the curriculum - and since her lecture that day contained a factual error and she misspelled a word on the chalkboard, perhaps *I* should be the one teaching the class. It didn’t go over well.
Brilliant article. I’ve long joked that I’m “an adult survivor of a gifted childhood”. Everything in the article is spot on. I’m reasonably happy and successful in my 50s now so on paper it all went fine but boy did it suck a lot as a kid.
My two sons are about as smart as I was (take that, regression to the mean!) and my wife and I have long struggled to help them navigate the process of growing up like that.
I cried a little reading this. Thirty years on from my own version of Georgios's experience, the wounds are still too raw. (My own IQ was estimated at the time to be around 160. An inaccurate and imperfect measure of course, but indicative.)
Depressing reading. Brings back memories of middle school in particular. Rejected by my peers, and having long since learned that speaking up was 'being disruptive'. Nothing to read, and nothing to do but sit and stare out the window, day after day, for years.
I don't judge anyone really. Helping people less fortunate than yourself feels good. Policy makers get to feel beneficent. Helping some arrogant snot feels cold and prickly, even if they did not uncomfortably expose one's own shortcomings. Meanwhile, policy makers seeking to help expose themselves to accusations of elitism.
Just echoing the previous comments in saying how much this article resonated with me. I likely have something approximating brain damage from how much boredom and ostracization I endured in school. I made it to what yanks would call high school until I stopped engaging altogether and fell behind from absenteeism. The school's reaction was (quite hilariously, at least in hindsight) to stick me in supplemental remedial classes with the kind of kids whose reading comprehension made them functionally illiterate, around the same time that I'd scored 140 on an IQ test administered by a psychologist the school referred me to. I soon dropped out entirely and never looked back at academia.
All the way I was made to feel defective by my peers, the teachers and most egregiously my parents - they're not bad people, they were just hopelessly out of their depth and had no one to guide them. It's only now in my thirties that I'm very gradually getting over all the inhibition this childhood instilled in me, working toward that "spreadsheet's eye" expectation. though these things leave a persistent mark. Much of the damage is likely permanent.
Our western educational systems are obsessed with helping the low achievers and not doing anything for high achievers because they have been infiltrated by marxist thought for at least one hundred years. Their marxist thinking wants to bring down every student to the lowest common denominator, intellectually gifted students are seen as a threat to the system and are ignored or mistreated. In Pol Pot's Cambodia, people who wore glasses were assumed to be intellectually gifted (and concomitantly a threat to the system) were massacred by the thousands. While we might not go to such extremes, we should learn from the Chinese, who have thrown off their communist beliefs and now value the intellectually gifted and give them all the nurturing they need. Our inability to take advantage of such a valuable resource results in the Chinese eating our lunch.
I am about to say something that will, no doubt, anger many people. You have been warned.
From the article:
"Let us take a child of average intellectual ability, and when he is five years old, let us place him in a class of children with severe intellectual disabilities, children whose IQs are at least four standard deviations lower than his. The child will stay with this group for the duration of his schooling, and he will undertake the curriculum designed for the class, at the level and pace of the class.
(snip)
If this proposal appalls you, rest easy. Such a study will never be undertaken. No education system would countenance it. No ethics committee would approve it."
I agree. It is HIGHLY unlikely that such a disparity of four SD would be allowed. But a full single SD would not only be allowed, it would be (and has been!) mandated. African-American students average a full SD below White students. One can argue nurture or nature as the cause; frankly after 60 years you would think the matter would have been settled by now. Regardless of the cause, after the adoption of civil rights laws in the 60s (laws that I supported then and still do) the integration of Black and White students into the same classrooms quickly became a source of argument. Black students simply were not performing at the same level as Whites. Of course "structural racism" was initially blamed. Various remedies were tried to "bring up" the Black students. None have succeeded in across the board grade levels or for long periods. The solution? Dumb down standards of behavior, standards of knowledge, standards of success, rates of advancement. Dumb them down until the 85 average IQ cohort had the same chance of graduation as the average 100 IQ group.
Result? We have multiple generations of children, children of ALL races, with an increasing disability to do common math, speak or write grammatically, or understand complex or abstract ideas. The brighter students have been brought down to make the poorer students look average.
Solution? There is none. More accurately, there is none as long as we insist on refusing to acknowledge that different races, on average, have different intellectual abilities. (As well as differing emotional makeup, differing physical talents, and probably other differing attributes.) Me? I wish this were not the case, that these were not the truth of the matter -- but I see no way to objectively look at the past 60 years and not come to this conclusion.
I’m a little late in responding here, but this article really resonates with me.
I’m the father of a gifted son. He never fit in regular schools, so he was mostly home schooled. He’s high achieving in math and science and has written output difficulties that affects his grades significantly.
We’re lucky that he was able to join a special program where he joined other kids like him to finish 5 years of high school in 2 and start university early. He’s currently in is first year of university and thriving.
This program was a life saver for him since he needed the intellectual challenge and couldn’t get it anywhere else.
Great article. We are in Harrison Bergeron world.
What the author fails to mention even in passing is that most highly gifted children are just precocious. They don't really have an exceptionally high intellectual potential, but only reach their cognitive maturity a lot earlier than most people. That's why a large majority of child wonders grow into unimpressive adults. An IQ of 145 for a 13 yo translates into a measly 115 for an adult...
Interesting.
A couple of points.
The most interesting parts of the piece related the personal interactions with Georgios. Nice work.
Yes, customized education is always a good idea but is expensive.
Society deems high intelligence to be a large asset and gift in itself, and therefore less deserving of support than, for example, a low intelligence, that will face serious obstacles throughout life, deserves. There's some logic to that.
Life is tough for everyone. Try imagining life with a 30-centile IQ. Stop crying about having a big gift, even if it come with some downside.
Cutting of funding for advanced courses, high intelligence children, standardized tests, ... is a trademark of the woke left and is clearly part of their agenda. And it's dangerous.
Thank you for writing this. I'm just reading it for the first time today, and the part about executive functions smacked me in the face: I still suck at those at age 43.
Why the rebrand?