Didn't finish reading the article because, like so many articles, (1) it equates achievement with intelligence (2) it does not actually seem to tell you how to "raise a genius".
I have seen a lot of lives of highly intelligent people go wrong, and this is the advice I would give: respect high-IQ children intellectually, prepare to lose arguments, but still give them emotional support. It's easy to imagine someone is an adult because they argue well, but in my experience intellectual capacity is not related to emotional stability. Both aspects need to be developed.
I'm the godfather of a very intelligent young woman. She is at university now, but regularly drops by to discuss all kinds of things. Achievement is totally unimportant to her, but she is very curious about how the world works. Talking to her is just amazing!
It does not equate anything. It describes the correlation and steps to not waste huge talents. In fact it does say they do not know exactly why some highly intelligent people do not achieve much.
It is surprisingly easy to waste talent. For example, get a gifted person through standard school and they will likely never extend enough to achieve full potential, often by growing lazy and coasting. Or push them into a wrong field, they will do good but not exceptional.
See, if your niece was challenged enough, she would probably place more value on achievement and thus achieve more. It is a positive feedback loop. The correct approach is to give them as much challenge as they can take. Evaluating where this point is takes some major interpersonal skills and experience.
Emotional support is a necessary ingredient as well so that failures do not break them and they remain human.
IMO the whole idea of "potential" that can be "wasted" is toxic. As soon as you feel yourself falling behind -- which you always will -- that idea that you've wasted your potential shows up to make you feel bad.
This inevitably drives people toward easier kinds of achievement like awards, promotions, and degrees. But a lot of real progress happens outside systems like this! I think it's valuable to have smart people working on stuff for its own sake, not chasing any kind of achievement.
It depends on where the pressure is places. If the pressure is placed on kids, sure. If it's placed on schools, that's not toxic. The school system in most of the US works under an attitude that the smart kids will do okay, and don't need anything extra. Even gifted and talented programs are fading fast.
The truth is those school system are toxic, abusive torture to someone smart. There were plenty of smart kids I knew -- some smarter than me -- who got horrible grades going through one of these school. Many of them did not, in any real sense, succeed.
Imagine being placed in a room, today, and forced to listen to lectures on what you already know, and be given menial make-work tasks, like adding big numbers and copying letters, and doing that for hours each day. Some people are resilient enough to survive that. Others get pretty broken by it.
> Some people are resilient enough to survive that. Others get pretty broken by it.
And the third kind (full disclosure: I was of this kind) get very rebellious and were multiple times in strong danger of being expelled from school (not because of bad marks). I still hated school and love to ask the inconvenient question: Who is the more evil person: The kid who does a school rampage or the politician whose decision not to drop lawcompulsory school attendance (in Germany for example home schooling is disallowed) leads to suicides of schoolchildren. Both people clearly leave traces of dead people.
Reminds me of the dialogue is Yes, Prime Minister:
- Education in this country is a disaster. We're supposed to prepare children for work.
Most of the time they're bored stiff.
- I should've thought that being bored stiff was an excellent preparation for work.
- The school leaving age was raised to 16, but they're learning less.
- We didn't raise it so they'd learn more! We raised it to keep teenagers off the job market
and hold down unemployment figures.
OTOH, would allowing home schooling really solve suicides by schoolchildren? Seems like if a parent is worried enough about their kid's mental health to home school them, they'd do so even if they have to move country (especially nowadays, when you can live and work in different EU countries easily). Isn't it more a matter of the adults around not perceiving the problem?
The dialogue is the unspoken truth. The age limit was actually instated to prevent kids from working damaging factory or repetitive jobs. There are much fewer of those nowadays.
Curious to how a school wold work on not wasting talent without putting pressure the talented kid.
"Oh, we have prepared a special curriculum for you because you are gifted and hired these teacher to give you room to fulfill your potential and not waste it. No pressure though, if you want to waste your potential and become medioker, just say the word and we will throw away the investment we have made in you!"
I don't think you have to go so far as big investments in extra teachers and curriculum to serve gifted children. Just get out of the way and let them work ahead, or get their busy-work done fast and read on their own. Don't waste their time, and turn school into a prison that they have to shuffle through for eight hours a day, bored to tears.
"The school system in most of the US works under an attitude that the smart kids will do okay, and don't need anything extra. Even gifted and talented programs are fading fast."
If they need something extra, like programs for talented and gifted children, that's an investment. A child that is assigned to a "Program for Talented and Gifted Children" will feel pressure to not let that talent/gift go to waste.
Your solution is to do nothing extra for them, just let them idle away in the library reading random books. Not a guarantee that they wont waste their time/talent by their own doing. While cheap, I don't think it would be very effective.
My argument is that most of the school systems work hard to retard and beat down students that are smarter than the average bear, or cripple their growth by forcing them to do unpaid labor as defacto teacher's aides. It would be nice to provide resources at a higher level, but that higher level material is beyond the capability of most of the people that are employed as teachers anyway, so the best, most economical result is to stop actively getting in the way of students that need to go faster than what the lowest-common-denominator can handle, and just let them.
> Just get out of the way and let them work ahead, or get their busy-work done fast and read on their own.
I would have loved that as a child. The problem was: All the interesting papers/books in the internet were behind paywalls (today we have SciHub and Library Genesis, which are nevertheless still illegal).
Where's your study proving the opposite? Or is your proposal to do absolutely nothing without a study first telling you to? G&T programs try to utilize the diversity of students, rather than just ignoring it or trying to will it away. In a world where things actually have to function prior to the conducting of infinite studies, that makes a lot of intuitive sense.
The programs can be good or a complete waste depending on how they are ran. The study referred to in the article pointed out that children do better in the short and long run if they are given extra opportunities to learn more on their own. That's the entire purpose of these programs to begin with, really. The same way as other Special Education programs which may or may not be well ran, but often do more for the students in them than letting them try and teach themselves.
Achievement cannot really be measured either. Doctorates and patents are used as proxies. You could also add scientific papers, renowned works of art, successful businesses, charities etc.
There's a socio-affective component to 'achieving'. The pupils have to care about the people and about what society think is an achievement. And for this I believe they have to care about said pupils identity (which they might not understand for lack of overlapping common views)
Tell me about it. I was one of those "precocious" children - I consistently tested years ahead of my peers, did state exams several years early, went to university several years younger than my peers.
Pressure. So much damn pressure. "Madaxe, don't you think it's disappointing that you didn't come first in all of your exams? Blankety blank is a stupid boy. He shouldn't have beaten you in blank. Are you stupid too?"
I never cared about achievement - just about knowing more, understanding why everything was as it was, how everything works - I ended up studying physics, because "because atoms" didn't cut it. All my parents and my schools cared about was achievement. Stop asking questions, study the material we gave you. "But it's wrong." "We know. Doesn't matter. Learn it anyway.".
The bit at the end of TFA about emotional intelligence vs academic intelligence is very true - my parents and the boarding schools which raised me put emphasis only on academic achievement. The fact that I was setting fire to things and torturing other kids apparently wasn't too important, and just warranted more beatings, and more pressure.
As an adult, I have the emotional intelligence of a cucumber and am conflict avoidant in the extreme. Whatever benefit having a superior intellect might have granted me I am hell-bent upon squandering, as I learned long ago to be ashamed of and resent my intelligence. People hate you if you are academically gifted. It's much easier to pretend to be a dullard.
It is somehow simultaneously sad and infuriating that it is not only socially accepted but seemingly ok to be _proud_ to be stupid in mathematics, computers and science. Try that with social intelligence, knowledge of popular culture or your capability/interest in keeping your home tidy, and the _best_ you can hope is a stamp "weirdo" in your forehead.
> It is somehow simultaneously sad and infuriating that it is not only socially accepted but seemingly ok to be _proud_ to be stupid in mathematics, computers and science.
I think it is mostly fear. I believe almost everybody can be good at it at a highschool level. I got sucked into computers by my peers, I was told that my father is good at mathematics and that I am, too. My sister on the other hand was told that girls are not good at it. She realized by accident, that she actually was.
Being academically talented is generally socially frowned upon. On the contrary, being talented in other dimensions such as sports or music is generally celebrated.
In the general sense, there seems to be a confluence of factors at hand - I see it as academically talented people having not having great soft skills, academic achievement being of valued low by society, and a base aversion toward people of academic ability.
If you accept PG's explanation of academically intelligent people being deficient in social skills[0], then it follows that it is possible many academically skilled people have also not learned how to gracefully acknowledge their abilities (e.g. they're not modest).
From anecdotal personal experience it seems to me this is driven by two interrelated sub factors - the first is a lack of popularity / social value causing overcompensation. School years can be brutal for certain archetypes and this produces damaged egos which can result in certain unpopular behaviour in later life such as immodesty. The other is more tenuous but I have also found that progressing deeper along the thought process for STEM fields is at ends with social interaction - one requires absolute logical and rational thought, the other involves ambiguous emotional and often contradictory thought processes - e.g. in programming you develop a thicker skin toward being objectively wrong but pointing this out to people from other backgrounds can seem obtuse at the best of times, smart/show-offy at the worst of times. On the social sciences side, things are more relatable but only certain types of people enjoy engaging in "intellectual" conversation. This feeds into the last point.
Socially it is more glamorous to be a sporting champion than a mathematician. This is potentially due to relatability - it is easier to appreciate a good footballer or tennis player on a primal level than a brilliant mathematician or physicist: the sportsman's abilities are more tangible than the academic's. Its hard to sell academic work, it is by its nature difficult and the people involved do not spend enough time explaining this to people in the field to laypeople.
Finally, while we're not really all forced to do sports, we are all forced to do school and study maths, science etc. So for people who are weak in these subjects, it is natural to project the resentment held against the subjects to people associated with them. It probably doesn't helpe that success at school is a decent predictor for later life success - no one likes being reminded of their own inadequacy. It also doesn't help that things which are encouraged by academic activities like correctness and depth can be at ends with social interraction. Use of overly correct punctuation and grammar can seem formal and stuffy to normal people. Appreciation of arts and classical music can seem pretentious or posh. These things can lead to further alienation when passion is expressed in the wrong context.
It's worth noting that in East Asian countries where academic ability is more socially recognised, there seems to also be less of a stigma being brilliant or behaviour of people parading their inability at maths. Singapore is probably the closest place you'll get to having a nation that celebrates its great minds but its still a far cry from reaching the heights of popularity celebrities achieve...
People hate you if you are academically gifted. It's much easier to pretend to be a dullard
Maybe it was that way decades ago but not anymore. Unlike earlier decades and generation, with the rise of technology and an economy that rewards STEM jobs, post-2009 or so culture seems to prize intelligence.
I think the praised "nerds" you are referring to are not the original nerds. While nerds are celebrated in shows like The Big Bang Theory I think exceptional interests or abilities are mostly not included in the pop-cultural definition anymore. It is mostly about being a virgin, bad at sports and playing video games.
A "revenge of the nerds" archetype is celebrated in The Big Bang Theory, not how actual nerds are. Some of its for the sake of comedy, but its more a stereotypical perception being celebrated not what actual nerdy people look/act like.
As someone that is a genius and have two little brothers that are geniuses... Nope... Still the same. Beaten down, considered bad, pressured by your parents ot be the best, impossible to talk about what you like.
I think the worst was when we went to see a councellor and, i quote :
Why are you coming to see me? He seems a Genius, he does not need any help. He has excellent results.
After hearing that, i just gave up. My results went down but still high enough to get into high maths and physics when i finally get into university. That was the two best years of my life and i would love to still be in that environment.
Luckily my brothers were able to jump some classes and so had to endure it for less years. That is all it does. Help them get out faster. It is just a loss of time for everyone.
It's not exactly intelligence, people, especially children, dislike and distrust anyone who is different. At the same time, there were a number of people I remember in school who were very smart (1% or higher) who made friends and got along really well for the most part. Usually, they found a club or something and just kept the same set of friends through high school.
It's people who are intelligent but have a troubled home life, or are also different in other ways that end up having a very lonely time compared to more average students.
For what it's worth, you story seems to be the common one for gifted kids. Maybe with less setting things on fire usually.
Although resenting your intelligence seems to be doing the exact opposite of you were told to do. The rational thing would be to instead use it for any purpose you see fit, irrespective of anyone's jugement.
The US appears to be the norm in this, which is why they focus on bringing in well developed intelligent people from other nations despite having boasted a program for intelligent kids, which in large part was an enormous failure to develop these kids into productive adults utilizing their capabilities. Quite a few of the people that move here are already considering moving back to raise their kids in an environment more conducive to their intellectual capability, rather than deal with the US' bully/violence and abnormally extremely aggressive culture.
Edit: I can't tell you how many "gifted" and highly intelligent people struggled as adults, with a significant amount of them have already committed suicide... it is a significant amount. The way the US' so called program for intelligent kids left many of them utterly defenseless and pariahs, was abominable.
A few of the smartest people I've known committed suicide, and a few others died from drug overdoses. It's a fucked up place, there's something wrong with the US' progrms, something severely wrong. Its level of "disturbing" is reminiscent of the CIA programs that targeted highly intelligent people for experimentation.
From what I've read, and some of my own experience, it seems like some of the genetic markers for high IQ are also shared with other mental illness, particularly depression and bipolar disorder. A few papers have even theorized that one of the triggers for these illnesses is when some of the markers for high IQ are switched on, but others are not. The bullying doesn't help, but it isn't the only cause for the downward spiral and may not be unique to the US.
I'm in the same boat, likely less. I figure my IQ is no where near as high as the people who had to suffer under the US' misguided programs and possible subversion and antagonism by their own elites.
It reminds me of the disturbing movie called "The Accountant" where they express a genius of Mozart and Einstein is turned into a complete monster, a robotic killing machine... and this is somehow celebratory. Maybe it is an expression of our times, and that western civility has failed (or is non-existant).
Environment has an active effect on how a person develops through their lives, and maybe scientifically and genetically this is expressed as "marker switching" or "de/activation".
Well from what I can tell, it basically said that it's good to let "genius" children skip grades if they're really bored in school. Also that it's important to give them chances to learn more even if they don't skip ahead in their regular class. So it kind of did tell you how. More to the point, it did not equate high achievement with intelligence all that much, it just pointed out that if you have someone who is intelligent and you want them to achieve alot in their future, you want to give them as many chances they can to keep learning.
That being said, if you want the child to grow up and be a well rounded and happy person, it's probably also good to give them the chance to do what they want to do even if that isn't the traditional definition of a high achiever. Although, being a complete slacker in everything isn't that great either.
The two are positively correlated, as the article mentions . The super-intelligent are more likely to achieve success as measured by creative output ,wages, educational attainment, publishing paper, and social status
(2) it does not actually seem to tell you how to "raise a genius"
The article is about how to not waste talent once it has been identified
As a child I was considered to jump a whole academic year by doing two at the same time.
I went through so many tests, visited so many experts and had to hear so many people talk about me that when we soon after moved town I made efforts to not show my real potential. I tried to be average and be just one more, which led to eventual laziness and bad grades. So bad that I had shifty final grades in high school and I never got to get a uni degree. Yet, most people that know me would say I'm extremely intelligent.
Too bad life is about effort and not intelligence :-)
What I'm saying is, leave the kids alone. Let them grow up and help them accomplish their intellectual needs. Just don't treat them as something different or special, it would lead to either self-entitlement or sense of not belonging and loneliness.
I didn't skip any grades because my dad wouldn't allow it. He had skipped two grades and hated it.
I know a few people who skipped grades, and they were always kind of outsiders. I say this from the standpoint of being part of a very nerdy clique in high school -- those who skipped grades were outsiders compared to us.
I think adults neglect the fact that education is more than just book learning. Youth need to learn social and emotional skills as well. There is more to learn at school that just academic skills, and this goes for all levels. For instance, you can spend 100% of your time on academics in college, but soft skills are at least as important as academic skills in the workplace.
Skipping grades isn't the only way to cripple children socially, and I'm not saying it's a social death sentence. Most of the kids I know who skipped grades are fine now, but some never really recovered, and some bear emotional scars from the experience.
On a similar note, a weird thing I noticed that is kind of similar, is that only children tend to be fairly poor at handling conflict. My theory is that if you are not an only child, you often get in fights with a sibling who you were then forced to be around. (For instance, sitting next to them in a long car ride.) Only children generally can leave situations when they get heated, so they never are forced to work though a conflict.
I might be totally wrong on that point, but I think there is something to the theory. My mom was an only child, and she could never understand how my brother and I could come to blows over one thing, and then be playing a game together ten minutes later. I didn't think much of it till I dated a girl who was raised an only child, and I noticed the same aversion to conflict. Every disagreement had to be resolved, any time we disagreed about something it was considered an argument.
Meanwhile, some of the calmest people I know during disagreements have like 7 siblings.
I skipped the 9th grade. My parents had the option of sending me from 8th directly into college but decided to only skip 9th because they felt I needed to mature socially.
In a way I resent them for it because am not satisfied with where I am in my life (figure I could have been much farther along by now in career/academia), even though I should be satisfied. On the other hand, I know they did what they thought was best....either way, I'm still socially a mess inside although I appear pretty charismatic when I try.
I guess I could have been a disaster without those high school formative years....it's up to me now at 37, I suppose.
I skipped a grade and my mom told me that the school district really didn't like doing it, for many of the reasons you mention. She said they did it with me because I was also large (I think I was even one of the biggest kids one grade up) and mature (a characteristic which seems to have flamed out early). I don't think I suffered many ill effects. One thing I did notice in retrospect, seriously disadvantaged in dating
I also have 3 brothers and agree with the ability to fight and get along. People who can't argue about stuff without becoming enemies...I just don't get them
As I said last time, I have one major qualm about this.
There seems to be a confirmatory bias among the academic community that a measure of intellectual success can be found in the percentage of individuals who earn a PhD. Sure, it's true that you need to be reasonably smart to earn a PhD, but I think that someone can have a lot of intellectual success (potentially just as much or maybe more) if they don't earn a PhD.
I think you could even argue that, depending on the field of study, a PhD is the "easy" route for someone who is intellectually gifted - it's a simply a continuation of what you have been doing. I would be more impressed by the intellectual who not only realizes that they can conduct their own independent research, but also has the creativity to come up with a use case that can improve and contribute to the world (and presumably, make a living doing so).
My point here is that, given two gifted cohorts, one which has a 45% PhD graduation rate and one which has a 50% PhD graduation rate, I don't know that you can conclusively say that one is more gifted than the other without looking at other metrics associated with intellectual accomplishment."
I just had a really weird deja-vu when reading this as i wasn't sure if i hadn't read exactly this before, but yes, this article has been on HN just a week ago. But now i see you even mentioned it in the first sentence ;)
I was not a gifted child, but I remember the odd pressure of being told you were smarter than other children. It's paralyzing. You're so afraid to finish something because if that thing isn't amazing it ends up hurting your perceived value.
I understand why a parent would want to raise a super-smart children (which makes the title a click-bait) but from where I stand I'd wish to see more people being interested in raising socially responsible children. IMHO we are abundant in (technical) smarts but very low on social/emotional ones.
> I understand why a parent would want to raise a super-smart children
I openly don't (and I can't stand the narcissism that is involved in the reason). If you look at the parenting most parents do, they do it as if the child should be like them, just smarter or achieve more - but otherwise similar (as I said: narcissism).
On the other, here is an article (that has been brought up on HN some times in the past) about the life of a super-smart - it is easy to imagine how the life of the parents would be:
(BTW: If you look in the German Google News about "Höchstbegabung" (the German word meaning that your talent (in this case IQ) is at least 3 sigma above the average; FYI: "Hochbegabung" means 2 sigma above average) you will find more news about soccer than about "Höchstbegabung" in the sense of intelligence. This says a lot about the society, IMHO).
Very accurate wrt the narcissism. So much of this attitude of "raising children to rule the world" (literally, the claim of the article, which I found ludicrous) is to flatter the parents and educators. Same for children who are good at sports. Does anyone stop to wonder what it does to a child to spend their whole lives training e.g. in a pool? How much pain does it cause to people who have to live up to such expectations, when all they can do, their entire lives, is fail?
I was one of those gifted children; both my parents are extraordinarily smart and I was years ahead of my peers in reading and maths. I'm happy no-one paid much attention and I was left to my own devices. Maybe I didn't become a billionaire, or go to Stanford at sixteen, yet I was mostly happy, most of my life, and every time I accomplished anything I was grateful and happily surprised. And I don't think it was a wasted life at all.
Leading society? What an arrogance. Let kids be, give them open access to knowledge and freedom to learn from others, and structure where they need it. Leave the "raising geniuses" to totalitarian regimes.
> I openly don't (and I can't stand the narcissism that is involved in the reason). If you look at the parenting most parents do, they do it as if the child should be like them, just smarter or achieve more - but otherwise similar (as I said: narcissism).
Evolution at work. Parents who tried to make their kids different than themselves did not raise parents.
For what it's worth, the motive to have children at all is entirely selfish and that should be fine. There is nobody else in the world who cares if you have kids. If you do have kids it had better be for your own reasons, or you'll just give up (as many do). This can sound inhumane, and I certainly didn't have a good childhood, but if people keep kidding themselves they're going to keep realizing this after they've had kids.
> For what it's worth, the motive to have children at all is entirely selfish and that should be fine.
I don't think "that should be fine". In the third world people are poor and produce children. Simply stopping doing so would be a fast way to reduce poverty (in my opinion even a necessity).
I'm very glad there's a solidly researched counterpoint to the 10k hours and everything is possible stuff. Deliberate practice is still enough to get really good at everything (imo) but I'd say it's sort of like compound interest. If you start with more raw intelligence the learning will yield even bigger dividends.
What troubles me a bit is the underlying assumption that supergifted children are best steered towards becoming founders, scientists and whatnot. I don't think it's self evident that some wouldn't enjoy being a nurse or firefighter.
Probably the best nurse or firefighter. But it would still be better to be a researcher working on third world medical problems or designer of efficient fire fighting systems.
2. Academic achievement doesn't have that much to do with intelligence.
3. Different people have different priorities, you might find that after a childhood and adolescence of you trying to make them "super smart", they will finally tell you that they don't give a damn and never will.
I think I'm probably fairly intelligent; but I honestly don't have enormous ambitions, I just want to have a child in the next 5-7 years, and not fail him or her.
I'm a bit surprised that the SAT was such an important metric for them. In my opinion it doesn't do that great of a job of characterizing intelligence.
I was in a "gifted" program but I got kicked out after I started skipping school all the time to play guitar and chase girls. Eventually I dropped out of high school and worked at Walmart. Now I have a math PhD and a 7 figure net worth
Unlike some other experiences here, I always had weird ideas in my head. As a kid, I would question if I just have an overactive imagination or am I really smart. I had no problem with a difficult subject like chemistry like my peers. Still I thought I might be a little crazy.
Long story short, I got IQ test, scored really high. Never after I questioned myself. I still think I am crazy, but I consider this a good thing. It helped me great deal understand where I am in relation with others.
Just posting to let everyone know what a genius I am and how I could have been the next Bill Gates if somebody had done something different when I was a kid.
I wonder if this is actually just some sort of statistical effect. Suppose intelligence is normally distributed in a high intelligence population and also in a low intelligence population but with two different medians. The guy at +2 sigma in the latter may be at 0 in the former. He may then reasonably conclude that he is extremely intelligent. If, on top of this, he doesn't then get the chance to mix with where the HI population resides (can't get into university, chooses to live outside of HI population centres), he's never going to be disabused of the fact that he's not really incredibly smart.
It's like being the best basketball player in your school. If you never go to the summer training classes, you'll never discover that there are thousands like you, and that the guys who didn't make the cut at a different school are way better than you are.
I have seen a lot of lives of highly intelligent people go wrong, and this is the advice I would give: respect high-IQ children intellectually, prepare to lose arguments, but still give them emotional support. It's easy to imagine someone is an adult because they argue well, but in my experience intellectual capacity is not related to emotional stability. Both aspects need to be developed.
I'm the godfather of a very intelligent young woman. She is at university now, but regularly drops by to discuss all kinds of things. Achievement is totally unimportant to her, but she is very curious about how the world works. Talking to her is just amazing!