I’ve lost any faith in the concept of “nurture” after watching two things right in front of my eyes:
ive watched some young kids steamroll adults who dedicated their entire life to the sport for a decade or two. it only took six months of training, and those prodigies weren’t particularly obsessed about their training either.
It was the same with academic studies. Some 1-in-million people were truly special. with either ridiculously deep insight where they could see patterns in problem sets nobody else could, or memory that allowed them to memorise 200 pages overnight. Not quite verbatim but quite precise, after only reading it once/twice.
True genius was nothing short of supernatural. There is a reason why we instinctively call it a “gift”.
Unfortunately, the other part of the spectrum exists as well, what we call special education, or the unfortunate kids with head injuries, bad infections, abused or just born that way. It’s quite sad.
What you are proposing is to create an educational system where both an IMO medalist and the special ed student both receive an A in math?
These are the extremes, but the gradient doesn’t just disappear between them. You’ll just teach at the slowest students pace, and eventually put stronger students on the “gifted” track, or super-specialize them based on their interests.
