undefined | Better HN

0 pointstarentel1mo ago0 comments

Not sure that's true. I am by no means gifted in the sense of Terence Tao, or even people much more gifted than me but far less gifted than him, but I did well in school up to a certain point in college. I never really learned how to study until I got fairly far in my education process. I put very little effort into school up until that point. That's when I actually had to put effort in and it was quite a wake up call.

0 comments

Viliam123429d ago

Exactly. Up to some point, you actually do well because you are smart. Then, in the middle of the game, the rules change (from your perspective), and it may catch you by surprise.

It would be much better for the gifted children to attend schools where their effort is visible since the beginning. That is, schools with other gifted children.

For example, in math, my kids didn't learn anything new during their first three years of the elementary school, because they already knew numbers and addition at kindergarten age. Yet they were forced to sit there for three years. It would have been better to give them a book to read, or a collection of interesting problems to solve.

zozbot23429d ago

> Exactly. Up to some point, you actually do well because you are smart.

No, you do well because you put in the effort. Even trivial effort is still effort. Sometimes it's all that's genuinely needed (quite often in fact!) and it's important to realize this - but not always, and that's important to realize as well.

> my kids didn't learn anything new during their first three years

I think it's almost always possible to revise even these 'trivial' subjects in more depth. Granted, it's hard to do this in elementary math without some kind of outside involvement - someone to explicitly introduce the nuances. Other subjects this is quite a bit easier.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse