Might be an unpopular take but… maybe being good at high school math tests is not really such an important gift in the real world.
I’d say the real world doesn’t reward being actually gifted.
School rewards obedience and memorization. If you’re aggressively mediocre, but sufficiently agreeable and willing/able to memorize a bunch of bullshit, chances are, you’ll get pretty good grades. I know several people with very good grades who are simply not very intelligent.
Universities also reward memorization. If you’re good at learning facts and writing bullshit like the prof wants to read it, chances are, you’ll get good grades in at least some areas (business, psychology , medicine, and as a CS graduate, even CS to a frighteningly high degree).
If you’re gifted (like I’m actually certified to be, whatever that means), you’re often bored at school, you won’t learn because you don’t really need to, and you don’t really want to play ball with all the bullshit. You can see through it, and especially for teenagers, that’s extremely frustrating.
In the “real world” being gifted isn’t really a huge benefit either. I’m good at what I’m doing and what’s the result? I’m now de facto managing other people at doing what I’m good at. I can’t complain, cushy job, very good pay. But a literal monkey could do 70% of my tasks. I’m inside a corporate cage, that I realistically can’t escape from.
And I think that’s where many of the “gifted, but neither genius nor psychopath” people are at. Overqualified for what they’re doing, but caught in a system where they can’t really excel in the ways they could.
As someone also measured as gifted and put in gifted classes, there was an interesting discussion that I had with one of the teachers about how the views for approaching gifted education was changing.
For a lot of schools, the “gifted” students are gifts; you don’t have to spend time on their education and they may end up helping the classes they are in. So, it is ok to treat them like normal kids and they won’t become a problem.
However, studies have shown that to be really bad for the “gifted” students. You get a lot of underperforming students who don’t engage with the material as it is mentally underwhelming. Soft skills that they were supposed to learn were never developed because they never had to. You even had issues with developing social skills as the distance in standard deviations between gifted and normal children are the same as between a normal kid and a “special education” kid.
The findings were showing you had to treat the “gifted” students with the same care as those in “special education” as the common teaching techniques don’t work, issues are much more varied between children, and being able to lean on talent in some cases leads to skills not being learned because they never needed to be.
Sounds like you were kept with the normal kids.
No, I was actually in a class specifically for gifted children.
However, this was over 20 years ago and back then, this was a relatively new concept in my region. That meant the class had to be padded with “regulars” and the special treatment we got, was rather limited. Looking back, it seemed like they dropped the idea almost completely after 9th grade or so.
And even today I’m pretty sure there’s no comprehensive testing going on. So a ton of smart children get labelled as having ADHD or just as delinquents if they’re from a “bad” background.
Funny thing is, Germany actually did have a three tiered school system for decades, where after elementary the children were separated by “performance”, but since this country is laughably bad at creating equal opportunities, this de facto became a class filter. Parents are academics? Off to the Gymnasium with you! Parents are poor/migrants? Well, Hauptschule will have to do. Good luck at being underemployed for life.
Your last paragraph seems misinformed.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gymnasium_(Germany)
State-funded schools (a big majority) are tuition-free, as foreseen by the respective laws, even often on constitutional level. Segregation of students by parent wealth or income is looked down upon, to the point of being an exception to the constitutionally guaranteed freedom to have private schools (Article 7 section 4 of the German constitution, Sondierungsverbot). Of the private gymnasia, the vast majority is run by the Catholic Church on very low tuition fees (which is more easy as by Concordat, the Church receives a high percentage of the amount of money the State need not spend for a pupil in a Church-school); fees for schools who need to earn money by teaching are higher. Schools with fees generally offer scholarships.
In 2005, the German government spent €5,400 per student for those attending public gymnasium. This is less than what was spent on a student attending Hauptschule, but more than was spent on those attending Realschule.[22] Some Hauptschule and Gesamtschule students have special needs requiring extra help, so those schools cannot operate as cost-effectively as gymnasia.
I myself went to a public Gymnasium and can still remember that among my classmates we had a wide range re “parent income and status”.
Literally from:
- ‘single parent that barely gets by’
- ‘teacher parents’
- attorneys / judges / cardiologist / engineers / etc.
- CEO parent of an international company
I literally:
- went through elementary school
- got a recommendation for going to a Gymnasium at end of 4th year based on my performance
- picked one out of the available Gymnasiums in my area (within what was doable by bus on a daily basis)
- then went there
And even if you go to “Hauptschule”, that’s not the end of education. One can still do what’s called “M-Zweig”, which gets you the equivalent degree of “Realschule”. Then one can go to “FOS”, which gets you a degree close to that of Gymnasium. It at least allows for going to a “university of applied sciences”, which is less geared towards academics and more towards industry. Still can get you your masters degree or if a doctors degree if one really wants that and partners with an “academic university” (AFAIR).
Some children simply take that other route. Still, it comes down to ability of the child. Of course, having a non-supportive environment that doesn’t believe in achild can make things harder on it. Some children might actually be motivated by “potentially escaping that”.
But to say this education system is a “class filter” is just wrong.
You seem to have a much too positive view of our system: https://www.das-parlament.de/inland/bildung/wie-gerecht-ist-das-deutsche-bildungssystem
Maybe I have bit too positive outlook on this, yeah.
But that article also emphasizes a lot (first half) that a child’s environment simply matters a lot. Esp. having parents that have higher education themselves and are there for the child to support it regarding learning outside of school can make a big difference. And this isn’t just about the first couple years before elementary school (what article says re “Wortschatz”). Esp. the ongoing school period thereafter. E.g. “Does it make a difference in a child’s household if parents can speak English when trying to learn English?” - of course it does!
The point on “Brennpunktschulen” is also very environment driven. I’m not saying that “Lehrermangel” isn’t real, or that having this system of three school paths starting from 5th grade is the best invention ever.
But one can’t put all the blame on the school system, when “what happens outside of school” has such a big impact on a child.
You can absolutely blame the schools, if so many other countries manage to do better.
You’re basically blaming the children.
“the real world” isn’t a thing.
There’s no such monolith. Different jobs reward different gifts. The challenge is finding one for your own.
Well, thank you very much, Captain Obvious!
Are you aware that generalizations can sometimes be a proper rhetorical device or do you need your contrarianism for self validation?
Where and how do they certify “gifted”?
Basically an extended IQ test, back then this was done at the local university, probably by some psychologist.
I’m not entirely sure in how far these tests have changed over time and how different they are from adult IQ tests. I definitely remember a longer interview with someone, which isn’t part of a regular test, I think.
Kind of off topic but some people are really bad at writing jira tickets.
“Show the user a list of projects [eof]”
Ok but like, only their projects, right? Do they need to be ordered? Searchable? Paginated? Only active ones or soft deleted ones, too? Do you just need the name or do you need metadata too?
Somehow product doesn’t love my stance of “if it’s not on the ticket or in a sop, the behavior is undefined and you get what you get” stance.
I feel personally attacked by this post!
I was a gifted kid who realized that when I applied myself all I got was more and harder work that I also didn’t want to do. Being successful academically felt like a punishment.
So I don’t mind at all that I’m filling out Jira tickets. It’s easy work and I have other things to enjoy.
My high school never had math competitions so I’ll never know how I’d do. :(
Oh look, it’s me.
Should we make a club?
