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An interesting article about the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth (SMPY) program and their findings.
Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth (SMPY), which would transform how gifted children are identified and supported by the US education system. As the longest-running current longitudinal survey of intellectually talented children, SMPY has for 45 years tracked the careers and accomplishments of some 5,000 individuals, many of whom have gone on to become high-achieving scientists. The study's ever-growing data set has generated more than 400 papers and several books, and provided key insights into how to spot and develop talent in science, technology, engineering, mathematics (STEM) and beyond.
With the first SMPY recruits now at the peak of their careers, what has become clear is how much the precociously gifted outweigh the rest of society in their influence. Many of the innovators who are advancing science, technology and culture are those whose unique cognitive abilities were identified and supported in their early years through enrichment programmes such as Johns Hopkins University's Center for Talented Youth—which Stanley began in the 1980s as an adjunct to SMPY. At the start, both the study and the centre were open to young adolescents who scored in the top 1% on university entrance exams.Pioneering mathematicians Terence Tao and Lenhard Ng were one-percenters, as were Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, Google co-founder Sergey Brin and musician Stefani Germanotta (Lady Gaga), who all passed through the Hopkins centre.
[...] Such results contradict long-established ideas suggesting that expert performance is built mainly through practice—that anyone can get to the top with enough focused effort of the right kind. SMPY, by contrast, suggests that early cognitive ability has more effect on achievement than either deliberate practice or environmental factors such as socio-economic status. The research emphasizes the importance of nurturing precocious children, at a time when the prevailing focus in the United States and other countries is on improving the performance of struggling students. At the same time, the work to identify and support academically talented students has raised troubling questions about the risks of labelling children, and the shortfalls of talent searches and standardized tests as a means of identifying high-potential students, especially in poor and rural districts.
[...] Although gifted-education specialists herald the expansion of talent-development options in the United States, the benefits have mostly been limited so far to students who are at the top of both the talent and socio-economic curves.
[Also covered by]: NATURE
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 08 2016, @05:21AM
Acting stupid in exchange for money, you're such a sellout! Stupid people aren't worth associating with, and you should be using your supergenius skills to manipulate them into marching into the Soylent Green machine.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday September 08 2016, @05:29AM
I know you're trolling here, but...well, you're right. I am a sellout. So are we all. Fortuately, I wasn't put on this world to be a genius and show it off; I'm here to, if at all possible, help people. I have jobs so i can survive and help. Also, in light of the earlier article about kuru, the smart thing to do is NOT to eat Soylent Green :)
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 08 2016, @05:46AM
I'm not a sellout, I'm an unemployable basement-dwelling loner. The only way I help people is by graciously refraining from going on a cannibalistic murder spree. Vote Green!
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday September 08 2016, @06:04AM
You have fun with that then...yeah...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 08 2016, @06:18AM
Oh yes, as soon as we win the election, there will be Basic Income and Single Payer for everyone, and then fat vitriolic basement trolls will never have to speak to their inferiors again. It will be a new Golden Age, for all the social scum will have walled themselves up in the Facebook, and finally the antisocial wilderness will belong to nerds again. Technology and automation will provide an idle living for misfit nerds who have been rejected by society, and social morons who love working can still get face time with other social morons. Everybody will win in the Green Future!
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday September 08 2016, @06:33AM
I don't think you're gonna live long enough to enjoy all that though. If you're actually that antisocial and walled-off, odds are good you won't survive the kind of social upheaval it's going to take to bring about anything like as radical a departure from the current system as UBI or single-payer healthcare.
But, uh...keep living in hope I guess...?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...