SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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: 5, Insightful) by stormwyrm on Thursday September 08 2016, @05:55AM
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday September 08 2016, @03:39PM
An interesting read, with more nuance and broader thinking than I've done on the matter. One of his points is that contrary to the stated purposes, school is more intended to keep kids out of the way of adults than to educate them. Yes, school does function as day care. Also, like a prison, there's nothing worth doing and the education is somewhat fake, which drives the inmates crazy. He extols the virtues of the craft system with apprentices who could do work of value despite their limited skills, and were not kept out of the way of adults.
I don't agree that crafting is the answer to the problems of boredom and despair. One of the things everyone has to learn is how to handle such feelings. No matter what you do, you're going to run into that. There are situations that are genuinely provoking of despair, and whatever other things about high school are bad, it's not so bad that anyone should be in despair about it. High school is definitely not a prison. Many students do of course feel genuine despair. At that age, people get stuck and despairing on issues that are not that important, and not appreciating that they are trivial can be students' biggest problem. Yes, yes, the male nerds feel genuinely frustrated and despairing that the girls are all over the jocks, swooning over the fastest 100m dash time, the winning touchdown, and of course the bulging muscles and fine physique, while no one seems to notice or care about scoring the top grade on test after test. Even the smart nerdy girls are so much more interested in conforming than dating a nerdy guy, that they blend in with the jocks, cheerleaders, and their hangers on. It's not much consolation to think that the nerd wouldn't be happy with the dumber girls anyway. What really hurts is to see even the smart girls treat the nerdy guys like they're something that someone forgot to pick up with a poop scoop, see them prefer the big dumb ox, because they see that kind of guy as someone they can have dancing to their tunes forever, lacking the wit to challenge their thinking, and therefore actually preferable to a smart guy. That's what my 2 aunts did, and it didn't turn out so good for them. Lack of self-confidence also figures in that sort of choice-- sometimes the smart girls shoot themselves in the foot because they believe they don't deserve any better, which makes them not so smart, which means they deserve even worse, etc.
One of the most surreal experiences I had in high school was being dismissed early from the school day so we could all be herded into the gym to watch the veteran cheerleaders perform and even more, watch candidates for the cheerleading squad, the Friday afternoon before some big football game. At that time it was a custom to drop pennies to indicate disapproval of any candidate. Any girl who was the least bit overweight got a veritable storm of tinks from pennies striking the gym floor. It was presented as a treat, but I wouldn't have gone if I had another choice. The buses had been held up to give the school more time, the rest of the school had been emptied out and locked. What I pondered was if there was any way I could slip out of the stands and get underneath to collect all that money people were throwing away. However, not only were school officials watching for any delinquent looking behavior, and slipping away definitely looked delinquent-- you might have been looking for a chance to do some drugs-- your classmates were also watching carefully to see if anyone was going to out themselves as majorly uncool by grubbing for pennies or do anything else weird. So all I could do was watch all the Ms. Unobtanias perform, which was not completely disagreeable, as it was somewhat comparable to spending an afternoon viewing porn online, without any nudity of course. The whole ordeal could hardly have been more ideal for enhancing the things decried in your link, and I suppose some of the smarter parents realized that the students ought to have a real choice whether to go or not, or perhaps didn't like having their daughters humiliated in front of the entire school, because after a few times it was changed to make attendance genuinely optional.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 09 2016, @12:23AM
I hope you realize you have mental issues and most 'smart' people don't think the same way you do.