Originally Posted by CFK
You were doing enough to get by, not extending the level of discussion, etc. How is this better than a class with hard working, passionate non-gifted kids who would take the class to the next level?

My point is that learning with other kids of very high ability would have been more likely to create an environment where my thinking about the subject would have changed. ETA from UM's last post: I don't mean that the class should have been HARDER. Well, not in the sense of more homework or near-impossible problem sets. Back then, my math classes were pretty good in a straightforward, pedestrian way. I mean DIFFERENT. More big or old ideas. More new ways of looking at, say, how to do geometry or algebra. That kind of thing.

This was precisely what happened to me when I ended up a small liberal arts college where being bookish by choice and asking lots of probing questions were encouraged. Classes were small and many people on campus enjoyed talking about the big ideas of the day. Not everyone was HG+, but enough were that college was a good challenge for me. I had to learn to study (which was hard) but I found myself getting a lot out of what I was doing. Most importantly, the vast majority of the classes I took were aimed at very smart people, and you either kept up or got a bad grade/dropped the class.

You don't get that community experience with the hard-working types whose parents are driving them. Especially for these types, "hard working" and "passionate" don't necessarily go together. I certainly don't see much academic passion among the tiger cubs I've met.

Last edited by Val; 04/02/14 04:16 PM.