What is their purpose in writing this? Because it seems like it could just feed into the ideas that we don't need to worry about PG kids because they'll be fine, and increase the social distance between them and "everyone else" creating an increasingly lonely position.
I didn't get this impression at all. The piece noted the obvious importance of practice yet added that talent can have an effect on outcomes.
I thought the piece was important because it said,
in major newspaper, that talent is real. I agree that it probably simplifies things, but it's not like they had much choice. The Op-Ed pages limits people to 750 words or so. There isn't a lot of room for nuanced argument in those kinds of bounds, so I'm not sure what you expect.
What's important (to me at least) is that the piece said something that's true, yet is unpopular these days:
talent matters, talent is real, and it can affect your chances for success. Saying this out loud is huge.
It's also so obvious (to me at least). Yet our society doesn't seem to want to say it out loud unless you're an athlete. So instead we hear arguments like "all children are gifted" and "they all even out by third grade" and "you must be making your kid do constant math worksheets." At the beginning of the school year, my son had to fill out a True-False homework sheet for math class that included the statement "There is no such thing as a mathy mind." Bollocks! But teacher's correct answer was "
True," and answering "False" was not, let us say, encouraged.
So I guess I'm a bit confused by why people here would seem to be suspicious of an opinion piece that finally says that talent --- particularly cognitive talent --- is real and can have real effects.
