I always wondered how much easier it must have been back in the day, to seem really smart because there was so much left to "discover". Now it seems in almost any discipline, it's all been done or thoroughly thought through by "more qualified people", so you are expected to read/review everything others have said before you can add/build meaningfully on the existing knowledge base. What a tedious drag/beat-down. What a deterrent to the generation of independent out of the box ideas.
I think to some extent, those people who have the natural IQ/talent/curiosity to make great discoveries/advances to begin with, may be beat down by all of the "already been done" thinking that's out there. They do not get to experience and build off of that thrill of discovering things for them-self because they are spoon-fed the "facts" from an early age. At school, or by well-meaning parents, either way the thrill of discovery/working things out for oneself, is taken away and I suspect this squashes the drive and/or self confidence that one might have otherwise developed had they been allowed to try and fail until they successfully "discover" things for themselves.
I have to disagree that there's a huge pile of knowledge that young students/scientists/researches have to wade through first to start discovering things. It's more that knowledge has just been compacted and shifted downwards. During Newton's time Calculus was cutting edge but now it can be "easily" explained to high school students. Over time we learn methods on how to pass down all that complicated knowledge that's been discovered by the top minds to younger and younger students.
I also have to agree with Val that there are other areas that genius can be shown besides just pure research. The tech fields are a great example of this as she pointed out and, really, it's probably infinitely easier to shine in a tech field because you don't need as much education first to make your mark (whereas if you wanted to make a major discovery in a science you'd have a much harder time getting academics to be interested in your work and you'd probably be labeled a crackpot right off the bat if you haven't first gotten a Ph.D).
However, I definitely agree with you on the push for early education and self-discovery. I think even in higher education self-discovery needs to be more emphasized. I would love to see colleges (and some are definitely moving in this direction) really incorporating young students into research projects instead of just having them sit through lectures and take tests. Passive learning just does not stick nearly as well.
