After the whole Ivy League admissions topic, I thought this was an interesting book to discuss.
One of the things she cites early is that IQ accounts for only 10% of the reason people are successful in the workplace.
Even if the 10% figure is true,
IQ and the academic credentials it helps one attain influence what workplace one joins and in what role. I've read stories about successful people who worked their way up from mail room. I don't see that happening nowadays. At my company, the mail room and cafeteria staff work for sub-contractors.
Exactly.
College is problematic now for a whole host of reasons-- but we are (IMO) a long way from that degree/credentialing process "becoming irrelevant."
NO way would I want my DD to take up the Thiel Fellowship. NO. WAY.
It's a nice idea, but the problem is that the statistics are
harshly and emphatically not on the side of the $100,000... and honestly, that 100K is already a memory within four years of a theoretical college diploma for all but a very fortunate few.
It's like hoping that you will be a good enough athlete to go pro.
IQ is (pretty much)
necessary but not sufficient, basically. Just like the educational doors that high ability can open.
We don't exactly free-range our DD, but we live in a quiet college town, and on a quiet dead-end street... so our DD has had the benefit of there being 4-8 neighborhood children as she's grown up. It's fairly mixed demographic, though, and unlike a 'subdivision' lifestyle, or a rural area where families are large (as in years gone by), there have not been many kids HER age.
There is a group that is older, and one that is younger by several years. This left her in the unenviable position of being "the little one" with the intellectual cohort, and "the babysitter" with the younger ones, a role that I eventually discouraged because of liability/safety issues (DD being as conscientious and guilt-prone as she is-- she took scrapes and bruises VERY personally and wasn't having much fun).
We have made a deliberate effort to NOT over-schedule her. By the way, in an HG+ child with wide interests/ability, this is largely a matter of applying the BRAKES, not of 'encouraging' activities.
Less scheduling and grooming, I'm all for.
I call that giving children a childhood. There is a lot of mammalian research to suggest that those years of "play" are absolutely essential to adult functionality, so I think that not allowing it in favor of structured activities (as some stressed parents have done in an effort to 'groom' kids better) is probably counterproductive anyway.
