Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion NYT opinion: No (rich) child left behind

I feel much the same. Dabrowski's OEs manifest themselves in me as an innate drive to advocate, particularly for those who cannot.

A few pages back, Dude referenced the privilege attendant to high earners who can opt to exist on a single income. That's the path our family takes, and I don't for a second believe that my son isn't tremendously advantaged to have my full attention for upwards of 12 hours a day.

In my free time, I'm pursuing research into founding a local ECE center for children exhibiting early giftedness, because I don't see public policy adequately addressing these issues anytime soon. I think there's scope for a profitable model of price differentiation on abilities and means, even for ECE, and I sincerely hope that isn't just a pipe dream.

[The Oxford dictionary defines talent as natural aptitude or skill.]

Honestly? I think it's unfair to assume talent where it doesn't exist. A student who consistently struggles with a particular subject doesn't have natural aptitude for it. I have no talent for drawing. I can't do it, and I get annoyed when people tell me that Method X will work and I just have to try!! It's okay. I have other capabilities, just like everyone else.

IMO, it's especially unfair to a child with low math ability to tell him that he's got "talent" for math when he clearly doesn't. This approach leads students into deep debt while they spend time (unsuccessfully) in college majors that they don't have aptitude for. I also think this idea lets people find other explanations for what are basically uncomfortable ideas that have a lot of data to back them up. For example, a recent study in Stanford found physical differences in the brains of children with different abilities at learning math.

Also, I think that it's pretty easy to forget how hard long division can be for many or most nine-year-olds. And it's not just a question of learning it more slowly. There is also the unfortunate fact that some people forget stuff more quickly than others.

IMO, the idea that everyone can have "talent" at math makes things worse, both for slower learners (who get pushed too hard) and faster learners (who are forced to work below their ability levels).

Yes, I agree that the schools often fall short and that home environments are suboptimal in many cases. ETA: And yes, I agree that most children can learn elementary school-level math. But these facts are all facets of a complex problem, and there's no sole or even simple explanation.

I don't see how telling a child he or she is capable of doing grade school level math is setting him up for future failure in college. I think we are talking about different things. I'd like to know exactly what percentage of children are completely incapable of learning long division with one-on-one help. Who cares if someone learns more slowly and takes longer to master long division when that person could live to be 100 years old? It would be great if slow learners and fast learners could work at their own speeds and everyone could maximize her own potential.

Really, as long as the rich think that improving the quality of education for the poor conflicts with their own personal interests or their interests of their children, nothing will ever be done.

Perhaps you misread my message? I didn't say that most kids can't learn long division (I said that I think that most can). I said that telling people they have talent for something when they don't is a bad idea.


I don't think anyone here has taken that position. I also doubt that wealthy people in this country can be characterized that way as a group. That's not really a fair statement.

But in answer to your question about who cares if people learn at different rates: federal law (NCLB) is very interested in that question and requires that public school children learn at the same rate. I agree with you that this is a bad idea.

Has anybody been able to access the actual paper? The press release Bostonian linked to a while back had the most inflammatory (and unsupported from the content) title I had ever seen, and the abstract made me want to know a lot more about their methodology and results.

I will note that they say the ability of children to benefit from 1:1 tutoring for automaticity in arithmetic tasks (the study wasn't about "learning math") was not correlated to either IQ or working memory.

And there are often a chicken and egg issues with studies of brain differences...

I'll try to get it tomorrow.

I have long thought that talent (especially the cognitive variety) involves more than IQ. Factors like creativity, thoughtfulness (desire to dig deep and look at a problem in many ways), ability to focus, ability to question widely accepted ideas, stubbornness, and independence are all important to varying degrees, depending on what you're trying to do. Obviously, IQ is important, but it's not everything. If it was, we wouldn't have so many unsolved problems in theoretical physics (to give one example).

Unfortunately, as has been argued here before, U.S. society these days tends to focus on single factors as simple solutions or answers.

what's that ?

Yesterday upon the stair
I met a man who wasn't there
He wasn't there again today
Oh, how I wish he'd go away

When I came home last night at three
The man was waiting there for me
But when I looked around the hall
I couldn't see him there at all!

The skills taught in elementary school, such as reading and arithmetic, are intrinsically important. Many subjects and skills taught in later grades and in college are rarely used, and employers value credentials such as the high school diploma or bachelor's degree to signal a certain level of intelligence and discipline, not for the specific knowledge acquired. Some pre-professional majors such as engineering or nursing may be exceptions.

Long division of numbers is almost never done in real life -- we use calculators. It is important primarily as preparation to do long division in algebra. Most people don't use algebra on the job or at home, either, and the people who really struggle with long division are especially unlikely to. My general point is that intensive efforts to teach certain parts of the post-elementary curriculum will have limited benefit, because weak students will soon forget what they have been taught, and because the correlation of academic achievement with positive outcomes such as high income is largely due to the correlation of IQ with those outcomes.

I lived a town away from a very bad school in a very poor town and I can think of people who graduated from high school who can't do basic math or write at a 4th grade level. Then they go on to struggle and fail out of community college because it's just too late for them to ever catch up and they can't pass that one algebra class they need to get their Associate's. Do people look at these kids as 10-year-olds and say "They don't need to know this, they aren't going to have a job where they need to understand math or know to spell?" because it really seems like that is what's happening to a lot of people, when maybe the reason they are failing is because they have parents who are out past midnight, not making sure the child is getting her homework done, sleeping enough, or eating anything for dinner that she can't dump out of can. Why bother teaching people for 13 years if you don't care about them or don't think they can learn? We're just wasting everyone's time.