I applaud this family, and am glad for Ahaan's sake that he isn't just shipping himself off to college, but is going to still have his support structure.
I was homeschooled, along with my two sisters, my entire educational career until college. We all started taking college classes early, my older sister correspondence at 14, my twin and I correspondence at 15. All of us took classes at local colleges before starting 'real college'. All of us scored high on our ACTs, all of us got scholarships to college.
My parents didn't really push us, we were just smart. We had childhoods, I was a starter on the basketball team, and played college soccer for a year. I also read 10+ books a week, played way, way too much Civilization and Total Annihilation, and did plenty of volunteer work, especially at our local public access station.
For my sisters, going to and living at 'real college' worked out well, they both succeeded in their own ways (my older sister graduated with two masters a few days after she turned 21, my twin sister received a lot of recognition from professionals in her field before graduating, was salutatorian, etc), whereas I didn't do so well being away from home and the support structure. I'm lazy, and I thought could just not do assignments I didn't want to and do well enough on other assignments to make up for it. Long story short, my GPA dropped enough to lose my scholarship, and I decided that the private college experience wasn't worth borrowing tens of thousands of dollars for.
So I moved home, finished my bachelors from the state university in town. Snagged an internship and then got a job offer from that company, essentially during my junior year for a full time job, contingent on finishing school.
My point in typing up this story is not to say that I am or was awesome. My point is that I am pretty sure that Ahaan Rungta is a pretty smart kid, his parents probably pushed him less than you think, and that as long as he and his family figure out how to navigate the maturity journey, he'll be fine.
>My point in typing up this story is not to say that I am or was awesome.
Are you sure? Being a smart fellow, you must know that your experience is not evidence that this young man was not "pushed" too much and that he will "be fine."
That said, my suspicion is that Rungta's early achievement is not cause for concern about his social development. Conducting research, for instance, is an intensely collaborative experience that he will probably have, and would provide ample opportunity for interacting with people of many ages. He probably will be fine.
You have an impressive background! If I may ask, how did (do?) you manage to read 10+ books a week? Was it sheer determination, or were you a fast reader? I know that quantity of books isn't necessarily indicative of any knowledge gained; however, I would love to work through my reading list a little quicker than my current rate.
With all due respect, and while you might very well be smart, your story is pretty normal. The MIT alumni I've meet (for which selection bias surely is a factor) has been quite beyond that and very much overachievers (in a positive way).
That said, going to college early usually isn't a good idea. People are quite "age sensitive" in that age so you're missing out on a lot of the social stuff. Regardless how good MIT is the rest is still "only" knowledge. I can of course imagine worse things though.
I went to college early (14, graduated 18). I've spoken with a lot of similar folks over the years, and the biggest takeaway for me was that everyone's experience and needs were different.
Some people were pushed by their parents, but mostly it was people who were bored with the normal experience and found an out. Out of that set, maybe about half regret it, and wished they had slowed down and enjoyed high school/childhood more.
People tend to assume that folks who go to college early would be socially awkward, but that was not my experience. The social/emotional intelligence distribution was pretty normal.
Out of everything, the common denominator was supportive parents.
What do you mean by "supportive parents"? I think that eludes some. You can be supportive without really being helpful. Can anyone provide some context as to what that support looked like?
My observations are similar, the kids have to want to do the work and it's hard enough that parental support is essential. It's too hard otherwise. The University of Washington has a program that brings in 12ish early entrants each year. The program's process seems to be repeatable and although the staff have a strong liberal arts bent they produce students in all fields including at least two YC founders.
Children can do a lot more than they're given credit for. My 4-year-old demanded music lessons when his older brother was playing cello. He started on both cello and piano.
Entering kindergarden, in music class the teacher had a keyboard, asked the children who could play. A little girl banged out chopsticks. Another little boy picked out twinkle,twinkle,little star. My son Andrew raised his hand, and played some Beethoven sonata. The teacher asked him if he knew what that was. He told her.
He's not a prodigy. Has terrible handwriting! The 1st-grade evaluation suggested he had fine-motor issues. Yet he could play 64th-note runs on the piano endlessly. Its all because of regular teaching and fun practicing.
Kids can learn what they put their minds to. But it takes 10,000 hours not only from the pupil but from the tutor. My wife put in the time; Andrew plays wonderfully.
Fun fact: terrible handwriting is correlated with high dopamine levels in the brain, which is correlated with increased brain activity (~ intelligence).
I've hung out with Ahaan at school several times -- some people in the comments here are speculating that going to university this young might make it hard to adjust (socially), but honestly I assumed he was like ~20 (i.e. just like any other college-age dude). I had no clue he had such a neat backstory of how he got to MIT!
Yeah, there was a guy at my alma mater (Olin College of Engineering) who entered at 14 or 15. He was perfectly normal and well-adjusted. I mean, it was a weird cloistered tech school environment, so "normal" and "well-adjusted" are relative here, but I also didn't realize he was so young until he mentioned it.
I mean, sure, you get the occasional Ted Kaczynski, but the vast majority of kids I've heard of entering college early seem well-adjusted.
When my (then future) wife was in college, there was some controversy about younger women on campus needing to tell guys who were flirting with them how young they were, because guys in their early 20s would occasionally end up asking a girl out and then finding out she was only 16. My wife agreed with this general sentiment, which led to one of her friends saying "you'd think differently if you were 16!" Her response: "maybe, but that's not for another year."
My younger sister was regularly mistaken for a teacher when she was in 7th grade.
I was pretty obviously an immature punk all through high school, but some people are both academically and socially advanced.
Right now, my five year old son with autism is simultaneously learning the toilet and calculus. Who knows where he'll be socially when he's academically ready for college?
I consider 4 years of my highschool a complete waste of time and would have loved to jump straight into a university right after elementary school. It would have been great to have OCW available at that time and not having to do everything myself including finding relevant books/sources.
Good for Ahaan he escaped it and I wish him the very best of luck @ MIT!
I think I read the entire non fiction section of the local library to avoid my HS boredom. This was before the internet when you can find so much more online.
It would be interested to check in with him at 35 to see where he ended up compared to other 'normal' 35 year old MIT grads. Basically does pushing your kid like that from such and early age lead to any significant long term advantages.
MIT has always had a few of these "show pony" geniuses around. Two of them sadly committed suicide during my years at MIT. I dont know their minds, but I guess some of their sense of self worth was being a smart ass and marching to to a different drummer. When you are surrounded by thousands almost as smart as you you dont really stand out for being you anymore. MIT people are impresses by you doing something really clever. Also I suspect these guys were very lonely too. I hope Adaan has a sense of self worth built on more than being at MIT.
Some commenters are afraid this kid was pushed way too hard and did not have time to learn proper social skills, play sports, get a holistic education in the humanities.
This all might be true but the article makes it very clear how precocious this kid is. I don't think his parents were trying to push him. If anything they seemed to struggle to get him the things that he needed to succeed.
Some people are just so laser focused on their desires that you just have to let them do their thing. I'm sure if he wants to play sports or learn history, he'll excel at it too.
As long as he did not exclusively learn technical stuff but also got a humanistic education, which we do not know, and enjoyed his childhood, which I think he did, because you cannot perform like that without enjoying it, I think this is pretty amazing parenting.
You could find other reasons to nitpick (Did he do sports? Did he develop social competences by interacting with other kids?), but even if these things are true, which we do not know, there are children, who got a regular education, that are still lacking in these regards and they are not enrolled at MIT at 15.
So many people praising this brainwashing I can't even believe it. I'm ready for the downvote but please comment to why it is not the case. That's a pretty story but if their parents went on teaching him something else than physics everybody would go on their horses and scream for child abuse.
What choice did the kid have? None. Dude didn't go out and was full MIT mode from the age of 5.
It is better for the kids to praised about what they are doing rather than what they are getting. Personally, I don't care what prestigious thing he got. This kid is amazing for having studied so many things on his own.
The real aim here should be to be engaged and to be learning; which are things this kid seems to be have done plenty of. It is so cool that we now have all these learning resources accessible easily.
It's interesting how this kind of thing makes one think about their own life. I went to a talk by a computer scientist yesterday. He is studying cryptography. You could tell that he was so engaged, getting so much joy from his subject. People were interested in what he was explaining. You could tell that he is just loving every minute of his job. This is the kind of engagement level I am looking for. And by the way, I don't think one needs to be top-level at what they do to get there.
Don't know this kid, or this situation, but to commenters here who seem envious, or young people who are inspired: being a child prodigy expires at age 25. Being known for your youth means that once you aren't young anymore you've lost that. If your identity is wrapped up in being precocious be ready with a second plan.
I don't know how many miss "being known". I think many regret not having so much intellectual stimulation, or opportunities to learn. (Seriously, how many of us, the HN crowd, considered their Primary School intellectually challenging?)
"When Rungta turned 12, his family moved to Lowell, Massachusetts, as his parents realized he needed to be in a more intellectually stimulating environment."
My friends in Fort Lauderdale are gonna LOVE this!
I envy this guy so much! I felt delayed by school, which offered slow-paced, and uninspiring environment (learning interesting stuff on my own, after the lessons; at ~15 I started reading academic textbooks in physics and chemistry).
Right now I am very much for adjusting education to students, rather than the other way around (without expecting that everyone gets magically enlightened at the age of 18-19). Especially as the cohort-based learning is a direct heritage of the Prussian education (for teaching soldiers, not - scientists or engineers).
I don't know man, I think there's something to be said about having a childhood. Being from India myself, I know the tremendous pressure parents put on kids to succeed. I hope that this kid wasn't subject to the same.
Agree with you. My wife and I are already arguing over the future of our 3-year-old. She wants him to learn to read and write. I want him to play, have time to be a boy, get in trouble, kiss a girl, and have a care-free childhood.
We're so obsessed with money, and forget all about the one currency that really matters. Time. Time to live.
I'd rather he were average academically, and experience life exceptionally.
“I will never forget the feeling of walking into the lobby of Building 7, looking up, and then touching the pillars to see if they were real. I couldn’t believe I was at MIT. My life and my ambitions moved to another level at that moment.”
I think this impressive achievement is more a testament to the role that aspirations acquired during childhood play in determining a person's success than it is a reflection of this young man's intelligence. Yes, the latter is necessary, but it isn't sufficient. I have little doubt that there are many 18 year olds entering MIT's class of 2019 who could have entered at 15 had they been provided a similarly advantageous upbringing.
These stories attract the attention of some of us because we wish we had been raised similarly. Had we not devoted our attention as children to, say, petty family turmoil or a hedonistic preoccupation with computer games, perhaps we would have progressed through life with a singularity of purpose and self-confidence that would have situated us in a better position today. We might have been spared years in our teens and twenties trying to find a sense of meaning in our work, unlike this fellow, who seems to have it figured out.
I won't speculate about his social skills. I've met college students his age running the gamut from borderline autistic to social butterfly. Yes, the sense of "peerlessness" must be a bit alienating, but many of us have had this experience without leapfrogging high school.
> These stories attract the attention of some of us because we wish we had been raised similarly.
We wish we had been but we didn't live in the right time or place for an upbringing like this. I remember stealing my dad's college textbooks on mechanics and applied mathematics and sneaking them off to school; taking out Byte and Compute issues from the library when they were available... just starving for more all the time. Astronomy club. Chess club. In high school I went to night school with my friends' mom at the university in the big city when I wasn't working to help pay the rent. You just couldn't get the breadth and ease of access to information you can today. It was slow and laborious back then.
But a world like this? Today? Amazing. You don't even have to leave your house. He is lucky. I'm 33 now and I'd kill to be able to study mathematics full time and be a professor some day. It just wasn't in the cards. Parents, circumstances, life and all of that.
Yes... we'll envy stories like this. More of us could have been this hungry. We just couldn't get there.
I find the idea that the absolute best thing for a highly intelligent person to do is get to collage as soon as possible is a little sad. Life is not a race.
> had they been provided a similarly advantageous upbringing
He's a minority immigrant that fled poverty and homeschooled himself. Please clarify in what ways this was an advantageous upbringing over say an american native raised in the suburbs by a wealthy family who attends the best public schools, few if any of whom enter MIT at 15.
“(...) Had we not devoted our attention as children to, say, petty family turmoil or a hedonistic preoccupation with computer games (...)”
I disagree. Altough I would have loved learn more when i had all that free time and no Internet, I don't regret for an second the time spent playing some videogames (Monkey Island, King/Space Quest, Civilization, etc), reading for pleasure (Dumas, Asimov, Dracula, Rowling... Spiderman!) or even watching movies or some TV.
I'm a more complete (and interesting!) person because of all that.
I will never bring my kids up this way, they will enjoy life. Imagine if Steve Jobs was raised this way, we would have no Apple, this kind of one dimensional excellence is for the parents satisfaction.
Good point. Talent may be what separates the top 1% or performers from the top 5% (where that tiny edge matters) but for the vast majority of the bell curve, hard work counts for so much more than raw aptitude.
I think our view of this gets skewed by sports because it really is an edge case where you have to achieve a certain level of performance in a very specific time period because your body isn't in peak condition forever. Talent may mean you pick up those skills faster and hit that narrow target window. That constraint doesn't seem to be nearly as present in other areas to the same degree: if it takes somebody 5 extra years to become a superb programmer, that won't absolutely kill their chances of having a successful career at it even if they needed the extra time to get there.
I'm content with my upbringing, but I think it's worth speculating about alternatives from a personal perspective since at one point we may raise our own children. For all we know, this person night have better social skills, personal development, etc. than those of us who had a "normal" upbringing. Normal should be defined by results rather than popularity. Don't you agree?
Well put, I frequently read stories like this and wonder if I could have done the same if I wasn't constantly being distracted by family arguments/being poor/being envious of other's situations or wasting so much time on video games. I feel regret almost every single day and constantly feel 1 or 2 years behind the curve. Even now I don't have a singular vision like this kid probably because I get so distracted by real life tasks.
Thanks so much for your comment. I am quoting it and sending it to my wife because we have differing views on how much time the kids should spend playing computer games (me=almost none).
I was raised in an environment (and at a time) when there were no games like this and I filled the time doing other interesting things that were not only fun but lead to me being able to earn a good living after college.
There is a lot of benefit to the singularity of purpose at the same time there are a lot of side effects. To give you one example, homeschooled kid lacks good social skills, which are more important to success in life than mere intelligence or knowledge.
Computer games can stimulate curiosity so labelling computer games and other child-related things as "hedonistic" might imply that they contain zero inherent value, which I think is a serious oversimplification.
According to my parents I could read at age 3, I can certainly remember petitioning my father to be allowed to read The Hobbit when I was 5. My mother got into trouble when I started school because the teachers didn't know what to do with a 5 year old who could read and write!
I was taught by the "look and say" method, now not used in British schools at least. They teach phonics now. Interestingly my daughter is dyslexic and struggled horribly in school to learn by the phonics method. It was when I started teaching her the old fashioned way that she picked it up.
There are people who have a hard time learning to read and some who never manage it despite making every effort. Why is it so hard to believe that there are people at the other end of the spectrum who are able to learn to read as an infant?
What I like is he came to America to go to MIT. That great mind is now an American mind, and with his family origin, I would hope a world thinking and sympathetic mind. Perhaps he can do good in this world.
The school system is really best for the kids-in-the-middle, i.e. not the best fit for the really talented, as the case with this MIT kid here, neither is it for the D/F students. Public school was originated in Europe for training workers if memory serves me right.
Since Bush the public education system is more geared towards to the D/F students nonetheless, i.e., the no child left behind policy, a road to hell. This might have something to do with Bush, who is about a D student himself.
A solution I would like to see, is tax-relief for home-schooling families, they don't use the public education system so why pay for the school district property tax? This looks like a win-win for the family and the nation in the long run.
Human races compete and evolve, focusing on the left-behinders are so against nature, yes they should be taken care of, but the focus really should be on the other side.
This seems to have been drawn from the same statistical distribution of many stories that center around this idea that "MIT students are smarter than students anywhere." The ideology of MIT is that you should go to MIT daycare, then MIT kindergarten and all the way through to the PhD and beyond, and if they had enough people in that pipeline they wouldn't bother taking applications from anywhere else.
That idea is definitely one of the things holding Boston back in terms of startups -- you definitely see research labs at MIT that don't hire postdocs from Stanford or Cornell because they only want to hire MIT people. There are plenty of MIT grads who are mediocre at best but many local startups (particularly those started by MIT grads) don't realize this and often make up all sorts of excuses about why things went wrong.
[+] [-] russnewcomer|10 years ago|reply
I was homeschooled, along with my two sisters, my entire educational career until college. We all started taking college classes early, my older sister correspondence at 14, my twin and I correspondence at 15. All of us took classes at local colleges before starting 'real college'. All of us scored high on our ACTs, all of us got scholarships to college.
My parents didn't really push us, we were just smart. We had childhoods, I was a starter on the basketball team, and played college soccer for a year. I also read 10+ books a week, played way, way too much Civilization and Total Annihilation, and did plenty of volunteer work, especially at our local public access station.
For my sisters, going to and living at 'real college' worked out well, they both succeeded in their own ways (my older sister graduated with two masters a few days after she turned 21, my twin sister received a lot of recognition from professionals in her field before graduating, was salutatorian, etc), whereas I didn't do so well being away from home and the support structure. I'm lazy, and I thought could just not do assignments I didn't want to and do well enough on other assignments to make up for it. Long story short, my GPA dropped enough to lose my scholarship, and I decided that the private college experience wasn't worth borrowing tens of thousands of dollars for.
So I moved home, finished my bachelors from the state university in town. Snagged an internship and then got a job offer from that company, essentially during my junior year for a full time job, contingent on finishing school.
My point in typing up this story is not to say that I am or was awesome. My point is that I am pretty sure that Ahaan Rungta is a pretty smart kid, his parents probably pushed him less than you think, and that as long as he and his family figure out how to navigate the maturity journey, he'll be fine.
[+] [-] rtl49|10 years ago|reply
Are you sure? Being a smart fellow, you must know that your experience is not evidence that this young man was not "pushed" too much and that he will "be fine."
That said, my suspicion is that Rungta's early achievement is not cause for concern about his social development. Conducting research, for instance, is an intensely collaborative experience that he will probably have, and would provide ample opportunity for interacting with people of many ages. He probably will be fine.
[+] [-] mrks_|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gozo|10 years ago|reply
That said, going to college early usually isn't a good idea. People are quite "age sensitive" in that age so you're missing out on a lot of the social stuff. Regardless how good MIT is the rest is still "only" knowledge. I can of course imagine worse things though.
[+] [-] chris_va|10 years ago|reply
Some people were pushed by their parents, but mostly it was people who were bored with the normal experience and found an out. Out of that set, maybe about half regret it, and wished they had slowed down and enjoyed high school/childhood more.
People tend to assume that folks who go to college early would be socially awkward, but that was not my experience. The social/emotional intelligence distribution was pretty normal.
Out of everything, the common denominator was supportive parents.
[+] [-] caseysoftware|10 years ago|reply
Anyway, supportive (or desperate) parents are a key aspect.
[+] [-] wahsd|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hedgehog|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JoeAltmaier|10 years ago|reply
Entering kindergarden, in music class the teacher had a keyboard, asked the children who could play. A little girl banged out chopsticks. Another little boy picked out twinkle,twinkle,little star. My son Andrew raised his hand, and played some Beethoven sonata. The teacher asked him if he knew what that was. He told her.
He's not a prodigy. Has terrible handwriting! The 1st-grade evaluation suggested he had fine-motor issues. Yet he could play 64th-note runs on the piano endlessly. Its all because of regular teaching and fun practicing.
Kids can learn what they put their minds to. But it takes 10,000 hours not only from the pupil but from the tutor. My wife put in the time; Andrew plays wonderfully.
[+] [-] MrBuddyCasino|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eddotman|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] erroneousfunk|10 years ago|reply
I mean, sure, you get the occasional Ted Kaczynski, but the vast majority of kids I've heard of entering college early seem well-adjusted.
[+] [-] lotharbot|10 years ago|reply
My younger sister was regularly mistaken for a teacher when she was in 7th grade.
I was pretty obviously an immature punk all through high school, but some people are both academically and socially advanced.
Right now, my five year old son with autism is simultaneously learning the toilet and calculus. Who knows where he'll be socially when he's academically ready for college?
[+] [-] bitL|10 years ago|reply
Good for Ahaan he escaped it and I wish him the very best of luck @ MIT!
[+] [-] peter303|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eljimmy|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dagw|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] peter303|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] erebus_rex|10 years ago|reply
This all might be true but the article makes it very clear how precocious this kid is. I don't think his parents were trying to push him. If anything they seemed to struggle to get him the things that he needed to succeed.
Some people are just so laser focused on their desires that you just have to let them do their thing. I'm sure if he wants to play sports or learn history, he'll excel at it too.
[+] [-] allendoerfer|10 years ago|reply
You could find other reasons to nitpick (Did he do sports? Did he develop social competences by interacting with other kids?), but even if these things are true, which we do not know, there are children, who got a regular education, that are still lacking in these regards and they are not enrolled at MIT at 15.
[+] [-] Mimu|10 years ago|reply
What choice did the kid have? None. Dude didn't go out and was full MIT mode from the age of 5.
[+] [-] umutisik|10 years ago|reply
The real aim here should be to be engaged and to be learning; which are things this kid seems to be have done plenty of. It is so cool that we now have all these learning resources accessible easily.
It's interesting how this kind of thing makes one think about their own life. I went to a talk by a computer scientist yesterday. He is studying cryptography. You could tell that he was so engaged, getting so much joy from his subject. People were interested in what he was explaining. You could tell that he is just loving every minute of his job. This is the kind of engagement level I am looking for. And by the way, I don't think one needs to be top-level at what they do to get there.
[+] [-] sawthat|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stared|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sakri|10 years ago|reply
My friends in Fort Lauderdale are gonna LOVE this!
[+] [-] stared|10 years ago|reply
Right now I am very much for adjusting education to students, rather than the other way around (without expecting that everyone gets magically enlightened at the age of 18-19). Especially as the cohort-based learning is a direct heritage of the Prussian education (for teaching soldiers, not - scientists or engineers).
[+] [-] littletimmy|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Spearchucker|10 years ago|reply
We're so obsessed with money, and forget all about the one currency that really matters. Time. Time to live.
I'd rather he were average academically, and experience life exceptionally.
[+] [-] rtl49|10 years ago|reply
I think this impressive achievement is more a testament to the role that aspirations acquired during childhood play in determining a person's success than it is a reflection of this young man's intelligence. Yes, the latter is necessary, but it isn't sufficient. I have little doubt that there are many 18 year olds entering MIT's class of 2019 who could have entered at 15 had they been provided a similarly advantageous upbringing.
These stories attract the attention of some of us because we wish we had been raised similarly. Had we not devoted our attention as children to, say, petty family turmoil or a hedonistic preoccupation with computer games, perhaps we would have progressed through life with a singularity of purpose and self-confidence that would have situated us in a better position today. We might have been spared years in our teens and twenties trying to find a sense of meaning in our work, unlike this fellow, who seems to have it figured out.
I won't speculate about his social skills. I've met college students his age running the gamut from borderline autistic to social butterfly. Yes, the sense of "peerlessness" must be a bit alienating, but many of us have had this experience without leapfrogging high school.
[+] [-] agentultra|10 years ago|reply
We wish we had been but we didn't live in the right time or place for an upbringing like this. I remember stealing my dad's college textbooks on mechanics and applied mathematics and sneaking them off to school; taking out Byte and Compute issues from the library when they were available... just starving for more all the time. Astronomy club. Chess club. In high school I went to night school with my friends' mom at the university in the big city when I wasn't working to help pay the rent. You just couldn't get the breadth and ease of access to information you can today. It was slow and laborious back then.
But a world like this? Today? Amazing. You don't even have to leave your house. He is lucky. I'm 33 now and I'd kill to be able to study mathematics full time and be a professor some day. It just wasn't in the cards. Parents, circumstances, life and all of that.
Yes... we'll envy stories like this. More of us could have been this hungry. We just couldn't get there.
[+] [-] Retric|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] collyw|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] droithomme|10 years ago|reply
He's a minority immigrant that fled poverty and homeschooled himself. Please clarify in what ways this was an advantageous upbringing over say an american native raised in the suburbs by a wealthy family who attends the best public schools, few if any of whom enter MIT at 15.
[+] [-] jp_sc|10 years ago|reply
I'm a more complete (and interesting!) person because of all that.
[+] [-] nashequilibrium|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TrevorJ|10 years ago|reply
I think our view of this gets skewed by sports because it really is an edge case where you have to achieve a certain level of performance in a very specific time period because your body isn't in peak condition forever. Talent may mean you pick up those skills faster and hit that narrow target window. That constraint doesn't seem to be nearly as present in other areas to the same degree: if it takes somebody 5 extra years to become a superb programmer, that won't absolutely kill their chances of having a successful career at it even if they needed the extra time to get there.
[+] [-] mrdrozdov|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sbov|10 years ago|reply
Today I can say that I would love to have had such an upbringing. At the same time, I can also say that my 5 year old self would have hated it.
[+] [-] HAL9OOO|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gist|10 years ago|reply
I was raised in an environment (and at a time) when there were no games like this and I filled the time doing other interesting things that were not only fun but lead to me being able to earn a good living after college.
[+] [-] hemantv|10 years ago|reply
There is a lot of benefit to the singularity of purpose at the same time there are a lot of side effects. To give you one example, homeschooled kid lacks good social skills, which are more important to success in life than mere intelligence or knowledge.
[+] [-] g_delgado14|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nameless1up|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eanzenberg|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mkj|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rachelandrew|10 years ago|reply
I was taught by the "look and say" method, now not used in British schools at least. They teach phonics now. Interestingly my daughter is dyslexic and struggled horribly in school to learn by the phonics method. It was when I started teaching her the old fashioned way that she picked it up.
[+] [-] NameNickHN|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cognivore|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ausjke|10 years ago|reply
Since Bush the public education system is more geared towards to the D/F students nonetheless, i.e., the no child left behind policy, a road to hell. This might have something to do with Bush, who is about a D student himself.
A solution I would like to see, is tax-relief for home-schooling families, they don't use the public education system so why pay for the school district property tax? This looks like a win-win for the family and the nation in the long run.
Human races compete and evolve, focusing on the left-behinders are so against nature, yes they should be taken care of, but the focus really should be on the other side.
[+] [-] PaulHoule|10 years ago|reply
That idea is definitely one of the things holding Boston back in terms of startups -- you definitely see research labs at MIT that don't hire postdocs from Stanford or Cornell because they only want to hire MIT people. There are plenty of MIT grads who are mediocre at best but many local startups (particularly those started by MIT grads) don't realize this and often make up all sorts of excuses about why things went wrong.