I think that there's plenty of intelligent kids who are able to devote part of their intelligence to noticing the whole lord of the flies going around and figuring that it's better to not raise you hand when teacher asks question (because answering it won't give you anything (besides grade which is useless) and can paint crosshair on your back) and figuring that it's better to be useful to reasonable group so you can hide among them, and figuring whom to hide from and how. I don't think intelligent kids are more maladjusted to average environments. It's just this is much more visible when smart kid is in trouble. When average kid fails to pay attention to their surroundings they are just bullied looser kids. I think there's proportionally more of such people than bullied looser geniuses.
Schools are just not healthy environments. Not only for gifted.
>I think that there's plenty of intelligent kids who are able to devote part of their intelligence to noticing the whole lord of the flies going around and figuring that it's better to not raise you hand when teacher asks question
I think these come from different sorts of intelligence. You can be intelligent in regards to knowing the right answer but be stupid in regards to knowing that you shouldn't be a know-it-all. Or you could lack the ability to evaluate the advice of adults and thus fully believe what they say at face value (which when combined with the peer-pressure is evil message can lead to optimizing social interactions in some of the worst ways possible).
Those who are gifted socially and in other ways are likely to have far less trouble. I think the gifted who have problems are those gifted in some way, but who are below average in terms of social skills, because the ways they are gifted leads to adults missing that the ways they are challenged.
Yep - I wasn't "gifted" in any technical sense, just reasonably smart / good at school, at that was no picnic socially, until I figured out how to play dumb. It's a weird thing. (This was NYC school system in the early 80s. Maybe schools have gotten better?)
I could say a lot about the quality of education: the lack of a challenge, the boringness of the one-size-fits-all curriculum, etc. But boredom isn't that big of a deal. I made up for that by studying what I wanted to outside of school, instead of doing homework. Even with the vindictive teachers that made homework 30% of the final grade, it was still cakewalk to pass their classes without doing a single assignment.
The real root of the reason school was a living hell for me was the bullying. We all like to tell kids that "the teachers will help you", but they either don't care or feel they can't do anything. Either way, the net effect is they are completely useless. We tell kids, "it builds character!", but that's nonsense. I don't care if it is the secret to my success, I'd rather be average today than to have experienced a tormented childhood. Those were formative years, and those scars run deep.
The worst mistake I ever made was deciding I wouldn't be a part of that Lord of the Flies bullshit. I kept thinking it'd get better as we got older, but it only got much worse. I never stuck up for myself, never learned how to fight, never worked out to become stronger to defend myself. And that's easily my biggest source of regret. Every day my mind recalls terrible memories from those days, and I find myself constantly thinking, "if only I had fought back here or done this there ..."
Bullying mostly targets the gifted, but it would help everyone if we took it seriously, instead of just saying, "well I went through it and lived; so the next generation can too!"
Also, it's bordering on a different topic, but bullying very much extends to the home as well. Abusive parents, siblings, etc. Some kids have literally no escape from it for 18+ years.
I believe bullies target what is different. Intelligence or lack of it will make you a target in equal measure. Got a birthmark on your face? Boom, you're a target.
My kids don't go to a school that accepts bullying. I don't think bullying was seen all that different when I was at school.
I 100% believe everything you said, but it's shocking to read. Bullying of the gifted kids wasn't really a thing in my public school in the suburbs of Philadelphia. I'm not sure if this was despite or because of the fact that while we had some gifted classes, we weren't totally segregated from the rest of the kids nor were we extolled as the "elites."
More importantly, I'm sorry that happened to you. Nobody should have to deal with the toxic environment you suffered through.
A point not raised in the article: some areas have gifted programs that are simply too large. I was enrolled in one in Fairfax County in northern Virginia, and nearly a fifth of the student population was part of it. I moved away before high school, but in high school, the program ended, and the expectation was that gifted children enroll in the Thomas Jefferson magnet school for science and technology — which looked at GPA (of eighth graders) as a deciding factor in admissions — or simply continue taking ordinary honors classes in high school, which were essentially opt-in-to-more-homework classes.
The correlation with eccentricity is not nearly as strong, in my experience, among children who are one standard deviation above average, as in children who are two. Teachers who are actually talented at teaching gifted children see their efforts spread too thin, with only 1–3 children per class who could really benefit from this teacher over other good teachers.
And the eccentric children don't ever get the insulation from other kids' bullying they need; they often avoid even making friends among themselves because they see that as a way of cementing their low social status. Gifted children can make friends with — for lack of a better word — normal children, but some of them, at least, can only get the social stimulation they need from real intellectual conversation with their peers, which other children are either incapable of or uninterested in.
I don't believe we should isolate gifted children from the rest of the population day in, day out. That would only serve to create an echochamber and leave them woefully unprepared when they inevitably leave the bubble. But I do think they need to be given significant time amongst themselves so that they can develop the friendships and confidence they need to survive in the general population, and the special academic attention which might hopefully stimulate them enough to help them flounder less in regular classes.
The gifted program at my school was genuinely fun and interesting. They spent the year on a theme, say astronomy, and explored that theme through a variety of projects. For example, they designed a game about space travel, they built a model of the solar system, etc.
I was not in it until the 6th grade, the last year before "gifted" meant "do more homework" in my school system. I got in because the previous year I built a fairly impressive lego castle for my entry project and maybe they thought that because they were doing architecture as the theme that I would do well. I really did enjoy it and looked forward to it every week.
But I was not, and am not, an exceptionally hard worker or particularly motivated to excel. I probably have an above average memory and was thus able to do well in school despite my laziness (I graduated high school with a 3.3 GPA). Even if I was "gifted", you wouldn't know it from my work. But given the opportunity to engage in something, I took that chance and looked forward to it.
I'm not sure that this addresses the children in the article, but I feel it's sort of a pity that the weekly "explore your interests" classes are no longer part of the gifted program in my child's school district. Not because she's necessarily gifted, but because I think she'd find it fun.
I was bullied for 8 years in primary school. I made the simple mistake of showing off how much smarter I am than the rest of the class (I was kind of a prick about that, looking at it now), and it was impossible to fix it later. Having visible skin condition, walking around bandaged for months, and asthma had not helped either.
I've learnt how to adjust when I was in hospitals and sanatorium, changing einvironment a few times is great for that. In middle school everything was OK already (also it was much better school, so there were more kids like me there).
I also think being on the receiving end of ostracism is valuable experience (but not for 8 years, a few months would suffice). It works as a vaccine against tribal thinking.
> I also think being on the receiving end of ostracism is valuable experience (but not for 8 years, a few months would suffice). It works as a vaccine against tribal thinking.
Peter Thiel said something about this once, speculating on why "disruptive" (pretty sure that was not the word he used) start-ups are disproportionally run by awkward social outsiders, and his theory is that "normal" kids instinctively seek validation from peers, and for these "disruptive" start-ups, they are saying that it's insane, it can't be done (go work in law/finance/management consulting instead). The awkward kids don't care (as much), and are therefore able to focus on actually doing it.
Yeah, well. About that... It might not be related but I have often been singled out because of strabism and I also developed a strong tendency to swim against the current in tribal settings (applause, talking about the movie we just saw when living the theater, political discussion). It's okay now, I know I have that tendency and watch out for it. Can't say for sure if it's related though.
Anyway. I would never fun of anyone based on their looks. This, I am pretty sure it's related. Although I have known some mean kid with deformities.
I'm from Calgary, and I went through the GATE program covered in this article.
While some of my classmates were certainly a bit ...eccentric... the vast majority were wonderful, completely normal people and many of them went on to do incredible things.
I've since moved to San Francisco, and I've gotta say, SF and the GATE program seem to have a lot in common: both fill me with the feeling that anything is possible; coupled with the nagging suspicion that everyone else is smarter, harder working, and more successful ... :)
The article discusses people who may have a trait Dr Elaine Aron calls "highly sensitive". She has been researching the highly sensitive since 1991.
She says the trait is normal. It is found in 15 to 20% of the population. She writes:
"While being easily overstimulated and aware of subtle little things may be what most parents notice first about their Highly Sensitive Child, depth of processing is really the underlying trait."
There's a reason why "outsider feels lonely, outsider is needed, outsider saves the world" has been a recurring theme in fiction for decades - it's something that everyone can identify with and everyone dreams of. It's normal. This isn't something that's limited to "gifted children".
This resonated with me. Growing up I always felt like an alien around other kids, my mindset was just so different. I put a lot of effort into fitting in though, which I think helped somewhat. Even so, I very nearly dropped out of school and could quite easily have gone down a dark path (likely ending up homeless or in prison or worse). Luckily I went to one of the best public schools in the country and ended up with some pretty good teachers, but I learned as much on my own as I did from school, and had things been different I might have lost patience. As it was I nearly ended up stuck on a remedial track for most subjects on entering High School (due partly to the fact that I just didn't do homework, 20-some years later after discovering that I have ADHD a lot more things make sense). Somehow at 13 I had the maturity to realize I needed to fix that and luckily the school system rewarded my efforts (ultimately I graduated with special honors among a handful of top students in my class, and entered college as a sophomore).
I imagine a lot of other folks who are just as smart as I was but didn't luck out with the same circumstances have been severely let down by the system over the years. Things just aren't setup for people who learn differently, or at a different pace, or have a different form of cognition than the archetypal student that everything is built around. Which ends up ill serving a lot of students across all intelligence levels.
I know smart people that had difficulties in school and smart people that steamrolled through school. Smart people that were bullied, smart people that bullied others, smart people that didn't have anything to do with bullying. I don't think any of the issues described has much to do with being smart per-se. There's this kind of people that just don't feel OK at school, smart or not.
I have a friend that is considered incredibly intelligent. When he attended kindergarten he realised he was different from the other children and so deduced he must be an alien. Fortunately his hypothesis was just a phase.
This strikes home, though I'm pretty much "only" upper normal (110-120 - several results in that range; never tested as a kid), but I had this fantasy from like 2nd grade until 5th or 6th grade. I probably annoyed my parents to no end.
I don't know if I'm gifted (I score 125 at some IQ test on abstraction when applying at a company, but still IQ is not always a correct to measure intelligence, so take this with a grain of salt), but my psychiatrist tells me I'm intelligent (he might say this to agree with me, maybe he doesn't think so and it's for another goal).
Yet I'm unemployed, 30 year old, and can't manage to get hired or to do work that is given to me. I don't want to tell people I'm just a special snowflake or something of that matter (since many people easily come down on you for it when they can), but I always hated school because I felt it was formatting me, and not stimulating me. I recently went into some school program for web programming, I hated it and failed it, yet I was considered to know things already.
I'm a little tired of people telling me it's a personality problem, to be frank.
In my view, school is not meritocratic, because its aim is to be efficient and teach important basics to the most people, which politically is a good thing. But is it for everyone? No, and people who are intelligent and care about what the learn actually have more chances to fail, simply because learning program are tailored to be taught easily.
I remember meeting a jury for some project at this school program, and they were pretty judgmental towards my behavior or my opinions when they were asking me specific questions about me.
I think Good Will Hunting precisely describes this problem. Society doesn't know how to pull people up according to their capabilities, because not everything is known about psychology, but also because society often tends to perpetuates its error because of social models which are built on belief.
I think there is no real opportunities for people who might have better capabilities than other. Maybe it should be treated as a handicap or special need, but it's true that politically it's hard to explain such thing when there already is a debate about inequality.
> Yet I'm unemployed, 30 year old, and can't manage to get hired or to do work that is given to me.
IQ and that kind of intelligence is only really a predictor of how quickly you are capable of learning. Unfortunately, it means very little regarding motivation, ambition, or any of the other traits generally associated with being successful. It's difficult to derive success entirely from pure intelligence, especially with cognitive biases humans are prone to accumulate through experience as they mature.
Most people would say that's why we have society: to prevent misapplied potential in various areas, and to competently leverage mental resources such that everyone can benefit. But people, being imperfect, fuck it up along the way, so we all have our cross to bear, and society becomes shaped by its malignancies.
Schools don't have teaching the basics as their primary purpose. They aren't even there for facilitating learning in general - if they were, they'd look a hell of a lot different. For one thing, they'd drop basically all the structure they provide and replace it with independent study and tutoring.
No, the primary purpose of schools is to teach children how to be controlled by authority figures. As a side bonus, it watches over children for a large period of time. Controlling parents insist on the state paying for what's essentially day-care, so that's what we get.
I have no clue how to fix things. Best advice I have is to opt out. "Homeschool" your children, don't force them into learning anything in particular, and pay attention to what their actual goddamn needs are.
I'm in similar situation. I finished MA and never really had to work hard for anything. Had IQ at around 130. Probably less now cause I had not done anything challenging for decade.
I hate my job, have no achievments whatosever and I balance on doing bare minimum not to get fired. Changed job 4 times and it's definitely me. That's despite the fact that I was always going to be a programmer since I was 10, and I loved programming. I'm lazy as hell and I'm astonished every day they won't fire me. Any dreams of success in mine choosen callign are long past.
I also had huge problems with social interactions, married first girl that could look past it (she has similar problems). It wasn't a good decision.
My wife has even bigger problems with employement, but she declines to agree it's her fault (she changes job every year and it's always "them"). We are codependent and use each other not to be alone. We hurt each other a lot. I don't think it's love, but then I find love to be hard to define (I mostly feel "I should be feeling this" instead of actually feeling this, not only towards her).
I should really leave her, cause she isn't happy with me (nor am I with her), but she has her life wasted, in some party because of me, and she depends on me at least economicaly at this point. Or maybe it's rationalization because it's more convenient to continue this.
I'm addicted to internet and gaming, and I'm well aware of the fact that I'm wasting my life. I just don't care. No right to complain really, I had it better than most people, and it's entirely my fault I'm wasting it all. And yet I do, because nothing worthwhile seems achievable and vice-versa.
BTW I know I sound arrogant and selfish, that's because I am. I wondered many times if maybe I'm just stupid (that would explain a lot). In the end it doesn't really matter, results matter and I don't have them.
I probably could get depression diagnosed, but I don't want to cure it even if it's true, because it would mean I have to actually do sth. So my best diagnosis is "chronic laziness".
I'd like to tell you about my most gifted friend. He is my classic definition of genius. He is a particularly lovely human being, handsome, tall and can do most intellectual tasks exceptionally well (eg. Chemistry, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, software engineering, etc). He matches the best I've seen in any of those fields (and I've been involved in complex systems and software for decades).
So, what does he do for a living? Odd jobs. He has held one steady job in the decades I've known him. This is because he has poor social skills (although I've tried to help him learn the ropes of understanding people) and because he finds accepting other people's mediocrity frustrating as he politely tells them their errors - and conversely, they resent his cleverness.
I was lucky enough to work with someone similar to my friend about 10 years ago. As his boss, I sat down with him and basically said "you are very clever but you are also ignorant. You change external interfaces that drive significant changes to the rest of the system. You must stop it for the sake of the project". He exploded and told me to "f* myself" in front of the project team of ~100 to hear. Two hours later, he apologised and thanked me for my honesty and wisdom (translation: courage to tackle the wild brumby). When I saw him a few years ago, he was a different person. He thanked me for my kindness and patience back then, which meant a lot to me.
To wrap it all up: some people truly March to the beat of their own drum. I thrive on these people.
Good luck. I hope you find your groove. No one else will find it for you, unfortunately.
It can be the other way round. A child may strive to learn things and achieve academic success because he is deprived of normal love and unconsciously believes that when he proves himself smart and successful, people will recognize and love him. I.e. it's not that being gifted leads to suffering; it may be that these kids already suffer and just try harder to survive.
This was definitely the case in my situation. I grew up gifted AND overweight/obese at an athletics-focused public school in a Northeast US suburb. I was bullied. A lot of my thought processes were "it doesn't matter if I'm fat/how I look/how my peers treat me because at least I'm smart and someday I'll be better than them..."
So I spent my high school inside WoW, where nobody can see you, and I went to a good college and worked really hard to get an education, lost some weight there (and developed socially, somewhat), and now I'm a full-time software developer (graduated school last May). I'm realizing that (a) I'm not actually an "introvert," I just never had a chance to develop socially, and (b) the reasons that initially attracted me to software development (specifically, the ability to just "get in the zone" and escape from reality for hours and hours) are now considerably less appealing to me. I'd much rather be in a job that exposes me to some sort of social interaction beyond my manager, although perhaps the grass is always greener...
Anyway, to relate back to OP, I really, really wish someone had pulled me out of my public school and let me develop with a group of other "misfits." I eventually fell into that social group anyway, in high school (mostly artists, turns out), but the damage was done. I had a "challenge math" class in elementary school that was fun (and all the other kids I remember from that class either went to ivy leagues or ended up in software or both), but beyond accelerating our math education and offering AP courses, there was no support for giftedness in my school system.
luckily not everyone who is smart is necessarily a wreck, but some are. i was too. still am but now i'm a more powerful wreck and some people actually need to listen me.
Many, many things about public school are terrible; honestly, a ground-up restructuring is in order, but nobody is sure what to do with it, and no one wants to step up and say "let's tear up the public education system and start over!".
To borrow from G.K. Chesterton, we love school enough to want to see it changed, but do not hate it enough to change it (yet).
I see this interesting article from Canada in 2015 was submitted while I was catching up on sleep after my third son applied the previous evening to a summer science research program for high school students. Most of my employment, research, writing, and parenting for the last decade or more has been related to the concerns of third-party-identified highly gifted children, for example children who are part of the Davidson Institute for Talent Development Young Scholars program[1] or the long-term, longitudinal Study of Exceptional Talent (SET).[2] For practical knowledge for my own challenges in daily life, in teaching, and in parenting, I have taken care to read thoroughly in the published literature on Lewis Terman's long-term longitudinal study of gifted children.[3]
The Hacker News participant who kindly shared the article that opens this thread is a user whose user name I recognize from the many good articles he submits for discussion here. That said, permit me to not entirely agree with the opinion expressed by the Canadian teacher profiled in the article that "our most brilliant children are among our most vulnerable." That is actually not what the research shows. I agree with the several comments posted before this comment that say that age-segregated, lockstep curriculum school[4] is a particularly toxic environment for gifted learners, and not a good environment for any learner. But I learned, after majoring in Chinese language in university and living in east Asia after graduation, that there are varying cultural perspectives on how a smart person fits into human society. Growing up in the United States, in junior high I read a story by Philip K. Dick, which I have tried to find again but have not yet found in his collected writings, in which he expressed the opinion that the higher one's IQ is above the population median, the fewer true friends one can have, an opinion expressed in a top comment in this thread. I fully agreed with that opinion when I was a child, and it became a self-fulfilling prophecy, as I isolated myself from "average" people in my school and neighborhood environment. But when I lived in east Asia, I learned that Confucius said, 三人行，必有我師焉 ("wherever three persons are walking, my teacher is surely among them"). The east Asian Confucian philosophers were very clear than human beings vary in how smart they are, but they also deeply believed that any human being can learn from any other human being. The job of a smart person is to use brainpower to understand other people and make society better. As soon as I adopted those east Asian perspectives, I found it much easier to make friends. Now I proactively tell my four children and the gifted young people I teach in my supplemental mathematics program that they can find rapport with anyone, if they are willing to listen. And I spread this same message internationally among parent email lists and social media groups for parents of gifted children.
To sum up, the article makes strong claims that high IQ is strongly associate with social maladjustment and psychological disturbance. That is not an invariant property of high IQ, and I know many exceptions. All research on the topic confirms that many high-IQ people do fine in social interaction with other human beings, and some who do not start out that way can learn better social adjustment. School has a lot of toxic features for most learners,[5] but gifted children need not fear being social misfits for life.
Quote: "Reed’s entanglements serve as an apt metaphor for the school life of severely gifted children."
Ah, "severely gifted" -- what a meme. What a commentary on the times in which we live. I can imagine psychologists surveying this new frontier with barely concealed joy, in particular now that the DSM is being abandoned.
People need to understand that, in modern times, to avoid one or another mental illness diagnosis, you can't be too smart or too dumb, you can't be hyperkinetic or hypokinetic, you can't be extraordinary in any way. You have to be the very definition of dull and unimaginative. You have to be a psychologist.
The diagnosis criteria for most mental illnesses include that the patient is negatively affected by their specific symptoms.
Or regarding the specific quote, in the context of going to a normal school, "severely gifted" might be the right word for describing these children. If these children are given something meaningful to do in school instead, then the moniker would not be apt.
I'd say that's why diagnoses are typically a "perfect storm" of otherwise normal conditions. We can probably all say that we've experienced schizoid avoidance patterns. But at some point, for certain people, that condition becomes a part of a larger psychological pattern in which it's considered an illness. Usually because it begins to have an overtly negative impact on the ability to function in society.
The nature of human development just means that we all inherit some level of personality "defect". But psychologists don't view them all as candidates for a diagnosis of mental illness.
[+] [-] scotty79|10 years ago|reply
Schools are just not healthy environments. Not only for gifted.
[+] [-] Lawtonfogle|10 years ago|reply
I think these come from different sorts of intelligence. You can be intelligent in regards to knowing the right answer but be stupid in regards to knowing that you shouldn't be a know-it-all. Or you could lack the ability to evaluate the advice of adults and thus fully believe what they say at face value (which when combined with the peer-pressure is evil message can lead to optimizing social interactions in some of the worst ways possible).
Those who are gifted socially and in other ways are likely to have far less trouble. I think the gifted who have problems are those gifted in some way, but who are below average in terms of social skills, because the ways they are gifted leads to adults missing that the ways they are challenged.
[+] [-] artpepper|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] byuu|10 years ago|reply
The real root of the reason school was a living hell for me was the bullying. We all like to tell kids that "the teachers will help you", but they either don't care or feel they can't do anything. Either way, the net effect is they are completely useless. We tell kids, "it builds character!", but that's nonsense. I don't care if it is the secret to my success, I'd rather be average today than to have experienced a tormented childhood. Those were formative years, and those scars run deep.
The worst mistake I ever made was deciding I wouldn't be a part of that Lord of the Flies bullshit. I kept thinking it'd get better as we got older, but it only got much worse. I never stuck up for myself, never learned how to fight, never worked out to become stronger to defend myself. And that's easily my biggest source of regret. Every day my mind recalls terrible memories from those days, and I find myself constantly thinking, "if only I had fought back here or done this there ..."
Bullying mostly targets the gifted, but it would help everyone if we took it seriously, instead of just saying, "well I went through it and lived; so the next generation can too!"
Also, it's bordering on a different topic, but bullying very much extends to the home as well. Abusive parents, siblings, etc. Some kids have literally no escape from it for 18+ years.
[+] [-] rustynails|10 years ago|reply
I believe bullies target what is different. Intelligence or lack of it will make you a target in equal measure. Got a birthmark on your face? Boom, you're a target.
My kids don't go to a school that accepts bullying. I don't think bullying was seen all that different when I was at school.
[+] [-] JohnBooty|10 years ago|reply
More importantly, I'm sorry that happened to you. Nobody should have to deal with the toxic environment you suffered through.
[+] [-] DanBC|10 years ago|reply
Wait what? You have nothing to support that claim.
https://www.mencap.org.uk/sites/default/files/documents/2009...
[+] [-] dennisgorelik|10 years ago|reply
Kids with lower IQ have tougher life.
[+] [-] SixSigma|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adrusi|10 years ago|reply
The correlation with eccentricity is not nearly as strong, in my experience, among children who are one standard deviation above average, as in children who are two. Teachers who are actually talented at teaching gifted children see their efforts spread too thin, with only 1–3 children per class who could really benefit from this teacher over other good teachers.
And the eccentric children don't ever get the insulation from other kids' bullying they need; they often avoid even making friends among themselves because they see that as a way of cementing their low social status. Gifted children can make friends with — for lack of a better word — normal children, but some of them, at least, can only get the social stimulation they need from real intellectual conversation with their peers, which other children are either incapable of or uninterested in.
I don't believe we should isolate gifted children from the rest of the population day in, day out. That would only serve to create an echochamber and leave them woefully unprepared when they inevitably leave the bubble. But I do think they need to be given significant time amongst themselves so that they can develop the friendships and confidence they need to survive in the general population, and the special academic attention which might hopefully stimulate them enough to help them flounder less in regular classes.
[+] [-] stinkytaco|10 years ago|reply
The gifted program at my school was genuinely fun and interesting. They spent the year on a theme, say astronomy, and explored that theme through a variety of projects. For example, they designed a game about space travel, they built a model of the solar system, etc.
I was not in it until the 6th grade, the last year before "gifted" meant "do more homework" in my school system. I got in because the previous year I built a fairly impressive lego castle for my entry project and maybe they thought that because they were doing architecture as the theme that I would do well. I really did enjoy it and looked forward to it every week.
But I was not, and am not, an exceptionally hard worker or particularly motivated to excel. I probably have an above average memory and was thus able to do well in school despite my laziness (I graduated high school with a 3.3 GPA). Even if I was "gifted", you wouldn't know it from my work. But given the opportunity to engage in something, I took that chance and looked forward to it.
I'm not sure that this addresses the children in the article, but I feel it's sort of a pity that the weekly "explore your interests" classes are no longer part of the gifted program in my child's school district. Not because she's necessarily gifted, but because I think she'd find it fun.
[+] [-] ajuc|10 years ago|reply
I've learnt how to adjust when I was in hospitals and sanatorium, changing einvironment a few times is great for that. In middle school everything was OK already (also it was much better school, so there were more kids like me there).
I also think being on the receiving end of ostracism is valuable experience (but not for 8 years, a few months would suffice). It works as a vaccine against tribal thinking.
[+] [-] mseebach|10 years ago|reply
Peter Thiel said something about this once, speculating on why "disruptive" (pretty sure that was not the word he used) start-ups are disproportionally run by awkward social outsiders, and his theory is that "normal" kids instinctively seek validation from peers, and for these "disruptive" start-ups, they are saying that it's insane, it can't be done (go work in law/finance/management consulting instead). The awkward kids don't care (as much), and are therefore able to focus on actually doing it.
[+] [-] johnchristopher|10 years ago|reply
Yeah, well. About that... It might not be related but I have often been singled out because of strabism and I also developed a strong tendency to swim against the current in tribal settings (applause, talking about the movie we just saw when living the theater, political discussion). It's okay now, I know I have that tendency and watch out for it. Can't say for sure if it's related though.
Anyway. I would never fun of anyone based on their looks. This, I am pretty sure it's related. Although I have known some mean kid with deformities.
[+] [-] Nimitz14|10 years ago|reply
Really good way of putting it. I'm stealing that.
[+] [-] foxly|10 years ago|reply
While some of my classmates were certainly a bit ...eccentric... the vast majority were wonderful, completely normal people and many of them went on to do incredible things.
I've since moved to San Francisco, and I've gotta say, SF and the GATE program seem to have a lot in common: both fill me with the feeling that anything is possible; coupled with the nagging suspicion that everyone else is smarter, harder working, and more successful ... :)
[+] [-] delineator|10 years ago|reply
She says the trait is normal. It is found in 15 to 20% of the population. She writes:
"While being easily overstimulated and aware of subtle little things may be what most parents notice first about their Highly Sensitive Child, depth of processing is really the underlying trait."
See her 2014 summary of scientific research on highly sensitive children here: http://hsperson.com/pdf/Authors_note_HSC.pdf
For more information see Dr Aron's website here: http://hsperson.com/
[+] [-] onion2k|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kalzium|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] InclinedPlane|10 years ago|reply
I imagine a lot of other folks who are just as smart as I was but didn't luck out with the same circumstances have been severely let down by the system over the years. Things just aren't setup for people who learn differently, or at a different pace, or have a different form of cognition than the archetypal student that everything is built around. Which ends up ill serving a lot of students across all intelligence levels.
[+] [-] tdsamardzhiev|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brendonjohn|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] epimetheus|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spacehome|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] h0l0cube|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eliboy|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jokoon|10 years ago|reply
Yet I'm unemployed, 30 year old, and can't manage to get hired or to do work that is given to me. I don't want to tell people I'm just a special snowflake or something of that matter (since many people easily come down on you for it when they can), but I always hated school because I felt it was formatting me, and not stimulating me. I recently went into some school program for web programming, I hated it and failed it, yet I was considered to know things already.
I'm a little tired of people telling me it's a personality problem, to be frank.
In my view, school is not meritocratic, because its aim is to be efficient and teach important basics to the most people, which politically is a good thing. But is it for everyone? No, and people who are intelligent and care about what the learn actually have more chances to fail, simply because learning program are tailored to be taught easily.
I remember meeting a jury for some project at this school program, and they were pretty judgmental towards my behavior or my opinions when they were asking me specific questions about me.
I think Good Will Hunting precisely describes this problem. Society doesn't know how to pull people up according to their capabilities, because not everything is known about psychology, but also because society often tends to perpetuates its error because of social models which are built on belief.
I think there is no real opportunities for people who might have better capabilities than other. Maybe it should be treated as a handicap or special need, but it's true that politically it's hard to explain such thing when there already is a debate about inequality.
[+] [-] bonesmoses|10 years ago|reply
IQ and that kind of intelligence is only really a predictor of how quickly you are capable of learning. Unfortunately, it means very little regarding motivation, ambition, or any of the other traits generally associated with being successful. It's difficult to derive success entirely from pure intelligence, especially with cognitive biases humans are prone to accumulate through experience as they mature.
Most people would say that's why we have society: to prevent misapplied potential in various areas, and to competently leverage mental resources such that everyone can benefit. But people, being imperfect, fuck it up along the way, so we all have our cross to bear, and society becomes shaped by its malignancies.
Talk to any cultural anthropologist. :)
[+] [-] ThrustVectoring|10 years ago|reply
No, the primary purpose of schools is to teach children how to be controlled by authority figures. As a side bonus, it watches over children for a large period of time. Controlling parents insist on the state paying for what's essentially day-care, so that's what we get.
I have no clue how to fix things. Best advice I have is to opt out. "Homeschool" your children, don't force them into learning anything in particular, and pay attention to what their actual goddamn needs are.
[+] [-] throwaway_65536|10 years ago|reply
I hate my job, have no achievments whatosever and I balance on doing bare minimum not to get fired. Changed job 4 times and it's definitely me. That's despite the fact that I was always going to be a programmer since I was 10, and I loved programming. I'm lazy as hell and I'm astonished every day they won't fire me. Any dreams of success in mine choosen callign are long past.
I also had huge problems with social interactions, married first girl that could look past it (she has similar problems). It wasn't a good decision.
My wife has even bigger problems with employement, but she declines to agree it's her fault (she changes job every year and it's always "them"). We are codependent and use each other not to be alone. We hurt each other a lot. I don't think it's love, but then I find love to be hard to define (I mostly feel "I should be feeling this" instead of actually feeling this, not only towards her).
I should really leave her, cause she isn't happy with me (nor am I with her), but she has her life wasted, in some party because of me, and she depends on me at least economicaly at this point. Or maybe it's rationalization because it's more convenient to continue this.
I'm addicted to internet and gaming, and I'm well aware of the fact that I'm wasting my life. I just don't care. No right to complain really, I had it better than most people, and it's entirely my fault I'm wasting it all. And yet I do, because nothing worthwhile seems achievable and vice-versa.
BTW I know I sound arrogant and selfish, that's because I am. I wondered many times if maybe I'm just stupid (that would explain a lot). In the end it doesn't really matter, results matter and I don't have them.
I probably could get depression diagnosed, but I don't want to cure it even if it's true, because it would mean I have to actually do sth. So my best diagnosis is "chronic laziness".
[+] [-] rustynails|10 years ago|reply
So, what does he do for a living? Odd jobs. He has held one steady job in the decades I've known him. This is because he has poor social skills (although I've tried to help him learn the ropes of understanding people) and because he finds accepting other people's mediocrity frustrating as he politely tells them their errors - and conversely, they resent his cleverness.
I was lucky enough to work with someone similar to my friend about 10 years ago. As his boss, I sat down with him and basically said "you are very clever but you are also ignorant. You change external interfaces that drive significant changes to the rest of the system. You must stop it for the sake of the project". He exploded and told me to "f* myself" in front of the project team of ~100 to hear. Two hours later, he apologised and thanked me for my honesty and wisdom (translation: courage to tackle the wild brumby). When I saw him a few years ago, he was a different person. He thanked me for my kindness and patience back then, which meant a lot to me.
To wrap it all up: some people truly March to the beat of their own drum. I thrive on these people.
Good luck. I hope you find your groove. No one else will find it for you, unfortunately.
[+] [-] Mikhail_Edoshin|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Nav_Panel|10 years ago|reply
So I spent my high school inside WoW, where nobody can see you, and I went to a good college and worked really hard to get an education, lost some weight there (and developed socially, somewhat), and now I'm a full-time software developer (graduated school last May). I'm realizing that (a) I'm not actually an "introvert," I just never had a chance to develop socially, and (b) the reasons that initially attracted me to software development (specifically, the ability to just "get in the zone" and escape from reality for hours and hours) are now considerably less appealing to me. I'd much rather be in a job that exposes me to some sort of social interaction beyond my manager, although perhaps the grass is always greener...
Anyway, to relate back to OP, I really, really wish someone had pulled me out of my public school and let me develop with a group of other "misfits." I eventually fell into that social group anyway, in high school (mostly artists, turns out), but the damage was done. I had a "challenge math" class in elementary school that was fun (and all the other kids I remember from that class either went to ivy leagues or ended up in software or both), but beyond accelerating our math education and offering AP courses, there was no support for giftedness in my school system.
[+] [-] timwaagh|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] IIAOPSW|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] selimthegrim|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] deadprogram|10 years ago|reply
I also recommend http://sengifted.org/archives/articles/overexcitability-and-...
[+] [-] mirimir|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dawnbreez|10 years ago|reply
To borrow from G.K. Chesterton, we love school enough to want to see it changed, but do not hate it enough to change it (yet).
[+] [-] kalzium|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tokenadult|10 years ago|reply
The Hacker News participant who kindly shared the article that opens this thread is a user whose user name I recognize from the many good articles he submits for discussion here. That said, permit me to not entirely agree with the opinion expressed by the Canadian teacher profiled in the article that "our most brilliant children are among our most vulnerable." That is actually not what the research shows. I agree with the several comments posted before this comment that say that age-segregated, lockstep curriculum school[4] is a particularly toxic environment for gifted learners, and not a good environment for any learner. But I learned, after majoring in Chinese language in university and living in east Asia after graduation, that there are varying cultural perspectives on how a smart person fits into human society. Growing up in the United States, in junior high I read a story by Philip K. Dick, which I have tried to find again but have not yet found in his collected writings, in which he expressed the opinion that the higher one's IQ is above the population median, the fewer true friends one can have, an opinion expressed in a top comment in this thread. I fully agreed with that opinion when I was a child, and it became a self-fulfilling prophecy, as I isolated myself from "average" people in my school and neighborhood environment. But when I lived in east Asia, I learned that Confucius said, 三人行，必有我師焉 ("wherever three persons are walking, my teacher is surely among them"). The east Asian Confucian philosophers were very clear than human beings vary in how smart they are, but they also deeply believed that any human being can learn from any other human being. The job of a smart person is to use brainpower to understand other people and make society better. As soon as I adopted those east Asian perspectives, I found it much easier to make friends. Now I proactively tell my four children and the gifted young people I teach in my supplemental mathematics program that they can find rapport with anyone, if they are willing to listen. And I spread this same message internationally among parent email lists and social media groups for parents of gifted children.
To sum up, the article makes strong claims that high IQ is strongly associate with social maladjustment and psychological disturbance. That is not an invariant property of high IQ, and I know many exceptions. All research on the topic confirms that many high-IQ people do fine in social interaction with other human beings, and some who do not start out that way can learn better social adjustment. School has a lot of toxic features for most learners,[5] but gifted children need not fear being social misfits for life.
[1] http://www.davidsongifted.org/youngscholars/
[2] http://cty.jhu.edu/set/
[3] http://www.amazon.com/Termans-Kids-Groundbreaking-Study-Gift...
https://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/magazine/article/?artic...
[4] http://learninfreedom.org/age_grading_bad.html
[5] http://www.johnholtgws.com/
http://learninfreedom.org/system.html
[+] [-] lutusp|10 years ago|reply
Ah, "severely gifted" -- what a meme. What a commentary on the times in which we live. I can imagine psychologists surveying this new frontier with barely concealed joy, in particular now that the DSM is being abandoned.
People need to understand that, in modern times, to avoid one or another mental illness diagnosis, you can't be too smart or too dumb, you can't be hyperkinetic or hypokinetic, you can't be extraordinary in any way. You have to be the very definition of dull and unimaginative. You have to be a psychologist.
[+] [-] mzl|10 years ago|reply
Or regarding the specific quote, in the context of going to a normal school, "severely gifted" might be the right word for describing these children. If these children are given something meaningful to do in school instead, then the moniker would not be apt.
[+] [-] hackercomplex|10 years ago|reply
Not really, you just have to learn to avoid them at an early age and to not answer any of their questions except through an attorney.
[+] [-] taneq|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jkxyz|10 years ago|reply
The nature of human development just means that we all inherit some level of personality "defect". But psychologists don't view them all as candidates for a diagnosis of mental illness.
[+] [-] anonymfus|10 years ago|reply
For example, Russian word for "nerd" is literally "botanist" ("ботаник").
[+] [-] JohnBooty|10 years ago|reply
A behavioral health diagnosis, just like any health diagnosis, just recognizes that you have some thing that is negatively impacting you.
Just as the diagnosis of an ingrown toenail doesn't mean you need special treatment, neither does a mental health diagnosis.
[+] [-] efaref|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] timwaagh|10 years ago|reply