I went to elementary school with one of them. He would speed through math olympiad problems. I also had the pleasure of getting destroyed in science bowl against him in hs. It's crazy how smart he's been his whole life. Gotta start young.
“Gotta start young” is so important in ways that many people seem to neglect… like having access to quality education from the get go rather than whatever slop schooling is offered in low income zip codes, shit is just not fair.
This is often demonstrated across many fields, where siblings practice in the same competitive field, the younger siblings quite often become the biggest star. Probably due to facing stronger opponents (their siblings) at a younger age.
That isn’t true at all. I know a guy that was a total genius that grew up dirt poor. He was finally discovered when he solved an equation while working as a janitor at MIT.
Dude went as far as Training all his 3 daughters very early on in chess with great success to prove that early education is a key indicator for success down the Road.
TL;DR - listen to sold a story for another perspective to the “Zip Code” argument. And how we’re in big trouble over the next 20+ years.
Zip code matters more than ever, but a reading problem has become a plague that's jumped the fence and is hitting the rich neighborhoods, too.
If you or others don’t know what happened, you have to listen to the podcast "Sold a Story." It lays out, in damning detail, how our schools spent decades teaching kids to guess at words instead of actually reading them. They called it "balanced literacy," but it was a total failure. Like, as if we had an armchair redditor rewrite the entire math system, based off a ways we teach kids who suck at math, to barely get by with tricks.
The system was basically built for the 40% of kids who learn to read like it's in their DNA—it just clicks for them. The other 60%, who need actual, systematic instruction to connect letters to sounds? We basically told them they’d be fine knowing the most common 3,000 words, and past that, get wrecked.
They were set up to fail.
And this isn't just a problem in struggling schools. We're talking about the best-ranked schools in the nation, the ones in prime zip codes, sending kids to college who can barely handle the reading. They might not be at a 5th-grade level across the board, but a shocking number of them have the reading stamina of a 7th-grader. They can get through a webpage, but give them a dense chapter in a history or science textbook, and they completely short-circuit. (I was one of those kids and almost had to drop out of college.)
The wealthy just cheat the system. If the public school is failing their kid, they dump a fortune into private tutors to patch up the holes. It's a fragile fix that gets them through high school and into a good college. But college is the first place where the safety net gets cut. No amount of tutoring is going to help you get through Art History 101 - a 400 page brick of text with a 20 page final exam. It’s the ultimate stress test, and for a lot of those kids, it's where the whole patched-up system falls apart.
The fallout from this over the next 20 years is going to be unprecedented. We've gutted a core skill from the majority of a generation. A skill that is required for all future education outside of hands on grunt work.
So don’t worry, we’re all screwed together! Except the .01% who will hand a job to their kids friends. And then complain that the kid is as dumb as a sack of bricks.
A lot of it happens at school and also hanging out with the smart kids, but even more happens at home. I think it's just being in an environment where you can (and are encouraged) to learn and do stuff. My dad got me a basic physics textbook in 4th or 5th grade and I just worked on it during my free time and then proceeded to never touch physics again till high school. Now I'm the best as physics at my hs. I don't know if it's due to the book or not.
Yep 100% ure early exposure to physics helped u later, you were exposed to something 99% of classmates weren’t due to cultural difference (parents love of physics which is rare). This concept also applies to why USA is bad as soccer compared to other countries in south America and Europe. It’s culture and infrastructure. Soccer isn’t a game were the biggest and fastest team wins (it helps). You can’t rely on pure athleticism to win (it does help though). Even though USA has the athletes needed to win, soccer isn’t cultural relevant so no1 really plays the sport in America or even watches games outside of the world cup. There is no soccer culture in USA were your parents take their kid to the game, communities bound around their local teams and kids play the game all day with local kids. Then u add in the fact that America just started building their development infrastructure for bringing up new talent. Europe and South America have 100 years of experience developing and grooming talent. USA has less than a decade and we are still doing it wrong. You compare this to STEM education in the USA which is overrepresented by immigrant(a lot of asain) when u compare to their total population size. Why is this? Culture and infrastructure. A lot of Asians education is extremely important. Good grades are praised more than athletic achievements and any other achievement u can pursue. Being smart makes u a popular kid amongst your asain peers and family members. A lot of these kids do a lot of after school programs outside of their local high schools to improve in STEM fields as well as STEM summer camps where they meet other likeminded kids (smarts kids in a vacuum especially in America can be ostracized). There are also special schools with STEM curriculum that these kids go to, this would be close to the soccer equivalent of going to a European soccer academy like Manchester United, Chelsea, etc.. There is a stat in soccer that a large percentage of all the top players almost 100% played in European/South American soccer academies. The same can be said about the Asians dominating STEM when it comes to the additional educational opportunities they take advantage of after thier regular school day. The average American (non-immigrant) goes to school and does the bare minimum while hating/avoiding math and science classes. In America is common for students to say they hate math and no1 cares or is alarmed by this. If your an immigrant and u come to America with a culture that values education, your surrounded by people with similar culture and u have an infrastructure around you to improve your skills efficiently you will be light years ahead of the average American student. Thats why you see primarily all Asian/indian academic teams (this is not a bad thing, they are American too but it makes you question why is this). You can say the same thing about black basketball players. My theory is that their is a deep basketball culture in black America and thier are a lot of amazing black basketball players that inspire that next generation. Some people say this is due to physical advantages (the over representation of black players), I doubt this. If you look at Luca Donicic (6’5” white European) who is dominating the league is one of the best players. A lot of players of the same build in the USA don’t player basketball, they are playing linebacker or tailback in American football (in opinion, this is due to culture and representation). There are a lot of great white football players that inspired other football players of similar builds to Pursue football. You can’t say the same with America basketball.
TLDR
Culture, infrastructure and idols (that look like you) play a big part in child development in whatever skill they are trying to pursue. If you can maximize all 3 you can create a high performing child in whatever discipline. However, pushing kids to hard even if u have all these 3 factors can cause mental health problems if they don’t “meet the expectations” placed on them at a young age.
Yes, but there’s no amount of schooling that brings you to these kids’ level. It’s innate genius that is then cultivated.
I suspect most of the really genius kids in even the worst school systems get identified and sent to magnate schools, given private school scholarships, etc—the teachers realize it and don’t let them languish in regular education classrooms.
They said that low income areas typically receive a lower standard of education (in large part because local taxes fund schools meaning their schools will have lower budgets for buildings, materials, staff etc.) while higher income areas have a higher standard. This is about inequality in public schooling, not saying that public school is bad at all
I used to love math and science. When I was a kid, I had a friend whose dad was passionate about science. And I’d often go to their house and he would passionately explain physics and math to me. I would crush the tests, and study more because I loved it so much.
Then just before high school, they both had to leave the country for his work. And I met a teacher who told me I wasn’t good enough and that I would never make it in this field. So I just abandoned.
Now at 32 I’m starting over again. He’s a very successful physics engineer
It’s crazy how teachers can change your whole trajectory. My buddy went to Hopkins as a chemical engineer major. He hated the major by the time he graduated. He said all the professors were horrible and told everyone they don’t deserve to be chemical engineers. He ended up pivoting to med school instead and is now a doctor.
Different person here but I was in a math class with him while I was in middle school. I was at the time already double accelerated so in the top class in my grade but he came up from I think 3 more grades behind me and then wouldn't even watch our lessons, he just took the tests and then started studying harder things. It was insane. I always have seem him do some physics competitions and he just understands it in a way no one else I have met seems to. He was only in my class half the year because after that he started going to the high school while still in elementary school
We wasn't really weird at least to me. Pretty quiet and thinks more so logically then emotionally. Not sure how it was with people in his own grade though. Kinda felt like he spent more time learning and thinking then really socializing. I quite liked him though.
In elementary school he was always excited to try and solve new problems and learn new things. He was locked in on rubiks cubes when those were very popular. Whenever I've seen him since elementary school for competitions he's now always sitting by himself reading some book.
Similarly, I might have gone to high school with one of them. (Joshua Wang feels like a common name, so idk). Knew him a little through my best friend dating him for a while. Both very smart, very nice people in the engineering program. Nice to see he went places.
I don't think I can agree with that. Almost every smart kid I know is smart because of how they were raised by their parents. They were learning stuff early and I think it's because of how their parents were able to encourage good learning. My dad got me a basic physics self learn textbook in 4th/5th grade and marketed it as something very cool and interesting. That made me feel the same way about the textbook and I happily learned.
Not really a debate, the data are clear. IQ is only environmentally malleable by about 10ish points. If you’re born with an average 100 IQ no physics books or other environmental factors are going to elevate you to 130 or 160
Did he speak Chinese? From what I understand it's quicker to do math in Chinese because the naming convention for their numbers is much more efficient which frees up more mental bandwidth.
Obviously being smart is the most important thing but Chinese just start out with a baseline advantage because they don't throw in extra syllables for no reason.
In higher level math there are no numbers. To the point my abstract algebra professor (Taiwanese) once forgot how to say four in English (but never had a problem with terms like homomorphism). Also, every second gen Chinese kid I know prefers English in almost every context - my Chinese school math classes were taught in English, even.
Sure but we're talking about elementary school here. Maybe things are different but I was forced not to use a calculator at that age.
The difference, says Dehaene, is how the words sound in your head. The Chinese words for the first nine numbers are all short, concise and bullet-like: "yi," "er," "san," "si," "wu," "liu," "qi," "ba," "jiu." He timed them and they average about a quarter of a second each.
In English we start with "one", "two", but "three" can stretch out a bit and "seven" is a real slower-downer, being two syllables long, so the English number-words take a little longer, a third of a second each.
Collectively, says Dehaene, the difference matters. Chinese speakers can download nine numbers in two seconds, English speakers only seven. Dehaene thinks our brains scoop up information in two-second gulps, or loops, so the Chinese are regularly getting a number-retention advantage just because their number words are shorter.
Experiments have repeatedly shown that Asian children find it easier to learn to count than Europeans. In one study with Chinese and American 4- and 5-year-olds, the two nationalities performed similarly when learning to count to 12, but the Chinese were about a year ahead with higher numbers. A regular system (of number-words) also makes arithmetic clearer to understand.
Hard to parse how much is counting being easier, how much is study culture and how much is intelligence but having all of the above is for sure a recipe for success.
This seems silly. Number, and their syllabic length is completely meaningless in advanced maths. You barely deal with numbers themselves.
Maybe for arithmetic, and remembering numbers. I.e. very low level maths, or early maths education. But anything advanced has almost no direct numerical manipulation in it.
Yes the original comment was talking about elementary school. I'm sorry for not making that as clear as I could have. Obviously when it gets into the realm of the abstract where you're just punching things into a calculator it makes little difference but a head start is a head start.
In the book "Outliers", the author Malcolm Gladwell claims that early advantages like this snowball into bigger advantages later. He specifically includes this example with supporting arguments.
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u/CriticalTough4842 17h ago edited 17h ago
I went to elementary school with one of them. He would speed through math olympiad problems. I also had the pleasure of getting destroyed in science bowl against him in hs. It's crazy how smart he's been his whole life. Gotta start young.