zlacker

Yes, I've also read The Bell Curve. I'm not sure what any of this has to do with designing an education system. Lots of kids aren't going to be professional athletes, but they still manage to have fun kicking a ball around. The same is not true in mathematics, for instance.

Of course there should be a small part of the education system capable of identifying and guiding the geniuses... but it should be in the context of helping every student identify their internal motivation... which is really the only way to instill the critical thinking skills everyone seems so keen on.

>>dls201+(OP)
The missing piece is media-driven culture. But video games don't cause violence, according to studies, which clearly leads to the belief that music doesn't cause drug trafficking or gang violence or hyper-machismo otherwise all other cultural music would do the same for their respective demographics. Surely media depictions of success aren't emulated. There's no way that success in sports as a way out of poverty could be hijacked not just from the top down but from the bottom up as well. There is definitely zero association between complexity of sound and complexity of thought. There is no causal link between any of this, it's simply systemic oppression over the course of decades, no, centuries. We should, in fact, celebrate this culture more.

>>dls201+(OP)
> Lots of kids aren't going to be professional athletes, but they still manage to have fun kicking a ball around. The same is not true in mathematics, for instance.

Kids in my classes who are probably not going to be engineers are still having a lot of fun tinkering with engineering problems. Kids in my classes who are probably not going to be computer scientists are having a lot of fun tinkering with ARM-Thumb machine language. Kids in my classes who are not going to be number theorists or statisticians are still going to have a lot of fun playing with elements of number theory and frequencies of elements in English text in my elementary cryptography class.

Some will be superstars and decide they want to do things close to this in the future. Others will decide they want to do something completely different, but understand more of these different paths. And everyone can come away knowing that maybe they won't be at the top but they can still do hard things.

The key is: A) not having a preconceived idea of who's going to be good at something, and B) creating many axes students can differentiate themselves in the classroom, so that someone who is not at the top still has areas to strive and can be a valued member of the classroom community.