“Clearly there was something odd here. Winston, Davidson had conceded, was the ablest boy in his form. He was, in fact, remarkable. His grasp of history was outstanding. Yet he was considered a hopeless pupil. It occurred to no one that the fault might lie, not in the boy, but in the school. Samuel Butler defined genius as “a supreme capacity for getting its possessors into trouble of all kinds,” and it is ironic that geniuses are likeliest to be misunderstood in classrooms. Studies at the University of Chicago and the University of Minnesota have found that teachers smile on children with high IQs and frown upon those with creative minds. Intelligent but uncreative students accept conformity, never rebel, and complete their assignments with dispatch and to perfection. The creative child, on the other hand, is manipulative, imaginative, and intuitive. He is likely to harass the teacher. He is regarded as wild, naughty, silly, undependable, lacking in seriousness or even promise. His behavior is distracting; he doesn’t seem to be trying; he gives unique answers to banal questions, touching off laughter among the other children. E. Paul Torrance of Minnesota found that 70 percent of pupils rated high in creativity were rejected by teachers picking a special class for the intellectually gifted. The Goertzels concluded that a Stanford study of genius, under which teachers selected bright children, would have excluded Churchill, Edison, Picasso, and Mark Twain.”
The Last Lion – William Manchester
Not to mention all the ADHD diagnoses and drugs…
Speed prescribed for hyperactivity — it’s almost criminal! When you ask a child who takes it, as I have, they report that they feel over-stimulated to the point of catatonia!
Just an illustration of the never ending battle between genius and stupidity. Or secular versus religious.
Most humans take a stand based on a belief of something (right or wrong) and never bother to review their stand now and again to insure the facts (if there are any) haven’t changed.
They also allow economic factors to eventually kill us all. Know what? After we’re gone (as we will be someday) the Universe will keep right on dying too! Of course on a time scale that we, as mere meat machines, cannot hope to even grasp, much less understand.
MA
This explains a lot about my schooling.
I was always in the #1, #2,or #3 spot in grade points. Always.
I was NEVER invited to participate in any extra classes the other two were constantly invited to. The school was lucky that my parents believed the “can’t afford” crap coming from the principal.
Years later I dated a teacher from my district (I never had him as a teacher, but he was teaching in the schools I attended) and found out why.
I scared the living crap out of my teachers. He said that nearly daily, one of my instructors would be in the break room discussing a question I asked, a fact I informed, or another statement I made.
Most of them had never even thought of the question, which were valid, in their OWN areas of expertise. Mr. HotPants told me that they resented the fact I made them go forth and LEARN the subjects they taught.
Yep, and as such, I wasn’t “compliant” which is probably the EXACT reason that in direct violation of state law the school never even called my parents to inquire what happened to their 15 year old daughter when she did not return to school in the Fall of ’82. Not a letter, not a phone call, nothing.
That school had rarely ever been happier to see a student go. Even considering a classmate I had that was extremely violent, assaulted teachers and students alike, and ended up holding his ex and kids hostage a few years later before being shot (not killed) by the cops. He was ALWAYS welcomed back after his juvie/jail stints. But thank GAWD that pain in the ass TE is outta here.
But, I got the last laugh, due to the small class size, my graduating class lost a HUGE bump in their overall testing averages once I was gone. Guess the state even noticed and that warmed my heart to think of the principal trying to cover up both the “remarkable” drop in test scores due to my leaving, and the lack of any official contact as to where the hell I went.
It really is the little things.
TE, you’re right. Most teachers want compliance, and challenging students intimidate them.
My wife raised 3 very bright sons. This helps inform her teaching of 4th graders. How? She recognizes that 1) her students are small people, not clay to be molded, and 2) she may not be the smartest person in the room, and in fact often has students who are more innately talented than she is. 3) It’s not a contest; bright kids are allowed to be bright, they don’t have to “show all their work” if they can do it in their heads, and as long as they’re not yelling out, throwing chairs or stabbing their classmates with pencils, individualism is fine.
Trust me, most teachers lack the abstract thought or wisdom to realize that some of their students are actually smarter than they are. Most teachers (as inveterate leftists) equate intelligence with schooling. As you know, this is absurd. Children have pretty much all the smarts they’ll ever have by the time they’re probably 8 or 9. They lack training and information, but raw intelligence? No, it’s all there.
The task is to help them hone their thinking skills and sideways thinking (creativity), their logic, their knowledge base and their relentless search for connection to Reality, not just fantasy and wishful thinking (which animates the vast majority of people.)
I have yet to see a school that actually does this. A good family handles most of it just through parents’ example and discussion. I believe a school COULD be structured to nurture what needs nurturing in an institutional setting, but it is impossible in a government system or anything that mimics it.
I do not think most people would do well at home-schooling, however. Lots of folks who do so attempt it and lack discipline. Their kids eventually return to the schools like they skipped a couple years of studies.
As “special ed inclusion” and amplified addiction to standardized tests accelerates the implosion of public schools, parents who care about their kids will have no choice but to seek alternatives…which have yet to sprout. I have hope, though. My wife is rare, but not unique. There are gifted teachers among us, and as the old model drives them out, with luck they’ll find ways to connect with students and continue mentoring young people to refine and amplify their talents and aptitudes.
My wife has the SpEd kids in her class this year.
This means a SpEd teacher comes in periodically to “help.” Hah. The SpEd teacher can’t abide students who get done with their work quickly and start reading a book. She demands they “show all their work,” even if the kid can do the math in his or her head.
She jumps on kids who squirm in their seats, or sit on their legs, or do any of a hundred other behaviors that, while they don’t all fit in like eggs in an egg crate, aren’t disrupting anyone or anything else. She especially has no tolerance for the “able” kids who get bored waiting for the Special Ed kids to get done with an exercise, when it take the latter an extra 10 minutes to do so.
It drives my wife CRAZY. She’d give anything to keep all the other adults OUT of her classroom, because essentially all of them exhibit zero understanding of what matters and what does not, and none of them can imagine that the students have to left to do the work THEMSELVES.
My wife notes that her most cognitively disabled students have the best grades. Why? Because the adults tasked with “helping” them often do the kids’ work for them. Which teaches them…….nothing?
On the contrary.
It teaches the weak that help comes when you’re even weaker. It teaches every kid in the room that more helpless you look, the more assistance comes your way.
Can you imagine a more destructive model for your young people?
@dc, I can’t.
And as I look around, I see how very effective at creating a non-thinking nation of sheeple these policies and beliefs have created.
“Can’t you look busy,” to an advanced, easily-bored, mind, is the equivalent of saying, “effort and outcome is secondary to how it all looks.”
Which sets us up nicely for our future chasing of the uber wealthy’s materialism.
I was lucky in that I had a handful of great teachers that challenged me and were not resentful of my questions or quickness. Sadly, they were the very minute minority.
Which is about 75% of the reason I quit school after 9th grade and went straight to college as soon as I was legally able. Because, you see, I had to WAIT to take the GED for my class to graduate. How that helped me is beyond me, but allegedly it was for my “own good.”
It was crap that probably cost me completing my college degree. Had I been allowed to start college at 15/16, I would have been done by the time I reached drinking age and became aware of the ways I was being shortchanged and taken advantage of by the damned school.
Good for your wife. It can’t be easy to be a small flame of common sense in a sea of union apologists, compliance specialists and all those that only care about “getting theirs.”