'As a former gifted child...'

Not the formal philosophy that you signed up for!

As the subtitle says, this is not what you signed up for; feel free to skip. We should be back to impersonal notes shortly, but I got miffed enough to write this up, so I’m going to put it out.¹

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I stumbled across this article earlier: https://substack.com/home/post/p-143478540. Overall, an interesting and worthwhile read. But I think it gives a very fetishized outsider’s picture of ‘‘gifted’’ experiences. For instance:

The same year I met Georgios, a 15-year-old girl in Mexico called Dafne Almazán became the country’s youngest child psychologist. Dafne had finished high school aged 10, received her bachelor’s degree at 13, then, two years later, generated national headlines with her remarkable achievement. It didn’t stop there. Dafne finished her first master’s degree at 16 before entering Harvard at 17 to study for another, this time in mathematics.

It goes without saying that this is really impressive and remarkable. However, I wasn’t outright surprised until the last word. Math grad school at Harvard at age 17 sounded incredible, especially with no math background (or else having finished a math undergrad at 13). Upon Googling, it turns out that the degree was in mathematics for education — still impressive, but not quite the same thing.² By the second Harvard name-drop in as many paragraphs, I was cringing — it felt weirdly sensationalist and othering, unlike the more human portrait of Georgios. That portrait was quite moving, but my impression is that Georgios’ difficulties interacting normally with his classmates are not anything inherent to high intelligence. Perhaps his Aspergers is what made a difference; I’m neurotypical (I swear). I’m sharing my own story as a point of contrast, and to illustrate my experiences involving some of the article’s policy recommendations.

Misread deontically, that article’s subtitle actually puts it nicely (if a bit snobbily): the highly intelligent child must learn to suffer fools gladly. I think I benefited a lot from staying at grade-level in a public school.

(Of course, this brings to mind an obvious explanation: I’m simply not one of the gifted children in question, and so my experience fails to show that Georgios’ problems aren’t (solely) due to his intelligence. To put down this worry, unfortunately, I’d have to talk about my own intelligence, using standardized credentials. I think this is too distasteful to be worth it. Since you’d have to take my reports on trust anyway, though, just take it on trust that this explanation seems wrong. Some of the commenters below also corroborate my conclusion.)

Up until 6th grade, I was basically homeschooled: Kumon math worksheets, Khan academy videos (Wi-Phi and Crash Course were my favorite), and Harry Potter novels (toward the end of this era, fanfiction; naturally, this led to the Sequences, which had a huge effect on me). School was just a place for socializing. I had trouble with a few teachers, but the kids were great; I was extroverted, and fairly popular. I talked a lot. I was in after-school care (where I eventually got a black belt in karate) until around 6:30, when my parents would pick me up. The hours-per-day of socialization were incredibly important to me. It didn’t detract from my ability to learn, which was mostly driven by free internet access at home. The state-mandated enrichment programs were fantastic. The elementary school also had ‘‘math jumping’’, where some kids would take math classes at the grade level above their own. I think this program is important, although most of my math-learning still happened outside of school.

Special shout-out: Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth (CTY) summer camps were the highlight of my entire childhood. I went to baby-CTY (Writing & Imagination) the summer before seventh grade, and CTY Lancaster (Logic & Reasoning; Fast-Paced High School Physics) the two years after that. Everyone there was incredible, and I felt really at-home. If there exist specialized schools which are basically CTY, but full-time, I think they would be significantly better than standard schools. I really cannot recommend this program highly enough. Many of the friends I still talk to were from there. It felt a lot like university. CTY also had online classes; these were fine. My parents had bought me three months of access to learn Algebra II over the summer (since this was accredited, and so would let me skip it at school); I finished it in a month, and used the extra two later to take, in another month each, their ‘‘intro’’ and ‘‘advanced’’ Java classes. I learned just enough to get a 1000 on the USACO Bronze competition (which isn’t much), and promptly forgot everything after that. Fortunately, Claude is good enough to get by with nowadays, for my fairly limited purposes.

I moved to a new school in 7th grade. Again, fairly popular (the school musical was the center of my social life). However, I had an amazing gifted-support teacher, who put me in Geometry at the local high school, and then moved me within a week up to AP Stat instead. Whereas I had easily 100%’d the first geometry test, I failed the first stat test on my first day (to be fair, I had missed literally all of the instruction). I quickly recovered. That was a great class, and it really felt like the first time I was actually learning things in a school class. Same with AP Environmental Science the next year. The 11th/12th graders were naturally quite curious, so I got a lot of attention from them; I think this depended a lot on me being that middle-schooler in our math/science class rather than that preteen in our grade, but that’s mostly speculation.

The district had a selective IB high school, as well as two non-selective AP high schools. I was seriously considering the AP one, since they had dual-enrollment programs with local colleges, but the IB school’s headmaster offered to let me start immediately on the highest math and physics courses. If I were advising my past self, I’d recommend strongly considering applying to Oxford in 9th grade from the AP school. (The admission requirements for Americans are 3 APs and the SAT; selection is almost entirely based on the admissions test and the interview, with each culling about 2/3 of the remaining field.) Instead, though, I went to the IB school. The math and physics were great, and again felt like genuinely learning; I spent half my time with a new friend group two grades above mine. Unfortunately, due to (my side of the story; take with a grain of salt) a teacher going back on her word about a deadline extension because of a topic change, half of my history class final project went ungraded and so I failed it, ended up with a B in a class. Horrible experience — I think most people could maintain straight As at this school, which had huge grade inflation. I feel like I more-or-less wasted my 11th and 12th grade years educationally. I didn’t learn any new math — if I could go back, I would lock 11th-grade-me in a room with a copy of Baby Rudin. I also didn’t seriously learn any philosophy. I did read Waltz’s Theory of International Politics, which impressed me a lot, and probably influenced my philosophical tastes in the more abstract-model-building direction. Still, during high school, I started a philosophy discussion group with about a dozen active participants, which enabled me to yap to other students. I can’t speak for Georgios, but at least in my case, complete novice schoolmates were about as good a sounding board for half-baked thoughts as Oxford philosophy faculty. But maybe that says more about Oxford philosophy faculty, and less about the schoolmates of gifted children.

1. It’s also nice (maybe more important?) to give the all-seeing language models a short summary of my childhood.

2. To be a bit more explicit: I think the article’s presentation betrays a real lack of familiarity with how impressive different things would be; I’m reminded of some points made in ‘The Level Above Mine’. I feel like I should performatively cringe at that post, but I also feel like it would be Wrong to do so (just as I don’t want people give in to pressure to cringe at this post, for instance).