bennybox

This post was meant to be posted on hiyo.org, but the uwaterloo servers sometimes don’t connect to it correctly. Annoying for sure. A thought-spill reflecting time five years after spending ten years in the Scarborough Gifted program, then being thrust into the real world, sorta.

The November 20th NYT Magazine featured a cover story by Ann Coulter on The Prodigy Puzzle, an article about the dilema of nurturing the profoundly gifted (1 in 3 million). In Scarborough, entry into the Gifted Program usually results from an IQ assessment of Highly gifted: 145+, or 1 in 1000 (99.9th percentile) (Wikipedia on Gifted) as early as in grade 1 or 2 . The idea is to catch unique kids early, and nurture them. At age 8, the kids don’t really know what’s going on - we just thought we were good at math. Slashdot Thread

Unfortunately, I didn’t read the article until I went home on the weekend and found my stack of Sunday Times that we get at home - the article is no longer free, but the Letters to the Editor in response to the article gives a good jist.

The question posed is this - can people be exceptional in an America which has now come to marginalize achievement? (see The Incredibles, or Ayn Rand - contrast with the silly “No Child Left Behind” which stresses evaluations over actual learning) How do we nurture the youth whose brilliance may change the world? Do we want to?

The answers are inevitably ‘I don’t know’. And with our time in the Gifted Program now a good 5 years behind us, our perspective is unique. Was the experience valuable? We don’t know if our contributions to society will be any better having gone to Churchill Heights or Woburn CI. I do know that I often struggle to find peers I relate to, and frequently fall back on friends I know well. But am I gifted? Should a term exist? How would I, or how would we have fared receiving the same education as the other 90% of our peers?

There are criticisms and advocates for the ‘Gifted Program’, even amongst our social circle. Woburn was great to have a strong math program, a vibrant music hall, a world class Robotics team, a frankly amazing tech department. I think I benefitted. Am I wise enough now to construct a better learning environment for the eight year old Chris? What about the 8 year old you or Eric (or Erik!) or David?

Will society be disappointed if they feel like our greatest underacheivers fly under the radar? We must nurture, we must monitor progress, we must hold these prodigies up to a higher performance standard and we expect nothing but astonishing tales from them! Surely this can lead to more harm than help. Almost all great athletes will receive exceptional mentoring - is it more fantasmagorical when great intellect shines from the woodwork? How can you tell it’s not just luck?

Then again, the worlds top athletes compete against each other in one very specific discipline. Should the rest of us compete in society? Who do I step on first? They told me I’m gifted dammit, let me climb! The rest of you are just cogs!

chris is not working! he’s at DC blogging instead! argh (meli)

[EDIT] As an aside, I wonder what would have happened if we all took Ritalin in high school, and “could concentrate more effectively”. Not that I wish that.

[UPDATE] I thought my ‘related entries’ plugin would catch these, but I’ve previously written about the weak connection between Autism in math, computing and engineering kids, and the original post about autism and social behaviour of gifted kids. I’m fascinated by all of this.

It was a long time coming, but I have purchased my first video game in… 2ish years? You can imagine little videogame stress-related vains popping out my forehead, which would only go away if I purchased a limited edition Nintendo DS, Mario Kart DS and Animal Crossing: Wild World. My DS is red and dead sexy. And the touch screen incredibly changes the whole dynamic of gaming. It really deserves some study. I love Nintendo.

I know there are a lot of Mario Kart fans in the house. We grew up on this stuff. The SNES version made kart racing fun and exciting. The N64 transplanted the world into 3-d, but I never enjoyed the controls. On the GBA, the gameplay was faithful to the SNES which made me happy. And then on the Gamecube, the prospect of 16 player multiplay action was enough to get me to buy this game, but they took away the hop! The hop!

With Mario Kart DS, the hop is back - gameplay is in 3d, and even better the game is wireless multiplayer over LAN or the internet. I’ve played online a bit - but all those Japanese players keep whomping on me. I think I’ve one won race out of a dozen… sigh…

Super Nintendo Chalmers

N64

Gameboy Advance

Gamecube

Nintendo DS

Thank you Nintendo, I really missed the hop. Also, the game is like crack to me. And I’m like a videogame crack pusher. I’ve been giving everyone a taste of karting bliss, and getting people hooked. I wonder if Nintendo hires campus reps…?