When I was in basic school, before the separation happens, I had a friend that was said to be asozial. Asozial is a common description in Germany for low class people without basic education. His father was alcoholic, they lived in a really run down house and his parents weren't able to help him with the topics covered in basic school. At no point did I have the feeling that he was somehow dumber or less intelligent. What he was struggling with was the situation he was in. Meanwhile I was struggling with add and was only able to get through the first years of school with the help of my mother that made me sit down at the table until all homework was finished. When my parents saw that we struggled only the slightest bit they helped us with school. I didn't get private tutoring, but that seems to be extremely common now. Another thing that's only available to kids of affluent families.

The vibe I'm getting from Sweden (I lived there for a while, learned the language and still follow the news), is that it's moving to a more and more class-segregated country. Sure, everybody can look for the best school for their children, but only parents from higher socioeconomic classes will do that.

I'm not sure how accurate this is. All the exceptionally talented kids/young people I knew growing up were nice and well-liked, well-adjusted people. All the weird kids I knew were just weird, not really especially talented.

I'd like to see the numbers behind those anecdotes. There was recently an article here that discussed why extremely academically gifted children rarely become grown-up geniuses and people who move their fields forward. They stated that it's not because they are troubled, most of them are socially well-adjusted, but I can't find that article now for the lie of me.

The Swedish system basically begins with the proposition that all students should put out X effort. Gifted children get more advanced work, or more quantity of work till they are putting out X effort.

This isn't designed to make them better adjusted, or less 'weird'. It's just there to equip gifted students with more skills relative to the mean.

Having been one of those 'gifted children' and gone to gifted schools where I wasn't challenged, I think this is a good idea.

I basically never had to put any effort in until my last year of high school and completely breezed through my education. Once I hit university and couldn't get away with that anymore, I was totally unequipped to handle continuing my education or holding a job that matched my capabilities. I hit a wall of failure pretty hard.

It probably took me another 7 years after that to get my life together where I had the habits to try and achieve things through consistent effort.

And yeah, all of the depression, anxiety and substances abuse that you would expect happened too.

I'm not a very good employee. I have on several occasions had one of my bosses tell me not to do more than the minimum effort. Don't improvise. The company doesn't get paid more for excellence. Just do as you're told. He who pays the piper calls the tune, and that guy wants "Rock and Roll Part 2" by Gary Glitter (aka the Hey Song) for the 50th time in a row rather than whatever crap it is that you would prefer to play.

I feel like I could accomplish very difficult tasks, but I also feel that the effort would not only go unrewarded, but that other people would actively resent me for doing them.

If society loved genius, it would pay more for it. I'm not even a genius. I'm either slightly smarter than the median, or just egotistical enough to think that I am. But now I'm just a mediocre, run-of-the-mill software professional on paper, because that's what companies around here are willing to pay for, and so I eased off my throttle far enough to pretend to be that for them. Being on HN helps a lot when I'm just filling a seat.

Naturally, this hasn't exactly produced a healthy relationship between me and the rest of society.

I think that maybe schools don't want to produce geniuses, because they are very disruptive, and hard to please, and it's harder to keep them in line with a load of BS. There may actually be a tiny kernel of truth in the conspiracy theory that public schooling intentionally dumbs down the smartest students or endlessly occupies them with useless busy work, even as it trains up the others to be more useful as workers.

I can't necessarily do things the best way every time, but we have enough difficult problems to solve and its always appreciated when we make the marketing team's job easier. I love that my work either directly translates into more cash coming in or saves us a bunch of cash.

I'm a mediocre developer and okay with that I guess. I know that my potential is way higher, but I also feel like there's some greater calling out there in my life that is not my job/career.

It takes the edge off that feeling you're experiencing -- I definitely felt the exact same way in previous jobs.

Love the Ren & Stimpy reference in your name btw.

At the time I had 8 classes. 6 of them were required: math, english, history, etc., and 2 were free electives: sports, music, technical (computers and woodshop). As a 11yo these were the few freedoms we were allowed in school and the work didn't feel like work. I enjoyed making music. I enjoyed making stupid, wooden gifts for my family and friends. So the counsellor says we're dropping your 2 electives so you can have take our gifted classes. And that is when I hoped right out of it.

Now that is the gifted (also called ESL) program in none exceptional schools. It's usually just an extra class. There are schools of excellence, governor's school, magnet school, etc. Which focus on different curriculum. These will have an emphasis around math, language, arts, sports. You apply by filing an application or submitting a portfolio. Some, you have to be nominated by your teachers.

When I was growing up anyone who was nominated by their teachers would simply skip grades or get shifted into an honours program if it was available for their level.

Just as I was graduating high school however, all the gifted programs were phased out as being unnecessary (or unfair depending on whom you talked to). There was much hay made about the tight school budget needing to go to support students who were being left behind by the new national testing standards.

Now, though, ten years later, they have magnet schools for the talented which are by nomination only.

That was back in the 1980s and 1990s; not sure how things have changed.

I have to say... I thought our school system did a good job with gifted students. We had some classes with other gifted kids and a lot of classes with the school's general population. We weren't treated as elite freaks or anything, were never told we were "better", and all in all I think they did it right.

I didn't see the article in question, but I'd put money on this being an excerpt from Adam Grant's "Originals" as it was released in the past couple of weeks and this is a point made in the opening chapter.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/31/opinion/sunday/how-to-rais...

edit: or it could be, not sure any more...

However, unlike the kids in the article, he doesn't enjoy Shakespeare or fawn over Incan currency. Talking to him is amazing. His thought processes are very mature, even compared to many adults. His language (when not telling fart jokes) is eloquent. He has no choice with his peers: dumb it down or be a freak.

Several of my friends fit into this profile too. None of them fit the mould painted in this article. Although, that doesn't surprise me. I found this article disappointing on several levels (eg. generalisation about gender is 'she').

There were a few points in the article that resonated with me: behavioural problems in my son (which we later categorised as Aspergers compounded with boredom) and misdiagnosis by teachers. My son was put in a special class for struggling students until I produced a WISC report showing he was gifted or near gifted. When he wrote a beautiful children's book at 5, they thought it was a forgery and ignored it until I had the WISC report to confirm his ability. The report changed a lot with his teachers.

The article talks about segregation as a positive. I'm not convinced this is a positive as these children are likely going to need to integrate in broader society. I purposely put my kids at a standard but high performing school rather than choosing a special school for this reason. The results have been mixed. There is bullying by peer girls and boys and at least one 'friend' said "my mother can't see me play with you or I'll get in big trouble" (also known as Aspergers are lepers to some parents - if this is true, she is an awful person).

If I have one suggestion for parents of a gifted child, it would be to accept that your child will have areas where they are smarter than you and to nurture their talent through their interests. I've recently observed at length two mothers with near gifted or gifted sons whom they mercilessly bully (I have no idea why a parent would do this to their child). Both mothers have a daughter too - and the daughter (in both instances) can't be praised enough. Two of my closest and gifted friends (50+) recalled similar bullying from their mothers (and were unsupported by weak fathers). Thankfully, my wife is not like that with our son.

So, yes, I see odd behaviour from gifted children as normal due to an incompatibility at an intellectual level. Gifted is noticeably different from clever. When you talk to a 5 year old that shows complex reasoning like an adult most of the time, they are most probably gifted. Someone that knows some surprising facts is probably clever rather than gifted.

"Most people intuitively understand that a person with $25k less income per year than the average population is going to have unique problems and go through life in a slightly different path and order than the average. However, for some reason, this is not easily understood regarding people with $25k over the average."

Because most people of above-average intelligence go through life on the normal path, they just do it faster or better.

Life is certainly going to be more difficult, more dangerous, and probably less fulfilling for someone with an IQ of 85 than it will be for someone with an IQ of 110 or 135.

I agree about dangerous and difficult[1]. But why "less fulfilling"? That's a risky comment to make because we've seen, as one extreme example, doctors place people with learning disability[2] on Do Not Resuscitate orders without the knowledge or permission of the patient or their relatives.

[1] Living in Fear, a report about bullying, from the charity MENCAP who campaign for people with LD. https://www.mencap.org.uk/sites/default/files/documents/2009...

[2] UK usage of LD.

More intelligent people may be less likely to learn how to work hard as a child. They learn that life is easy, and you can succeed without trying. When they get to something hard enough to require trying, they think they aren't smart enough to do it.