[20years]

Such a great comment!

"And it's an atrocity that staggeringly gifted young people can grow up thinking they're poorly endowed weirdos because, instead of memorizing their way through school, they struggle to actually understand things since their minds refuse to take “that's just how it works” for an answer, and they bother to "waste time" wondering, "What if...?"

This is exactly how I felt through school and did poorly because of it. I see these issues with my son too but he is excelling because I heavily encourage his curiosity and he has been lucky enough to have some great teachers that appreciate his obsessive need to have to know "why" or dig in deeper. I do worry though that he won't be so lucky as he moves into high school.

"It's really a sad thing that some kids with plenty of potential are misguided into thinking that a GPA is more important than knowledge, experience, curiosity, and comprehension."

This is so true. Something that recently really stood out to me was the lack of critical thinking or troubleshooting skills in kids. I discovered the lack of this in a summer workshop I was part of. Only about 10% of the kids (ages 8 to 12) had decent critical thinking or troubleshooting skills. The rest just wanted to be told what to do and how to do it. Why? Is it because we are so focused on getting kids to reach certain milestones that we are not teaching them or even encouraging critical thinking?