[hatsubishi]

It's way faster to learn by yourself than from someone teaching you because you can go directly to what you need to understand etc. So it's more suitable for geniuses.

Counterexamples to your point: Mozart, guy was copying whole compositions by memory at age 14

Adrian Lamo: didn't finish high school

Einstein?

And many others

[masklinn]

> Counterexamples to your point: Mozart, guy was copying whole compositions by memory at age 14

Mozart’s father was a minor composer, accomplished musician, and skilled teacher (he published a well regarded violin textbook the same year WA was born).

Mozart started picking up musical education through his father teaching his older sister.

> Einstein?

The tutored son of an engineer, graduate of ETH Zurich?

Both of them were geniuses, but in both cases their familial background and educational access were not exactly minor.

If you’re looking for something even remotely close to an actual self-made genius, it’s probably Ramanujan you want. And here you could actually argue formal education was unsuitable and damaging: dude was only interested in pure mathematics so failed out of two colleges (as well as his FA), nearly starved until he chanced a meeting with V. Ramaswamy Aiyer (the founder of the Indian Mathematical Society).

But such stark examples are not common at all. It’s almost certain we collectively missed on a much higher number of Einsteins and Mozarts because they did not have the early access and education to blossom, than we stifled and smothered ramanujans.

Would Jacob Collier exist if he’d been born in a slum of Chennai, on the streets of Bogota, or in a project? That seems doubtful. But how many Jacob Colliers did, and were lost?

[occamrazor]

Einstein had a degree in Maths and Physics and did his PhD as an external student while working at the Patent Office. How is he an example of schools killing creativity?

[hatsubishi]

The 12-year-old Einstein taught himself algebra and Euclidean geometry over a single summer.

Einstein also independently discovered his own original proof of the Pythagorean theorem at age 12.

And more at Wikipedia. Point is geniuses learn way faster by themselves than going to a class. It's a huge waste of time to sit in a lecture of someone speaking at turtle pace, I would fall asleep. Sorry if you went through that.

[ckastner]

> Point is geniuses learn way faster by themselves than going to a class. It's a huge waste of time to sit in a lecture of someone speaking at turtle pace, I would fall asleep. Sorry if you went through that.

You're generalizing from some poorly taught class, whereas it's unlikely that a genius would remain in such a class, and also unlikely that the education would not also be supplemented with other forms of teaching.

Terence Tao was a child prodigy the likes of which are rarely seen, and his bio is full of classes/teachings.

[Mezzie]

Eh. It depends on the kid and their circumstances.

I was a child prodigy (I'm a much less impressive adult), and since I was from a rural area with divorced parents without much time for me, I spent plenty of time in 'normal' classes in addition to supplemental classes and educational opportunities.

The difference between me and my (non-prodigy) siblings was that the teachers normally didn't expect me to pay attention/I was allowed to do pretty much whatever I wanted after I finished the assignments. I have to agree with hatsubishi to a degree: It IS boring as hell to be in a classroom setting made for people behind your level, and this is especially likely to happen at early ages.

I don't think it's schools alone that kill the creativity, though. It was interesting going to events/being around other prodigies, because often I was the only kid there whose parents/adults didn't have a career already picked out for them by the time we hit middle school. The expectations of perfection, the sense that you're public property (with great gifts come great responsibility), and the social isolation of child geniuses does more to stunt them than the education system, in my opinion/experience.

[ckastner]

> Eh. It depends on the kid and their circumstances.

Absolutely, hence why I phrased it as "unlikely". The wrong environment will kill anything.

[Mezzie]

It's hard to know whether my experience or Tao's is more representative. There's selection bias going on with regards to people's conception of a typical child prodigy since people are going to be more aware of successful/properly educated prodigies than the others.

[david-gpu]

> Counterexamples to your point: Mozart, guy was copying whole compositions by memory at age 14

Mozart's father, a professional composer and director, had a lot to do with Mozart's early musical development [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_Mozart

[ckastner]

> It's way faster to learn by yourself than from someone teaching you because you can go directly to what you need to understand etc.

That is a pretty weak conjecture, I think. I can think of a ton of issues where the fastest way is almost certainly having the guidance and counsel of a great teacher.

Sure it's possible to teach yourself calculus, relativity theory, or even QED. I find it highly doubtful though that any student of Feynman's, for example, would have learned faster in self-study than from sitting in his class.

[watwut]

> Einstein

Einstein went to school, graduated and all that. It was only really at highest level when he went to work at that patent office.

[efdee]

Putting Adrian Lamo between Mozart and Einstein is ridiculous.