Take almost any “academically gifted” student and start looking into their biography, and you’ll find a shitload of preparation. As a general rule (to which, sure, you can find rare exceptions if you really hunt) the more “gifted” the student, the more hands-on help and attention from experts they had. Even for those without significant expert help, the “gifted” students are the ones who spent a ton more time thinking about the subject than their peers for whatever reason. The international math olympiad winners I took courses with in college were incredibly well prepared, and while clever and hard working, are by no means superhuman.
Preparation is not the only relevant factor that goes into what gets called academic “giftedness”, but it’s the vast majority of it.
It’s similar for other fields. Nobody can compete in sport at a world-class level nowadays without significant amounts of excellent coaching. Etc.
For instance, the reason my kid learned to read before he was 4 and most of his peers did not is because we spent many hundreds of hours reading books together aloud, and maybe 50 hours over 6 months on direct instruction in reading per se. Not because he’s biologically any different than his peers. The reason he’s really good at making stuff out of Legos is that he really likes it and spends hours per week doing it, not because he’s some kind of Lego prodigy. He’s not particularly skilled at drawing or dancing or playing the guitar or sewing, because those are things he did not practice very much yet.
Passion for a subject can indeed propel you far ahead of your peers in that subject, but intelligence is what allows passion to continue and grow. No matter how much time you spend preparing the dumb kids they will struggle with difficult(or often easy) subjects and get frustrated - because of this passion will never develop, and it’s entirely reasonable to not become passionate about something you’re not capable of doing well at. I was a very smart kid, although very far from a genius. My parents were young earth creationists who knew nothing about science or computers and shielded me from science because of themes like evolution. The town I grew up in was in poor rural TX, so my teachers barely knew more. I certainly wasn’t well prepared to understand science, but yet I developed a passion for that and computer programming and became a voracious reader of everything I could find on it in the school library, acquiring knowledge far beyond my grade level. The less smart but wealthier and better prepared kids I knew growing up never caught up to me.
> developed a passion for that and computer programming and became a voracious reader of everything I could find on it in the school library, acquiring knowledge far beyond my grade level
This is a huge amount of “preparation”, as far as I am concerned. It’s not as effective as working with an expert tutor/coach, but it still adds up over time. (And good job preparing yourself without much help!)
The wealthier kids in your town who spent their time on whatever else were less well prepared than you (academically; they might have been better prepared for schmoozing or playing sports or whatever).
But if you had wanted to be a child prodigy or world-class competitor in something as a teenager, you likely would have needed significant expert help.
> No matter how much time you spend preparing the dumb kids they will struggle
If the kids are dramatically struggling, they are likely significantly under-prepared for the work they are expected to do. But it is not true that no matter how much time you spend you cannot make a difference. Kids testing in the 10th percentile can if tutored 1:1 for a year or two surpass the 80th percentile kids taught in an ordinary class. Regular 1:1 tutoring is extraordinarily much better than other methods of instruction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_2_sigma_problem
This is a fundamental aspect of human life that most people do not understand. My kids all walked long before their first birthdays. Why? For the same reason my lower back hurt so much before they turned 1. I held their hands and we practiced walking for hours upon hours.
Mozart wrote his first symphony at 8. He was also playing piano for courteseans at age 3. All at the behest of his father, to support the family. If you, you personally, played piano professionally for the next ~5 years, do you think you could write a quick and dirty symphony? Of course you could.
Anyways I find this basic truth to be incredibly liberating and hopeful. There really aren't any superhumans, just people who've spent more time playing guitar, learning about + coding , racing motorcycles etc. (there are but statistically irrelevant to me)
> For the same reason my lower back hurt so much before they turned 1. I held their hands and we practiced walking for hours upon hours.
I’m sorry to call you out on this but that is very much not a good thing to do. The mind is much more plastic so one can probably start teaching very advanced subject to their child soon, but the body does need plenty of support strength before it will be able to hold itself up, and holding hands is shown to not be too good for the child. Nonetheless, not ideal is far from harmful, so don’t worry, I’m sure they are wonderful children.
For any parents who want to help their small kids’ balance, let me recommend holding them by the hips for a few minutes at a time starting from about 5 months, instead of holding them by the armpits.
If you hold them from the top they will be passively stable, but if you hold them from the bottom they will need to actively stabilize themselves using their back/abdominal muscles. If you start with just 1 joint they need to stabilize, they figure it out reasonably quickly. (Babies start out surprisingly strong; what they completely lack is coordination.)
After about a month of that, you can carry them around on your shoulders and they will be able to hold up their torso and stay upright. This is great core strength/balance training, while also being a lot more convenient than any other way of transporting a baby, for a moderately healthy parent.
Preparation is not the only relevant factor that goes into what gets called academic “giftedness”, but it’s the vast majority of it.
It’s similar for other fields. Nobody can compete in sport at a world-class level nowadays without significant amounts of excellent coaching. Etc.
For instance, the reason my kid learned to read before he was 4 and most of his peers did not is because we spent many hundreds of hours reading books together aloud, and maybe 50 hours over 6 months on direct instruction in reading per se. Not because he’s biologically any different than his peers. The reason he’s really good at making stuff out of Legos is that he really likes it and spends hours per week doing it, not because he’s some kind of Lego prodigy. He’s not particularly skilled at drawing or dancing or playing the guitar or sewing, because those are things he did not practice very much yet.