school

[davee99]

Originally Posted by drunken monkey

being naturally gifted doesn't mean you don't have to work.

The whole idea of being educated means that you have to work! Kind of conflicting views.

I figured it out!

[drunken monkey]

Originally Posted by davee99

The whole idea of being educated means that you have to work! Kind of conflicting views.

how is it conflicting?

[davee99]

The idea of learning means that your are taking something that you don't know about and progressing along till you learn it. This would be called work, right? So if you did nothing and still thought you were learning are you doing work? No, by the definition that we call learning you are not doing work, thus you cannot learn with out doing work. There is the conflict between learning and not working. The conflict being how can you learn with out working...you cannot so people that say that they never worked hard learning is because they just didn't think it was hard.

Thanks

[2.2 Straight six]

that was deep.

no, not really.

ability and education are different. people with natural ability don't have to work as much to learn something that falls into their natural ability. someone's who's not gifted in that area will have to work harder to be on par.

[beef_bourito]

I would say that i am naturally gifted. now, would you call sleeping in class while the professor writes on the board work? i sure as hell wouldn't, and i did better than most of the class did, without what i would consider work. by your definition i did not learn any of the material because i didn't do any work, and yet i did better than some people who "worked" and "learned" the material.

[replicant_008]

Here's a few thoughts... As someone who is naturally gifted, has gone thru the education system and is reasonably successful...

• Go have a look at www.vark-learn.com this discusses learning styles but broadly there are 4 - Visual (you understand thing visually and you use diagrams, models and outlines to help you learn), Auditory (you listen to learn), Read/Write (reading and then writing notes) and Kinesthetic (you learn by feeling, touch and doing something for yourself). I only wish earlier in the education system that I understood this as it would have made learning easier. Also explains why some intelligent folk don't do well at school (which is based around auditory and read/write) but excel when they do something practical or learn on the job... how high school dropouts become enterpreneurs..
• I used to be highly competitive at sports and academics. What I learnt after a while is that the very elite folk aren't interested in beating others they are more interested in bettering their own bests (eg personal bests for swimmers) and set themselves high standards.
• Work ethic is not normal neither is common sense as common as it supposed to be. Work ethic is usually taught and gifted folk often have really crap work ethic as things are easy at high school. I worked several jobs to put myself thru University (driving trucks, waiting tables, cooking, doing plumbing inspections, working in retail and customer services) to afford to eat and pay for my tuition. I got through on a B average doing a triple major Bachelor degree in Commerce in three years (I ended up doing one and one half times more final year papers than necessary because I wanted a challenge)
• Gifted folk have to work hard in the real world too - my main problem in my first years working was that I was gifted and I was a disruptive little @#$% who wouldn't be told and did things faster, smarter and more innovatively than anyone else. Which was good fun but in a world of business politics this got you offside with supervisors who got showed up for having crap technical knowledge and were too lazy to understand enough about what they did so they merely copied the predecessor. It also got me transferred overseas because the firm didn't want to let me go but couldn't cope with the whining from supervisors about this smart!@#$ graduate who kept being sent out to sort out projects that were late, overbudget or going nowhere.
• When I finally did get myself up the ladder, I also had to learn that when it comes to aptitude tests I score in the top 10% of executives tested for verbal comprehension and numerical reasoning. This presents some challenges - firstly it's an uncommon combination you are usually one or t'other and it also means that when given a pile of data I can comprehend it faster and process it than most folk. So I have to be careful that when I get data that I bite my tongue and then look like I have spent time reading it before I respond... as some folk perceive I'm working off the cuff and can't understand why I want to make immediate decisions without carefully considering the information (which I can't have if I've only had 5 minutes...)
• Believe me, work now - play later... if you work hard, get ahead in the career, you can get to the point where you can actually don't have to slog your guts to have a decent quality of life. It also means all that work you put in now is an investment in your future. I don't write spreadsheets, model variables, write specifications and technical bulletins or manipulate OLAP data mining tools anymore - I have staff that do this... I spend most of my time in meetings coordinating projects, talking to people, developing strategy and tactics... and managing which is this weird alchemy of coaching, cajoling, pace setting and leadership...

[drunken monkey]

actually I meant it is a very basic way.
you can teach any old fool that v=ir

doesn't mean that they have the aptitude to use it in all of its permutations or relate it to other basic formulae.
that's the work you have to do besides learning that v=ir

i can in a week, teach you how to perform forms in a particular school/type of kung fu.
that doesn't mean that you can fight.you have to work turning that knowledge into something more.

[Steel]

Would you guys agree with me if i said that european kids primary schooling is much better and/or tougher than the public schooling in the U.S., therefore preparing them much more for college?

The fact that the U.S. has many of the best colleges in the world, while at the same time has arguably the worst public primary schooling system in the world is a recipe for problems for a lot of students.

I guess in the end you can't really blame anyone else but yourself, but it does leave you with a feeling of being ripped off in high school. AH well.