What do you value?

In my Gifted and Talented Class, we have begun a unit on Ethics.  We learned about different perspectives in ethics, such as morals, virtues, outcomes, principles, and care.  Each different perspective can be used and taken into consideration when you are trying to solve an ethical dilemma.  Recently, I found out what my values are. They are:

Emotional well-being, Stability
Education, Intelligence, Wisdom
(Altruism) Compassion, Fairness, Justice
Power, Achievement

Personally, I think they fit me very well.  I was bullied a lot as a kid.  Constantly, other kids would call me a loser.  As it stands, I have low self-esteem.  Something I have always wanted as a kid was to be accepted by more people.  Now, I want to be able to accept myself, and I want to stop thinking of myself as a loser on the inside.  Emotional well-being is something important that I feel I need.  Growing up as a kid, I did not have much to make me feel confident, except for my intelligence.  I feel my intellect is all I have.  No brawn, no love, but brains.  I think education is all I ever really had as a kid, and is what I have now.  I never liked to be bullied; so, I feel that there needs to be more justice in this world.  Personally, I cannot stand unfairness towards anyone.  Lastly, achievement is what allows my own existent.  The kids that would bully me made me feel like I would never amount to anything.  I want to prove them wrong.  I use my intellect to achieve.  The pride I have in my intelligence and work is what keeps me alive.  It gives me reason to be here.  These characteristics do outline my values.

The Trouble with Genuises - Outliers

In my Gifted and Talented class, G+T, we, the students, are reading a fascinating book.  It is Outliers the Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell.  This book discusses how people have achieved success but in a more in depth perspective.  Outliers does not show how success may be achieved, but it shows how it was achieved through people with reasons least expected.  For example, 40% of the players on elite Canadian hockey teams were born in the months January, February, and March.  Those people born in those months could participate in hockey as they turn 10, the minimal age.  Those children would gain practice which, in turn, would act as an advantage over someone who turns 10 in December, someone who would have to wait nearly 12 months to start practicing.  This advantage accumulates over the years, and it is known as accumulative advantage.  This is what allowed the January birthday hockey players to succeed.  This is how Malcolm Gladwell presents how success was achieved, through things normally overlooked.

Recently, my class just finished reading chapters 3 and 4, Trouble with Geniuses Parts 1 and 2.  These two chapters primarily revolved around the importance of IQ.  As it turns out, it really is not all it is thought to be.  Of course IQ has a major impact on you if you had an IQ of 90 when the average is 100.  However, once you reach around 120, the height of your IQ has little meaning.  The intellectual difference between IQ’s of 130 and 140 is not as big as 85 to 95.  Someone with an IQ of 130 has the same chances as someone with an IQ of 180 at winning the Nobel Prize.  This is because of another topic expressed by Gladwell known as entitlement.  The idea of entitlement is that someone feels entitled to ask questions or ask for help.  Children who grew up with entitlement were not afraid to ask for help, and thus gained an important life skill, practical intelligence (a.k.a. common sense, street smarts).  These children used common knowledge to gain information or assistance in something they needed.  Most middle-class families can provide entitlement to their children; however, most lower class families cannot.  Children of lower class families learn to be independent rather than entitled.  Two perfect examples would include Christopher Langan and Lewis Terman’s Termites.  Chris Langan grew up in a lower class family, struggled with life as a child, and has an IQ of 195.  To be terse, he flunked out of college from lacking in practical knowledge and had to work as a bouncer.  Likewise, there was a man named Lewis Terman who gathered children with high IQ’s, and he tracked them for the rest of their lives.  These children were known as Termites.  They were split up into groups A, B, and C once they reached adulthood, and they were ranked according to their success.  The C group, lowest ranking, were filled with people who grew up in poor areas and failed to gain practical knowledge.  The point of this exceedingly long explanation is you cannot make it in this world if you try alone, without asking for help.

Back to Chris Langan, I personally found him successful.  Today, he is married, working on a farm in Missouri, and working on a theory of the universe in his spare time.  When he was interviewed by Gladwell for the book, Chris said that he was content with his life.  As long as you are happy and financially able to support yourself, I say you are successful.  So what if he flunked college, he is happy, and that is what really matters.

On my behalf, I will probably take away a lot from these two past chapters.  I never thought that simply asking for help could do one person so much in life.  I always thought that the ability to be independent was the most important thing.  I guess Gladwell proved me wrong.  From now on, I will remember the importance of entitlement, and I will remember to exercise it when I can.  Furthermore, I have learned you do not need a massively high IQ to get places.  My IQ is definitely higher than 120, but it is no Einstein, 150 (for the record, I know what my own IQ is).  With this knowledge of practical intelligence I have one last thing to say, Nobel Prize, here I come!

Kindergarten Debate

I agree with Wang and Aamodt's theory about the negatives of starting school late.  Gladwell did state that the more mature a child is, the better that child will be.  In addition, that peticular child will be given more time to practice, and an accumulation advantage will occur.  Now, I agree that an accumulation advantage would benefit anyone in athletics, but I disagree that you may gain an accumulation advantage by holding your child back.  If a child were to begin early, that child would be an entire year's worth of studies ahead of someone who started a year late.  Furthermore, a child's brain development can not be put off.  It is at its peak around the age of 4; so, why would a parent purposefully dodge this oppurtunity for their child?  That child just missed the best point in their life to suck up information.  Plus, I know students that have been held back for them to have a strong start in kindergarten.  All of this claimed advantage is utterly worthless by the time that child reaches high school.  Those students that I know dominate the fields of athletics because they are a full year older than everyone else, but they suffer greatly in academics.  Personally, I agree with the idea that holding you child back will only do them harm.

Introductory Blog Post - James

James
Ninth, 9th
My favorite subjects are Mathematics and Science.
Topics I like to learn about include Advanced Algebra, Physics, and Calculus.
I like to read math and science books, play guitar, and enjoy theatre.
I would like to be a chemical engineer, but my dream job would be a physicist.
Math, music, theatre, and friends make me happy.