Article: "An A+ student regrets his grades"

[Patricius Maximus]

Originally Posted by Adhom

We already see what people do in their free time. I can tell you it's usually nothing academic.

Possibly because in the case of those being educated their schooling already takes up 6-8 hours a day; perhaps they don't do anything academic because they are already receiving as much or more academics than they want or need? Hypothetically you could require some subset of people with a proclivity and a need for swimming (analogous to children and education) to swim 2 hours a day during the summer; chances are very few would use their remaining free time for swimming, but that wouldn't prove people wouldn't swim anyway if they weren't required to.

A truly smart person would have found the ways to fulfill his intellectual curiosity while fulfilling school requirements. Noone ever said school should teach you everything you need to know. But it's definitely a good start by introducing you to a wide range to topics that may be helpful in succeeding in life.

You invite a whole new set of questions. If truly smart people will learn, fulfill their intellectual curiosity, and be successfully educated on their own, what is the point of sending them to these schools? Truly smart people generally find school boring, uninteresting, or a burdensome rehash of things they already know, and this takes up most of their waking hours and leaves them more tired in those hours that remain. Wouldn't learning new things be a better use of their time than sitting in a room and rehashing that which was already learned?

Genius, creativity, and innovation is what advances humanity, and these students are future genius. The system supposedly is interested in advancing students' knowledge and capabilities as far as possible, so it should accommodate or even cater to the needs of genius. It should place a higher value on meeting the required level of knowledge than attendance, and waive attendance requirements if one tests as knowing the required material, or if nothing else waive attendance for the best performers, because if they already know it they will not benefit from attending, which will only detract from their own efforts. None of this detracts from the mission of universal education, yet the system does none of this; generally, and particularly in the lower grades, it places a higher value on attending the required number of days than maximizing one's knowledge or even knowing the material, and if one does not attend the required days one is not passed, does not graduate, and may even be prosecuted for truancy. The primary goal and expectation of the system seems to be maximizing attendance, which is not coincidentally in the best interest of the system itself, which is run to serve itself, not students.

[Sandpointian]

I found his article self-serving, sprinkled with numerous references to his success. If his feelings were genuine, he would relinquish the ill-won position and privileges he won through being an uncreative and shallow professional student. But he has not. Rather, in this piece, he manages to market himself and his accolades well, while attempting to come off as Albert Schweitzer.

It is a typical post we now see in media blogs like the Huffington Post that trade in the righteousness of the privileged left.

Yawn.

S.