Special needs
Jan 30, 2017 12:42:53 GMT -5
Post by Wes on Jan 30, 2017 12:42:53 GMT -5
Another column picked up from the paper.
It was another cold winter weekend without much to do or the drive to do it, so for lack of anything more energetic I found myself reading a long but not very good amateur-written novel online. It was tedious and often repetitive, but here and there were some ideas that gave me something to think about.
I don't want to get into the background of the book very much -- it's a little on the hokey side -- but the part that got me to thinking was a secondary story about a group of three kids around the age of ten who are all well into the "precocious genius" category. Their parents are well aware of the kids' capabilities and do what they can to guide and encourage them. The kids are given an assignment to list the birds that appear at the backyard bird feeder, which is a fun thing, not too difficult, and gives them something to research.
However, there is a problem: the neighborhood squirrels also like to hang out at the bird feeder, and they drive off the birds, so the kids decide they need to do something about the squirrel problem. It's obviously impractical to just sit out there and throw stones, and besides, they don't want to hurt the squirrels, just encourage them to go elsewhere or at least stay away from the bird feeders. If you have bird feeders you know what I mean.
Now, these are pretty tech-savvy kids who have some very tech-savvy parents who want to teach and guide the kids to come up with their own answers to questions, and the idea quickly arises to have a computer throw something at the squirrels. It sounds easy since the squirrels have to approach the feeders along the top of a fence, but it takes modified facial recognition software to teach a computer the difference between a squirrel (a target) and a bird (not a target).
Then, what are they going to throw at the squirrels? Being kids the first idea they come up with is nerf balls, but there are range and accuracy problems. The story takes us through several increasingly wild alternatives before they settle on high-pressure water, aimed by a computer correcting for things like range and wind. The water contains a dye so they can tell if the squirrels are getting the message.
One of the things that irritated me about the story was that it didn't get into the final part of that part of this episode very well other than to comment that there were rainbow-colored squirrels running around the back yard.
Pretty obviously these kids learned a heck of a lot, even considering that the story itself was fiction. But if it was the truth, these were some very lucky kids, because they had parents that encouraged them to learn, gave them room to grow, and guidance to do things on their own without doing the job for them.
What would smart kids like these do if they didn't have that kind of guidance? Most likely they'd be sitting bored to tears in some fourth or fifth grade classroom somewhere, reading books of that level when they'd really rather be reading -- and are capable of reading -- software documentation or at the minimum much more advanced books. They'd be expected to be playing with nerf balls, My Little Ponies and Barbie dolls rather than autonomous squirrel-targeting software.
And the really sad part is that by the time these kids would get old enough to do the kind of things they're capable of doing, a lot of the enthusiasm and spirit to do is would be washed away by classroom boredom, peer pressure, and indifference.
Bright kids are just as much special needs children as are kids who have no hope of keeping up with their peers. The heck of it is that the bright kids in the real world usually just don't get the attention they need to develop their talents, either from their parents or from the schools; they're being held down to the level of their peers in more ways than one. In the long run the whole society will pay the price for being indifferent to genius.
It was another cold winter weekend without much to do or the drive to do it, so for lack of anything more energetic I found myself reading a long but not very good amateur-written novel online. It was tedious and often repetitive, but here and there were some ideas that gave me something to think about.
I don't want to get into the background of the book very much -- it's a little on the hokey side -- but the part that got me to thinking was a secondary story about a group of three kids around the age of ten who are all well into the "precocious genius" category. Their parents are well aware of the kids' capabilities and do what they can to guide and encourage them. The kids are given an assignment to list the birds that appear at the backyard bird feeder, which is a fun thing, not too difficult, and gives them something to research.
However, there is a problem: the neighborhood squirrels also like to hang out at the bird feeder, and they drive off the birds, so the kids decide they need to do something about the squirrel problem. It's obviously impractical to just sit out there and throw stones, and besides, they don't want to hurt the squirrels, just encourage them to go elsewhere or at least stay away from the bird feeders. If you have bird feeders you know what I mean.
Now, these are pretty tech-savvy kids who have some very tech-savvy parents who want to teach and guide the kids to come up with their own answers to questions, and the idea quickly arises to have a computer throw something at the squirrels. It sounds easy since the squirrels have to approach the feeders along the top of a fence, but it takes modified facial recognition software to teach a computer the difference between a squirrel (a target) and a bird (not a target).
Then, what are they going to throw at the squirrels? Being kids the first idea they come up with is nerf balls, but there are range and accuracy problems. The story takes us through several increasingly wild alternatives before they settle on high-pressure water, aimed by a computer correcting for things like range and wind. The water contains a dye so they can tell if the squirrels are getting the message.
One of the things that irritated me about the story was that it didn't get into the final part of that part of this episode very well other than to comment that there were rainbow-colored squirrels running around the back yard.
Pretty obviously these kids learned a heck of a lot, even considering that the story itself was fiction. But if it was the truth, these were some very lucky kids, because they had parents that encouraged them to learn, gave them room to grow, and guidance to do things on their own without doing the job for them.
What would smart kids like these do if they didn't have that kind of guidance? Most likely they'd be sitting bored to tears in some fourth or fifth grade classroom somewhere, reading books of that level when they'd really rather be reading -- and are capable of reading -- software documentation or at the minimum much more advanced books. They'd be expected to be playing with nerf balls, My Little Ponies and Barbie dolls rather than autonomous squirrel-targeting software.
And the really sad part is that by the time these kids would get old enough to do the kind of things they're capable of doing, a lot of the enthusiasm and spirit to do is would be washed away by classroom boredom, peer pressure, and indifference.
Bright kids are just as much special needs children as are kids who have no hope of keeping up with their peers. The heck of it is that the bright kids in the real world usually just don't get the attention they need to develop their talents, either from their parents or from the schools; they're being held down to the level of their peers in more ways than one. In the long run the whole society will pay the price for being indifferent to genius.
