I have my B.S. in engineering. Going to school there was a guy in my class that had one of the most brilliant engineering minds I've ever encountered. Group projects, he always came up with brilliantly simple solutions. Class work, he always had answers to professor asked questions. Homework was always a breeze for him. Buuuut.... give him an exam and he just locked up. Failed consistently. Flunked out of university and got a job stocking shelves at a department store. Such a waste. All because he couldn't write exams.
Omg! I'm sorry to hear this. I'm in the Engineering field and school exams, especially Calc 3, were the worst. I made it through, but my grades were either an A or C. Even now, I have to sit and write everything down for work certifications and exams to do well. It's a nightmare and it stresses me out so much until it's all over.
Even though I aced my final College exams (B.S. @ computer science), my returning nightmares are that somehow I have to go and do my exams again. This is a returning nightmare for both my secondary grammar graduation and my college diploma. And that was 25+ years ago !!!! Teachers have been shocking us for years about the final exams for years and years. I even failed my first driving exam because I was just terrified by the "exam" nature of driving, even though I had zero issues driving the exact same route with the instructor a 100 times. Once it was called "THE EXAM" I started sweating, doing stupid things, heart rate in the sky, just absolutely terrified and everything "locked up".
school is a prison like daycare for kids, and school work is a form of unpaid child labour. everyone is against child labour, except the type they dont realize is child labour cause its normalized. and the most obvious problem is that most of the stuff learned in school is both boring and useless to learn and doesnt help the kids later in life
24:00 Einstein did not do poorly I'm school. That's an urban myth. That he didn't challenge it is a part of why I don't think he is the great meta-thinker he is made out to be. He does simultaneously, too.
When I was a young boy I used to get very high marks in all my classes. I started to think maybe I was gifted. I got tested and to my surprise I was average, in everything, except I scored a bit above average in reading comprehension skills. I believe why my marks were so high was because of my ability to sit still and focus in class. I enjoyed listening to my teachers talk and could listen all day no problem. The teachers would say to other boys why can’t you sit still like me…..I think that was my real skill…sitting still….but if most boys are not like me…the teaching system is wrong. It’s not the little boys.
Reading comprehension and reading speed can carry good marks by themselves. I breezed through school and uni with a B+ average with minimum effort while my SLIGHTLY slower sister struggled to make B+
You are right , the school and how things operate in the classrooms are not fair to boys!! I was like you except I had a natural talent for reading and English!! Plus the ability to have my homework done before school ended !! I go back to the 80s at a time when there were more male teachers !! The classrooms back then were more tolerable to boys !!
Sadly you are 100% on base, I was a child that had a lot of energy my test scores were off the chart and my IQ is considered way above average. I graduated with a c average from a private school and went on to take a roughneck job because I didn't like sitting still and listening to lectures. Play if it makes you feel better most people with genius IQs actually never go on to do anything considered genius worthy, a vast swath of them go on to do careers that involve interacting with the public or things that they can do on their own time frame and their own scale.
It's unlikely you are average, as the average person can not write a coherent sentence, let alone think about things and make a reasonable point. Don't look down on yourself. That's one of the most common flaw of people who could be much more than what they are.
I have an A student and a C student in high school. I find myself worrying about my A student more. She's bought into the surrogacy of success of academics, while the other kid is more in tune with his own interests and the real world.
"A" students excel in structured environments and follow established rules, "C" students may struggle within the confines of traditional academics but often develop skills such as problem-solving, resilience, and innovation. These traits can lead to greater success in real-world situations, where adaptability and unconventional thinking are highly valued. Success is not solely determined by academic performance but by the ability to navigate challenges and think outside the box.
This is such nonsense. You don't have to close off your creativity to make grades. Once you get a clear picture of what is going on, earning As is easy. With the rest of your time, you move on to other things. You come to realize that your projects matter more than any teacher's, AND you know which teachers to avoid. That's good training, as everyone will have to answer to someone at least some of the time. Figure it out in school, where the stakes are lower.
this is very hypothetical and most often bullshit. ppl just want to make themselves feel better after being shitty students and say stuff like this. the valedictorian is much more likely to have a successful and high earning life than the C student. and btw, eric went to harvard and penn, and absolutely crushed it as a student.
@@l.w.paradis2108 Doesn't sound like nonsense to me. Most "A" Students are only good at working the school system, go on to get college degrees thanks to their compliance and obedience to authority. But within the group of "C" students, there are more intelligent kids, who see beyond the school system and grading system and do not even care, go on to do more "out of the box" things later than the 'teachers pet' "A" student. Good grades, advanced degrees = obedient little rule follower. no creativity.
I worked for an engineer in my first engineering job who had a low gpa in college. My gpa was average. We hired several high-gpa engineers from good schools, hoping they'd be even better than us. After going through several of these who were almost useless, he joked that we needed a max gpa requirement of 3.0.
As someone who grew up with serious learning issues, I remember educators having these exact same conversations with me growing up. Now I'm a PhD student in Math and Computer Science at one of the top schools for these subjects in the world. What Eric talks about really touches home with me; having Dyslexia, Dysgraphia, not being able to read my own handwriting, doing separate projects in school, and having trouble following directions. I was told that maybe college wasn't for me; I laugh now as old teachers reach out to me to come visit class; I do, but in the back of my mind I never forgot how they treated me as a student and made me feel.
Then why visit them? Are you doing it for the kids? Then let them no, know matter how much of an obstacle your teacher is, you can succeed past their interference. "You can succeed in spite of your teacher"
@@Daybyday439 maybe you should learn to be as understanding as you would like other people to be. They were teachers. They weren't trained to deal with your issues. Where were your parents in all of this? Your doctors?
I worked at a school for 15 years. I am the mother of two boys. The school system is not built for boys. Private boy schools are more built for boys than public schools. There’s a great book called the “Minds ofBoys.” I needed to understand why my boys hated school. Didn’t seem to be bullied. They they were not bullies. They were well rounded happy guys but literally hated school. If you put a tiger in a cage for 5.5 hours a day and expected to be happy insane you’re kidding yourself. That’s what we do to these kids. we forced children to sit in a desk for hours if that’s not mental and physical abuse I don’t know what is… I bought into the “system” that I traditionally grew up with. And it’s wrong it’s wrong on a fundamental level. Our school systems are teaching our children not to think, that there’s only one answer that the world is black-and-white, indoctrinated content, so many bad things. The good no longer out weighs the bad in our school.
I am 24 year old men and I deeply resonated with the fact that your sons hated school. I was shamed and judged as being "stupid" just because I didnt give a sh*t about the school marks. At age 15 I was accepted to the animation oriented art high school, where I was basically doing what I loved and I no longer felt like a tiger in a cage. Its so liberating when you have the freedom to express your energy in a specific field. Me are literally designed to build, conquer and expand - so of course they can't sit in a chair with all the life energy in them! Or, we ca completely ingore this life force of men and shame them for having "ADHD" or some kind of sh*t like that. Thank you for comment, I am very happy, that I wasn't the only one who couldn't stand school.
@@eyylmao1032 so great to hear this. I homeschool with 10 children ( 4 boys) and we pretty much follow each of their own interests❤ this confirms I am doing the right thing
It depends on how things are taught. I went to public schools that expected me to not only gain a great deal of knowledge, but they also got us to consider why it should be known, to wrestle with and build meaning. I do not blame the local public school system much at all. A great deal of blame should fall on the interfering corporatists, NGOs, and politicians wanting to control and steer the education of children to their own ends (including NCLB, Race to the Top, Common Core, etc.). They very clearly want people educated for the 4th Industrial Revolution rather than to be free, self-governing people.
It absolutely was built for boys. It was designed to crush the wills of Prussian soldiers to be obedient slaves and was adapted to make obedient mindless factory workers. Now teachers' unions and the NEA prevents us from making any progress towards improving the system.
I'm not crying. you're crying! I was special Ed all the way till high-school. I now have a masters degree in a sci/engineering field from a top rated school in my field. This was from a kid that was told, "College isn't for you, you should look at the trades". If I didn't have 2 parents and a hand full of REAL teachers, that helped me find the techniques that worked for me i might have ended up with a much more simple life.
As I wouldn't trade my trama for any money, it made me stronger. My fiancé came from the other side of the education system, always being rewarded for how smart and successful she would be, told she was going to Harvard... things didn't work out that way and she has a way harder time accepting failure and starting again. What they say is true 'fail young and often'
The fact that the masses consider the open free market the best way to create prosperity and then sentence the entirety of their kids childhood to the total centralized homogeneity that is school is a testament to how little the average person actually thinks.
The "masses" consider no such thing. They revert to the slogans set out for them, as do most people most of the time. And do so due to desperation, mostly.
@@l.w.paradis2108Yes. The masses really do not have faith in free markets. They will fall for free lunch policies over and over again. The point has some validity, but it’s based on competition. Even academics believe in the virtue of competition just so long as teaching careers in K-12 are not dependent on it. Then, they think standards and regulations will work just fine.
@@l.w.paradis2108 Fair point, but look at competition to get into schools, bell curves, and to get tenure in the first place. I’m willing to accept the ostensible reasons for tenured professors. I’m not willing to accept it has any place in K thru 12.
I am one of those dyslexic people that somehow succeeded in life. Could not be more grateful to Eric for addressing the subject and to Tom for giving his platform to bring it to more people.
I’m a C student that now employs people. I was always made to feel like I was a nobody that would help no one. Most of my employees have been with me for over 5 years now, and we are not in the labor field.
@@GIGADEV690 I still ended up getting a BS in Finance, if that’s relevant. But I own 2 businesses. My most successful is a real estate marketing company that does everything from photos to Unreal Engine renders of architectural plans. We do a lot of work with track homes and custom home builders. So a steady stream of small houses with a sprinkle of high end Luxury homes. Best year we did $1.1M, that was right before Covid.
@@GIGADEV690 I did go on to complete a BS in Finance. I did insurance for a little while, but really nothing related to my degree. Was relocated by my job to CO and that’s when I got laid off. After that I took a hobby of photography and turned it into a Real Estate Marketing company. We now do just slightly over $1M a year Net. I think this year we are on track to do a little less though.
Most people are average. Most stuff should be able to be run by competent average people. Good work ethic and character are something anyone can develop. Being born with a high IQ is a gift. Even organizational skills can be learned.
Dropped out of school in the 11th grade. Moved to the Cayman Islands. Built nearly a dozen businesses and became the 4th largest employer of Caymanians. Obviously packaged education was a hindrance not an asset. Thankfully I learned to think for myself and dropped out.
Bravo! As a society, we (most people) still equate intelligence with the amount of credentials, CERTs and money people have. Such things are, at best, good correlations of high degrees of intelligence. Intelligence is multifaceted: EQ, creativity, Theory of Mind, etc. No one has a monopoly on Intelligence but certain institutions attract highly intelligent types (brilliant business strategy ). So congrats MIT, Stanford, Some highly intelligent people aren’t interested in formal modes of education, at least not in adolescence. At higher levels of intelligence, we often encounter neurodivergence. Many of us are getting better at harmonizing the various aspects of intelligence that have been defined. IQ is a crude yet useful metric of a couple feats of intelligence.
Dropping out is sometimes the right choice. Diplomas and degrees don’t matter. In most cases they are just a marker of a person’s ability to comply with the rules of the game. And the game does not care if you learn or retain anything, just that you can play the game. But what if the game is flawed? The rebels and outsiders already figured that out.
Wow congrats! Thanks for sharing, what kind of businesses and how did you start building your own business? The first step seems the hardest in transitioning from an employee to business owner
I grew up under a third-world dictatorship and struggled a lot with the "Prussian" schooling system because it was all about memorization. But after school, I'd go home to devour my personal library. I was able to graduate from medical school on time, thankfully, but I always struggled with the way information was presented in modern texts and questions, as it was all rote memorization. Yet, I still continued with my personal studies, covering everything from classical grammar and logic to modern finance and computer science. I was able to migrate out of my country, leverage all the knowledge and skills I acquired on my own, and today I lead diligence for venture capital investments in one of the top-ranked Ivy League academic medical centers in the world.
I'm 51 years old and still struggling with the violence of my childhood. I couldn't learn as the others in my group so starting at 8 years old i was beaten up after school, juged and rejected by my family because they had this performance mindset about life. People that can't do a others are only loosers. I have been very neglected by my parents and never had a chance to heal. I'm broken, got a work accident that left me unable to force. Feeling lost here. You are so right about the sistema. No one stopped to check on me what's wrong. Thanks for your testimony 🎉❤
Sounds like childhood PTSD... I don't know if you heard of crappychildhood fairy but her videos and the info she shared has helped me...... Although not before a substantial amount of inner pain which I know someone like you might not be able to take on all at once..... Sometimes clarity is painful....
@@lovelessjams2720 Thanks you so much. I'll check this out. Yes a lot of ptsd to deal with. Working hard to not loose my faith in all this. Happened before but I'm holding on. Thanks 🙏🙂
@@lovelessjams2720she’s good BUT SHE IS A SEXIST. She’s better for women in general and self dismissing men. “Adult childhood of dysfunctional families” is a good in person group, present in many locations. You could look up CPST from childhood. My parents had 9 marriages and I was equally abused by mom and dad. Shootings and stabbing between my parents, is only my starting position… from there it got worse. I’m 49 and battle issues all the time. Keep digging in sir. You are connected to many of us 💪😊
@@karamlevi Wow!! That's why my childhood is fascinating to me. Both my parents were Christians. There was no adultery...parents didn't fight...both were stay at home (farmers)...no drinking....no drugs. However, it was crazy dysfunctional. I was completely abandoned....severely ridiculed by my peers for 9 years...heartbroken when my sister left home (my only friend). I'm 48 and have never had a friend. I'm shut down in social situations. I've always viewed myself as a 2nd class citizen (even though I'm not). I read about other people's childhoods (sexual abuse, physical abuse, etc) and it SEEMS like they had it 10x worse. Yet, they lead functional lives? Married, children, 6 figure career.
As a parent of 4, 2 girls, 2 boys. All learned differently. Their GPAs in high school were all passing, but the range was from 2.5 to 4.0. The one with 4.0 went on to earn a PHD. The one with 2.5 hated classes other than math and science. The distinguishing difference was that the latter learned independently after getting a BA. His achievement was getting a C.F.A. designation through self-study. There is a great need to focus students on what interest them.
I was socially promoted through school got nothing out of it except a drivers license & ptsd. Public schools are for adults not kids. Took me decades to figure out I have a learning disability & vision problems the school never cared, neither did anyone at home. I wish someone would help me stop paying property taxes to a system that causes so many problems for so many innocent children.
My son has a severe learning disability language based…he has started learning the violin via the Suzuki method and is doing amazing…it brings me so much joy that he is learning something without struggling !!!! Thank you for saying all of this!!!
Wow!!! I would never have guessed that he ever had problems in school. I've listened to Eric Weinstein a number of times in different interviews and he's definitely one of the smartest persons I've ever had the pleasure of listening to.
As an ex-military guy, as the saying goes " you ain't cheatin you ain't winning". Take the short cuts that work and try to miss the pit-falls as much as possible.
I recall Jocko willink saying something along the lines of this. during bud/s after some log lifting workout they were told to run around a pole a mile away and back, first team back gets to skip the next exercise. team 1 left the log, team 2 brought the log. The seal instructor congratulated team 1 on being first. Team 2 looked upset and the drill instructor looks at them and says “where did I say you have to bring the log”. The skill was to learn how to “cheat”.
Eric is sooo brilliant I have an engineer, just graduated from university, and an empathetic child(he told us he was empathetic in 8th grade with comment that he did not want to be pathetic) Both had such different learning needs. My empathetic is in 4th year at university in a stem economics program. He was the most work as a parent in trying to help him understand himself (both of us are engineers) and getting him through the broken educational system that wanted to fail him which would have changed his perception of himself and having confidence in himself. My husband and my first goal was to build skill and confidence in the heart of our children starting at age 4.
@@l.w.paradis2108 Just from life experience, meeting people, one can observe how those with college degrees lack creativity and fully embrace the indoctrination they had received in school. The better the grads, the higher the degree, the more deeply indoctrinated they are. Those who fall outside this pattern, are extremely rare. You must not have much experience in life.
@@peterbelanger4094 Oh really? I went to major universities in two countries, in two languages, with the native-born in each case, and have a JD. I'm trilingual now, have a knowledge of two other languages, and have no memory of being monolingual. There's no way American anything could indoctrinate me. (For example, I didn't fall for this video.) The US bombed where my parents were from, thus immunizing me from their nonsense. I suspect you don't know too many people like me. (Or you resent the Chinese kids or something.) 😂 You stepped in it this time. Maybe what you said is true of the boring crowd you know. Maybe you should try branching out. But then again, we might not want you to.
BUILT TO PRODUCE MEDIOCRITY , we moved and the new school was way behind where I left , so they stuck me in the back corner by myself until the rest could catch up … THAT WAS FUCKED UP in 7th grade
Western Schools dont teach anyone. Mass memorization of pre-approved lessons cant possibly teach you anything. In 3 days you forgot about it. Only 1 hour per subject doesnt let you so deep into any topic or discussion. Especially with a class over 20 people. Learning is a skill, just like teaching is a skill. Its a process. We need to teach thinking methods, especially applied critical thinking. No one thinks for themselves anymore, or checks their ideas against a critical thinker to test their ideas out. Collages "update" all the rules guideline for schools and workplaces. They are writing our reality, and people are not thinking outside of it. School teaches you all of the skills to be a low wage worker at a corporation. Thats it. Collage teaches you the data science they wrote is what everone follows so you will follow as well, and help create future materials and ideas.
I learned how to ACE tests after taking a class on learning how to learn. Prior I was a D/F/C student. What’s this prove??? That most of teachers are abusing the different students via extreme neglect of care.
There was this teacher called Warren that Elon musk retweeted his video, who was teaching kids critical thinking and thinking for their themselves. The school he was working for fired him because he wasn't supposed to be teaching critical thinking cause they don't want people who can actually think. It's by design.
I remember in 5th grade when I took one of the Iowa tests. When I got to certain aspects of that test I would come to a part where it said if you're in fifth grade stop here and I would read the next question and I know the answer so I continued on and then it would say when you're in 7th grade you stop here and I finished the entire test. All the way up to the 11th grade level. When I got my scores back aspects of that test I had scored Masters Degree college level. When the teacher was talking about how good some of us did on the test I said Thank you and she said well not yours they must have miss scored your tests. By the time I got into junior high school, they had had my older brothers and sister in that school and they were always skipping school and smoking so of course they wanted to treat me different and I refuse to let them. So I must have had an attitude. Because in fifth grade I was always helping them with their math and science homework. By the time I got out of Junior High. They had put a really big chip on my shoulder.
I was one of those 'smoking and skipping' kids back in the day. I also got really good scores on all those standardized tests too. Spent a lot of time coaching and tutoring others kids as well, kids of all social cliques. By 11th grade physics class, the other students were asking me for help more often than the teacher. Graduated with a 2.68 GPA. Dropped out of college 3 times in the first semester, I could never deal with the work load.
Variation of the species breeds a stronger species than having a small number of successful variations. If the environment changes, the varied species survives, the specialist species with few variations does not.
Single best discussion on the education system can totally relate to this. Failed by the education system second year in school failed to diagnose and issue which would go on to effect the rest of my life only to get officially diagnosed 2 years ago, what if ......
Man. That was me, but in a different way. Mom taught me to read and write when I was a toddler, so I was always well above my class in that way. But school was too boring to hold my attention. At home, I was busy reading books 4 grades above my level, exploring the woods, experimenting with my Radio Shack electronics kits, etc. During class, I would daydream and get called out for it. I aced my tests but got low grades due to failing to turn in homework. Somehow, I managed to get a Bachelor of Music degree but ended up working as an audio tech for 35 years, even though I can orchestrate in my head. Weird world.
deja vu. i also did well on tests but got crappy grades bcuz of homework/busywork. every report card had an A and an F. school was just too boring to pay attention to; i spent a lot of class time drawing in my notebook or reading books i found on my own at the library. the way i felt, it was the teachers job to hold my attention; if they couldnt, then im going to go on my own journey for knowledge. got into a fair amount of trouble for that.
Eric & I are on the same page. I love learning but hate school with a passion for all the reasons he described. I recall in high school being a sent to the deans office for sleeping in Algebra 2. The dean immediately sent me back to class after I told him I had a 110 (perfect score on all tests + bonus work). I was also a freshman & everyone else was a sophomore or junior. At another point I had coded an extensive website for a history class project that was light years beyond what anyone else (poster boards with pictures) had done… and this was circa 2000/2001 (most people still didn’t have internet). The fact that I wasn’t put in a special program or early college is a complete failure of the system and my parents. It’s probably more the system since I’ve endured similar situations in the workplace. Meaning, my bosses always poorly allocated my abilities - the equivalent of someone tightening screws on a laptop when they’re capable of writing operating system code. How much talent & potential has wastefully fallen through the cracks in our society?
I graduated 4 years ago with a degree in mechanical engineering. There were three groups of kids; one that did excellent and barely had to study, would always give you the " oh you don't understand it ?" One were mediocre, they had to study much more, and were something like B and C students, many had to worm full time jobs while taking 3 or 4 classes, mostly server or bartending jobs ( which I think this job has alot to do with their success, they know how to hustle) One group who just didn't care Fours years after graduation the mediocre, but hard working and persistent students are in upper management now, many of the gifted kids are struggling, many of them don't even work in engineering or gave up as soon as it didn't come easy Cause I'll tell ya there is a huge difference between a theoretical design, and actually building something. This couldn't be more true
Hearing about Eric’s learning challenges years ago helped me not feel so alone. With an IQ of 153 yet barely graduating HS, I went on to get an MS from BU. I figured out how to “deal with it” but always felt defective until I heard Eric describe the weird confluence of things that challenged me my entire life.
Eric and Tom, thanks for this discussion. It was very illuminating. What Eric is getting at, is that many teachers are not talented enough to teach the gifted. They cannot relate to the student that is smart but not academically motivated, because they don't see the point in the fluff being presented, let alone how it connects to everything in their world. Moreover, many of the teacher have no idea that they are part of a system that is sugar coated because it was not meant to make people succeed and be thinkers but automatons.
This hits close to home for me in so many ways as someone who was given up on and struggled through the schooling system with what I now know was undiagnosrs ADHD... The older I get, The more I discover how damaging and how messed up that system was. Even for the nerotypical students who do well it can be bad. Schools focus and prioritize the resuts from them that bennifit the schools prestige and image, not what will actually benefit the kids whelbeeing in life... Like, it dosnt matter to them if little Timmy develops some sort of debilitating anxiety issies and a messed up sense of his self worth tied to his grades.. No. What matters more is that he gets the higest marks on his tests making the schools look good on paper to those who fund them...
I coasted through mandatory education doing the bare minimum, feeling out of place, only to be told post-graduation that I was, "The most gifted student ever taught" by my French teacher and "a scary genius" according to a science teacher. I had Cs in their classes. No teacher ever gave a rat's ass about me or expressed recognition of anything special within me as a poor kid wearing tattered clothes.
I am sorry that happened to you. I, too, grew up poor. I had a very different experience at school in terms of relationships with many of my teachers. It sounds like your teachers were overwhelmed or strangely oblivious. Did you go to a very large school?
If they said those things, you are wrong. They dod recognize something in you. I had 1 teacher recognize something in me, my seniir year, and she was crying because she said i was wasting it.
Success depends on the actions or steps you take to achieve it. Building wealth involves developing good habits like regularly putting money away in intervals for solid investments. Financial management is a crucial topic that most tend to shy away from, and ends up haunting them in the near future.., I pray that anyone who reads this will be successful in life!!
In fact, markets have incorrectly priced in such a pivot six times over the last two years, according to Deutsche Bank, which sounded cautious about this seventh time. Still showing us why pointers from market experts are essential.
The rich Invest in alternative income streams that are independent of the government should be the top priority for everyone right now. especially given the global economic crisis we are currently experiencing. Stocks, gold, silver, and virtual currencies are still attractive investments at the moment..
I thought about investing in the financial market, I heard that people make millions if you know the tricks of the trade, but I lack good knowledge and a strategy to outperform the market and generate good yields. I have $160,000 but it's hard to bite the bullet and do it.
I'm very cautious about giving specific recommendations as everyone's situation varies. Consider independent financial advisors like "Jessica Lee Horst" I've worked with her for some years and highly recommend her. Check if she meets your criteria.
Dovetailing onto Dr. Weinstein's music analogy - I've played music for over 40 years. I had formal music theory education. I played in bands with people who - in the absence of musical training - developed an outstanding ear for music. Where I would have to 'think' my way through musical problems, they could 'feel' their way through with the intuition that they developed. We all have something to contribute in our own way.
There are many kids who get labeled unfairly from a young age in education and sports. Kids are put in grades and on teams based on their birthday. A 6, 8, or 12 month difference in age when you’re 20 isn’t significant, but at 6, 7 or 8, it can be huge. A child whose not emotionally or intellectually or coordinated compared to the peers he or she has been shoehorned in with can be labeled a slow learner, or a class clown, or unathletic which the child, or teachers and coaches, accept as a fact and demotivates them from becoming all that they can be.
One of my friends was a genius in chess, but had no interest in academics. He was a smart guy who didn't need a college education. He dropped out of high school in 11th grade. John Stienbeck in East of Eden said that the people who went to college were the people didn't have what it took to succeed on the farm.
@@julieb7785 My father grew up on a farm in Oklahoma. He was born in 1929. He was better at taking things apart and putting them back together than anyone I ever met. Farmers need to be smart or they have to get out of farming.
@@rickmorrow993 Ah, my favorite musical. ; ) New Englander here...yes, I know the type well; the children of the Great Depression were special.. and given all they'd been thru, they were pretty sane too..... My dad: 1922 (h.s. ed. and off to ww2)...he gardened as much of the year as he could. Not large scale or anything, but he just KNEW stuff. I think too of his completely ignored shotgun (in case of marauding woodchucks which he never had the heart to kill) propped up in our front hall closet along with fishing gear, ski poles, snowshoes, skates, et c. No bonkers obsession with bumper stickers and the "right to carry. " The older I get, the more I miss that self-reliant, rational and dignified generation. ; )
@@julieb7785 On the farm when things break down you need to fix them. The farm was owned by my great grandmother and Dad used to go help out in summer and on weekends. He lived in town about 6 miles from the farm. Without the food grown on that farm, his family wouldn't eat much. I am not sure if he was part of what they referred to as the greatest generation or part of the silent generation. He joined the Navy right after he turned 17 and before the formal end of hostilities. He went to school with lots of returning soldiers. Mom was born in 1935, so she was snack in the middle of the silent generation. Her job was to cook for the gamily and babysit her younger sister. She was 20 when I was born and I was their second. Mom was really special. They don't make them like her anymore, but her and her 3 sisters were all great ladies. My grandfather was a WW1 veteran and was in and out of the hospital all the time from the effcts of mustard gas. He also probably suffered from PTSD, as he was in the trenches at several major battles and minor skirmishes. Mom and Dad both worked at young ages, even when their parents couldn't find work. They gave us everything they couldn't have growing up.
Boys need to be active, doing things, using their hands, building something, etc. Boys sitting at a desk 8 hours a day is not the environment to captivate and develop them.
@@l.w.paradis2108 to onlookers a kid playing a videogame is just sitting still and staring at a screen, but to the player a whole adventure is being experienced. if you dont play videogames then you cant understand it. the closest i can describe it is a rollercoaster ride that alternates between awesome scenery and loop de loops. even with a good teacher, a classroom just cant compete with that. if you read as a hobby, then a reader is the same, just sitting still and staring at something. it looks like nothings happening but the reader is in another world.
@@superturkle I'm pro-BRICS, so it's easy for me to laugh at this. You didn't even grasp my comment. OP: "Boys need to be active, . . ." Keep it up. Who cares?
One of the best teachers I ever had at one point refused to give me the F I deserved, instead, she made me stay after school and redo the assignment. I am all the better for it.
Eric Weinstein has changed my life for the better. He’s opened up such a level of clarity for achievement and reignited a passion for learning. Podcasts like this one, with guests such as these reclaiming hope for humanity. Thank you Eric W.
I was always told in school that I read slowly and had a hard time in math and English. They gave me a test for dyslexia with a teacher in a quiet room . Of course, I did well because there were no distractions, lol . I have adhd and on the spectrum for autism .I was put in the "special class". I got kicked out of music class because I couldn't read music . I was trying to play by ear . I was constantly told I have a learning disability and would amount to much . I taught myself how to play guitar and started at 15 . The first thing I learned by ear was eruption by van Halen. I have been playing for 20 years as a hobby and also study and research ancient history, philosophy, astronomy, astrophysics, and often have conversations with my kids about black holes and quantum mechanics . I run my own business, have a house and a family. Never graduated high school. I also taught myself how to cook,build computers and currently leaning ancient Hebrew
My brother is very smart. He was held back a year in 2nd grade because he had trouble with reading. He went on to graduate from UCLA and run a chemical analysis lab.
Thank you for bringing up this topic. I have a music degree and work in water chemistry/treatment. I had a 1.9 GPA in high school, yet was capt of multiple sports teams and in jazz band etc..I failed out of college and had to restart. This man is describing me lol
Wow. My son is entering 6th grade. He has dysgraphia. His least favorite thing is writing. The process to figure out he had dysgraphia was terrible. One teacher in particular was treating him like he had something wrong with him and was constantly asking me to medicate him. We finally found out he feels writing is extremely difficult Reading and math are no problem. At first you don’t know what it is though. So he’s avoiding writing hard. Now he’s had a couple great teachers who are more understanding. At first though we were getting a lot of mistreatment. Where we are there’s no resources for this and the school doesn’t have an IEP. Nothing is set up for dyslexic and dysgraphic children and I think it’s way more common than people realize. These kids have an enormous amount of potential but we’re putting some in a corner because it’s easier. Also I don’t judge anyone’s choices but personally for us we didn’t do medication. I felt like the Aha moment that smart people have or the moment they see the “portals” would be robbed if they’re hyper focusing due to medications. I’m going to meet my kid where he’s at and still give him expectations but I do feel somehow that I’m failing him or the system is failing him because he can learn so much more than just sitting at a desk feeling bad because he can’t write. Also we were getting pushed meds hard and for a long time but meds won’t help dysgraphia and it’s terrible that people are just throwing this out there without knowing what’s really going on.
No B.S., Eric spoke to my soul. Literally everything he said described my K-12 experience. I retired from a career in the military and went to college. Everything changed once I got away from "teachers." Eric did an exceptional job articulating the feelings and emotions I felt and feel about kids growing up today. Now I'm feeling like I need to develop my relationship with music, an unrealized talent (maybe), but a new goal nonetheless.
I am teaching my son that his gift isn't the same as other's (academic) gifts and theirs have value and so does his! He was getting the message that he wasn't smart and it was the biggest lie that I've had to train out of him. Thank you for your righteous indignation and brilliant detailed explanation. 👏
This is so so good. We should break away from traditional learning, route learning, 99% memory without understanding. It is an out of date of learning for anyone.
As someone with Tourette's I had to go to community college for 5 years to just pass my pre algebra and still failed and then dropped from school system 😅
Eric is the first person I've ever heard (other than myself) point out the specialness of Indonesian for a native English speaker. I first noticed this when I made an Indonesian friend online. I thought they were fluent in English and they thought I was fluent in Indonesian. We later discovered that we were both just running things through Google translate but the languages were interchangable enough that neither of us ever noticed anything odd. 😂 Slowly I started learning to write some Indonesian on my own and it came naturally just from exposure. I haven't been able to learn any other language like that; I always have to intentionally study.
not to bother you but im curious about how indonesian and english integrate like you and eric say; whats a good direction to look to if i was to pursue this?
Indonesian is easier to learn than English. There is no past tense, future tense, past perfect tense and all the variety of verb related to time. Just add the time components to the sentence and you only have to use 1 type of verb (the present tense version). So i can say, "I work yesterday" and that would be correct. It is also easier to learn how to spell and say things as well. If you are able to say the word, then you should be able to write it. This makes the language easy, however good luck with the vocabulary.😂
I was fortunate enough to be born in 1970, where toys were board games, backgammon, chess, puzzles, mechano sets, and a microscope. The types of things we played with took time to complete even when we played outside. There were so many things we did as play that required so much time to figure out. As I’ve had teams of analysts and had to hire, and more specifically, interview young folks … I have seen a lot of MBA grads do well on logic, but struggle to apply it during an interview, and get beat out by those with college diplomas (Canada) or international students. And then there are those who are only high school diploma grads who have had 5+ yrs in the workforce, and a lot of them crush it. I design my interview tests to be unlikely to finish all the questions, and go in early at the end … as I want to see who asks for more time. Very few ask for that, none of the MBAs have ever asked for more time, they just stop as soon as they see me. Initially I was blown away by this, now I’d be surprised if they did ask for more time. I’m not looking for people to punch out at 4:55 pm when there is a problem at the table.
I feel such an affinity with Eric and the philosophy he shares with Ken Robinson and other holistic educators. I’ve learned more since school than I ever learned in the classroom and found so many ways my more active right brain has served me in the real world that would never have been recognised by the western education idea of what constitutes ‘smart’. Thank God people like him have a platform nowadays
That so felt like me at school. "So much potential, but, he needs to apply himself more." "I want to be a scientist." Na you don't, they don't earn that much." Me " Oh, ok." I've done many jobs, ended up deciding to get a trade, fire sprinkler fitting. Now I'm a gardener. Heaps of different hobbies, including working on my own design fusion reactor, magnetically augmented spindle cusp IEC leveraging RF for resonance. Thanks Erik, the things you say really resonate.
I went to a good high school but was put in the ‘dummy’ classrooms because of my hearing loss. A dumping ground for the disaffected. Even marginal effort could raise a grade, and most in this class were just… barely showing up. I didn’t understand the way schools track students (see the film ‘Waiting for Superman’ for more info on that). I was an average student, but once I got into college I began to shine. No longer boxed in by traditional teacher-student roles, some of my teachers became mentors and took an interest in my future. High School is where dreams go to die, I’ve found.
Thank you Eric....I'm sorry I'm late to understanding this...but with my son with aspergers I did talk therapy so I could learn how he thinks and he learned how to express himself. I so wish I had learned this earlier....
I think this is primarily a post-NCLB problem when the emphasis on "standards" boomed. Standards lead to standardization, like widgets for a corporate machine. There should be a balance between unifying group knowledge and extending individualization. My pre-NCLB education in public schools did a decent job balancing these things. They seemed to reflect some of the ideas of Mortimer Adler, Neil Postman, and E.D. Hirsch.
@emilymiller1792 I agree to a point. I see no problem with a standard but a problem with the type of standard. The standard given to us was that of a drone, a standard set by the failed and not one of the successful.
@jeremiahblackwood9225 Also, there is a difference between a standard and how a particular individual strives to meet it. This is most obvious in math: a mathematical truth is universal, but each person comes to an understanding of it on their own, following a unique path. This is because each brain is unique, literally. The standard may not need to change, but flexibility in meeting it has got to be part of every subject and lesson. I wonder, has Common Core made schools worse? I say that because many of its proponents are known to be rigid people (thinking of Bill Gates).
Same thing happened to me and I left engineering and just started playing music for a living. Later I began making instrument and reengineering my own versions of expensive tools. I just figure stuff out in the real world, but on paper I’m useless. I’m not a success story, in many ways it makes me more miserable because I can see real world solutions to things, employment them in my own work, and never really find a way to break through. I just don’t test well on paper and the world does not seem to like that. Outside of engineering my brain is still looking for failure points in systems. It’s kind of a problem because I don’t have a place in the world.
I was a C student even though I aced almost all my tests just by listening in class. They gave me terrible grades because I refused to do homework for a subject I understood through listening, reading comprehension, and memorization. I was in algebra in 7th grade, went to a new school where they had me test in, and because I hadn't done long division in a long time and was never particularly fond of it, they put me in remedial math and made me dislike it and feel dumb. Fast forward 20yrs later and I taught myself sound physics and passed a board on the subject on the first try that most people take 2-3 tries to get. I'm not Eric's lvl of intelligence, but I wonder if the system hadn't failed me where I'd be now
I was a teacher of Philosophy, Sociology and History in high school for about ten years in Brazil, most of the time at a prestigious military school (here in Brazil military schools are not for rebellious or delinquent students, on the contrary, they are schools of excellence for students already previously disciplined and performing well...). Sometimes I noticed that some problematic students reminded me of myself (I was a terrible student, recognized as intelligent and even "erudite" despite having mediocre or even bad grades, to the point that I failed in the fifth grade, in Portuguese and in the first year of high school. , in Mathematics). So I repeated to these students my bumpy trajectory through schooling and concluded with the "threat" or "curse": "...that way you run the risk of ending up as a high school Philosophy teacher..."
I usually told my students very frankly that none of the content I taught and taught was essential, so much so that I could work with completely different content. However, he added, the experience of trying to do well in my tests with brute force (memorizing what they thought were the answers) and failing had the objective of showing them the importance and limits of the "brute force" with which they usually tried to obtain A without understanding and forgetting after the tests. My goal or challenge was to show that they could more easily get an A by first understanding it and then "memorizing" it with much less effort, because memorizing something random (which is what things we don't understand sound like) is much more difficult (and fleeting) than understanding after a different type of attention (which was what I was trying to "teach") and from then on learning becomes "easy" or "intuitive". My method for this was developed by offering a "brute force" "work" whose objective was to familiarize them with the content and which corresponded to 4/10 (grades are quantitative in Brazil and even when we use "qualitative" grades A, B, C.. . they are actually quantitative values...) of the score and the test taken as an entrance exam was equivalent to the remaining 6/10 to complete the final grade for the quarter (the academic year is made up of three quarters). Detail: the "work" gave the maximum score (4/10) to everyone who presented almost anything... for example, answered an online form with questions to mark as many times as they wanted; or prepare notes to use during the test equivalent to the other 6/10. I give then, however, a warning: if you copy from a colleague or do it without paying attention, you won't be able to get even half of the marking test right... and 4 + (x
This reminds me of a quote, commonly misattributed to Mark Twain, but which was actually articulated by a novelist named Grant Allen, which says: *_“I have never let schooling interfere with my education.”_*
This is fascinating. I would love to know how best to support my ADHD teen. I'm definitely guilty of giving up on his academics in favour of the hands on activities.
He's right. The system was designed to create a certain type of worker who would do well in a factory setting. It isn't much different now. They don't have the time or other resources to deal with lots of exceptions; jump through the hoops or get left behind. I don't think of myself as gifted but I wasn't able to jump through the hoops and was seen as a discipline problem. I eventually quit school but managed to easily get a GED and, in time, get into college by taking a series of special tests people without high school graduation had to take. College was different as they weren't trying to make you do anything. You paid for the classes and you could do the work or not. I learned well mostly on my own - but directed by some good teachers - and graduated with honors in a scientific field. I did well in my career and attended grad schools twice. So all those elementary school and high school teachers I had who only knew how to themselves jump through the hoops of the system almost kept me from succeeding. I do think I was an exception and that many like me probably never did manage to get where they probably could have got had they been treated differently.
I have a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree, both from elite schools. I had a very solid (although unspectacular) career in business. A guy I knew in high school dropped out of college twice (he struggled academically). Then he became a general contractor and did extremely well. A high IQ does not guarantee success and a mediocre IQ does not guarantee failure.
Consider this - 1. Many teachers are excellent and caring and effective. 2 - Most teachers aren’t that great at their jobs. 3 - Many teachers are low key emotionally/verbally abusive. If I were raising a child today they’d be homeschooled. And we’d be having fun and we’d both be learning.
Jimi Hendrix was the best example of this... Learnt guitar by ear, and practice alone.. Hardly knew any music theory, yet become the most famous and most expressive guitarist ever seen, by far! Sure some cant follow what he is doing. But those who have ears to hear, can see!
The education system, as it is currently designed, is intended to reward those who conform the most, memorize the best, and can abide by the formulas that serve corporate taskmasters. The education system is NOT designed to reward the creative, out of the box thinker, who maybe the source of the next great advancements in society. Yes, on rare occasion, those unique individuals do flourish, but in most cases they get marginalized by established educational institutions because they don't fit into a mold. To use a sports analogy, imagine you had a kid with inherent physical qualities that would make him a world champion powerlifter (sturdy bone structure, muscles that are hyper responsive to strength training, a disproportionate amount of fast twitch muscle fibers, and he has great neuromuscular coordination). However, the standard to be athletic consisted only of the ability to run long distances, which is something that people with a powerlifter's phenotype are not well equipped to handle. That kid would WRONGLY be castigated as "unathletic" by the institution, because he did not fit the narrow definition of "athletic" which only acknowledged cardiovascular endurance as worthy. This is the same selective bias that you see when academic achievement is assessed.
Once upon a time, before NCLB, schools were far better able to teach and reward creative, out of the box students. I saw my public schools K-12 do this. There was a good balance between the group and the individual, and the individual was encouraged. Maybe I got lucky in the schools I attended and the teachers I got.
When in high school when taking tests I was so stressed I could barely spell my name. English was my second language and I struggled. I was treated and felt dumb. As an adult I took a few college classes and got on the deans list, i started an successful international company. I'm proud of my can do attitude but at 77 still feel inferior because I didn't get a college education.
I was diagnosed adhd at 36 years of age. Although it contextualised my childhood experience, it does little to repair the damage of being told you are wrong and not fulfilling your potential, incessantly. Seems to me that talent and intelligence is rendered useless if the bedrock of self esteem is not laid and maintained appropriately by "caregivers". Ive seen this phenomenon again and again as a musician (well, drummer 😂). Some of the deepest creativity is hidden behind fear of the self but it is, paradoxically, born of the perspective of such fear. Such is the embodied existence.
I was a straight A student who stupidly thought that my academic success would transfer into worldly success. I graduated from a very prestigious, private college. I had a degree but very little work experience. So when I tried to enter the workforce, I got the big "So what?" If I had not been forced to do volunteer work in high school, I would've had almost no work experience. I think every job I've ever had, except for being a telemarketer, can trace its roots back to the volunteering I did in high school.
Primary school I was touted as one of the most brilliant kids in the country. High school I took every chance to ditch classes, not do homework and I was pretty much a C student in most subjects, as I lived off things the teachers said during classes I heard with one ear. The vast majority of stuff being taught made no sense to learn, especially not in a way it was taught. School is largely regurgitation. It's daycare. High school teachers told me I won't make it in life. I work from home in IT and make 15-20x the national average. I could rake in much more. But I don't want to. The stress associated with running a company and being responsible for the livelihood of other people is not worth the extra money for me. I already can't spend this much anyways, as most luxury goods and services are just as stupid as the school system.
This is why I have chose this year to honeschool. Public school kills the Spirit of children and the spark of learning. Confidence and curiosity are sucked from young people.
17:50 . Ut-oh. I can so sorta relate to this. I attended class, participated, read the material, 'took notes', and still barely passed my class. My transcript is loaded with sympathy C's because my professors were aware of me and my contributions. 🐿
I almost stopped listening until I Googled Eric's education background, that's the use of school education. It's like democracy, it's the crappiest education system we can come up with UNDER LIMITED RESOURCE, but it's still better than any other thing we've tried. It's not for every individual, but it's not meant for individualism to begin with.
We have used better education systems throughout all of history. This Prussian model of education was adopted for its ability to indoctrinate. Thinking is a skill and a process. It creates information. It is full of life, change, and it is freeing. Public education doesn't teach thinking it teaches pre-approved and standardized information that is dead, unchanging, and politically motivated. We would be better off not teaching anything than to subject children to public education.
I thank you for posting an opinion that is different. While without question there needs to be reform in education, there needs to be recognition that some ideas can only work in idealistic environments.
@18:30 You don't learn by taking notes; you learn by studying them, going over them, re-writing them, using them as a resource for what the instructor thinks is important, for any extra insight into the ideas that the instructor offers that your textbook doesn't.
I love him. My son Philip wanted to play the violin, but a teacher turned him off. Something else could work better. "Incaluable harm." That's an understatement. I could do music either. But music has something in the brain thats importsnt.
I can't spell and had terrible handwriting. With the aid of computers, I was able to work my way off a factory floor, and now I'm an Oracle Engineering Analyst.
Update. This is no longer the lens nor the attitude that teachers view students who are struggling. If class sizes are small enough, and if teachers have assistance for so many learning styles - we’re doing better at seeing each individual as valuable and not left behind. This stuff is totally being addressed in schools. It might take time. But we are seeing this whole matter differently. Give we teachers a chance! And a minute. Know better do better! It’s happening. Grrr.
You are 100% correct! I work for an education company and regularly visit classrooms in numerous schools. I regularly marvel at the all the ways these kids are getting a better education than we did. The future is in good hands!
I have kids in school, what you’re saying is not true at all. Every “new” attitude like the one you claim helps, only makes matters worse. The worst higher education system in the country is the education universities. None of their studies are replicable, every thing they implement fails. “No child left behind” is a major failure. My son’s teacher admitted to me in a conference that they aren’t allowed to fail the students because it affects funding. It’s all smoke and mirrors. You’re lying to yourselves.
The country that knows how to incentivize making families and how to effectively foster the next generations’ talents will be the next global superpower
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I have my B.S. in engineering. Going to school there was a guy in my class that had one of the most brilliant engineering minds I've ever encountered. Group projects, he always came up with brilliantly simple solutions. Class work, he always had answers to professor asked questions. Homework was always a breeze for him. Buuuut.... give him an exam and he just locked up. Failed consistently. Flunked out of university and got a job stocking shelves at a department store. Such a waste. All because he couldn't write exams.
Omg! I'm sorry to hear this. I'm in the Engineering field and school exams, especially Calc 3, were the worst. I made it through, but my grades were either an A or C. Even now, I have to sit and write everything down for work certifications and exams to do well. It's a nightmare and it stresses me out so much until it's all over.
That's tragic.
Fuck the rigged education system it is shitness
So I guess he didn’t become more successful than the A students
Even though I aced my final College exams (B.S. @ computer science), my returning nightmares are that somehow I have to go and do my exams again.
This is a returning nightmare for both my secondary grammar graduation and my college diploma.
And that was 25+ years ago !!!!
Teachers have been shocking us for years about the final exams for years and years.
I even failed my first driving exam because I was just terrified by the "exam" nature of driving, even though I had zero issues driving the exact same route with the instructor a 100 times.
Once it was called "THE EXAM" I started sweating, doing stupid things, heart rate in the sky, just absolutely terrified and everything "locked up".
"Public schools are literal prisons for children and the only place most people will experience violence in their lives. " Michael Malice
Love Malice, he has some great quotes
Meat grinders
school is a prison like daycare for kids, and school work is a form of unpaid child labour. everyone is against child labour, except the type they dont realize is child labour cause its normalized. and the most obvious problem is that most of the stuff learned in school is both boring and useless to learn and doesnt help the kids later in life
24:00 Einstein did not do poorly I'm school. That's an urban myth. That he didn't challenge it is a part of why I don't think he is the great meta-thinker he is made out to be. He does simultaneously, too.
@@camskeaI see him for the fraud he is.
When I was a young boy I used to get very high marks in all my classes. I started to think maybe I was gifted. I got tested and to my surprise I was average, in everything, except I scored a bit above average in reading comprehension skills. I believe why my marks were so high was because of my ability to sit still and focus in class. I enjoyed listening to my teachers talk and could listen all day no problem. The teachers would say to other boys why can’t you sit still like me…..I think that was my real skill…sitting still….but if most boys are not like me…the teaching system is wrong. It’s not the little boys.
Reading comprehension and reading speed can carry good marks by themselves. I breezed through school and uni with a B+ average with minimum effort while my SLIGHTLY slower sister struggled to make B+
You are right , the school and how things operate in the classrooms are not fair to boys!! I was like you except I had a natural talent for reading and English!! Plus the ability to have my homework done before school ended !! I go back to the 80s at a time when there were more male teachers !! The classrooms back then were more tolerable to boys !!
Sadly you are 100% on base, I was a child that had a lot of energy my test scores were off the chart and my IQ is considered way above average. I graduated with a c average from a private school and went on to take a roughneck job because I didn't like sitting still and listening to lectures. Play if it makes you feel better most people with genius IQs actually never go on to do anything considered genius worthy, a vast swath of them go on to do careers that involve interacting with the public or things that they can do on their own time frame and their own scale.
It's unlikely you are average, as the average person can not write a coherent sentence, let alone think about things and make a reasonable point. Don't look down on yourself. That's one of the most common flaw of people who could be much more than what they are.
@@txdmsk That's one of the most positive things anyone has said to me in quite some time, I will take your advice. I wish you positive karma!
I have an A student and a C student in high school. I find myself worrying about my A student more. She's bought into the surrogacy of success of academics, while the other kid is more in tune with his own interests and the real world.
That's the system
"A" students excel in structured environments and follow established rules, "C" students may struggle within the confines of traditional academics but often develop skills such as problem-solving, resilience, and innovation. These traits can lead to greater success in real-world situations, where adaptability and unconventional thinking are highly valued. Success is not solely determined by academic performance but by the ability to navigate challenges and think outside the box.
This is such nonsense. You don't have to close off your creativity to make grades. Once you get a clear picture of what is going on, earning As is easy. With the rest of your time, you move on to other things. You come to realize that your projects matter more than any teacher's, AND you know which teachers to avoid. That's good training, as everyone will have to answer to someone at least some of the time. Figure it out in school, where the stakes are lower.
this is very hypothetical and most often bullshit. ppl just want to make themselves feel better after being shitty students and say stuff like this. the valedictorian is much more likely to have a successful and high earning life than the C student. and btw, eric went to harvard and penn, and absolutely crushed it as a student.
@@l.w.paradis2108 Doesn't sound like nonsense to me. Most "A" Students are only good at working the school system, go on to get college degrees thanks to their compliance and obedience to authority. But within the group of "C" students, there are more intelligent kids, who see beyond the school system and grading system and do not even care, go on to do more "out of the box" things later than the 'teachers pet' "A" student.
Good grades, advanced degrees = obedient little rule follower. no creativity.
@@peterbelanger4094 I answered that in another thread.
@@peterbelanger4094 . . . As you well know
I worked for an engineer in my first engineering job who had a low gpa in college. My gpa was average. We hired several high-gpa engineers from good schools, hoping they'd be even better than us. After going through several of these who were almost useless, he joked that we needed a max gpa requirement of 3.0.
You guys sucked at recruiting, Jack.
As someone who grew up with serious learning issues, I remember educators having these exact same conversations with me growing up. Now I'm a PhD student in Math and Computer Science at one of the top schools for these subjects in the world. What Eric talks about really touches home with me; having Dyslexia, Dysgraphia, not being able to read my own handwriting, doing separate projects in school, and having trouble following directions. I was told that maybe college wasn't for me; I laugh now as old teachers reach out to me to come visit class; I do, but in the back of my mind I never forgot how they treated me as a student and made me feel.
Then why visit them? Are you doing it for the kids? Then let them no, know matter how much of an obstacle your teacher is, you can succeed past their interference. "You can succeed in spite of your teacher"
Why are you going then ??
@@GIGADEV690 To be kind to their students, and giving them an idea of what real math and computer science is; not what they learn in class.
@@Daybyday439 maybe you should learn to be as understanding as you would like other people to be. They were teachers. They weren't trained to deal with your issues. Where were your parents in all of this? Your doctors?
I worked at a school for 15 years. I am the mother of two boys. The school system is not built for boys. Private boy schools are more built for boys than public schools. There’s a great book called the “Minds ofBoys.” I needed to understand why my boys hated school. Didn’t seem to be bullied. They they were not bullies. They were well rounded happy guys but literally hated school. If you put a tiger in a cage for 5.5 hours a day and expected to be happy insane you’re kidding yourself. That’s what we do to these kids. we forced children to sit in a desk for hours if that’s not mental and physical abuse I don’t know what is… I bought into the “system” that I traditionally grew up with. And it’s wrong it’s wrong on a fundamental level. Our school systems are teaching our children not to think, that there’s only one answer that the world is black-and-white, indoctrinated content, so many bad things. The good no longer out weighs the bad in our school.
I am 24 year old men and I deeply resonated with the fact that your sons hated school.
I was shamed and judged as being "stupid" just because I didnt give a sh*t about the school marks.
At age 15 I was accepted to the animation oriented art high school, where I was basically doing what I loved and I no longer felt like a tiger in a cage. Its so liberating when you have the freedom to express your energy in a specific field.
Me are literally designed to build, conquer and expand - so of course they can't sit in a chair with all the life energy in them!
Or, we ca completely ingore this life force of men and shame them for having "ADHD" or some kind of sh*t like that.
Thank you for comment, I am very happy, that I wasn't the only one who couldn't stand school.
@@eyylmao1032 so great to hear this. I homeschool with 10 children ( 4 boys) and we pretty much follow each of their own interests❤ this confirms I am doing the right thing
It depends on how things are taught. I went to public schools that expected me to not only gain a great deal of knowledge, but they also got us to consider why it should be known, to wrestle with and build meaning. I do not blame the local public school system much at all. A great deal of blame should fall on the interfering corporatists, NGOs, and politicians wanting to control and steer the education of children to their own ends (including NCLB, Race to the Top, Common Core, etc.). They very clearly want people educated for the 4th Industrial Revolution rather than to be free, self-governing people.
Public Schools are optimized for girls. The schools are run by women and weak men.
It absolutely was built for boys. It was designed to crush the wills of Prussian soldiers to be obedient slaves and was adapted to make obedient mindless factory workers. Now teachers' unions and the NEA prevents us from making any progress towards improving the system.
I'm not crying. you're crying! I was special Ed all the way till high-school. I now have a masters degree in a sci/engineering field from a top rated school in my field. This was from a kid that was told, "College isn't for you, you should look at the trades". If I didn't have 2 parents and a hand full of REAL teachers, that helped me find the techniques that worked for me i might have ended up with a much more simple life.
As I wouldn't trade my trama for any money, it made me stronger. My fiancé came from the other side of the education system, always being rewarded for how smart and successful she would be, told she was going to Harvard... things didn't work out that way and she has a way harder time accepting failure and starting again. What they say is true 'fail young and often'
The fact that the masses consider the open free market the best way to create prosperity and then sentence the entirety of their kids childhood to the total centralized homogeneity that is school is a testament to how little the average person actually thinks.
& ironically make the case for rule by an intellectual vanguard. 😂😂😂
The "masses" consider no such thing. They revert to the slogans set out for them, as do most people most of the time. And do so due to desperation, mostly.
@@l.w.paradis2108Yes. The masses really do not have faith in free markets. They will fall for free lunch policies over and over again.
The point has some validity, but it’s based on competition. Even academics believe in the virtue of competition just so long as teaching careers in K-12 are not dependent on it. Then, they think standards and regulations will work just fine.
@nunyabidness3075 Academics believe in competition? Then explain tenure, adjunct faculty, and spousal hire.
@@l.w.paradis2108 Fair point, but look at competition to get into schools, bell curves, and to get tenure in the first place. I’m willing to accept the ostensible reasons for tenured professors. I’m not willing to accept it has any place in K thru 12.
I am one of those dyslexic people that somehow succeeded in life. Could not be more grateful to Eric for addressing the subject and to Tom for giving his platform to bring it to more people.
I’m a C student that now employs people. I was always made to feel like I was a nobody that would help no one. Most of my employees have been with me for over 5 years now, and we are not in the labor field.
What do you do? As C student 😂
@@GIGADEV690 I still ended up getting a BS in Finance, if that’s relevant. But I own 2 businesses. My most successful is a real estate marketing company that does everything from photos to Unreal Engine renders of architectural plans. We do a lot of work with track homes and custom home builders. So a steady stream of small houses with a sprinkle of high end Luxury homes. Best year we did $1.1M, that was right before Covid.
@@GIGADEV690 I did go on to complete a BS in Finance. I did insurance for a little while, but really nothing related to my degree. Was relocated by my job to CO and that’s when I got laid off. After that I took a hobby of photography and turned it into a Real Estate Marketing company. We now do just slightly over $1M a year Net. I think this year we are on track to do a little less though.
Most people are average. Most stuff should be able to be run by competent average people. Good work ethic and character are something anyone can develop. Being born with a high IQ is a gift. Even organizational skills can be learned.
Dropped out of school in the 11th grade. Moved to the Cayman Islands. Built nearly a dozen businesses and became the 4th largest employer of Caymanians. Obviously packaged education was a hindrance not an asset. Thankfully I learned to think for myself and dropped out.
Bravo! As a society, we (most people) still equate intelligence with the amount of credentials, CERTs and money people have. Such things are, at best, good correlations of high degrees of intelligence. Intelligence is multifaceted: EQ, creativity, Theory of Mind, etc. No one has a monopoly on Intelligence but certain institutions attract highly intelligent types (brilliant business strategy ). So congrats MIT, Stanford, Some highly intelligent people aren’t interested in formal modes of education, at least not in adolescence. At higher levels of intelligence, we often encounter neurodivergence. Many of us are getting better at harmonizing the various aspects of intelligence that have been defined. IQ is a crude yet useful metric of a couple feats of intelligence.
Dropping out is sometimes the right choice. Diplomas and degrees don’t matter. In most cases they are just a marker of a person’s ability to comply with the rules of the game. And the game does not care if you learn or retain anything, just that you can play the game. But what if the game is flawed? The rebels and outsiders already figured that out.
@@kensurrency2564 I concur
Wow congrats! Thanks for sharing, what kind of businesses and how did you start building your own business? The first step seems the hardest in transitioning from an employee to business owner
Am I the only one thinking the same thing😅
I grew up under a third-world dictatorship and struggled a lot with the "Prussian" schooling system because it was all about memorization. But after school, I'd go home to devour my personal library. I was able to graduate from medical school on time, thankfully, but I always struggled with the way information was presented in modern texts and questions, as it was all rote memorization. Yet, I still continued with my personal studies, covering everything from classical grammar and logic to modern finance and computer science. I was able to migrate out of my country, leverage all the knowledge and skills I acquired on my own, and today I lead diligence for venture capital investments in one of the top-ranked Ivy League academic medical centers in the world.
I'm 51 years old and still struggling with the violence of my childhood.
I couldn't learn as the others in my group so starting at 8 years old i was beaten up after school, juged and rejected by my family because they had this performance mindset about life. People that can't do a others are only loosers. I have been very neglected by my parents and never had a chance to heal.
I'm broken, got a work accident that left me unable to force.
Feeling lost here.
You are so right about the sistema. No one stopped to check on me what's wrong.
Thanks for your testimony 🎉❤
Sounds like childhood PTSD... I don't know if you heard of crappychildhood fairy but her videos and the info she shared has helped me...... Although not before a substantial amount of inner pain which I know someone like you might not be able to take on all at once..... Sometimes clarity is painful....
@@lovelessjams2720 Thanks you so much. I'll check this out. Yes a lot of ptsd to deal with. Working hard to not loose my faith in all this. Happened before but I'm holding on. Thanks 🙏🙂
@@lovelessjams2720she’s good BUT SHE IS A SEXIST. She’s better for women in general and self dismissing men.
“Adult childhood of dysfunctional families” is a good in person group, present in many locations.
You could look up CPST from childhood.
My parents had 9 marriages and I was equally abused by mom and dad.
Shootings and stabbing between my parents, is only my starting position… from there it got worse.
I’m 49 and battle issues all the time. Keep digging in sir. You are connected to many of us 💪😊
@@karamlevi Wow!!
That's why my childhood is fascinating to me.
Both my parents were Christians. There was no adultery...parents didn't fight...both were stay at home (farmers)...no drinking....no drugs. However, it was crazy dysfunctional. I was completely abandoned....severely ridiculed by my peers for 9 years...heartbroken when my sister left home (my only friend).
I'm 48 and have never had a friend. I'm shut down in social situations. I've always viewed myself as a 2nd class citizen (even though I'm not).
I read about other people's childhoods (sexual abuse, physical abuse, etc) and it SEEMS like they had it 10x worse. Yet, they lead functional lives? Married, children, 6 figure career.
❤
As a parent of 4, 2 girls, 2 boys. All learned differently. Their GPAs in high school were all passing, but the range was from 2.5 to 4.0. The one with 4.0 went on to earn a PHD. The one with 2.5 hated classes other than math and science. The distinguishing difference was that the latter learned independently after getting a BA. His achievement was getting a C.F.A. designation through self-study. There is a great need to focus students on what interest them.
I was socially promoted through school got nothing out of it except a drivers license & ptsd. Public schools are for adults not kids. Took me decades to figure out I have a learning disability & vision problems the school never cared, neither did anyone at home. I wish someone would help me stop paying property taxes to a system that causes so many problems for so many innocent children.
My son has a severe learning disability language based…he has started learning the violin via the Suzuki method and is doing amazing…it brings me so much joy that he is learning something without struggling !!!! Thank you for saying all of this!!!
Wow!!! I would never have guessed that he ever had problems in school. I've listened to Eric Weinstein a number of times in different interviews and he's definitely one of the smartest persons I've ever had the pleasure of listening to.
As an ex-military guy, as the saying goes " you ain't cheatin you ain't winning". Take the short cuts that work and try to miss the pit-falls as much as possible.
You ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying
I recall Jocko willink saying something along the lines of this.
during bud/s after some log lifting workout they were told to run around a pole a mile away and back, first team back gets to skip the next exercise. team 1 left the log, team 2 brought the log.
The seal instructor congratulated team 1 on being first. Team 2 looked upset and the drill instructor looks at them and says “where did I say you have to bring the log”.
The skill was to learn how to “cheat”.
If you ain’t cheating, you ain’t competing.
Eric is sooo brilliant
I have an engineer, just graduated from university, and an empathetic child(he told us he was empathetic in 8th grade with comment that he did not want to be pathetic)
Both had such different learning needs.
My empathetic is in 4th year at university in a stem economics program. He was the most work as a parent in trying to help him understand himself (both of us are engineers) and getting him through the broken educational system that wanted to fail him which would have changed his perception of himself and having confidence in himself.
My husband and my first goal was to build skill and confidence in the heart of our children starting at age 4.
People who think differently from college are now VERY RARE.
You know this . . . How?
@@l.w.paradis2108 Just from life experience, meeting people, one can observe how those with college degrees lack creativity and fully embrace the indoctrination they had received in school. The better the grads, the higher the degree, the more deeply indoctrinated they are.
Those who fall outside this pattern, are extremely rare.
You must not have much experience in life.
@@peterbelanger4094 Oh really? I went to major universities in two countries, in two languages, with the native-born in each case, and have a JD.
I'm trilingual now, have a knowledge of two other languages, and have no memory of being monolingual. There's no way American anything could indoctrinate me. (For example, I didn't fall for this video.) The US bombed where my parents were from, thus immunizing me from their nonsense. I suspect you don't know too many people like me. (Or you resent the Chinese kids or something.) 😂
You stepped in it this time.
Maybe what you said is true of the boring crowd you know. Maybe you should try branching out. But then again, we might not want you to.
@@l.w.paradis2108 Yeah this guy sounds fake Andrew tate of learning disabled people.I also have learning disabilities.
@peterbelanger4094 Weinstein has a PhD from Harvard.
BUILT TO PRODUCE MEDIOCRITY , we moved and the new school was way behind where I left , so they stuck me in the back corner by myself until the rest could catch up … THAT WAS FUCKED UP in 7th grade
Western Schools dont teach anyone. Mass memorization of pre-approved lessons cant possibly teach you anything. In 3 days you forgot about it. Only 1 hour per subject doesnt let you so deep into any topic or discussion. Especially with a class over 20 people. Learning is a skill, just like teaching is a skill. Its a process. We need to teach thinking methods, especially applied critical thinking. No one thinks for themselves anymore, or checks their ideas against a critical thinker to test their ideas out. Collages "update" all the rules guideline for schools and workplaces. They are writing our reality, and people are not thinking outside of it. School teaches you all of the skills to be a low wage worker at a corporation. Thats it. Collage teaches you the data science they wrote is what everone follows so you will follow as well, and help create future materials and ideas.
Its much worse than that. They actually disable critical thinking in students. This is intentional, and appears to be purely political.
College not collage
@sara... You are too categorical.
I learned how to ACE tests after taking a class on learning how to learn.
Prior I was a D/F/C student. What’s this prove???
That most of teachers are abusing the different students via extreme neglect of care.
There was this teacher called Warren that Elon musk retweeted his video, who was teaching kids critical thinking and thinking for their themselves. The school he was working for fired him because he wasn't supposed to be teaching critical thinking cause they don't want people who can actually think. It's by design.
I remember in 5th grade when I took one of the Iowa tests. When I got to certain aspects of that test I would come to a part where it said if you're in fifth grade stop here and I would read the next question and I know the answer so I continued on and then it would say when you're in 7th grade you stop here and I finished the entire test. All the way up to the 11th grade level. When I got my scores back aspects of that test I had scored Masters Degree college level. When the teacher was talking about how good some of us did on the test I said Thank you and she said well not yours they must have miss scored your tests.
By the time I got into junior high school, they had had my older brothers and sister in that school and they were always skipping school and smoking so of course they wanted to treat me different and I refuse to let them. So I must have had an attitude. Because in fifth grade I was always helping them with their math and science homework. By the time I got out of Junior High. They had put a really big chip on my shoulder.
I really feel for you preconceived notions about people often are to the detriment to the student in question
I was one of those 'smoking and skipping' kids back in the day. I also got really good scores on all those standardized tests too.
Spent a lot of time coaching and tutoring others kids as well, kids of all social cliques. By 11th grade physics class, the other students were asking me for help more often than the teacher.
Graduated with a 2.68 GPA. Dropped out of college 3 times in the first semester, I could never deal with the work load.
Lolololol
Such BS. Either you are lying or the test was horseshit
Variation of the species breeds a stronger species than having a small number of successful variations. If the environment changes, the varied species survives, the specialist species with few variations does not.
Single best discussion on the education system can totally relate to this. Failed by the education system second year in school failed to diagnose and issue which would go on to effect the rest of my life only to get officially diagnosed 2 years ago, what if ......
Man. That was me, but in a different way. Mom taught me to read and write when I was a toddler, so I was always well above my class in that way. But school was too boring to hold my attention. At home, I was busy reading books 4 grades above my level, exploring the woods, experimenting with my Radio Shack electronics kits, etc. During class, I would daydream and get called out for it. I aced my tests but got low grades due to failing to turn in homework. Somehow, I managed to get a Bachelor of Music degree but ended up working as an audio tech for 35 years, even though I can orchestrate in my head. Weird world.
deja vu. i also did well on tests but got crappy grades bcuz of homework/busywork. every report card had an A and an F. school was just too boring to pay attention to; i spent a lot of class time drawing in my notebook or reading books i found on my own at the library.
the way i felt, it was the teachers job to hold my attention; if they couldnt, then im going to go on my own journey for knowledge. got into a fair amount of trouble for that.
Eric & I are on the same page. I love learning but hate school with a passion for all the reasons he described. I recall in high school being a sent to the deans office for sleeping in Algebra 2. The dean immediately sent me back to class after I told him I had a 110 (perfect score on all tests + bonus work). I was also a freshman & everyone else was a sophomore or junior. At another point I had coded an extensive website for a history class project that was light years beyond what anyone else (poster boards with pictures) had done… and this was circa 2000/2001 (most people still didn’t have internet). The fact that I wasn’t put in a special program or early college is a complete failure of the system and my parents.
It’s probably more the system since I’ve endured similar situations in the workplace. Meaning, my bosses always poorly allocated my abilities - the equivalent of someone tightening screws on a laptop when they’re capable of writing operating system code.
How much talent & potential has wastefully fallen through the cracks in our society?
I graduated 4 years ago with a degree in mechanical engineering. There were three groups of kids; one that did excellent and barely had to study, would always give you the " oh you don't understand it ?"
One were mediocre, they had to study much more, and were something like B and C students, many had to worm full time jobs while taking 3 or 4 classes, mostly server or bartending jobs ( which I think this job has alot to do with their success, they know how to hustle)
One group who just didn't care
Fours years after graduation the mediocre, but hard working and persistent students are in upper management now, many of the gifted kids are struggling, many of them don't even work in engineering or gave up as soon as it didn't come easy
Cause I'll tell ya there is a huge difference between a theoretical design, and actually building something.
This couldn't be more true
Hearing about Eric’s learning challenges years ago helped me not feel so alone. With an IQ of 153 yet barely graduating HS, I went on to get an MS from BU. I figured out how to “deal with it” but always felt defective until I heard Eric describe the weird confluence of things that challenged me my entire life.
Eric and Tom, thanks for this discussion. It was very illuminating. What Eric is getting at, is that many teachers are not talented enough to teach the gifted. They cannot relate to the student that is smart but not academically motivated, because they don't see the point in the fluff being presented, let alone how it connects to everything in their world. Moreover, many of the teacher have no idea that they are part of a system that is sugar coated because it was not meant to make people succeed and be thinkers but automatons.
This hits close to home for me in so many ways as someone who was given up on and struggled through the schooling system with what I now know was undiagnosrs ADHD...
The older I get, The more I discover how damaging and how messed up that system was.
Even for the nerotypical students who do well it can be bad. Schools focus and prioritize the resuts from them that bennifit the schools prestige and image, not what will actually benefit the kids whelbeeing in life... Like, it dosnt matter to them if little Timmy develops some sort of debilitating anxiety issies and a messed up sense of his self worth tied to his grades.. No. What matters more is that he gets the higest marks on his tests making the schools look good on paper to those who fund them...
How far into school did you get before you realized they weren't teaching you but babysitting you? That's when you go from getting A's to not caring.
I coasted through mandatory education doing the bare minimum, feeling out of place, only to be told post-graduation that I was, "The most gifted student ever taught" by my French teacher and "a scary genius" according to a science teacher. I had Cs in their classes. No teacher ever gave a rat's ass about me or expressed recognition of anything special within me as a poor kid wearing tattered clothes.
I am sorry that happened to you. I, too, grew up poor. I had a very different experience at school in terms of relationships with many of my teachers. It sounds like your teachers were overwhelmed or strangely oblivious. Did you go to a very large school?
If they said those things, you are wrong. They dod recognize something in you. I had 1 teacher recognize something in me, my seniir year, and she was crying because she said i was wasting it.
Hey me too
Success depends on the actions or steps you take to achieve it. Building wealth involves developing good habits like regularly putting money away in intervals for solid investments. Financial management is a crucial topic that most tend to shy away from, and ends up haunting them in the near future.., I pray that anyone who reads this will be successful in life!!
In fact, markets have incorrectly priced in such a pivot six times over the last two years, according to Deutsche Bank, which sounded cautious about this seventh time. Still showing us why pointers from market experts are essential.
The rich Invest in alternative income streams that are independent of the government should be the top priority for everyone right now. especially given the global economic crisis we are currently experiencing. Stocks, gold, silver, and virtual currencies are still attractive investments at the moment..
I thought about investing in the financial market, I heard that people make millions if you know the tricks of the trade, but I lack good knowledge and a strategy to outperform the market and generate good yields. I have $160,000 but it's hard to bite the bullet and do it.
I'm very cautious about giving specific recommendations as everyone's situation varies. Consider independent financial advisors like "Jessica Lee Horst" I've worked with her for some years and highly recommend her. Check if she meets your criteria.
Thanks a lot for this suggestion. I needed this myself, I looked her up, and I have sent her an email. I hope she gets back to me soon.
Stopped taking notes freshman year couldn’t read them either. Put the note book down and listened
One system doesn't fit all
Especially when that system was designed to turn Prussian soldiers into mindless slaves and was adapted to make obedient factory workers...
Dovetailing onto Dr. Weinstein's music analogy - I've played music for over 40 years. I had formal music theory education. I played in bands with people who - in the absence of musical training - developed an outstanding ear for music. Where I would have to 'think' my way through musical problems, they could 'feel' their way through with the intuition that they developed. We all have something to contribute in our own way.
There are many kids who get labeled unfairly from a young age in education and sports. Kids are put in grades and on teams based on their birthday. A 6, 8, or 12 month difference in age when you’re 20 isn’t significant, but at 6, 7 or 8, it can be huge. A child whose not emotionally or intellectually or coordinated compared to the peers he or she has been shoehorned in with can be labeled a slow learner, or a class clown, or unathletic which the child, or teachers and coaches, accept as a fact and demotivates them from becoming all that they can be.
One of my friends was a genius in chess, but had no interest in academics. He was a smart guy who didn't need a college education. He dropped out of high school in 11th grade. John Stienbeck in East of Eden said that the people who went to college were the people didn't have what it took to succeed on the farm.
😂😂
True...Have you ever met a farmer that was not competent, interesting, methodical?
@@julieb7785 My father grew up on a farm in Oklahoma. He was born in 1929. He was better at taking things apart and putting them back together than anyone I ever met. Farmers need to be smart or they have to get out of farming.
@@rickmorrow993 Ah, my favorite musical. ; ) New Englander here...yes, I know the type well; the children of the Great Depression were special.. and given all they'd been thru, they were pretty sane too..... My dad: 1922 (h.s. ed. and off to ww2)...he gardened as much of the year as he could. Not large scale or anything, but he just KNEW stuff. I think too of his completely ignored shotgun (in case of marauding woodchucks which he never had the heart to kill) propped up in our front hall closet along with fishing gear, ski poles, snowshoes, skates, et c. No bonkers obsession with bumper stickers and the "right to carry. " The older I get, the more I miss that self-reliant, rational and dignified generation. ; )
@@julieb7785 On the farm when things break down you need to fix them. The farm was owned by my great grandmother and Dad used to go help out in summer and on weekends. He lived in town about 6 miles from the farm. Without the food grown on that farm, his family wouldn't eat much. I am not sure if he was part of what they referred to as the greatest generation or part of the silent generation. He joined the Navy right after he turned 17 and before the formal end of hostilities. He went to school with lots of returning soldiers. Mom was born in 1935, so she was snack in the middle of the silent generation. Her job was to cook for the gamily and babysit her younger sister. She was 20 when I was born and I was their second. Mom was really special. They don't make them like her anymore, but her and her 3 sisters were all great ladies. My grandfather was a WW1 veteran and was in and out of the hospital all the time from the effcts of mustard gas. He also probably suffered from PTSD, as he was in the trenches at several major battles and minor skirmishes. Mom and Dad both worked at young ages, even when their parents couldn't find work. They gave us everything they couldn't have growing up.
Boys need to be active, doing things, using their hands, building something, etc. Boys sitting at a desk 8 hours a day is not the environment to captivate and develop them.
Then why are they willing to spend nearly that long in front of a screen?
@@l.w.paradis2108 you mean videogames and the like?
@@superturkle YES
@@l.w.paradis2108 to onlookers a kid playing a videogame is just sitting still and staring at a screen, but to the player a whole adventure is being experienced. if you dont play videogames then you cant understand it. the closest i can describe it is a rollercoaster ride that alternates between awesome scenery and loop de loops.
even with a good teacher, a classroom just cant compete with that.
if you read as a hobby, then a reader is the same, just sitting still and staring at something. it looks like nothings happening but the reader is in another world.
@@superturkle I'm pro-BRICS, so it's easy for me to laugh at this.
You didn't even grasp my comment. OP: "Boys need to be active, . . ."
Keep it up. Who cares?
One of the best teachers I ever had at one point refused to give me the F I deserved, instead, she made me stay after school and redo the assignment. I am all the better for it.
Helped your soul
Eric Weinstein has changed my life for the better. He’s opened up such a level of clarity for achievement and reignited a passion for learning. Podcasts like this one, with guests such as these reclaiming hope for humanity. Thank you Eric W.
I was always told in school that I read slowly and had a hard time in math and English. They gave me a test for dyslexia with a teacher in a quiet room . Of course, I did well because there were no distractions, lol . I have adhd and on the spectrum for autism .I was put in the "special class". I got kicked out of music class because I couldn't read music . I was trying to play by ear . I was constantly told I have a learning disability and would amount to much . I taught myself how to play guitar and started at 15 . The first thing I learned by ear was eruption by van Halen. I have been playing for 20 years as a hobby and also study and research ancient history, philosophy, astronomy, astrophysics, and often have conversations with my kids about black holes and quantum mechanics . I run my own business, have a house and a family. Never graduated high school.
I also taught myself how to cook,build computers and currently leaning ancient Hebrew
Great interview, there are so many people who are similar to Eric. Maybe not as high level but similar. Good job
My brother is very smart. He was held back a year in 2nd grade because he had trouble with reading. He went on to graduate from UCLA and run a chemical analysis lab.
8:25 I had undiagnosed Asperger's as a child and I went to Bridges Academy. Hearing it mentioned here, even off-handed, is so surreal.
Thank you for bringing up this topic. I have a music degree and work in water chemistry/treatment. I had a 1.9 GPA in high school, yet was capt of multiple sports teams and in jazz band etc..I failed out of college and had to restart. This man is describing me lol
Wow. My son is entering 6th grade. He has dysgraphia. His least favorite thing is writing. The process to figure out he had dysgraphia was terrible. One teacher in particular was treating him like he had something wrong with him and was constantly asking me to medicate him. We finally found out he feels writing is extremely difficult Reading and math are no problem. At first you don’t know what it is though. So he’s avoiding writing hard. Now he’s had a couple great teachers who are more understanding. At first though we were getting a lot of mistreatment. Where we are there’s no resources for this and the school doesn’t have an IEP. Nothing is set up for dyslexic and dysgraphic children and I think it’s way more common than people realize. These kids have an enormous amount of potential but we’re putting some in a corner because it’s easier. Also I don’t judge anyone’s choices but personally for us we didn’t do medication. I felt like the Aha moment that smart people have or the moment they see the “portals” would be robbed if they’re hyper focusing due to medications. I’m going to meet my kid where he’s at and still give him expectations but I do feel somehow that I’m failing him or the system is failing him because he can learn so much more than just sitting at a desk feeling bad because he can’t write. Also we were getting pushed meds hard and for a long time but meds won’t help dysgraphia and it’s terrible that people are just throwing this out there without knowing what’s really going on.
No B.S., Eric spoke to my soul. Literally everything he said described my K-12 experience. I retired from a career in the military and went to college. Everything changed once I got away from "teachers." Eric did an exceptional job articulating the feelings and emotions I felt and feel about kids growing up today. Now I'm feeling like I need to develop my relationship with music, an unrealized talent (maybe), but a new goal nonetheless.
I am teaching my son that his gift isn't the same as other's (academic) gifts and theirs have value and so does his! He was getting the message that he wasn't smart and it was the biggest lie that I've had to train out of him. Thank you for your righteous indignation and brilliant detailed explanation. 👏
Mr. Weinstein you are a hero!!! You understand. You are a blessing.
This is so so good. We should break away from traditional learning, route learning, 99% memory without understanding. It is an out of date of learning for anyone.
Rote
As someone with Tourette's I had to go to community college for 5 years to just pass my pre algebra and still failed and then dropped from school system 😅
😓😩
Eric is the first person I've ever heard (other than myself) point out the specialness of Indonesian for a native English speaker.
I first noticed this when I made an Indonesian friend online. I thought they were fluent in English and they thought I was fluent in Indonesian. We later discovered that we were both just running things through Google translate but the languages were interchangable enough that neither of us ever noticed anything odd. 😂
Slowly I started learning to write some Indonesian on my own and it came naturally just from exposure. I haven't been able to learn any other language like that; I always have to intentionally study.
not to bother you but im curious about how indonesian and english integrate like you and eric say; whats a good direction to look to if i was to pursue this?
It's such a simple structure, it's great
Indonesian is easier to learn than English. There is no past tense, future tense, past perfect tense and all the variety of verb related to time. Just add the time components to the sentence and you only have to use 1 type of verb (the present tense version). So i can say, "I work yesterday" and that would be correct. It is also easier to learn how to spell and say things as well. If you are able to say the word, then you should be able to write it. This makes the language easy, however good luck with the vocabulary.😂
I was fortunate enough to be born in 1970, where toys were board games, backgammon, chess, puzzles, mechano sets, and a microscope. The types of things we played with took time to complete even when we played outside. There were so many things we did as play that required so much time to figure out. As I’ve had teams of analysts and had to hire, and more specifically, interview young folks … I have seen a lot of MBA grads do well on logic, but struggle to apply it during an interview, and get beat out by those with college diplomas (Canada) or international students. And then there are those who are only high school diploma grads who have had 5+ yrs in the workforce, and a lot of them crush it. I design my interview tests to be unlikely to finish all the questions, and go in early at the end … as I want to see who asks for more time. Very few ask for that, none of the MBAs have ever asked for more time, they just stop as soon as they see me. Initially I was blown away by this, now I’d be surprised if they did ask for more time. I’m not looking for people to punch out at 4:55 pm when there is a problem at the table.
I feel such an affinity with Eric and the philosophy he shares with Ken Robinson and other holistic educators. I’ve learned more since school than I ever learned in the classroom and found so many ways my more active right brain has served me in the real world that would never have been recognised by the western education idea of what constitutes ‘smart’. Thank God people like him have a platform nowadays
That so felt like me at school. "So much potential, but, he needs to apply himself more."
"I want to be a scientist." Na you don't, they don't earn that much." Me " Oh, ok."
I've done many jobs, ended up deciding to get a trade, fire sprinkler fitting. Now I'm a gardener.
Heaps of different hobbies, including working on my own design fusion reactor, magnetically augmented spindle cusp IEC leveraging RF for resonance.
Thanks Erik, the things you say really resonate.
I went to a good high school but was put in the ‘dummy’ classrooms because of my hearing loss. A dumping ground for the disaffected. Even marginal effort could raise a grade, and most in this class were just… barely showing up. I didn’t understand the way schools track students (see the film ‘Waiting for Superman’ for more info on that). I was an average student, but once I got into college I began to shine. No longer boxed in by traditional teacher-student roles, some of my teachers became mentors and took an interest in my future. High School is where dreams go to die, I’ve found.
I can't agree more with Eric on this. 100 thumbs up
Thank you Eric....I'm sorry I'm late to understanding this...but with my son with aspergers I did talk therapy so I could learn how he thinks and he learned how to express himself. I so wish I had learned this earlier....
This brought the feeling of tears in my eyes, it is soo true
It's a system not designed for out-of-the-box thinking and a fundamental problem with understanding intelligence.
I think this is primarily a post-NCLB problem when the emphasis on "standards" boomed. Standards lead to standardization, like widgets for a corporate machine. There should be a balance between unifying group knowledge and extending individualization. My pre-NCLB education in public schools did a decent job balancing these things. They seemed to reflect some of the ideas of Mortimer Adler, Neil Postman, and E.D. Hirsch.
@emilymiller1792 I agree to a point. I see no problem with a standard but a problem with the type of standard. The standard given to us was that of a drone, a standard set by the failed and not one of the successful.
@jeremiahblackwood9225 Also, there is a difference between a standard and how a particular individual strives to meet it. This is most obvious in math: a mathematical truth is universal, but each person comes to an understanding of it on their own, following a unique path. This is because each brain is unique, literally.
The standard may not need to change, but flexibility in meeting it has got to be part of every subject and lesson.
I wonder, has Common Core made schools worse? I say that because many of its proponents are known to be rigid people (thinking of Bill Gates).
9:50 - Social invisibility can be a gift too if you know how to utilize it.
Same thing happened to me and I left engineering and just started playing music for a living. Later I began making instrument and reengineering my own versions of expensive tools. I just figure stuff out in the real world, but on paper I’m useless. I’m not a success story, in many ways it makes me more miserable because I can see real world solutions to things, employment them in my own work, and never really find a way to break through. I just don’t test well on paper and the world does not seem to like that. Outside of engineering my brain is still looking for failure points in systems. It’s kind of a problem because I don’t have a place in the world.
I was a C student even though I aced almost all my tests just by listening in class. They gave me terrible grades because I refused to do homework for a subject I understood through listening, reading comprehension, and memorization. I was in algebra in 7th grade, went to a new school where they had me test in, and because I hadn't done long division in a long time and was never particularly fond of it, they put me in remedial math and made me dislike it and feel dumb. Fast forward 20yrs later and I taught myself sound physics and passed a board on the subject on the first try that most people take 2-3 tries to get. I'm not Eric's lvl of intelligence, but I wonder if the system hadn't failed me where I'd be now
You should have done the work. Quit blaming the schools for your insubordination.
I was a teacher of Philosophy, Sociology and History in high school for about ten years in Brazil, most of the time at a prestigious military school (here in Brazil military schools are not for rebellious or delinquent students, on the contrary, they are schools of excellence for students already previously disciplined and performing well...). Sometimes I noticed that some problematic students reminded me of myself (I was a terrible student, recognized as intelligent and even "erudite" despite having mediocre or even bad grades, to the point that I failed in the fifth grade, in Portuguese and in the first year of high school. , in Mathematics). So I repeated to these students my bumpy trajectory through schooling and concluded with the "threat" or "curse": "...that way you run the risk of ending up as a high school Philosophy teacher..."
I usually told my students very frankly that none of the content I taught and taught was essential, so much so that I could work with completely different content. However, he added, the experience of trying to do well in my tests with brute force (memorizing what they thought were the answers) and failing had the objective of showing them the importance and limits of the "brute force" with which they usually tried to obtain A without understanding and forgetting after the tests.
My goal or challenge was to show that they could more easily get an A by first understanding it and then "memorizing" it with much less effort, because memorizing something random (which is what things we don't understand sound like) is much more difficult (and fleeting) than understanding after a different type of attention (which was what I was trying to "teach") and from then on learning becomes "easy" or "intuitive". My method for this was developed by offering a "brute force" "work" whose objective was to familiarize them with the content and which corresponded to 4/10 (grades are quantitative in Brazil and even when we use "qualitative" grades A, B, C.. . they are actually quantitative values...) of the score and the test taken as an entrance exam was equivalent to the remaining 6/10 to complete the final grade for the quarter (the academic year is made up of three quarters). Detail: the "work" gave the maximum score (4/10) to everyone who presented almost anything... for example, answered an online form with questions to mark as many times as they wanted; or prepare notes to use during the test equivalent to the other 6/10.
I give then, however, a warning: if you copy from a colleague or do it without paying attention, you won't be able to get even half of the marking test right... and 4 + (x
This reminds me of a quote, commonly misattributed to Mark Twain, but which was actually articulated by a novelist named Grant Allen, which says:
*_“I have never let schooling interfere with my education.”_*
Love it.
This is fascinating. I would love to know how best to support my ADHD teen. I'm definitely guilty of giving up on his academics in favour of the hands on activities.
Yep, C in academics, and A in liberal academics. I saw the trickery that the school system was just an all-inclusive care taker😂
I was one of those kids who educators gave up on early on. I was 33 when I turned things around. School sucks.
He's right. The system was designed to create a certain type of worker who would do well in a factory setting. It isn't much different now. They don't have the time or other resources to deal with lots of exceptions; jump through the hoops or get left behind.
I don't think of myself as gifted but I wasn't able to jump through the hoops and was seen as a discipline problem. I eventually quit school but managed to easily get a GED and, in time, get into college by taking a series of special tests people without high school graduation had to take. College was different as they weren't trying to make you do anything. You paid for the classes and you could do the work or not. I learned well mostly on my own - but directed by some good teachers - and graduated with honors in a scientific field. I did well in my career and attended grad schools twice.
So all those elementary school and high school teachers I had who only knew how to themselves jump through the hoops of the system almost kept me from succeeding. I do think I was an exception and that many like me probably never did manage to get where they probably could have got had they been treated differently.
I have a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree, both from elite schools. I had a very solid (although unspectacular) career in business. A guy I knew in high school dropped out of college twice (he struggled academically). Then he became a general contractor and did extremely well. A high IQ does not guarantee success and a mediocre IQ does not guarantee failure.
Consider this - 1. Many teachers are excellent and caring and effective. 2 - Most teachers aren’t that great at their jobs. 3 - Many teachers are low key emotionally/verbally abusive.
If I were raising a child today they’d be homeschooled. And we’d be having fun and we’d both be learning.
I was mostly a C student in school. But my severe ADD and aspergers negatively effected my grades even though I was a deep thinker.
Jimi Hendrix was the best example of this... Learnt guitar by ear, and practice alone.. Hardly knew any music theory, yet become the most famous and most expressive guitarist ever seen, by far!
Sure some cant follow what he is doing. But those who have ears to hear, can see!
He was a genius musically. Not a good example.
The education system, as it is currently designed, is intended to reward those who conform the most, memorize the best, and can abide by the formulas that serve corporate taskmasters. The education system is NOT designed to reward the creative, out of the box thinker, who maybe the source of the next great advancements in society. Yes, on rare occasion, those unique individuals do flourish, but in most cases they get marginalized by established educational institutions because they don't fit into a mold.
To use a sports analogy, imagine you had a kid with inherent physical qualities that would make him a world champion powerlifter (sturdy bone structure, muscles that are hyper responsive to strength training, a disproportionate amount of fast twitch muscle fibers, and he has great neuromuscular coordination). However, the standard to be athletic consisted only of the ability to run long distances, which is something that people with a powerlifter's phenotype are not well equipped to handle. That kid would WRONGLY be castigated as "unathletic" by the institution, because he did not fit the narrow definition of "athletic" which only acknowledged cardiovascular endurance as worthy. This is the same selective bias that you see when academic achievement is assessed.
Once upon a time, before NCLB, schools were far better able to teach and reward creative, out of the box students. I saw my public schools K-12 do this. There was a good balance between the group and the individual, and the individual was encouraged. Maybe I got lucky in the schools I attended and the teachers I got.
When in high school when taking tests I was so stressed I could barely spell my name. English was my second language and I struggled. I was treated and felt dumb. As an adult I took a few college classes and got on the deans list, i started an successful international company. I'm proud of my can do attitude but at 77 still feel inferior because I didn't get a college education.
I was diagnosed adhd at 36 years of age. Although it contextualised my childhood experience, it does little to repair the damage of being told you are wrong and not fulfilling your potential, incessantly. Seems to me that talent and intelligence is rendered useless if the bedrock of self esteem is not laid and maintained appropriately by "caregivers". Ive seen this phenomenon again and again as a musician (well, drummer 😂). Some of the deepest creativity is hidden behind fear of the self but it is, paradoxically, born of the perspective of such fear. Such is the embodied existence.
Love it you guys rock!!!
I was a straight A student who stupidly thought that my academic success would transfer into worldly success. I graduated from a very prestigious, private college. I had a degree but very little work experience. So when I tried to enter the workforce, I got the big "So what?" If I had not been forced to do volunteer work in high school, I would've had almost no work experience. I think every job I've ever had, except for being a telemarketer, can trace its roots back to the volunteering I did in high school.
So you’re clueless about work with all that education.
There are those that are told what to do, and there are those that tells others what to do.
Primary school I was touted as one of the most brilliant kids in the country.
High school I took every chance to ditch classes, not do homework and I was pretty much a C student in most subjects, as I lived off things the teachers said during classes I heard with one ear. The vast majority of stuff being taught made no sense to learn, especially not in a way it was taught. School is largely regurgitation. It's daycare.
High school teachers told me I won't make it in life. I work from home in IT and make 15-20x the national average. I could rake in much more. But I don't want to. The stress associated with running a company and being responsible for the livelihood of other people is not worth the extra money for me. I already can't spend this much anyways, as most luxury goods and services are just as stupid as the school system.
This is why I have chose this year to honeschool. Public school kills the Spirit of children and the spark of learning. Confidence and curiosity are sucked from young people.
Thank you Eric 😢
The old story about what George Patton's father did is illuminating.
The powerful and rich don’t want anyone but the mediocre to succeed.
17:50 . Ut-oh. I can so sorta relate to this. I attended class, participated, read the material, 'took notes', and still barely passed my class. My transcript is loaded with sympathy C's because my professors were aware of me and my contributions. 🐿
Everybody has a story based on their experience, whether good or bad!
I almost stopped listening until I Googled Eric's education background, that's the use of school education. It's like democracy, it's the crappiest education system we can come up with UNDER LIMITED RESOURCE, but it's still better than any other thing we've tried. It's not for every individual, but it's not meant for individualism to begin with.
We have used better education systems throughout all of history.
This Prussian model of education was adopted for its ability to indoctrinate.
Thinking is a skill and a process. It creates information. It is full of life, change, and it is freeing. Public education doesn't teach thinking it teaches pre-approved and standardized information that is dead, unchanging, and politically motivated.
We would be better off not teaching anything than to subject children to public education.
I thank you for posting an opinion that is different. While without question there needs to be reform in education, there needs to be recognition that some ideas can only work in idealistic environments.
@18:30 You don't learn by taking notes; you learn by studying them, going over them, re-writing them, using them as a resource for what the instructor thinks is important, for any extra insight into the ideas that the instructor offers that your textbook doesn't.
I love him. My son Philip wanted to play the violin, but a teacher turned him off. Something else could work better. "Incaluable harm." That's an understatement. I could do music either. But music has something in the brain thats importsnt.
I can't spell and had terrible handwriting. With the aid of computers, I was able to work my way off a factory floor, and now I'm an Oracle Engineering Analyst.
He mentioned Indonesian when discussing learning languages. I've tackled several, and Indonesian was by far the easiest.
Vivaldi, he played in the pub a tiny town I was in in about 1980.
Liloett BC. Surprised to hear his name come up.
Update. This is no longer the lens nor the attitude that teachers view students who are struggling. If class sizes are small enough, and if teachers have assistance for so many learning styles - we’re doing better at seeing each individual as valuable and not left behind. This stuff is totally being addressed in schools. It might take time. But we are seeing this whole matter differently. Give we teachers a chance! And a minute. Know better do better! It’s happening. Grrr.
This only works for the dumber people, the smart people are purposely held back so that we don't hurt the dumb people's feelings
You are 100% correct! I work for an education company and regularly visit classrooms in numerous schools. I regularly marvel at the all the ways these kids are getting a better education than we did. The future is in good hands!
But saying things like you are here don't' bring fame and money. Once people get upset about something it's like a drug.
I have kids in school, what you’re saying is not true at all. Every “new” attitude like the one you claim helps, only makes matters worse. The worst higher education system in the country is the education universities. None of their studies are replicable, every thing they implement fails. “No child left behind” is a major failure. My son’s teacher admitted to me in a conference that they aren’t allowed to fail the students because it affects funding. It’s all smoke and mirrors. You’re lying to yourselves.
40+ year too late 😂😂😂 but hey the government moves slow as they say
Powerful voice, great man 🎥🥂🎀
The country that knows how to incentivize making families and how to effectively foster the next generations’ talents will be the next global superpower
This gave me the impression that a conversation between Eric and Scott Barry Kaufman could be very interesting.