If you are so good at doing something, that means that you are really good at doing a lot of things that utilizes that special skill set. However, it doesn’t meant that they are all beneficial.
The Brilliant Mind displays this fact really well and it allows the audience understand the “dark side” of being brilliant.
However, the movie only highlighted a few struggles of brilliance. Schizophrenia and social struggles are two of them however, I think there are a lot of other “costs” of being smart.
Looking back at my life I can draw a couple of examples. I had a really good friend of mine who was of higher intelligence compared to those around her. At year two she could read harry potter books and her professor parents taught her advanced topics in grade school. Her older brother went to Columbia and she was always on the top of her class. However, school was always boring to her and she rarely felt invigorated through the traditional learning system. She ended up establishing distance between herself and a lot of her classmates and ended up finishing high school early.
Not that there is anything negative to that, however I think it is just interesting to see how different gifts always, not necessarily have “costs”, but imply other consequences.
For those who skip grades, they miss out with going to school with people of their own age. Are they able to establish meaningful relationships, learn social norms, find out more about themselves as quickly as their intellectual knowledge is growing?
Is there a way for us to establish educational systems that can both satisfy the “geniuses” of the world without having to compromise the rest of their lives? However, what would that type of institution entail for inequality and segregation?
I agree with you that there are costs to being brilliant. One of my friends in high school was very smart. She got a perfect score on her SATs, and even skipped a grade! She got into pretty much all the schools that she applied to, even Princeton, and then decided to take a gap year. Even though she was just a year younger than us, she felt that it was important for her to go to college with people her own age. I didn’t really think about how hard it must have been for her, socially, to skip a grade. A year later, she is happy and doing well at college!
Hi,
I also agree the costs of having above average intelligence. However, I think this issue could also be extended to individuals who have below average intelligence or anyone who does not fall with in the masses. It’s interesting how we treat above average intelligence differently than below average intelligence, although both of them are deviations from the statistical norm. I feel like educational systems should cater to everyone, and not be built on statistically common capabilities. However, this is much easier said than done. On the bright side, there are educational systems like those in Finland that work outside conventional teaching methods to ensure that each student has an equal opportunity to agree.
*Equal opportunity to succeed