Look, John and others, I want to make sure that I’m clear about something: I neither take any particular pride at this point in having been a “prodigy”, nor feel that the label is in any way useful. (What could be much sadder than being a 50 year old child prodigy?)

“Gifted” is perhaps a little better, but the real issue in my mind comes in two parts:

(1) our schools operate on a “factory” or “industrial engineering” model, in which students are the workpieces and “success” is modeled not by how effective the individual outcomes are, but rather by how effectively the factory produces a steady flow of barely acceptable work products. This means, with self-adapting “workpieces”, that some of us manage, in some of the areas of our interests, to “pull ourselves ahead” in the production line.

I think this model is massively flawed, and — now that I put it that way — I think needs massive revision.

(2) I think being labeled a “prodigy” has some good effects — I actually was permitted to attend college classes at 9 because of the label, and that the source of some of the happiest moments I had in childhood — but it also has some really deleterious effects that come from a combination of the “gifted child” expectations I talked about above, and flat-out resentment on the part of others.