alt Hacker News> When someone's that good, we shouldn't waste four years of his life in school he doesn't need, but instead let him be productive
Or perhaps we need more challenging schools. I'd hate to harvest before cultivation has a chance to grow without the constraints of organizational biases
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18 years is more than enough time to ripen.
- Marquis de Lafayette was only 19 when he helped the US win independence.
- Alexander began conquering when he was 20, smashed Persia at 25, and "wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer" at 30.
- Pascal and Galois did revolutionary math before 20.
- Mary Shelly wrote Frankenstein at 18!
We need more rigorous secondary education and a pathway that lets people with rocket-ship trajectories skip useless tertiary education. I am sick and tired coddling mediocre people by pretending geniuses don't exist. If I ran things, I'd set up magnet schools nation-wide.
Hard to make a school designed for a very small group of students. Who's paying?