Intelligent or gifted people are really screwed by the system

I just read an article about intelligent or gifted kids that irritated the helll out of me. So much so that I'm going to have a little rant here.

Heh, I also learned a new word today, 'autodidacts' which is big word for 'self taught'. I also learned that being more intelligent than the average can lead to a person almost exactly like me. Depressed, alone and pretty much socially isolated because I'm considered weird by most people.

Now I don't have the highest IQ in the world. It's only 140 but it's still genius level and it's far enough above the average that I find few people to talk to or that can even understand what I'm talking about. So besides being smarter than average Karma played another great trick on me and my personality type just happens to be very rare too. I'm an INTJ type. If you don't know what that is just Google it and you'll find plenty of sites to explain it. Yep, it makes me even weirder to most people.

Heh, I could read before I started school. I'm highly curious about a lot of things but my favorite thing is why people do what they do. I'm not much of a talker but I most definitely am a watcher and a listener. I make a lot of people nervous because around most people I just don't talk much. I love it when I can predict behavior based on just a few minutes of watching in a group.

A few I talk to a lot but they understand me and what I say and what I mean. It's rare for me to find someone I like talking with. Lol, I joined Mensa for awhile but they didn't understand me either. However that probably had more to do with the way I was raised than it did anything else.

So I'm an autodidact. Left totally alone I turn into somewhat of a nerd. It's to bad that I had to make such a bad choice so long ago when I was way to young to make it. There is no way I'd have survived my life by choosing to be a nerd. Tough and hard ass was my other choice. So I chose tough.

Physically tough and mentally tough. Independent to a fault. Able to suppress all of my emotions except anger and that surfaced a lot when I was a drunk. I'm still very irritable now and then but it seldom comes out as anger. Just an irritated tone of voice.

Lol, I'm also told I'm cocky, arrogant and a know it all. ROTF, asshole is one of peoples favorite terms for me because I don't suffer fools gladly and I tend to be a bit blunt and tactless. IOW I don't sugarcoat things or tiptoe around issues or problems. There are those who are bigger and stronger but I still tend to be the Alpha male wherever I go. People find me very intimidating.

I have enough credits from seminars, courses and company training plus my own sense of curiosity that I could have a couple of college degrees but they don't really matter to me. I quit formal schooling after 9th grade because it was idiotic and boring.

I can tell you that most educators I've talked to think 'No child left behind' is the worst thing Bush did to the country. The fact is it's leaving every child behind. Not just the highly intelligent or gifted.

I didn't choose to be born with a high IQ. MOF I think it's one of the worst things that happened to me. Heh, more Karma. Not did I choose to be an INTJ. More freaking bad Karma from my point of view. The other worst thing is Trish making me feel emotions again.

Yeah, yeah, I know she didn't make me, that it was my choice. It was my choice to let her do it. I'm big on being personally responsible for your own choices and I take responsibility for mine at all times. Don't always like it but I do it. I certainly have a lot of dumb crap I did that I'd like to blame on someone else but hey, I made the choice to do it.

Anyway, go read the article and then do something at your kids school to make sure the intelligent kids are challenged. No, don't pair them up with someone in special ed or someone with a 50 point lower IQ. Doing that just frustrates them even more and makes them more likely to drop out.

Because some days I have, or wear, the trappings of success, schools have asked me to come in and speak to older kids about school and life. I always tell them sure but I never get accepted to do it because I have one condition.

That one is pretty simple tho. Just that I be able to tell the truth as I know it about education and business. About the value of schooling and about what a waste a lot of it is. So when I throw that in as my condition all of a sudden they don't want to hear from me anymore. To bad they didn't know I'd only finished 9th grade when they asked me.

Lol, the institutions that are supposed to revere truth and learning above all don't want to hear the truth of the real world. That they don't teach kids the most important things in life. How to think for yourself and how to make decisions. There are others but those two irritate me the most.

So now we have a crappy education system that doesn't really educate anyone about anything. We are getting short changed with our current system and even worse so are generations of kids. Stupidity at it's finest.

So go read the article and do something at your school to make it better. From my perspective it won't take much to make it better. http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/failingourgeniuses