Don't rely on the system to guarantee you life satisfaction

It's particularly apropos that Lord of the Flies is common required reading in American high schools.

Were it not the case the teachers are often the biggest bullies. On the contrary, IMO, it is the excessively authoritarian, prison-like model school follows that generates bullies.

Not really.

In history/political education my grades depended a lot on the teacher. In Germany you can get better 0 and 15 points. A bunch of my teachers just didn't understand me. Nobody told me that good writing is clear writing so, I did the German intellectual thing of writing long and deep sentences.

One teacher didn't understand the difference between tactics and strategy and therefore just didn't get what I wrote. I often got something like 11 or 10 points which happens to be above average but not the top of the class.

Than I had one teacher who had the reputation of being really tough by other students. He gave me the full 15 points for every exam I wrote with him. If he would have followed the rules to the letter he would even have to deduct a point because of spelling mistakes that I made, so he effectively gave the quality of my writing something like 16 points on a 15 point scale.

As far as I understand it also happens frequently that high IQ people perform poorly when they are in an environment that doesn't challenge them the right. It's even one of the prime ways IQ tests are used. They are useful tool for identifying smart kids that are failed by their schools.

This might be different because I have a European experience/perspective, but I don't think tests are a very good indicator for general intelligence.

Due to how the system is set up, there's little incentive to score a perfect score (10 out of 10 points is often used here in Belgium). In terms of consequences, there's absolutely no difference between 10/10 or 6-7/10. You still pass the class, you still get to the next grade, you still end up going to university.

So what ends up happening is that a lot of smart kids end up with grades around 7/10, because that's what they get when they put in no effort.

Because of [...] the massive number of tests students take I bet that the smartest kid in every high school knows that he/she is at least one of the smartest 3 kids in his/her school.

That's probably close to true in the US, at least by college admissions season -- there are only a few merit-based scholarship packages that are open to anyone going to any university, and if you've landed one of them, or even gotten close, you can be pretty confident that you're if not the smartest kid in your school then at least in the 98th percentile or so. (There is some noise.)

I think it becomes a lot less true at percentiles below the 95th or thereabouts, though. You'll have gotten standardized test results, yes, but if I'm remembering my own high school years right, they'll likely have been perceived (not entirely without justification) as utter bullshit. Grades are better correlated with conscientiousness than IQ, and you'll probably have gravitated towards students close to your own intellectual caliber, so social proof won't be helping you much. All told, I think I'd expect high school students that aren't obviously more than two or three sigmas out to perceive themselves as much closer to average than they are.

I think if it comes naturally, widespread popularity is an incredibly helpful quality, and a very important one to nurture.

Is it? I think "popularity" is being conflated with "influence".

I wasn't popular at all with high school. I was the guy you suddenly want to be very friendly with and then stay far far away from for a few weeks when he started dropping names and pointed hints. And I was also the guy whom people came to tell what they saw in corridor E-2 so they could work in some good will or hopefully even make me owe them a few favors.

And all without the disadvantages of being publicly visible! Like having to maintain appearances to a much higher standards! Or the whole community turning against you once you cross one of its many invisible lines of unacceptability!

(note: The above examples were not the widespread thing I've portrayed them to be, but rather rare and isolated cases I've fished out as salient images. Still, I find the advantages I enjoyed much better than outright "popularity".)

What if it doesn't come naturally?

so it should be emphasised that this is not a Fully General Counterargument against learning anything.

I think it's okay to tell kids that if you're incompetent you'll still do fine in life, because it's true. The function of telling them that the material doesn't matter could be to reduce their anxiety over the obvious tension between valuing coursework and real world pragmatism.

Another takeaway from the argument could be that adults are generally pretty incompetent. Most people don't use math or calculus, but in my experience this hurts them quite a bit. If they have a bunch of data they won't be able to model it as well. If they have to design an experiment they won't even think to go look at the constitutive equations. All of this cross-applies to evaluating other peoples' work... Like professional engineers will frequently look at academic literature but only be able to read the abstract/conclusions section. They aren't punished for it per se, but they aren't exactly rewarded for it either. So you could go the other way and say: "look, if you want to be in the top 0.1% of achievers, learn this stuff because it actually is applicable if you go out of your way to apply it, and it will be awesome".

I also just don't have any sympathy for the people who are hurt by informing them about their biases :)

And if you tell them to listen to smart and successful people, you might be preparing them to fall for the next MLM scam.

Above I told them to google or wiki stuff. Just start doing it. There are so many things the average person believes that are just false upon reading the wiki article. For example, eating breakfast is the most important meal of the day because you've heard it in Kellog's commercials since you were 5. Except maybe that's not true and you should look deeper into the issue since you'll be eating every day for the rest of your life. Similarly it boogles my mind that parents can't summarize expert opinion on corporal punishment for children. Your children are insanely important, and you can't even spend 5 minutes reading wikipedia to double check what you already "know"?

Regardless of how they get their information though, it would be good for them to get in the habit of discussing their ideas with strangers (on the internet) to serve as kind of a check on them getting too out of whack. You don't necessarily have to convince other people, but they shouldn't be able to destroy your belief by just linking a wiki article :P

Maybe just... give them your e-mail and tell them to feel free to ask anything

I think we should emancipate 15+ year olds.

And Amy's father was a super-genius, even compared to Ivy league professors.

Sure, but note that the the type of advice Jonah is giving is disproportionately aimed at gifted kids.

So, Chua's technique and Jonah's are indeed aimed at the same population and so we can look at the results that each offers. Chua's two daughters are not a big data sample, however.

Certainly, kids who are pushed to "play the game" succeed in life along all relevant parameters more than those who are not (those Upper East Side kids whose parents prep them for Harvard are going to end up with above average outcomes as compared to the US population). But there are some major confounding variables there, of course.

There are vast educational resources available online for both parents and students, and the fact that formal schooling is going on is no barrier to making use of those resources.

Actually, it is, because your children spend a lot of time at school and you'd have to teach them in their "free time".