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Notes -
How would you pick the specialization at age 5?
Parents' choice? This might be suboptimal; imagine being born to mathematicians and being pushed into maths from age 5, but realizing at age 25 that despite becoming better at maths than your peers, you enjoy creative writing much more, it comes effortlessly to you. The society has gained a good mathematician, but has lost a great writer.
Child's choice? One of the reasons for the same mandatory (and inefficient) skill-training we corral every child into is exposing them to various activities so they can make this choice for themselves. I can't imagine compressing this into the first five years of their life.
Some kind of aptitude testing? Perhaps, I think it's possible to come up with one that is easy enough for a five-year-old to do, but still has enough predictive power. But possible doesn't mean easy.
I think greater access to specialized schools will help more than trying to specialize every child at age 5. If someone shows aptitude for chemistry at age 5 because her parents are both renowned scientists, let her go to a chemistry-oriented primary school. If someone shows aptitude for chemistry at age 10, let him to go a chemistry-oriented secondary school. Yes, there is a chance that we've lost a Nobel Prize winner by skipping five years of chemistry education, but if the boy's parents were, I don't know, accountants, I think he would still be a better scientist than an accountant.
I was just reading about a woman who loved novels and wanted to be writer but was pressured into going to an elite school for mathematics. That was Maryam Mirzakhani —
The problem with whim is that it’s whimsical. For every person who ignores their passion and regrets it, there’s one or more who ignored their passion and thanks God for it. For every person who wishes they continued trying to be a famous actress, there’s a person who curses their life that they focused on something they aren’t good at, and there’s someone who loves their life because their parents told them not to be naive about an acting career. For every “society has gained a good mathematician, but has lost a great writer”, there’s “society has gained a mediocre writer, but has lost a universally important mathematician”. In college I knew someone who wanted to be a personal trainer. He studied for four years, and after graduating he suddenly hated it. I met him when he returned to do a new four-year degree as a computer science student.
This does not take the thousands of hours of training we administer. This takes, like, three hours per subject. And I support that. Kids should try lots of things to find what they are good at and what they really like. And then they should attempt to balance the two. IMO it’s better to look what one is good at, find what is bearable, and then see if you can’t find enjoyment from it. If there’s still no enjoyment, then they should make a switch. But there are so many people in the world who enjoy making music but are terrible at it, and then there are excellent performers who actually dislike performing. There are writers who hate writing, then there’s a shitty novella published every hour by someone who should just work at a library. Life is weird.
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