Is success a coincidence

[Music]

mark twain said

that to succeed in life you need only

two things

ignorance and confidence but is that

really the case

my name is arya thiagy and together we

will discover why your success may not

depend upon who you are

but where you are

people are born into this world with

unlimited potential

but the moment they’re placed in the

hands of their parents the scope of

their future gets

a little constrained now why would i say

something like that

well even if we assume that all parents

love their kids equally

it’s a fact that the amount of love each

parent has for their child

has little to do with the to do with the

amount of attention

or mental stimulation that child

ultimately receives

maybe both parents work and a child is

left with many sitters or goes to day

care

that child will not be receiving the

same attention or more importantly

mental stimulation from its parents that

a child would stay at home or work from

home parents may receive

these things start impacting who we are

what dreams we have

and they create the experiences that

lead us to self-define

our capabilities from there

children in elementary schools

experience some of the most significant

significant events

of their lives and these critical years

shape

how we solve problems how we resolve

conflicts and it’s when we discover our

potential

these life events occur when we’re very

young and they shape our thought process

throughout the rest of our lives

children in elementary schools are

separated based on their reading levels

math abilities and other similar

sections

that determine the speed at which kids

learn new material

and the depth they ultimately go into

their studies the most notable of these

higher level groups is the gifted and

talented program which i am a part of

the testing process for this program

includes problem-solving questions that

challenge cognitive ability but do they

these are the types of strange questions

that kids have most likely never been

exposed to unless they have very

hands-on parents and the kids who do

well on these tests are children with

older siblings as the older siblings

ultimately help the younger siblings

with the testing process

and this was definitely my experience

with me and my little brother as we were

tested into the program

so there’s already an established gap

between children before the testing even

starts

that has no relationship with the

child’s intelligence or ability to work

hard

once in the gt program kids learn

information at a faster rate and so

we’ll have more knowledge than the

children in the on level program

but the most important thing is that the

result of being trained to absorb more

information faster

are better marks in advanced placement

or ap classes in college and eventually

better performance in newer jobs where

quick thinking is required rather than

textbook knowledge

these crazy results completely shape our

futures as adults

and the causes can be seemingly smaller

unnoticeable things

such as the working status of parents

the order of a child’s birth or even

what month in a year a child is born

now if you’re having some trouble with

that last one like i did at first

here’s an example from outside of school

in canada

in in hockey the cut-off date each year

for every season is january 1st

now if you were to look at the trends in

player birthdays you would find that the

most popular birth months for hockey

players are january

february and march in that order

canadian psychologist roger barnsley

found

that there were nearly five and a half

times more junior hockey league players

born

in january as there are in november five

and a half times

more players born in the beginning of

the season as opposed to the end

and this case of age bias isn’t simply

because older players are better

but because they started out with an

early advantage

in age class hockey a boy who turned 10

on january 2nd

could be playing a boy who doesn’t turn

10 until december 31st

in boys of that age a difference of

almost a year is enormous

in terms of physical maturity so when

the big teams start scouting

they look for the bigger and stronger

boys ultimately they end up being the

older ones and

those boys get the teams that those boys

get put on

get better coaching have put in more

hours of practice

and have more experience playing at a

higher level

before the difference between the two

boys was that one was older and so

slightly

better bigger than the other but but now

after years of getting better coaching

putting in more hours of practice

and competing at a higher level the boy

born in january has truly become a

better player and is more

likely to play professionally than the

boy born in december

dr barnsley found that these biases

exist wherever there are selection

streaming and differentiated experiences

and this same concept applies to our

early education and its effects on our

future success

so what does this mean for our kids i

think this concept

shows that if you separate the talented

from the untalented at an

early age at a young age and give the

former group a superior experience

you will be giving a huge advantage to

those people when only the smallest

difference would have differentiated

those groups in the past

so what do you think is success equally

attainable

or is it just the result of a series of

fortunate events

does it really matter who we are or is

it time to start looking at where

we are thank you

you