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