.
Was encouraged to skip a grade or two but declined.
My friends were in my class. At 3rd grade level, it did not
even make sense. Perhaps the teachers were disappointed.
Doesn't really matter. We all develop at our own rates.

...are the most important. I'm not sure of the benefit of IQ testing except perhaps for discovering cognitive disabilities. I think a lot of people probably have some latent talents that were never really developed because they were undetected, either because they weren't raised in the right environment, or persons with the proper background weren't available to take note and promote cultivation of the gift.

Sometimes education is too cumbersome, rigid, or lacking in imagination. Consequently, a lot of talent out there is neglected. In other instances the talent or potential may be recognized, but it doesn't meet the needs of the organization, or people in a position to promote talent, simply don't give a crap enough to encourage and support it. It's a hard fall to know that you are the best at something, and the potential is never realized, because of one's status, and you didn't have the resources or opportunity to realize it. In other instances, people are simply neglected.

On other hand, because teaching institutions are rigid, and evaluation techniques improperly applied, one might even be told, you have no skill in this area, you have poor test results, you got a D, or failed the course. Something along those lines, when in fact, the teaching and evaluation methods are crude, applied out of context, or simply wrong.

I think it was Alan Watts who said working at a job, is a waste of your life. I like the aphorism attributed to John Lennon as well, life is what happens when you were planning something else. I have often heard over the decades from ordinary people, people I liked, "woulda, shoulda, coulda." It's a kind of folk wisdom. I'm more of it takes a village type. Without mentors and teachers who know what they're doing and care enough to guide a child and young person, their gifts may never be realized. If the environment isn't conducive...oh well. My 2 cents.

.

....geniuses and immensely gifted composers and mathematical visionaries who were born over the past 90,000 years — with not much to do during their lives except to hunt woolly mammoths with homemade spears. Unless they were nearsighted, as so many humans seem to be.

I imagine all of the Jeff Bezos and Elon Musks, who were born as modern humans in the early nomadic years, just out off Africa. There was not much to do relative to their unique gifts — except for drawing comics on the walls of various caves they slept in..

They would have to wait another 80,000 years before their tribes caught on to growing food from seeds. Staying in one place for a yearly cycle, then another, would clue humans into astronomy and climate change. Those three simple concepts would finally start the tick-tock of human thought in time and space — and speed things along.

On the other hand, there's no denying the large numbers of unhappy misfits that are currently among us. How many are potential genuses who can't get any traction or find inspiration in the world, as it is. History tells us our misfits may have been born tens-of-thousands of years too soon for their natural gifts to find a fulfilling purpose. The civilizations occupying this planet are very slow and very lazy when it comes to improving the world for future generations. In fact, many people on this planet are trying to grab and hoard everything they can, and take it with them. From a futurist perspective, however, the current human existence on this planet dd Human existence on this planet remains technologically and philosophically and spiritually primitive. There are many precious aptitudes and innate gifts that lie dormant in the many unhappy misfits we produce, and jail.

Born too soon to be great.

An enjoyable essay. Thanks.

[edited = garbled mess]

touchy subject. My grandmother had been a schoolteacher, and she taught me to read when I was 2.
Apparently this eluded my mother. I recall asking her to buy me a book (Mouse House?) at a little bookstore when I was four or so. She scoffed and said no, I couldnt even read it. Which I promptly began to do. She may have been baiting me, its hard to know. She bought the book and I notched it as a victory. My parents divorced when I was in kindergarten, and our house caught fire so we moved.
First grade at another school they slid me over to 2nd grade reading/english/whatever for that particular period.
Second grade was split between the school near my grandparents house where I stayed as my mother moved to San Francisco then Berkeley, where I attended King Middle School for the last half of the year. Seriously pissing off the teacher with my doodling.
While at my grandparents they procured some psychologists to come out to the middle of nowhere and administer a test. Third grade was spent in Grand Forks at an Open Community School experiment that I enjoyed immensely. Fourth grade into a year round school in Reno where I came to traumatic grip with my missing math skills trying to learn mult tables. By then I had already made animated film, and been introduced to computers, but those basics were delayed and seemed difficult, definitely stressful and pressured. Next few years in Carson City at very decent schools, unaware of any sorting by class, but sent off to some gifted program at certain times to do whatever they were trying to do in that program. Educational psychologists doing research rather than teaching. I suppose the earliest lessons I learned was that answering all/any of the questions in class was a bad idea. Playing stupid wasnt necessarily dumb.
Moving back to Fresno I found myself at a rinky dink junior high without my academic records in the obviously segregated classes lower rung. I suppose that lasted a few days or less when my pencil hit the desk far ahead of anyone else during tests. "take this note to the office." Seeing the reality of that segregation left me feeling that the slower students were being harmed, but at this point I can understand how that works both ways. My grades were never particularly good, and a year prior my mother's frustration with that caused me to basically break down. "Youre supposed to be so bright, why arent your grades better?"
She went to the trouble of telling me I scored something like 135 on an IQ test, and the normal IQ was 120... I tried correcting a teacher who claimed 100 was the norm, and suddenly knew something was rotten somewhere. This was when she admitted my score was 152.
None of that made much difference to me, changed nothing, I didnt like school, couldnt wait until I was done. Of course the college thing was a thing, and I was content to attend the local state college I live next to now. \
That wasnt good enough for my mother. Probably looking out for my best interest, maybe a little pride involved, despite my pleas and protests, she got me into UCSC with maybe a 2.8 GPA?
Underprivileged white kid discount applied I suppose. This was just before it became very popular.
While that was the best of vacations, I did learn a thing or two that seemed important.
But I cant learn unless Im interested, and even then I am learning disabled (I call it instruction blind). I had never considered or heard of ADHD, but a really great fellow in the Electronic Music program brought it up and it seems correct. Having the chance to hear Bob Trivers lecture on fascinating ideas like Deceit and Self-Deception was pivotal. I tried to slide into his graduate class because I was so interested. He told me to dig my own grave. If I had known how many classes I was gonna fail anyway, I would have stuck around. That would have been a profound decision, but likely harmful, just as being at home would have been. I managed to tip toe through the 80's without being another coke addict suicide stat, but only by accident or good fortune of a sort. I suspect Trivers would have been a very destructive influence at the time.
Wait, was this about Trump?
All of the cognitive charges leveled at Biden and Trump are pretty bogus and that actually is the point I wanted to make. They arent stupid or demented, just sick and treacherous.
Deceit, lying, dishonesty, all the games played by asshole hatchet flacks is much more significant than the baseline intelligence of anyone, oval office or anywhere.\
With no holds barred deception being the rule, intelligence is kind of a vestigial appendage.
All we can do is hope for the best for the most, and call those fucking liars just what they are.
That should be known as one of the worst crimes of all.
Wake me up when that happens.
Thanks!