Expectations

I have done an incredible amount of reading on intelligence, the difference between races and ethnicities and cultures. I've discovered in my fifty-six years of living on this rock called Earth that the difference between us has never been about intelligence or aptitude, but expectations. In certain cultures the expectations that a child was going to excel in Math or Science is baked in. Just like the expectation that a child would excel in sports is a foregone conclusion. You probably could picture that child as I described the characteristics... It's all about what a parent expects from the child. I am reminded of the story of Thomas Edison. It is said that as a child he came home from school one day and handed his mother a note from the teacher wrote that she instructed him not to read. Thomas Edison's mother opened the note and read it silently to herself. Then she read it aloud to her son. "Dear Mrs. Edison, your son has exceeded the abilities of our staff to instruct him and we will no longer be able to teach him at our school." Several years later when Mrs. Edison had passed, Thomas Edison was going through her letters and found the note from the teacher. It read, "Dear Mrs. Edison, your son does not have the intelligence to keep up with the other students and we cannot address his needs at this school. Please find an alternative." Mrs. Edison had homeschooled him from that day forward.