Mamdani wants to limit New York City’s gifted and talented program
Of course he does. Of course he does.
This is a recurrent dream of the left, and de Blasio shared it. After all, one can’t have smart kids getting special treatment; they must be sacrificed to the average. It reminds me of the educational equivalent of this observation of Thatcher’s in the economic realm:
I used the word “limit” in the title of the post, rather than “end.” It’s hard to understand exactly what Mamdani is proposing; I can virtually guarantee he’d like to end the whole thing, but as best I can tell he seems to be saying it should start in third grade rather than kindergarten:
Zohran Mamdani’s New York City mayoral opponents ridiculed his plan to phase out the city’s gifted program for public school kindergartners.
Mamdani, the New York City Democratic mayoral nominee, would embrace former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s 2021 plan to phase out the gifted program for elementary schools if elected this November, according to The New York Times. …
Adams has expanded the elementary Gifted & Talented program during his tenure, a reversal of de Blasio’s plan to phase out the program and stop testing 4-year-olds.
“The era of judging 4-year-olds based on a single test is over,” de Blasio proclaimed at the time, likening the gifted program to “the segregation of students if they’re labeled as ‘gifted.’” …
But Mamdani told The New York Times that he would renew de Blasio’s plan, which sought to eliminate the Gifted & Talented test, opting for a universal test in second grade.
Adams is out of the race, but he has an opinion:
But Adams rejected [Mamdani’s] notion in a statement on Thursday, arguing it “gave thousands of Black and Brown kids a real shot to excel.”
New York City doesn’t have all that many white children in the public schools anymore. Here’s the demographic breakdown:
The student body at the schools served by New York City Public Schools is 14.2% white, 23.8% Black, 16% Asian or Asian/Pacific Islander, 41.5% Hispanic/Latino, 1.2% American Indian or Alaska Native, and 0.4% Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander. In addition, 2.8% of students are two or more races …
My guess is that there’s a high proportion of Asian students in those gifted and talented classes. Can’t have them excelling.
Oh, and Mamdani himself went to the Bronx High School of Science, a public exam school in the Bronx for the gifted and talented in science. Before that, he went to the Bank Street School, an expensive private school.
… [Mamdani is the] son of a tenured Columbia professor and an Oscar-nominated filmmaker.
In 2016, he told the oral history podcast “Encompassed – Bronx Science Stories” that, in eighth grade, while he was deciding which tony private school would have the pleasure of his enrollment for the next four years, he sat for the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test on a whim.
He had developed “a small idea of maybe Stuyvesant” — an even more selective and prestigious public high school than Bronx Science. “And then, when I didn’t get in, I was like, ‘Nah, I ain’t going to public school.’ ”
Among the many private schools Mamdani visited that fall, he slummed a trip to Bronx Science [a public school], and found himself impressed because “when I walked in there was a jazz band playing and students just killing it and that hadn’t happened at any of the private schools, and the jazz band wasn’t all white, which was also different from all the private schools I had visited.”
I’d love to see him debate the brilliant Thatcher, otherwise known as “the grocer’s daughter.” Alas, that’s not to be.
A personal note: I attended New York City public schools from kindergarten through twelfth grade. In those days, the gifted and talented program was called the program for intellectually gifted children; apparently they didn’t care all that much about “talented.” The gifted program saved me from constant boredom, and although it had its flaws it was fairly rigorous and we learned a lot. I didn’t like school, but without that program it would have been far far worse. Gifted children need desperately to be challenged, and we need to at least try to help gifted children reach their full potential.
Behind this we may find lurking the Magic Brick theory of schooling. The gifted schools are made of Magic Bricks that smarten up the kids sent through them, therefore we should make a every school a gifted school (or we should send non-gifted kids to the gifted schools) and then those kids will magically become gifted.
Closely related to the Magic Dirt that magically transforms immigrants into Americans. A variation of “wet streets cause rain”.
Academics oppose merit on exactly these grounds. That smart kids get A’s only means that smart kids are chosen by the teachers to receive A’s and those A’s are what induce society to treat those kids as though they are smart. This is exactly what is behind “role models” and DEI.
So, so predictably stupid. Do you think the one test is unfair? Design a better one, or a system of evaluation. The concept of a homogeneous society, conceived by the champions of diversity no less, is so toxic. “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.” Get a clue Mamdani.
I could go on endlessly with this one, since both gifted programs and the economic disparities are mentioned.
Always the gap between the rich and poor, AOC blathering about the “Gini coefficient,” and the plight of the poorest 10 or 20%. It reminds me of all the shouting about racism, when it’s become clear that overt acts of racism in this country have to be manufactured or faked, since real ones are so rare.
Economists have pointed out that income quintile analysis over time, glosses over the fact that millions move from lower quintiles to higher ones all the time. We and the Dems have to flood our country with illegal immigrants to keep the lowest quintile stocked with fresh poverty.
In Phoenix, they were called advanced classes, and I think they started in something like fourth grade. I took every advanced section offered through twelfth grade. The downside, of course, was that I didn’t know very many kids not in those classes; it was the same population over and over. Like Neo, I think I would have been totally bored in the regular sections.
I have to say, in fairness, that testing for intellectual quality in kindergarten seems early. By the end of second grade it’s pretty easy to see which children are capable of more demanding work. This assumes, as was the case when I was a child, they are really trying to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic.
Behind this we may find lurking the Magic Brick theory of schooling.
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Behind it is a hostility to individual accomplishment and the notion that all benefits should be dispensed by people like diBlasio and Mamdani.
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Please note, failure to sort common-and-garden students into performance tracks wherein students are fed material at different paces and failure to remand other students to consortial programs which address their specific impediments is a formula for massive inefficiency in the use of instructional manpower. Annual assessments via regents examinations administered by proctors employed by the state board can tolerably tell you how well students are progressing.
Why is it that this reminds me of the episode of SNL back in the 70s when Julian Bond was the guest host? Especially the part where he reads sample questions off an IQ test to Garrett Morris.
You know, back when SNL was still funny.
I was one of those gifted kids that public schools didn’t know what to do with. Was bored bored bored until 5th grade when the elementary part two school in eastern Massachusetts started a special after-school class for the smaht kids. For the first time I felt slightly challenged.
Then we moved overseas. British schools are generally at least one or two years ahead of American so we were moderately challenged. I did mostly well. Then we attended a rather elite American school where we continued to be challenged. I did very well in some subjects, managed above average in others.
My point is that kids with above average ability and drive *need* to be challenged or they get bored out of their skulls and quite frankly waste years when they could be learning at a much more advanced level. Both my children were Talented and one was Gifted. The Gifted daughter finished high school a year early and later earned her doctorate from Vanderbilt.
I must confess that I am not entirely comfortable with Gifted and Talented tests and curricula that reward those with above average intellectual abilities. This isn’t to say that they should be done away with as Mamdani would like to, but rather that other tests should be used in conjunction with measurements of students ability to perform symbolic manipulation.
I believe there is more than one, all-encompassing G factor called intelligence that rests on a person’s ability to manipulate mental objects. I have worked with farmers and factory workers that, while lightly formally educated, yet were ingenious when working with their hands to craft and fix machines. Similarly, I have met people in the helping professions like doctors and clergy that have deep emotional intelligence. So rather than one G factor, I suggest there may be three: intellectual, manual, and emotional.
So rather than a Gifted and Talented track, schools should track students into those that would excel at a university and those that would excel in the trades. As many likely are aware, this is what Mike Rowe is pushing. It is also what my high school did a long time ago and what I saw in Europe during the time I spent there. Rather than saying “learn to code,” online wags should say “learn to fix heat pumps.”
Marxism goal is to bring everyone down to the lowest common level, Oh except the Party children.
priviledged progs like obama or mamdani seem to want to keep the people miserable, well there is no benefit to make them self reliant, is there ‘from their point of view’ when you can keep them on the dole, and unemployable
Tracking is a non-starter in this country, given our body of civil rights law. You know already which kids are going to disproportionately end up in which tracks, if they actually do meaningful tests. There’s only three possible outcomes:
1) They apply differing standards so that the demographics come out “right”, the tests are a farce and lots of people will be sent to the wrong track who could benefit from the right one.
2) They apply such a weak standard that too many kids qualify for the coveted tracks, and then they select out the demographics they want, the tests are a farce and lots of people will be sent to the wrong track who could benefit from the right one.
3) The tests will be made illegal.
@neo: Gifted children need desperately to be challenged, and we need to at least try to help gifted children reach their full potential.
True.
Also gifted children are a national resource. These children are more likely to bring greater boons to the country than average children, which might sound unfair, but that’s reality.
Nurturing gifted children is a cheap, no-brainer investment in the future.
Equity and Inclusion with a dose of Diversity
After I learned to read, I spent the rest of grades 6-12 surreptitiously reading a book on my lap.
I’m pretty sure the teachers knew.
I grew up and went to school on the other coast – I do not think that the LA public school system had specifically designated public schools for the gifted and talented which one could test into. There were such things as the Honors and AE (academically-enriched) courses from high school on; I was tracked into those courses, mostly, as someone who was bright and collegebound. Thank G*d for that, because whenever I landed by some administrative mistake into a regular class, I was bored out of my ever-loving mind.
Being very, mostly, or even sort-of above average in intelligence and stuck in among average or even below average students is absolute torture. I suppose I was at least somewhat fortunate that I wasn’t actively resented and bulled by the average students on that account – but there is that element to it all; envy and resentment of the brightest. I’d bet Mr. Mamdani is exceedingly resentful of those with superior intelligence … and wants to curry favor with lower mid-wits by seeming to cut the bright and talented down to size.
What a disgusting little man. Honestly, if he gets voted in, the people who voted for him deserve him.
huxley on October 6, 2025 at 5:25 pm
There are so many good points to be made, but huxley’s here is one of the best.
It also illustrates why the label “progressive” is such an insult to the English language. Would you like to stifle a country’s progress over time? Just follow a progressive’s policies.
This will guarantee an exodus of smart people from NYC
A dumbed down populace is much more accepting of propaganda and the more dumbed down, the less skillful the propaganda needs to be. But the more aware on the left do not envision a permanent end to gifted and talented programs. Once permanently entrenched in power with “consent of the governed” a concept relegated to history’s dustbin, such programs will be restored. Early identification and classification of every child, so that as in China, the State can best direct and utilize its servants.
“We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class of necessity in every society, to forego the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks”. Woodrow Wilson, stated during a speech in 1909.
huxley, me too!
One of my teachers, Mrs. Doherty, definitely knew. She used to wink at me when she walked past my desk, and sometimes she’d recommend books to me.
Tracking is a non-starter in this country, given our body of civil rights law.
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No and no.
A dumbed down populace is much more accepting of propaganda and the more dumbed down, the less skillful the propaganda needs to be.
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No. A dumbed-down populace pays no attention to public affairs except when something invades their daily life (like hiking their property taxes).
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Highly intelligent people who fancy themselves ‘well-informed’ are often quite vulnerable to manure because they are highly other-directed. Faculty would be an example.
“We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class of necessity in every society, to forego the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks”. Woodrow Wilson, stated during a speech in 1909.
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You’re forgetting Wilson was a perpetual student and the son of a clergyman-professor.
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People benefit from learning to read and write, learning arithmetic and elementary algebra, and learning the fundamentals of American history, geography, and civics. You’re not going to make intellectual hobbyists out of most people and for most there is a serious opportunity costs incorporated into studying academic over vocational subjects. In regard to tertiary schooling, the share of each cohort obtaining a specifically academic degree was around about 12% in 1969 and might be 16% today. People given the choice have other things to do with their time.
Science Fiction addresses this topic in several ways.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Marching_Morons
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit_451
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/697618-throughout-history-poverty-is-the-normal-condition-of-man-advances
“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as “bad luck.”
The “gifted” program in our sons’ elementary school consisted of children who were sent to a “pull out” section at one location, one day a week, in which all of the appropriate age cohort throughout the district met for more challenging activities and instruction.
The district used a selection criterion I hadn’t heard of before: rather than just a higher IQ or whatever testing level was used, there had to be a significant difference between the student’s expected achievement in class, based on those IQ and other tests, and their actual grades. If they were doing okay, there wasn’t a problem!
There were many causes for the discrepancies, including learning disabilities such as dyslexia, ADD, “absent minded professor syndrome” (probably low-level autism spectrum), and idiosyncratic personality and learning styles. I think my kids collectively covered the gamut.
All of them benefitted from the classes, and loved going there.
Technically, the youngest should not have been in the pull-out sessions: his grades actually did match his projected ability, but his teachers recognized how bored he was in regular classes, and pulled strings to get him in the program.
My own experience in HS back in the Late Dark Ages was of “tracked” levels of classes in math, science, and English so that the teacher could make assignments based on the norm for a specific group, not the year-class as a whole.
Thank goodness. Finally, I could quit reading the interesting book on my lap while the rest of the students struggled through the basics.
(There seems to be a trend here in the comments. As a caveat, as mentioned by others: some book-l’arned highly intelligent people are dumber than bricks, and some trades-majors were my best students in the computer programming classes I taught in college.)
I understand that IQ or intelligence in general is 50 to 70% based on the genetic contribution from your parents.
Given India and China have 3 to 4 fold more people than the US, it would seem reasonable that they have 3 to 4 times as many geniuses [some of whom would come here under student and/or HB1 visas].
But if the Mao (and Stalin) purges removed a large fraction of the more intelligent set of potential parents, then the final numbers available might still be closer to ours? Not that the Indians and Chinese don’t have or make solid contributions across a number of fields, but it does seem they are no more numerous than Western contributors.
Conversely, we might believe the more intelligent people under that situation would find ways to stay alive compared to their less talented or intellectual peers? [Caveated by AesopFan’s final comment above.]
“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
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Combox denizens are fond of this quotation. The only problem with it is that it is false.
@Sgt. Mom
“Honestly, if he gets voted in, the people who voted for him deserve him.”
No argument with that. But the big problem is that those who don’t vote for him don’t deserve him any more than those of us not in NYC!
I lived in Manhattan most of my adult life and recently left (for reasons other than political). I feel I got out just in time! I have many very liberal friends in NY but not one that I know of who will vote for him. They didn’t vote for Di Blasio either, but figure they made it through 8 years of him. I thought Adams was reasonable – but my liberal friends hate him. Probably, no, definitely, because he was willing to talk and work with Trump. Mamdami is riding into office because of political derangement syndrome and he has made no secret of the fact that a vote for him is a vote against Trump. That is the only reason, I think, Kathy Hochul finally endorsed him. Ironically, my liberal friends are hoping that Trump will rein Mamdani in and prevent his most auspicious intentions by shutting off the money tap and thus restricting him. I find that rich (they are all Trump haters, but quietly are depending on him to protect them from Mamdami’s intentions. Those who are voting him in are those who are listening to his campaign “promises” now. Not what he said 6 mos. ago 1 year ago, 2 years ago. Poof! All the statements of global jihad are gone from his daily stumping thanks to the advice (orders) of campaign managers and advisors. What comes after the election? People figure they’ll deal with it when they are faced with the consequences: higher taxes, riding free subways ,dealing with crime and justice if it affects them and cops are told to stand down (think Chicago now), and counting on Amazon to be able to import food they can no longer get on local store shelves.
Also, I, too was one of those “gifted” kids, who was bored out of my mind in the subjects that AP classes were not offered in. I went to public school and I have always said I couldn’t have had a better education! It was grueling at times, but never boring and never more than I and my classmates could handle (although when assigned the work, we didn’t know how it was possible!). Someone above mentioned that you generally had the same people in classes, and fewer teachers – usually the AP classes were taught by one teacher in each subject throughout the school year. That was my experience, but participation in extracurricular activities allowed for meeting other students. And to tell you the truth, I don’t even know if students not in the Honors classes, even knew they existed, and certainly didn’t feel they were being deprived or being regarded as a different “class” (double entendre intended).
It is beyond any doubt that Neo and her readers/commenters all have above-average intelligence. I come here for the information and stay for the enlightenment! The issue of public education is, for me, quite simple: avoid it and teach your own children, unless that is an impossible choice. Alternatively, find a private school that follows a traditional curriculum: reading, math, history (but under no circumstances using that abomination from Howard Zinn), classical literature, etc. And no fair claiming you can’t afford it: you can if it is important enough. And of course, I recognize that every child has different qualities, some being more inclined to intellectual pursuits, others inclined in different directions. I have a grandson who has difficulty reading but is an absolute savant when it comes to things mechanical as well as computer-based. He can simply look at a machine of any sort and figure out its function intuitively, but abjures “reading for pleasure.” Public schools, by nature and necessity, tend toward homogeneity. Some say that is their purpose. Moreover, they, by their very structure appeal to female rather than male proclivities. Thus, they have become dominated by females in both teaching and administrative positions. Check out any random public school’s male/female teacher ratio, and don’t forget the teacher’s unions, now dominated by feminist harridans like the execrable Randi Weingartner and Becky Pringle. Exposing a child, male or female to such an environment is parental malpractise.
The issue of public education is, for me, quite simple: avoid it and teach your own children, unless that is an impossible choice.
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Schooling is a fee-for-service activity which will appear naturally on the open market, so it is not what economists call a ‘public good’. The utility of public expenditure is that you can guarantee some baseline of service provision within a certain commuting distance from the home. The hostility to private schooling (whether it is to be had in an incorporated school or at home) is a function of vested interests. The administrators and teacher’s college faculty who staff and indoctrinate the apparat and have nefarious ends want a captive audience and dislike people going off the grid; the unions are often of similar kidney but wish there to be a government monopoly while they maintain a monopsony of the salient workforce. Lots of things which might be done to increase options for parents – voucher issuance, reversion of a portion of one’s property tax payments, all-voucher districts, &c. We should do this recalling that modal opinion among parents generally does not incorporate objection to public schools per se, but to spot problems which they encounter. We should also recall that a big problem is on the supply side:
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A. Shutter the extant state teacher’s colleges
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B. End the practice of requiring schools at all level limit their hiring to those with an ‘education’ degree.
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C. Limit the function of the state education department to composing and administering examinations – for civil service positions, occupational licensure, and student assessment.
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D. Draw local superintendents from the business world, general public administration, philanthropic administration, the military &c. Limit the function of local superintendent’s offices to budget, physical plant, the motor pool, the comptroller corps, the grievance officers, itinerant instructors and evaluators, itinerant technicians, and (perhaps) liaison functions with certain outside agencies. The superintendent would be responsible for implementing district policy as carried out by his own staff, while the principals would be responsible for that among their own reports. In such a system, principals would be selected by and report to the board, not the superintendent.
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E. Vest in local school boards a franchise to enact policy manuals within guidelines specified in state law. These would include specifications on the instructional programs offered in the district; disciplinary manuals for students, faculty, and other employees; manuals on relations with outside agencies (consortial districts, the sheriff’s department). Sometimes state law would allow broad discretion, sometimes not. (In the latter category would be procedures for hiring and promoting ancillary employees, which would have to be regulated by examinations administered by the board of regents).
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F. Establish new teacher’s colleges in state schools, blacklisting the faculty of the old schools unless they were trained tests-and-measurements psychologists. Such schools would screen their applicants with a state entrance examination, offer two year programs consisting of a short menu of methods courses, some months in an internship working with a state certified master teacher, and a year of stipended apprenticeship with a state certified master teacher. You might have eight different types of certificate, some requiring antecedent (subject-specific) course work and some just relying on the screening examination. The colleges would also offer programs to enhance one’s certificate – e.g. exam preparation courses for content examinations in the arts and sciences.
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G. End collective bargaining for public employees, and compel public employee unions to function as voluntary mutual aid societies.
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H. Leave common-and-garden schools to instruct common-and-garden youths. Youths not proficient in English, youths with severe deficits, and youths who are a disciplinary issue beyond a certain severity should be assigned to consortial programs.
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I. Institute in the state government a corps of mediators and arbitrators whose presence a parent can request when he wishes to contest a disciplinary decision. Leave the board, the superintendent, and the court system out of it.
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J. Again, annual regents examinations administered by the boards proctors, not school employees. These have a number of uses. All youths in the state would be assigned a men of regents examinations they had to take w/o regard to who was schooling them.
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K. Require any common and garden school district have a youth (5-18) population (not a pupil population) of at least 1,600. Elect all the state’s school boards for four year terms on the fourth year of a quadrennial cycle (the year before a presidential election).
Obligatory link to Harrison Bergeron-
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B5PPSRIcnHuwOVdmdndTWjRRcGs/edit?resourcekey=0-E8qpKNHSjjOpCI2gZaiaOg
“A. Shutter the extant state teacher’s colleges
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“B. End the practice of requiring schools at all level limit their hiring to those with an ‘education’ degree.”
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I didn’t realize until very recently that the IQ of the average public school teacher was very likely slightly below the population mean (maybe 97-98 on a 100 medium scale). I should have, when I realized that the girls with SATs in the high 500s were the ones going to our state teachers’ college. The guys whom I knew who went there were mostly differently able (typically dyslexic) who often ended up very successful, after dropping out of college, and embracing their differences. Which, in retrospect is a bit humorous, because a teachers’ college should be at the top of the colleges that could cater to differently ambled. Yet, it was my small liberal arts college that seemed to do it best…
In any case, what this means is that in the public schools, taught by graduates of teachers’ colleges, if you charitably assume an IQ of 100 (it actually appears lower), for every teacher with an IQ 1 STD above the mean, you will have one 1 STD below. And without any tracking, you will find those 1STD below trying to teach those 1, 2, etc STDs above the mean. It doesn’t work, as many here can attest.
It didn’t work for me, or the two women I (sequentially) married. My goal was a 3.5 GPA, which, plus my high SATs got me into an elite small liberal arts college. I was bored silly through middle school, and esp high school, where I could maintain that by reading and doing homework for the next class, in the current class, while not diverted by looking to see the girls’ underwear in the nearby seats. Proudly didn’t take a book home my last two years in HS, and only got Bs in the highly subjective classes where the As went to the girls who could butter up the teachers the best (and often ended up going to the state teachers’ college).
My daughter grew up in the same school district as we did (and her daughter may do so too). It was decent, which, in retrospect, is scary. So, we sacrificed, and sent her to a good private school. It was worth it. Instead of teaching some sort of gestalt math, they learned their math tables the hard way, and had competitions for speed every Friday (her PhD is in engineering). And they had more AP classes than any other school in the state (even the best public HS with 10x the class size).
There was a fad, during the later years of my father’s teaching career (mid-to-late 80s) called Outcome Based Education. Essentially, it meant that children who had mastered a subject could take a test and then move on to the next subject in the curriculum.
It failed, of course. It was a square peg/round hole failure. Those exhorting the idea were presenting a paradigm shift, but it had to take place inside the orthodoxy of the public school setting. Can you imagine the anarchy of children learning at different rates and moving to different classrooms mid-school year, teachers learning new students mid-term, teaching one level to one group of students and another level to a different group of students, usually in the same classroom at the same time? Naturally it failed, and the theory was defamed instead of the orthodoxy.
My mother, on the other hand, was a special education teacher. To the end of her career, she told me she dealt with very few dumb kids. These kids were smart, but they couldn’t learn in the environment of 30 kids in five rows of 6 desks. They needed one-to-one instruction. Again, established physical plant impedes the progress of students, and more insidiously, stigmatizes them. And to compensate, the schools started medicating them.
My parents were relatively smart people, fully up to the task of teaching middle school children. But they always struggled against the orthodoxy and the actual physical setup of schools.
After I learned to read, I spent the rest of grades 6-12 surreptitiously reading a book on my lap.
I’m pretty sure the teachers knew.
Definitely! I had a teacher in 7th grade who told me, at the end of the year, that he’d spent all year surreptitiously watching me read my under-desk book and trying to catch me out on the in-class material – calling on me to pick up where the last student had left off from the on-top-of-desk book and so on. He seemed both disappointed and ruefully admiring of the fact that he never did.
Regarding the students who go into teaching: when I was taking Calc 1, there were two clusters of grades. The math majors pretty much all got As. The education majors pretty much all got Cs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfIAZG1aR4E