“the difference between students isn’t in their potential to learn particular things, but in how fast they can learn them”
I love this idea that anyone can learn anything, it just takes us different times to learn it. I used to hold the belief that I couldn’t learn languages. Yet I’m now (occasionally) able to survive social gatherings entirely in Mandarin Chinese. It has taken an inordinate time to reach this point though. I can learn, just slowly.
“I believe that talent and prior experience drive our learning rate more than our learning potential. But we mostly measure rate of acquisition, not ultimate attainment, in schools. Because of this, we end up selecting for talent, rather than total potential.”
This leads to something that I’ve long believed: Academic performance is not a good indicator of potential.
Source: How to Learn Anything Easily