Let me start by saying that I am a High School Rebbe. Recently I have been giving a good deal of thought to how former students turn out years later. It seems to me that many (certainly not all) of the students who I, and often the school, thought of as "superstars" in terms of learning (which I know is not a rigorous definition) did not end up fulfilling the expectations we may have had for them to be ongoing "learners" as adults.
I would love to hear if other educators have had similar experiences. I have thought of 3 possible reasons why this might be true, but would love to hear other thoughts -
1] some people peak early in life and having too much expected of them early on might actually work against long term development
2] we often don't see the full picture of who a student is beyond the classroom and if we knew who the student was overall, we might have had a different impression even initially
3] possibly people who are "superstars" in limudei kodesh are often also the same way in math, history etc and it was never realistic to think that they would equally pursue each discipline, so as long as they do well later in life in one area, that was all that we really should have expected.
Yaakov Blau
