Measured

The sidewalk I run on had some new chalk today. Mile markers. It's pretty much impossible to be a runner with a watch and not check to see how fast you can cover a measured mile, even if you think the measurement is bunk. In case you're wondering (and I know you are) I ran that mile part of my run in 8:25. I was running quick, but not at a race effort. I think whoever measured the mile was optimistic.

Gifted and talented. We could tell early on. 

That got me to thinking about how we measure ourselves. With running it's pretty straight forward, time. How fast can you run a mile, 5k, a marathon? That's one of the great appeals to running by the way, there's really no cheating. You start, you finish, how long did it take and who did you beat. Not much else in life is like that.
My kids are just starting to bring home papers from school with grades on them. The first homework, the first quizzes. Grades. Numbers. How did you do? What do you know? Important of course, we need to figure out what people know so that we can figure out if we're teaching well and they're learning well. Who needs help? Who needs more challenges? This is mostly all decided by grades and numbers. It's how we measure our kids, or how others do anyway.
My younger daughter brought home the test results from last year that were used to decide whether to let her into the GT program at school or not. Her ability measured and broken down in numbers. Singling her out from the majority of her peers for a different academic experience. All of this at six years old. It's something to think about.