I was once invited to spend the day at a high school, speaking to all the Sophomore and Junior Religion classes about “science and religion.”
 
Before the first class, the teacher told me these were the brightest and the best; the high achieving, top-tier, AP students.  As I started my presentation, one of the young men asked me if they were going to be tested on the material I would present.  I chuckled and said, "No, not by me.  This is information for information’s sake, to do with as you see fit.” 
 
As soon as I said that, their eyes glazed over, and they closed their notebooks and placed them under their desks. They knew, even at 16, that if the material isn’t worth being testing on, it’s not worth knowing. So I spoke for 50 minutes to 30 wooden planks.
 
Later that day, before the last class of the afternoon, the teacher informed me these were the lost ones; the D-students.  They didn’t fit in and they’d been written off.  In fact, the teacher said, if I could just keep them from breaking a window or starting a fight, the class would be a success.
 
Against expectations, when I mentioned my subject, they came alive. This was material they’d never been exposed to.  They were intrigued, focused, asked interesting questions that came out of left field, and challenged me on everything I had to say.
 
I was in AP classes in high school, tho they weren’t called that then.  I understood the students in the first class; I’d been one.  If a subject didn’t fit in the landscape of received wisdom, it had no value.  It was unthinkable to consider expanding the horizon.  Better, instead, to exclude that-which-doesn’t-fit.

I saw that day there can be real intelligence in some of those too-quickly written off as D students; the ones who probe, challenge, ask impolitic questions; the freaks and geeks so beaten down by the boredom of a mindless regimen they seem to be asleep at the switch. Then later, some of them go out and develop things like relativity theory.