If you have two students with whom you were teaching a fine art, and one was naturally gifted in that art, and the other was not, which student would you expect to do better in the long run? Most people would guess that the gifted student would; but is that really the case?
In Zen Master Shunryu Suzuki's book Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind he explains his point using horses. "In our scriptures, it is said that there are four kinds of horses; excellent ones, good ones, poor ones, and bad ones. The best horse will run slow and fast, right and left, at the driver's will, before it sees the shadow of the whip; the second best will run as well as the first one, just before the whip reaches its skin; the third one will run when it feels pain on its body; the fourth will run after the pain penetrates to the marrow of its bones."
Everyone wants to be the best horse, but this cannot be done, because perfection is impossible. If one cannot be the best horse, then we would want to be the second best. However, Master Suzuki believes this is wrong. He believes that “when you learn too easily, you're tempted not to work hard, not to penetrate to the marrow of practice." To him, the bad horse has the advantage because if it puts forth the effort, it will learn the skill much more deeply than the other horse would. I believe Master Suzuki is right and that when you learn easily, you are tempted to not exert the same amount of effort, but I don't believe that the slow learner is inferior to the fast learner. One type of learner is not dominant over the other and each has equal potential, but for the fast learner "to achieve his or her full potential, this person will have to work just as diligently as those with less innate ability." George Leonard.
So in conclusion both types of learners are equal, and both can achieve maximum efficiency, but the obstacles for each learner are different and must be overcome to ultimately reach that level of proficiency.
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