<p>If that is so, it’s better to take the kids out of the school. Our kids went to public school. It did not cost any money for S to be accelerated. Private schools can be far more rigid than public ones. </p>
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And it will get worse, not better. And colleges will not want to avoid kids who are deemed to be underachievers.</p>
<p>There are a number of factors that come into play with genius. First you have to have skill (be it mental or physical) at an extremely high level. Some of that is likely a talent that you are born wiht and some is going to come after practice, practice, practice. This will give an extremely high skill level, but that alone is not ‘genius’.
In addition, for genius, I think that you have to be able to take that skil and turn it and apply it in new and unique ways, look at Hawking, Einstein, Motzart, Michael Jordan (hey, I think his fallaway jumper is genius). It’s more than just skill, it’s inspiration. I think that it is what athletes talk about with being “in the zone”. There are times when you get an inspiration and things just start to click and suddenly you have created something really fantastic. I think that just about everyone has had small bits of time when that has happened, but true geniuses are able to do it on a regular basis. I know that the few times that I have experienced it, I got done with what I was working on and looked back and thought “now how the heck did I manage to come up with that?”</p>
<p>I think that Gladwell was very close to the mark. I have seen from watching two kids face both sides of this (LD/effort and gifted/unmotivated) that is it truely the combination of innate ability to learn, the willingness to explore and effort to master the task which make a success of the individual “genius”. You cannot have one without the others. But, it is the spark of the subject and the presentation of the opportunity at the right time to explore the subject which is the catalyst.</p>
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<p>Funny you should mention hockey, Canuckguy. In his book, Outliers, Gladwell analyzes the Canadian Hockey league to find out what the top players have in common and what accounts for their success. It’s too involved to go into here, but the overwhelming commonality is their birthday. The vast majority are born in January and February. It has to do with the cut-off dates for eligibility when they are young. The ones who are the oldest do the best because at whatever age they start (I forget – 6?), there is a huge difference in size and ability if you are born in January, or December, 11 months later. Obviously, that isn’t everything, but the cumulative effect of that headstart becomes overwhelming.</p>
<p>Funny that so many of you equate genius with hard work. For me a genius is someone who is truly apart from us (well, me) common mortals, who has access to that 90% of the brain that is apparently in dormance, or to misquote the Romantic poets, hears the music of the celestial spheres. I would add that many true geniuses have gone unrecognized through the ages because their particular talent did not have any value to the society in which they functioned, and their difference was seen as a liability rather than an asset. Someone used Van Gogh as an example; he sold one painting during his life despite the unremitting efforts of his brother Theo. How would Mozart have turned out had his father died when he was still a baby?
In our modern society, there is a much better chance of being in the right place at the right time for someone to recognize your potential (i.e. Good Will Hunting). In fact, we seem to have gone overboard nowadays and attribute genius potential to any kid who doesn’t fit in. As a teacher, I have met scores of parents desperate to convince me that their child’s poor results were due to the fact that you can’t ask a genius to learn a page of irregular verbs.
Talent is the ability to master a skill better and faster than average. Some use their talents, and here I agree with the concept of hard work; others don’t, and as parents, we tear out our hair in frustration,or we console ourselves by saying that it is better to be all-rounded than obsessional. Talent, as one poster mentioned is measurable: in a conservatory, all students are talented, but to different degrees. On the other hand, genius can’t be measured precisely because it means being outside the chart.</p>
<p>Ah yes, the folks that are off the chart through no effort of their own, like the preschooler who tries to help improve the standardized test the preschool director is trying to administer. Also, like the kid who comes home from preschool at age 3 can can tell you how each child felt in the classroom and why, spot on. The preschool staff repeatedly advised the parents that their kids were off the charts and it was inappropriate to assume that their kids were how kids of like age were like or capable of.</p>
<p>For athletic genius or giftedness, the Shoji brothers at Stanford who were both All-American for Men’s Volleyball this year–one as a junior & the other as a freshman.</p>
<p>Being at the right place, right time and making the most of the opportunities presented to you has always been very helpful, to rise out of obscurity and have more resources to extend the talents/genius.</p>
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<p>You do realize that Gladwell is also a Canuckguy? So his interest in hockey does not surprise me. It is true that children born in the beginning of the year is significantly more advanced physically and emotionally than those born late in the year. I would be curious to know if those enrolled in Caltech are not also born early in the year.</p>
<p>In a way, Gladwell just phrased what we know all along a little differently. Last year I learned, for example, that it is an open secret in China that parents understate their children’s age when they enroll them in sports schools, which may partly explain the lack of longevity in many of their sports heroes.</p>
<p>Where I find him really stretching it is when he tried to make a connection between math ability and rice cultivation. I know Terence Tao and Shing Tung Yau are Cantonese, but I can not believe the wheat eaters in China’s north do not produce fine mathematicians as well.</p>
<p>BTW, Ovechkin’s birthday is in September.;)</p>
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<p>Then he truly IS an outlier!</p>
<p>Re the rice cultivation and math ability, I’m not entirely convinced either, although there is no question that rice cultivation has been the predominant force that shaped Asian cultures like Japan or Korea. Didn’t he mention something about most Chinese math whizzes (that looks funny) in this country being from southern China?</p>
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<p>That is why I mentioned Tao and Yau. They or their parents are from the southern Chinese province of Guangdong. My feeling is that Chinese from southern China, specifically those from Guangdong and Fujian, have been emigrating abroad for a long time and thus have the opportunity the northerners have not had until recently. In short, I don’t think it has anything to do with rice cultivation at all.</p>
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<p>The other two superstars in the series, Crosby and Malkin have birthdays in August and late, late July respectively. Maybe they are given so much natural talent that a late birthday is insufficient to hinder their success? LOL. As I see it anyway.</p>
<p>The difference in math abilitites from different countries is in a way math is taught in school. American kids are very unfortunate. Algebra, geometry, trig starts in 5 -6 grade in other countries. These are taught as different subjects concurrently (ususally on different days of the week). By the time kids are in HS, they already know what is considered HS math in US, and they know it much deeper, since they have spent several years studying. In addition, math is used to develop logical thinking process with stress on proofs, deriving of formulas, not memorizing them. </p>
<p>American kids are exceptionally talented, production of “melting” pot of human genes. Elementary and HS education by opinion of immigrants from various countries is lacking considerably in comparison to other countries that spend fraction of US cost of education per student. Pouring more $$ will not help!</p>
<p>“. For me a genius is someone who is truly apart from us (well, me) common mortals, who has access to that 90% of the brain that is apparently in dormance,”</p>
<p>90% of the brain is not dormant. That’s a myth–we all use all of it. :)</p>
<p>There are theories out there that it is not how much of brain we can use, but how it is “wired”. The most famous savant was born with only 1/2 brain.</p>
<p>There is a very substantive discussion of this very question here:</p>
<p>[Knowing</a> Me Knowing You Radio Show 4](<a href=“alan-partridge.co.uk”>alan-partridge.co.uk)</p>