I love the way you talk. It sounds so crisp and clear.
So, either way, just watch your kids closely and give them the whole world to consume and digest. I guess the lake and river analogy means generalists will take in the local environment while savants or specialists will draw what they need to them.Ellipses, let me go google-fishing see if I can't find some Brittish lit curriculum. What age?- ish.
Aww-- thank you...
Yes, though I'd probably say it's more akin to
channeling everything through a particular route/subject/filter. The rain water still covers the same watershed as for the lake-- it's just directed in a much more obviously focused manner. The specialist kids tend to be the obsessive immersion learners, or those for whom 'all roads lead to ______' (interest du jour).
The generalists tend to see
everything as interesting, but little as truly fascinating or obsession-inducing.
My hypothesis is that the former develop greater "surge" capacity and can handle much greater information loads and cognitive demand. Like a higher wattage rating. It isn't that the generalists can't learn pretty much the same stuff-- just that they learn it differently and in the case of complex material, slow and steady seems to work better for them than drinking from the firehose. I think this leads to some limits
at VERY high levels in specialized disciplines-- that is, I strongly suspect that there are topics in math, chemistry, and physics that are akin to that carnival game where you have to ring the bell-- repeated taps aren't enough... you have to hit it with a sufficiently high force or the threshold isn't overcome. In my way of thinking, that may be where the generalists hit a cognitive ceiling and the specializers do not.
But that's my hypothesis, and it's not backed by anything other than my own peculiar observations, so far as I know.
