Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion "The Genius in All of Us"

I was just out at B&N and the used bookstore with my kids and B&N had this book on display. I picked it up & leafed through it quickly and am curious if any of you have read it or have any opinions.

His premise, based upon my quick skimming, seems to be that intelligence is not innate. It is the nurture vs. nature with him coming out on the side of nurture. He has a whole chapter on twin studies and how they don't prove that intelligence is heritable & how they've been misinterpreted. Now, I have to admit it is easier to come down on the side of intelligence being innate when you are not average, but I'm curious about others' take on his book.

I listened to his interviews on "The Takeaway" (http://www.thetakeaway.org/2010/mar/08/genius-all-us/) and read quite a bit at his blog:
http://geniusblog.davidshenk.com/2010/03/welcome-to-genius.html

He seems to go down the popular road of "10 zillion hours of practice will make you good at anything." I know I'm greatly over-simplifying, but I don't see how this notion applies to a PG kid "spontaneously" learning to read at age 3... or any of the other countless examples we see with young prodigies.

I'm sorry, but I could practice drawing for 10,000 whatevers and, at best, would maybe improve my stick-figure rendering only slightly.

One of the comments (at one of the above sites) raised an interesting question: "If parents are given credit for developing the genius, are they also assigned credit (blame?) for kids on the other end of the spectrum?" (Loosely paraphrased.)

My two cents, happily contributed.