Mastery at anything is a moving target.Not sure that I agree here-- but maybe not for the reason one might assume.
I associate the term "mastery" with a body of knowledge, a particular concept, a methodology, or a specific skill.
Mastery, in my definition would mean "Rachmaninoff 2nd" or "Mozart K331" rather than "piano."
I would consider the analogous term associated with "piano" to be "peak human performance." THAT does seem to be a moving target, yes.
But I see that as a pinnacle built upon the older versions of it-- so a generation ago, yes, those conservatory pieces were at a post-secondary level, and now my high schooler is studying them instead. Yes. Quads not triples. Yes.
Undergraduates in chemistry are doing research projects that I didn't tackle until I was a graduate student. Yes, again.
Things that used to happen in state-of-the-art research settings are being done in introductory teaching labs now, and some of them even in science classrooms in secondary enrichment environs.
But they aren't moving targets, I don't think. Isolating DNA hasn't
shifted. We've shifted around it. We are all standing on the shoulders of giants. Perhaps being a scientist makes me inherently comfortable with this construct. That's possible. What took Descartes and da Vinci
years of grinding work takes my 13yo just a few hours or even minutes. Of course, she has modern tools available-- so I don't think that the exercise is entirely comparable-- just that she has the ability to go PAST their discoveries as a result of being able to master that work, and that knowing it, then she can use those tools to explore in new ways.
I have faith that my daughter will find her place in the world without a lot of pushing from us to be "the VERY best" at the things that
we think are important. We can see the past and the present. Therefore, I can't prepare her for her life any more ably than SHE can, realistically. I don't know what she will "need" to know in twenty years, or what she'll regret having not done.
I do know that if I insist that she do things that she doesn't particularly feel driven to do, she will grow to resent and hate them... no matter how high her level "mastery" or "excellence" might be.
My question is more about the root causes of push-parenting overdrive. What resources are we all trying to "outcompete" for in the first place? Which of those are so scarce that we are terrified that our kids won't be able to "get theirs" among the crowd? What are we afraid of?
I'm not afraid for my child. She will find her way, and her intellect will make her pretty successful in anything she chooses as a passion to pursue.
That said, we have warned her that there are relatively few employment opportunities for studying philosophy or history in college as a major course of study-- and that this has been a very stable thing for the past half century or so. Choose wisely.
I don't believe that human beings are getting smarter. But there are more of us-- which means more and more PG people among us, if at the same rate as always. That seems like a very good thing, potentially, in light of the problems that the carrying capacity of the planet is likely to present us with in my DD's lifetime. LOL. But that's just me. I tend to take a non-competitive view of life in general. It's just the way I am.
