Mill was a famous philosopher. Wikipedia cites a source saying he was "the most influential English-speaking philosopher of the nineteenth century". If hothousing increases both the chance of eminence and failure, is it wrong?
He wrote an autobiography and there is a chapter on his early education:
http://www.bartleby.com/25/1/1.htmlWhat his father did makes me feel very uncomfortable. Maybe it's not as wrong this:
However, his teacher in Beijing, nicknamed Professor Angry by Lang Lang, had other ideas. "Professor Angry didn't like me and she always gave me a hard time," he remembers. "One afternoon she said that I had no talent, that I shouldn't play the piano and I should go home. She basically fired me before I could even get into the conservatory!"
Unbelievably, when Lang Lang's father heard the news, he demanded that the boy take his own life. "It's really hard to talk about. My father went totally nuts," says Lang Lang quietly. "He said: 'You shouldn't live any more – everything is destroyed.'" The father handed his son a bottle saying, "Take these pills!" When Lang Lang ran out on to the balcony to get away from him, his father screamed: "Then jump off and die."
but still, reading about and imagining the life of JSM as a child makes me very sad.
