Certainly when you put it like that I'm not persuaded either.
I definitely would question whether kids can be made "smarter" (which is a pretty general term that I'd want to have defined) using hothousing techniques.
However, I do think that one skill (or many) can *suffer* at the expense of one that that gets hothoused. I think that prioritizing what the parent wants to have learned over what the child is ready to learn can slow down the child's overall progress. And for what? If the answer is "For bragging rights" or "to get her into Harvard so that Mom and/or Dad can have bragging rights," I'm not a fan.
