Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums GT Research Child prodigies as evidence of innate talent

Oh, that is a shame.

I had SO much fun with that column-generator that Jon posted a while back. I laughed and laughed, and then DD got in on the action, too, and she had a blast with it. Darn.

{scurries off to wayback}

"Child prodigies provide a particularly fascinating view on the nature versus nurture debate because of the extremely young age at which the prodigies demonstrate their remarkable abilities, thus, limiting the extent to which their abilities can be solely the result of extreme dedication to practice."

(((Echo of my dad's voice, "He's going to be a genius!")))

I think there is no debate that nature plays a role whether you have a talent for math, piano or running. But nurture is required, hence the whole 10,000 hours thing. Bill Gates got up at 3 in the morning day after day to use the University computer. Just being uber smart does not make you create a company like Microsoft. Yes, they got the opportunity to create the software but because by high school he already had a computer consulting firm.
I think what really distinguishes certain prodigies is their love of their talent. DD enjoyed her talent at the piano but then when the concerts started early and we had to push her to play to concert level, she didn't love it. She loved being able to play the pieces, not play them exactly how the teacher wanted them done. When we went to the Young People's concerts and they had these musicians who won competitions at 12 and were touring at 14, they loved the music, they loved their talent and ability to play. DH was at Harvard with Yo Yo Ma and said the guy would practice one section of a piece for hours until he had it perfectly. That is nurture.

And so the argument gets blurred. Yes, a gifted can more easily tackle the work and spend less time achieving the end result but with bad habits of slacking, the less gifted can achieve higher results. So in the end, how can you judge who is more talented, the giftie who didn't want to do the work or the less gifted who did the work and achieved greater results?

I think that these ideas are exploited people like Malcolm Gladwell and educators who claim that everyone evens out by third grade. They twist your first statement and end up confusing people. The result is bogus arguments. No one is claiming that practice doesn't matter. The OP's paper (and many others) found that practice is important but that giftedness is an entry requirement.

People like Gladwell would have us believe that 10,000 hours of practice is what matters. These ideas sell because (IMO), they make people feel good. I could be a great artist/athlete/musician/physicist if only I had practiced for 10,000 hours. But I didn't and that was my choice. Tiger parents would presumably love this argument because it gives them permission to force their hapless offspring to keep practicing piano at midnight. Gladwell lets everyone ignore the elephant in the room, which is that talent matters.

Oh, I have a copy of the OP's review article. Ping me with your email address if you'd like a copy.

I think the point about gifted being the entry requirement is in question. entry into what? Dona Matthews' Being Smart about Gifted Education has that whole mystery/mastery thing.

If there was oodles of money and brilliant people making use of that in education and you had the mastery model optimized, where anyone could achieve mastery using whatever gifts they had, (Madeline Levine's Teach Your Children Well) then we have society of the future and term gifted is irrelevant because it encompasses Howard Gardiner's idea of gifted, not WISC IV.

And my point about prodigies, that even though they have talent, they may do nothing with it. So? Yeah, they have talent. Let's stare at them instead of the kid who had less talent, did the 10K hour thing and is playing at Carnegie Hall? That really sounds stupid.

I believe that with the 10,000 hours most people can become COMPETENT at most things. I believe with the work I could draw much better than I can or complete a half marathon. I could not overcome the fact that I am short with short legs or that I do not have natural talent at art.

I could optimise what I do have. It seems silly instead of congratulating people for their talents to blame ourselves for not having worked hard enough to get the talents. It does seem to fit quite well with the American mind set of everyone being able to get to the top (but honestly I don't quite think that was meant that way).

Some thoughts on what may even out by third grade are found in these online articles:
1) http://giftedkids.about.com/od/schoolissues/i/even_out.htm
and
2) http://giftedkids.about.com/b/2006/08/09/leveling-of-abilities-in-third-grade.htm

Some thoughts on nurturing, written by renowned author of the French tale "The Little Prince", are found in this Wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Little_Prince,
which reads, in part:
“ I sat down [facing a sleeping] couple. Between the man and the woman a child had hollowed himself out a place and fallen asleep. He turned in his slumber, and in the dim lamplight I saw his face. What an adorable face! A golden fruit had been born of these two peasants..... This is a musician's face, I told myself. This is the child Mozart. This is a life full of beautiful promise. Little princes in legends are not different from this. Protected, sheltered, cultivated, what could not this child become? When by mutation a new rose is born in a garden, all gardeners rejoice. They isolate the rose, tend it, foster it. But there is no gardener for men. This little Mozart will be shaped like the rest by the common stamping machine.... This little Mozart is condemned. ” —A Sense of Life: En Route to the U.S.S.R

I like the articles indigo because he helped explain some things going on with DD last year in third grade.

She had a really amazing teacher in first grade and her project on optometry took me by surprise, the depth of research, her writing skills. Then the teacher in the gifted 2nd grade class, who was lovely, didn't have the same level of challenge and DD slacked off a bit. Her work got sloppy and by third grade, the teacher, who was good, thought that DD wasn't up to it. Because there were state tests, I saw scores that reflected it. On the ELA practice DD got 70%. Her answers were short, vague but reflected her boredom and disinterest. I made her do a writing workbook, practice writing more, taking out exact lines and copying them to give her practice in explaining her ideas and she ended up with a 92% on the final but her attitude, boredom and disinterest by 3rd grade was so striking a difference from her work in 1st. And this was in a gifted program, but a general gifted, one size fits all.

Right now, after the move, her gifted class is run very differently and DD has a project to do on habits and she chose micro-organisms in the Arctic, narrowing it down to Tunicate and started pretty eagerly to get into it. Wikipedia makes research irrevelant hence I have to help her learn some research skills. No more getting 3 books out of the library -- which was something the teacher in grade 1 insisted. No Internet. It had to be 2 reference books.

Anyway, Sunday afternoon musings.

just came across this and thought it would be of interest--I haven't really read the thread so it may already have been covered. My thought was "Well, duh," but it's useful to see it in print.

http://healthland.time.com/2013/05/20/10000-hours-may-not-make-a-master-after-all/