Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Benefits of learning skills late in life

Beginners: The Joy and Transformative Power of Lifelong Learning, by Tom Vanderbilt (Knopf, 320 pp., $23.99)

Like many parents, New York-based journalist Tom Vanderbilt found himself, in mid-life, clocking long hours on the sidelines of kid events. He took his daughter to chess tournaments on weekends. He signed her up for choir and swimming lessons. Meantime, he and his fellow parental spectators all stared at their phones. Eventually, this provoked a thought: why wasn’t he spending any of this time learning new skills himself? Was he “imparting a subtle lesson: that learning was for the young?”