Genius, Kids Aren’t Born With It

If you’re worried your little drooler isn’t demonstrating the kind of genius you were just sure he had been blessed with before birth, don’t worry. Genius, according to two new books, is made not bestowed.

All it takes to make genius are these three easy steps: practice, practice, practice.

In a recent column for the NY Times, David Brooks gives us the digested version of the two books, The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle and Talent Is Overrated by Geoff Colvin.

Here’s what he says about the genius/talents/skills of Mozart and Tiger Woods if the research in the books is to be believed:

Mozart was a good musician at an early age, but he would not stand out among today’s top child-performers.

What Mozart had, we now believe, was the same thing Tiger Woods had — the ability to focus for long periods of time and a father intent on improving his skills. Mozart played a lot of piano at a very young age, so he got his 10,000 hours of practice in early and then he built from there.

The latest research suggests a more prosaic, democratic, even puritanical view of the world. The key factor separating geniuses from
the merely accomplished is not a divine spark. It’s not I.Q., a generally bad predictor of success, even in realms like chess. Instead, it’s deliberate practice. Top performers spend more hours (many more hours) rigorously practicing their craft.

Brooks gives us a hypothetical: how to turn a girl with slightly above average verbal skills into a genius novelist. Basically, you set her up with a role model, who would give the girl a sense of how her life could be, which would instill an ambition in her to read loads of good novels. After so much reading, she gets the basic blueprint of how to push characters around in stories, she’d see the patterns in various genre and literary technique.

Then she’d practice her own writing and focus on errors. Correcting the errors is exactly where they get good — no, great.

Et voila! Genius!

Granted, I haven’t read the book, but nowhere in his column does Brooks refer to self-esteem and its impact on making genius. Or homework. Or expensive preschools/private education. And certainly, certainly no mention of Baby Einstein videos or even listening to genius (read: well-practiced) Mozart in the womb.

Photo: HuffingtonPost.com