Freeman points out that it's easy to put out this fire by cramming kids with a school-like education. It's also easy to ruin the lives of even the most gifted people by treating them like brains on a stick. “After many years, I have become convinced that making only one aspect of a child's life – their talent – the sole criterion for making decisions that will affect the rest of their life jeopardizes their emotional balance and, ultimately, their success in life,” she writes.
The bottom line is that we need to give intelligence its place. We need to respect intelligence and place precocious children in an environment that nurtures and develops them. But we don't want to overvalue intelligence. In my view, it's crazy that so many top universities require students to score 1300 or 1400 or higher on the SAT and reject most applicants below that. This places too much value on a narrow aspect of ability.
When we look at people who have achieved truly great things, we find that most of them weren't geniuses. They didn't wow people at 18, but they developed a deep interest and mastery in something as an adult. Many of society's greatest contributors didn't have some easily identifiable, extraordinary ability; it was a winning combination of subtle advantages and personality traits that made them successful.
A recurring theme in Freeman's book is the notion, “If only I had stopped at….” If she had stopped giving interviews at 20, we would never have known why a brilliant childhood turned into a sad adulthood. If she had stopped at 40, we would never have known why someone who was once lost found their way. Life is surprisingly non-linear. In his book Child Prodigies and Exceptional Early Achievers, John Radford argued that it is nearly impossible to predict adult proficiency from childhood talent.
Sure, having a highly intelligent child is a stroke of luck and a good chance, but as Rubinsky and Benkow said in our conversation, we want to look at each person holistically. Let's put it this way: It's good to know people who do well on IQ tests, but it's even more important to know people who are fueled by their inner passion.
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