The Myth of Innate Genius
by David Shenk
David Shenk is author, most recently, of The Genius in All of Us: New Insights into Genetics, Talent, and IQ, which was just shortlisted for the Bristol Festival's 2011 Best Book of Ideas.
From Michael Jordan playing JV to Mozart's dismal early compositions to Usain Bolt's so-called sprinting gene, David Shenk says that geniuses are made not born?and asks why we still believe in the myth.
For all the unpleasant noise in Amy Chua's Tiger Mom roar, she's spot on about one very big thing: Children do have enormous potential. The concept of innate talent is simply wrong; our brains and bodies are designed to adapt to environmental conditions. Genetic differences do matter, and we all have different levels of potential; but the vast majority of us don't actually get to know what those limits are. For that, we need great mentoring resources, an eagerness to fail and learn from those failures, and an awful lot of time. Talent is a process, not a thing.
Plenty of good science now reinforces this message. And, when you look closely, so do the actual lives of our most impressive achievers?whose success is often deeply misunderstood. Here are five corrective ideas:
Getty Images
1. Mozart was actually a slow learner
"People make a great mistake who think that my art has come easily to me," Mozart once wrote to his father. "Nobody has devoted so much time and thought to composition as I." As impressive as it was that little Amadeus attempted to compose at an early age, his early work was far from extraordinary. His first seven piano concertos, written from ages 11 to 16, "contain almost nothing original," reports Temple University's Robert Weisberg, and "perhaps should not even be labeled as being by Mozart." Over about 10 years, Mozart voraciously incorporated different styles and motifs and developed his own voice. Critics consider his Symphony No. 29, written 10 years after his first symphony, to be his first work of real stature. His first great piano concerto is widely considered to be the No. 9, Jeunehomme, written at age 21. It was his 271st completed composition. Looking at Mozart's works chronologically, there is a clear trajectory of increasing originality and importance leading up to his final three symphonies, written at age 32, which are generally considered his greatest.
All tests are achievement tests?they reveal not inborn ability but the skills a person has acquired up to that point.
2. Michael Jordan played JV
As a youth, Jordan was not the best athlete in his family (his older brother Larry was); not the most industrious (of five siblings, he was by far the laziest); and not very mechanically inclined (a prized family skill). "If Michael Jordan was some kind of genius, there had been few signs of it when he was young," writes David Halberstam in his biography Playing for Keeps. In his sophomore year of high school, after attending summer basketball camp with his friend Roy Smith, Jordan didn't even make the varsity basketball squad. Smith did.
It was around then that Jordan seemed to develop a new rebounding attitude toward failure. For the remainder of his basketball career, no one within Jordan's orbit ever practiced or played as hard. "All top athletes are driven," writes Halberstam, "and no one made the [University of North] Carolina roster unless he was by far the hardest-working kid in his neighborhood, his high school, and finally his high-school conference, but Jordan was self-evidently the most driven of all."
And yes, drive can be an acquired trait.
you can dance american william kate video world war 2 in britain you can dance america
沒有留言:
張貼留言