How to Raise (or to be) a Smart Kid
The other day, I was reading Drawn!, the illustration and cartooning blog, and they made this post on creativity. I followed all the links and read all the comments, across all the blogs involved. I thought it was a fascinating discussion, not least because the vast majority of the participants actually conducted themselves like grown-ups.
In the thread on Von Allan's blog, someone linked to this article on Scientific American's site: The Secret to Raising Smart Kids. The title, of course is pure sensationalism. The general techniques around which the article centers, i.e., rewarding hard work more than achievement per se, and encouraging constructive failure, seem sort of obvious to my late-twenties self. It's probably all of the exposure I've had to the extremely hard working moconnor and stargazer, or perhaps kragen's ideas about the plasticity of smartness.
Hindsight, of course, is 20/20. I'm tempted to feel sorry for slacking off all those years, knowing I was capable of more academic achievement, but not valuing the results. I'm definitely paying for it now that I'm an adult. That's all a bunch of baloney, though. For me to have understood what this article is trying to say, back when I was, what, 13? I would have had to have been raised completely differently. of course, if I were raised differently, I'd be someone else. And you know what? I'm pretty happy with who I am.
So I guess I'm a late bloomer. And I can be ok with that. The article still serves as a warning, though. I can definitely see the seeds of my intellectual dilettantism in a childhood tendency to back off when the going got tough. Moving forward, I will be careful to be explicit, whether I'm changing tracks because I'm honestly no longer interested, or because the effort/reward ratios are no longer appealing. If it's the latter, I'll be much more careful about my decision-making process, to avoid missing out on hard things that I might find rewarding.
So, what do you think? Is braininess any different from any other creative or artistic skill set? If so, how? If not, then to what degree are creative skill sets innate, and to what degree do you think that training matters? How divorced are these things from commercial success?
In the thread on Von Allan's blog, someone linked to this article on Scientific American's site: The Secret to Raising Smart Kids. The title, of course is pure sensationalism. The general techniques around which the article centers, i.e., rewarding hard work more than achievement per se, and encouraging constructive failure, seem sort of obvious to my late-twenties self. It's probably all of the exposure I've had to the extremely hard working moconnor and stargazer, or perhaps kragen's ideas about the plasticity of smartness.
Hindsight, of course, is 20/20. I'm tempted to feel sorry for slacking off all those years, knowing I was capable of more academic achievement, but not valuing the results. I'm definitely paying for it now that I'm an adult. That's all a bunch of baloney, though. For me to have understood what this article is trying to say, back when I was, what, 13? I would have had to have been raised completely differently. of course, if I were raised differently, I'd be someone else. And you know what? I'm pretty happy with who I am.
So I guess I'm a late bloomer. And I can be ok with that. The article still serves as a warning, though. I can definitely see the seeds of my intellectual dilettantism in a childhood tendency to back off when the going got tough. Moving forward, I will be careful to be explicit, whether I'm changing tracks because I'm honestly no longer interested, or because the effort/reward ratios are no longer appealing. If it's the latter, I'll be much more careful about my decision-making process, to avoid missing out on hard things that I might find rewarding.
So, what do you think? Is braininess any different from any other creative or artistic skill set? If so, how? If not, then to what degree are creative skill sets innate, and to what degree do you think that training matters? How divorced are these things from commercial success?