Any time people start talking about genetic predispositions for this or that specific, learned skill, red flags go up for me.
We’re all limited by our physiology, obviously so. However, how this plays out in practice is debatable (to say the least). If you give a second look, people are usually comparing the end result of a child’s learning to the beginning stages of an adult learning.
No, I don’t think that people are comparing a child’s learning to the beginning stages of an adult’s learning. They are comparing children to children, and adults to adults. Certain children are instantly and massively better at the same new task than other children of the same age. Certain adults are instantly and massively better at the same new task than other adults of the same age. One person who begins to, say, play guitar will be a “natural” at it, versus other people of the same age and general intellect who could spend years trying to be as good and never succeed.
On top of that, a child usually has more willingness and sheer time to focus on a new activity, and he doesn’t think of it as a chore or some chosen pursuit. As such, he doesn’t have mental baggage hindering his learning. He can also keep doing an activity for as long or as short as he wants – he isn’t thinking about his “real” job, his kids, his bills, etc. He’s just doing something that interests him, by his choice. So, comparing a child’s intense, focused interest to an adult’s distracted, chore-like, time-restricted “learning” isn’t really comporting the same thing at all.
If the kid loses interest, he just moves onto something else. So, by the time an adult notices the kid’s interest, he’s already been doing it a LOT. “Oh, wow, Johnny’s really got a genetic predisposition for soccer.” Well, no, he’s been in a field the past two summers by himself kicking a ball around in a million different ways – in between that he’s been catching grasshoppers and stuff. So, no, he wasn’t born with an innate understanding of life forms, either, now that you bring it up!
That’s why, in an earlier post, I suggested that an inherent “interest” or “passion” be included along with the concept of inborn “talent.” Certain people are born with an intense interest, passion or capacity for certain things. They don’t “lose interest” and “move on to something else.” It’s not a choice: A child prodigy doesn’t begin by listing all of the possible fields that he might want to pursue, logically weigh the potential benefits of each, and then rationally choose one and become good at it. The interest and ability/capacity is already there, and he would not be anywhere as near as good at anything else. In fact, he will most likely be quite deficient in other specific areas despite trying his hardest.
The issue was well-stated in a scene from Good Will Hunting:
Will: Beethoven, okay. He looked at a piano, and it just made sense to him. He could just play.
Skylar: So what are you saying? You play the piano?
Will: No, not a lick. I mean, I look at a piano, I see a bunch of keys, three pedals, and a box of wood. But Beethoven, Mozart, they saw it, they could just play. I couldn’t paint you a picture, I probably can’t hit the ball out of Fenway, and I can’t play the piano.
Skylar: But you can do my o-chem paper in under an hour.
Will: Right. Well, I mean when it came to stuff like that… I could always just play.
Certain people can process and integrate faster and better than others, but I think that’s about as far as you can take the physiological argument. Even then, people are so complicated, the continual choices they make can easily turn a genetically “inferior” brain into a wild success of work ethic, relative focus, drive, etc., while turning a genetically “superior” brain into a total failure of self-defeat, malevolence, and lack of confidence.
I’d like to see proof that choosing to have a good “work ethic, relative focus, drive, etc.,” could result in any person having prodigy-level ability at any subject that he choose, or any subject that was chosen for him by others. One would have to demonstrate that a person who was not naturally inclined toward a certain subject could choose to focus on it and become great at it. Scientifically we’d have to start by analyzing what an individual person was good at, and then choose for him: asking him to will himself to become great at something which is extremely difficult for him and which he dislikes doing.
J