To think that nearly any child could become a genius with early training?

[crunchymint]

I have been reading about psychologist László Polgár who thought that any child could become a genius in a chosen field with early training. As an experiment, he trained his daughters in chess from age 4. All three went on to become chess prodigies, and the youngest, Judit, is considered the best female player in history.

@Sluttybutty
That’s odd I joined Mensa when I was 12 and I am sure my score was 144!!! I might be wrong on my score as don’t remember exactly.

Me and my sister have the same genes, and the same upbringing. I joined Mensa when I was 12 and she was never in the top classes etc.

Likewise with my kids DS1 is amazing academically yet the other 2 whilst not stupid are just normal. Now I would say that actually they have had far more time invested in helping them learn to read/ do maths etc than DS1!!! He could just do it all, we never had to teach him.

On the other hand I am totally gone deaf yet played the piano and flute to a high level, played in concerts etc so that was just down to lots of practice and the intelligence to learn to read music etc

Yes I think mensa membership is a bit higher than 140 IQ.

I think it’s a mixture of hard work and talent. However, I don’t beleive programmes like ‘child genius’ show really gifted kids. The are just trained and worked hard. Most of the tasks involve memory rather than any sort of applied intelligence. Feel sorry for those kids.

Those poor chess playing kids. Hope they get lots chances to do other things.

Ha! "Poor chess playing kids"? Is that a joke Luna?
Do you actually know any?

My eldest plays chess for county. Also just entered super selective grammar school, and has been in the National Children's Orchestra since 10yo. She isn't even the only one on the county team that is in NCO, as several also attend junior conservatoire around their chess. She is on school hockey, rounders, girls football teams too. She has a fantastic time, and loves every minute of it.

Even if this were true in theory, you'd have to have a child who will submit to being "trained".

DD is pretty bright but not a chance in hell would she have done hours of chess practice at the age of 4!

I think comments like 'Every child can become a genius with enough training' betray how little any of us know about how and why we learn.

I am utterly useless at PE and ball games. I had a lazy eye as a kid so my eyes weren't sending the correct messages to my brain in the first place. Added to this, a body that is more 1.1 litre Fiesta than F1 McLaren and I struggle to come much higher than the bottom third. That's fine. I'm more bothered about health than races. But that's what you can (sort of) see. There's any number of influences and limitations on a kid's learning that have very little to do with parental involvement and teaching, and we don't really understand them properly.

I remember doing a logic puzzle in our student house. Everyone in the room comfortably top 1% if not top 0.1% based on A Level results. The puzzle said that each letter stood for a digit, and we were to solve the puzzle to find all ten digits.

I remember sitting in a 6th grade math classroom on parent day and we were in groups of three and asked to solve a math problem (basically it required you to put a number in place of a letter but the trick was the number didn't need to be a single digit). I am a lawyer. The other parent is an interior designer. The third parent was a physicist who has won the Lasker prize - generally seen as an indicator of likely to win the nobel. The interior designer solved the puzzle. Once she did I immediately got it. both of us had to explain it to the physicist.

I don't think children can do anything with enough training/practice. But I do think many of us could do better than we think we more practice/teaching/education/confidence.

If I ran a school what I would love to do is assign a topic to each child early on and work to make each of them the expert in it over the course of say 5 years. I think it would be a great deep-dive for children into knowledge/learning and also would teach how much work it really requires to become an expert and how different that is to reading a few articles last week. My kids' school did something like this in 8th grade - a major research project in an area of their choosing.

@Xenia here you go, from the Mensa website.

Thanks so 146. I found my mother's test taken in her 50s after she died and she got a very creditable 145 I think it was or 140 and they rejected her . She always remembered almost everything and certainly even if she was just pipped at the post on a mensa test she was bright. I was 150+ although it probably varies at different times of you life. I was less as a child - our parents were a psychiatrist who sometimes had a colleague wanting children to test IQ tests on and a teacher our mother who had studied a lot of child psychology and their input certainly had an impact on how we did at school. Whether it or their genes gave me my supposed 150+ level IQ (and much more importantly high exam grades which led to high earnings now which is what pays the bills) who knows.

On the person mentioning children at 4 - one of ours could read at that age and sat still listening. Another moved around all the time at that age and read later. Both ended up with very similar exam grades and are London lawyers. So I am not sure at 4 if it makes too much difference . My father taught our 5 year old brother chess in secret at bed time each night (he tended to put our brother to bed every night and our mother my sister and me). I discovered what they were up to and I got a book from the library when I was 10 and taught myself chess without a chess board so I could play when at Christmas that chess set was produced as a present and my borhte rcould play. It was actually a nice gesture of my father as the youngest child is rarely better than the older ones so it's kind to give them an ego boost at times and rather rotten of 10 year old me to scupper their plan a bit. Some families force the children to do well of course - and where you draw the line between abuse and parental control is never hard to decide. One person's you must do your music practice in two instruments or homework every day whether you like it or not is someone's ultimate kindness to the child and someone else will see it as abusive.

(should have been "148" from the picture above, I can't evevn type.... bottom of the class)

Haven't read the full thread, so sorry if this has already been mentioned, but where does brain plasticity come in then? Do you need a very high IQ to become a chess genius, if you develop more connections in the areas of the brain necessary to become great at chess, over someone with a higher IQ who doesn't. Perhaps even with an average IQ it is possible to become a genius if you continually strengthen neural connections in the - i dont know -hippocampal regions of the brain responsible for spatial awareness and recognition along with other areas responsible for memory. This idea of rigid intelligence is somewhat limiting especially for school children, someone told me once, virtually no one opperates at their full IQ capacity.

No I don’t think so.

Firstly intelligence has a large heritable component. You are born with the potential for a certain range of intelligences. Some children will be struggling from day one and some will find school effortless.

You can work within that range - for example a severely neglected child may develop intellectual disabilities such as never acquiring language. Or you can nurture and encourage them to teach their potential.

On top of that, and what I think your question is rally aiming at, is the concept of innate talent vs practice. There’s the old idea that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become prodigy level, and there is a great deal of truth in that.

So you’re born with a potential range of abilities
Early environment will dictate where you are in general in that range
On top of that, intensive practice can vastly increase ability in specific areas.

To me "genius" comes with an innate desire to do that practice without being pushed. If you have to be drilled by a tiger parent you ain't a genius.

Lol @ “poor chess playing kids” 😂

I know a junior chess champion (son of friends) and he has a fantastic life! Travels all over, loves the game (note, it’s a GAME, children like playing those!) and recently won a skateboard that he is rapidly becoming an expert in also.

You remind me of the person who when I mentioned I was going to see Hamlet, asked “What for?”!

brie are you and your sister identical twins? otherwise you really don't share the same genes....its also unlikely for siblings other than twins to really be sharing the same upbringing....

hmm that was poorly phrased...what I mean is that siblings can share between 0 and 100% genes but its very strongly centred on 50%. The same is true for non-identical twins. To have a reasonable chance of significantly greater than 50% overlap you have to be identical twins for which its obviously 100%.

My ILs are also very sarcastic about the fact I play chess. In FIL’s words “I hope you’re not going to bring up my grandson to be a pansy. He needs to be playing football not chess”.

Says it all I think.

My psychiatrist father thought it was about 50/50 - genes and environment which is probably true and accounts for the differences between those adopted as babies and the parents' birth children although I think these days I veer a bit more to genes may be being 60% and I agree that how children are treated early on matters too - at age 3 some know many many fewer words than others simply because their parents have a more limited vocabulary.

Every set of parents has to decide what is right for them and their children. Some will want to pursue the interest - chess, robotics, music, sport as the one main thing that child does and the child may adore that thing and want only to do that. Others will be a bit more polymath if that's the word and want a more relaxed life with a variety of tihngs in it. I would want for all children genius or otherwise that they have the tools to live a balanced independent life and able financially to support themselves and have robust mental health so if it's a hoice between that and doing nothing but chess I'd ignore the chess and keep it as a nice hobby but if they aren't good at much else and want to get on with the chess and are happy then all power to their arm. it's a bit like mmy view that you are better off with a good Oxbridge degree than specialist music or drama or art school at 18+ as it just gives you that little bit of a wider range of options in case you change your mind later, something to fall back on.

That is plain silly. No.

I’ve seen figures roughly 60-70% for hereditary component of intelligence, so you and your dad were fairly accurate xenia

You aren’t born with a set IQ - you’re born with a range of potential. Early severe neglect can wreak havoc (you see those awful cases where kids have been neglected so badly they never pick up language for example, and some of the Turpin siblings seem to have disabilities like this.) or good nurturing can make sure you reach the top of your range.

Ability in a thing isn’t really genius though - it’s more prodigy type ability. And that, yes is very influenced by practise.

It also has a downside - practice must be meaningful and mindful to be beneficial. So a child obsessed with something who wants to do it all day long will be much happier than a tiger Mum pushed kid who really doesn’t love the violin.

This is a bone of contention. DH agrees with OP. I don't. I think there has to be some genuine talent there which cannot be overcome by training/hours put in. Words come really easily to me but I had to work very hard to be even average in maths. I don't think even with the best teachers and all the time in the world I could be a maths genius.

I think if you tune into something the child has an aptitude for then you can certainly get them to a high level of attainment. However if a child has no interest or skill in something they won't apply themselves no matter how much of a tiger parent you are