My Brilliant Brain made me a genius is an inspiring biography of Susan Polgar. Her father’s early work with her and her sister made them child prodigies in the game of chess. Reaffirms that genius is made and not born.
If you’re not on a tablet, try this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wzs33wvr9E
Thanks for sharing!
this is really fascinating, thanks for posting! I had heard about these Hungarian sisters but had always thought that their father had been a grandmaster himself - looks like he wasn’t! Then it’s even more impressive. interesting that her father was a psychologist doing this as an experiment. I have actually noticed that in many reports about gifted children, their parents “happen to be” psychologists - I think they just know a bit more about child development and are able to bring out gifts accordingly. In my experience, most psychologists would be against the kind of EL practiced here, but they would definitely dedicate a lot of time to learning and discovery, answer all the questions patiently, take their children to museums, encourage free play and experimenting etc. which would give the child lots of learning opportunities.
I am a psychologist too and I notice myself also doing these “experiments”. basically it’s a very liberal approach. BUt let’s say when we do painting, my 2 year old loves to spill the water over the painting. it’s a big mess. So most parents would think “she’s naughty, she’s trying to spill the water and make a mess” but I think “she’s doing physics experiments, she wants to find out what happen to the paint when it is mixed with water, let’s see what happens” and I think this kind of approach leads to a lot of self-directed learning that less open-minded parents prevent. Very often, when my daughter does something that others would define as “naughty” or silly, I decide to see what happens next and then I suddenly understand why she did this - usually, she is trying to find out something or trying to copy something she sees her parents doing.
this chess experiment is intriguing by how well it worked. There is also another story of a high school in Budapest that had one inspirational maths teacher (Laszlo Ratz), and somehow many famous mathematicians/physicists/nobel laureates of the 20th century happened to have been taught by this particular maths teacher, which again showed the importance of stimulation and learning and how genius can be created with the right set of circumstances.