When you hear the word "genius," you might think of luminaries like Einstein, Mozart, or Da Vinci. But how a person who achieves extraordinary success gets that way is the subject of debate. Were they born that way? Or does it come from sheer tenacity?
MoreEven though his book, “The Genius In All of Us”, has the word "genius" in the title, author David Shenk doesn’t think it's a particularly useful term.
Instead of asking where genius comes from, he says, we should ask “what it takes to be good at stuff”.
Educator Jennie Niles has put a lot of thought into what it takes to be good at stuff. She founded a public charter school in Washington D.C. that operates by the principles and research behind David's book. She joins us today for our final segment in our Genius series, to think about what we’ve learned this week and give advice about how to apply it in our homes and schools.
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The show is a co-production of WNYC Radio and Public Radio International, in collaboration with New York Times Radio and WGBH Boston.
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Comments [2]
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Thank you for feedback.
Robert
I think the overall message here- that hard work and discipline are the drivers behind achievements labeled "genius" is a useful one.
However I found it disappointing that your series did not make much of an attempt to focus on the experiences of traditionally defined geniuses or even gifted children. We are not mythological creatures and we are not necessarily the same kids as the successful "hard workers" that you have focused on in this series.
Geniuses have important gifts to share as well as our own unique challenges which very few schools are equipped to help us meet. For every Bill Gates out there, there are dozens of people with 140+ IQs who are not able to achieve their potential due to anxiety, depression, or other problems that divert their energy and focus. Geniuses are, by definition, a minority, and do not get the attention we require because our public schools' scarce resources are usually diverted to kids who "cause trouble," not the high achievers.
The fact that there is not much of a difference in the long term achievement levels of geniuses and those of average intelligence is a major tragedy: imagine how much these promising kids could give to the world if they had received the right levels of support, understanding, and discipline throughout their lives.
Again, I think that everyone could benefit from your message that systematic work and discipline can improve achievement levels across the board. However, geniuses have a very particular set of needs and abilities, and the fact that we are underachieving as a group is a real social problem that must be more closely examined. Pretending that geniuses are just "like everybody else" really perpetuates this problem.
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