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| EDUCATION TRIBUNE |
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Genius: Learned or pre-ordained?
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Genius: Learned or pre-ordained?
The ideas of Darwin have made an almost total conquest of modern consciousness. The theory of natural selection; the idea that individuals fail or flourish by virtue of inherited characteristics, has been a triumph, commanding the assent of both scientists and laymen alike.
But Darwinism, in a process almost too imperceptible to notice, has shaded into a rather different, but no less dramatic, proposition. It is the idea that heredity not only explains the variation in such simple traits as height, eye colour and the like, but also the vast differences we see in mathematical, scientific, sporting and musical prowess. It is the view that excellence hinges, in large part, on the right genetic inheritance. Talent is the word we use to rationalise this idea; the notion that brilliant mathematicians, scientists, sportsmen and musicians are born with excellence encoded in their DNA. It is an idea that seems to follow naturally from the tenets of Darwin, but is also bolstered by the evidence of our own senses. When we see a great golfer hitting a 200-yard fade or a maths whizz mentally processing a multi-digit calculation, we infer that they must have been blessed with skills way beyond our own. It boils down to the assertion that excellence is reserved for a select group of individuals; winners in a genetic lottery that passed the rest of us by. But what if this seductive idea is all wrong? What if our deepest assumptions about success in education and sport — indeed, in life itself — are misconceived? What if talent is not just a meaningless concept, but a corrosive one; robbing ourselves and our children of the incentive to work hard and excel? Could it be that the very idea of talent is holding back our children and damaging performance not just in exams, but in school generally? Could it be that we need to debunk the talent myth, in order to fulfil our potential and that of our children? A ground-breaking investigation of British musicians found that the top performers had learnt no faster than those who reached lower levels of attainment. Hour after hour, the various groups improved at almost identical rates. The difference was simply that top performers had practiced for more hours. Precisely the same insight is revealed by looking at child prodigies; boys and girls who reach world class levels of performance in their teens. At first sight, they seem to have been blessed with amazing skills; abilities that have enabled them to take a shortcut to eminence. But a closer inspection reveals a very different story. Tiger Woods, for example, was considered a miracle golfer when he became the youngest-ever winner of the US Masters in 1997. “The most talented player of all time,” was one assessment. But now consider that Woods was given a golf club five days before his first birthday; that by the age of two he had played his first round; that by five he had accumulated more hours of practice than most of us achieve in a lifetime. Far from being a golfer zapped with special powers that enabled him to circumvent practise, Woods is someone who embodies the rigours of practice. The same insights apply to mathematical “prodigies”. Rudiger Gamm, a German able to find the quotient of two primes to 60 decimal places, was once described as a “walking miracle” by one science magazine. But now consider that Gamm devotes his life to maths; that he practises for at least four hours every day; that he relentlessly and obsessively learns number facts and procedures. His excellence is not hardwired — it emerged through practice. The illusion of talent arises because we only see a tiny proportion of the work that goes into the construction of virtuosity. If we were to examine the incalculable hours of practice; the thousands of baby steps taken by world-class performers to get to the top, the skills would not seem quite so mystical or so inborn. Indeed, extensive research has shown that there is not a top performer in any complex task who has bypassed the 10 years of hard work necessary to reach the top. So, does this imply that “ordinary” people could perform amazing feats with sufficient practice? We do not deny the notion of heredity or the principles of Darwinism. The evidence shows that some kids start out better than others, whether at maths, English, golf, whatever. But, the key point is that, as the number of hours devoted to practise escalates, so the relevance of these initial differences melts away. Why? Because, over time, and with the right kind of practice, we change so much. It is not just the body that changes, but the anatomy of the brain too. In the ancient world, when our ancestors had little time for anything beyond the minute-to-minute demands of survival, heredity mattered a lot. Today, where it is not only possible, but often obligatory to devote half a lifetime to a specific but complex area of expertise, heredity matters less and less. Specialisation has been the game changer, but our ideas about success remain in the ancient past. It is how hard we work and the opportunities we are gifted which determine excellence. None of this would matter terribly much if the question of talent was merely theoretical. But it is so much more than that. It influences the way we think, feel and engage with our world. It determines almost everything, from the way we respond to challenges to the way we react to failure. To see how, consider someone who believes excellence is all about talent (labelled the “fixed mindset”). Why would she bother to work hard? If she has the right genes, won’t she just cruise to the top? And if she lacks talent, well, why bother at all? And who can blame a youngster for this attitude, given the premise? If, on the other hand, she really believes that effort trumps talent (labelled the “growth mindset”), she will damn well persevere. She will not see failure as an indictment, but as an opportunity to adapt and grow. And, if she is right, she will eventually excel. What a young person decides about the nature of talent, then, could scarcely be more important. Think how often you hear people (particularly youngsters) saying: “I lack the brain for numbers,” or “I don’t have the coordination for sports.” These are direct manifestations of the fixed mindset and they destroy motivation. Those with a growth mindset, on the other hand, do not regard their abilities as set in genetic stone. These are the people who approach tasks with gusto. “I may not be good at maths now, but if I work hard, I will be really good in the future!” So, how do we orient ourselves and our children to the growth mindset? How do we unlock the power of motivation, particularly with exams around the corner? A few years ago, Carol Dweck, a leading psychologist, took 400 students and gave them a simple puzzle. Afterwards, each of the students were given six words of praise. Half were praised for intelligence: “Wow, you must be really smart.” The other half were praised for effort: “Wow, you must be hard-working.” Dweck was seeking to test if these words could make a difference to the student’s mindsets. The results were remarkable. After the first test, the students were given a choice of whether to take a hard or an easy test. A full two-thirds praised for intelligence chose the easy task: they did not want to risk losing their “smart” label. But 90 per cent of the effort-praised group chose the tough test: they wanted to prove just how hard working they were. Then, the experiment gave the students a chance to take a test of equal difficulty to the first test. What happened? The group praised for intelligence showed a 20 per cent decline in performance, compared with the first test, even though it was no harder. But the effort-praised group increased their score by 30 per cent: failure had actually spurred them on. And all these differences turned on the difference in six simple words spoken after the very first test. “These were some of the clearest findings I’ve seen,” Dweck said. “Praising children’s intelligence harms motivation and it harms performance.” It is not difficult to figure out why. It is because intelligence-based praise orients the receiver towards the fixed mindset; it suggests to them that intelligence is of primary importance rather than the effort through which intelligence can be transformed. This reveals a radical new approach to the way we engage with children and each other: that we should praise effort, not talent; that we should teach kids to see challenges as learning opportunities rather than threats; that we should emphasise how abilities can be transformed. Experiments have shown that when parents and teachers adopt this approach — and stick to it — the results are remarkable. This is particularly important with exams looming. With the motivation that emerges from a belief in the power of practise, youngsters can really boost exam performance. The key thing is to keep striving. As Thomas Edison put it: “If I find 10,000 ways something won’t work, I haven’t failed. I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward”. It is a message that should be stapled to the wall of every school in the country. The writer is the author of Bounce: The Myth of Talent and the Power of Practice. — The Independent |
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Lala Lajpat Rai University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences, Hisar Business planning unit set up Lala Lajpat Rai University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences has set up a Business Planning and Development (BPD) Unit under the Chairmanship of Dr. A. K. Pruthi, Dean, College of Veterinary Sciences. Dr. N. K. Kakker, Senior Scientist, Veterinary Microbiology has been nominated as its Principal Investigator. The BPD Unit will be operative in consortium mode along with BPD Unit of Haryana Agricultural University and has been funded by National Agricultural Innovation Project, Indian Council of Agricultural Research. The main objectives of the BPD Unit are to commercialize or license the potential technologies developed by the scientists of LLRUVAS to private sector entrepreneurs and companies through training and business incubation facilities and promotion of public private partnership. A Business Incubator with modern office and laboratory facilities for entrepreneurs and start-up companies will soon be established. Joint project on Bluetongue The Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR) has approved a project on Monitoring and prevention strategies for Bluetongue virus epidemics in rural India. The project will be jointly implemented by the UK based Institute if Animal Health and the LLRUAVS. It has a budget of £ 55 lakh. Dr Simon Carpenter, Principal Investigator from IAH, along with Dr Lara Harrup visited LLRUVAS, to discuss the modalities of the project. The main objectives of the Indo-UK project is to study the vector biology of the Bluetongue virus which will help in designing the future strategies for the control of the bluetongue vector and indirectly the disease caused by this virus. Several ecological factors such as temperature, humidity, rainfall and vegetation also affect the dynamics of the vector population. Therefore, with the objective of understanding of interplay of different factors linked to vector-virus-host and environment leading to occurrence of BTV infection in a geographical region will be studied for developing effective control strategies.
Guru Jambheshwar University of Science & Technology, Hisar New deans appointed M S Turan of Haryana School of Business has been appointed as Dean Academic Affairs of Guru Jambheshwar University of Science & Technology. Kuldeep Bansal has nominated as the Dean Students Welfare and B S Khatkar will be Director Youth and Cultural Affairs. Dhaminder Kumar will hold additional charge of Dean Colleges. — Contributed by Raman Mohan
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