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Intelligence
Intelligence and the childMythsGeneticsStudy of intelligenceNature of giftednessCreativityFAQIdentificationPsychology testsIQ scoreIdentifying talentscharacteristicsExceptional qualitiesObservationsLists and limitationNurture
Protegy and childhoodSecret of successGenius factoryObjectionsAssembly lineGrowthCultivating talentsProblemsPlay and explorationSelf conceptFamily relationshipKindergartenUnderachieversPre-schoolPrenatal developmentInfanthoodStimulation|
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| Objections and the future |
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| Objections There has always been a lot of skepticism and hostility to the idea of super-babies and hot housing in the academic circle. The academics do not deny the existence of exceptional babies who could carry on a conversation at 3 months, or perform long divisions at 18. What some experts in fact object to is that many of the techniques utilized on otherwise presumably average children often are empirically derived and do not yet have vigorous research evidence to back them up. Many also find offensive the notion of allowing the spectre of middle class children to be hot housed with a view to become even more privileged than they already are. The common misnomer that one cannot be both hot housed and happy didn't help much either. Many of the 'graduates'' superior characteristics are anecdotal-type of evidence. Doman has no proper data to back up his assertions either. He himself is a genius, the academics say - a marketing genius. There are no IQ tests done on his subjects; he says the tests mean nothing, that what he creates is competence, for which, of course, there is no test. Doman and others' defense of their work on developing better children is engagingly simply (as anyone visiting the Institute can see for himself) - it works, and the kids are happy. Current research does suggest that babies can be 'bettered' at least in some ways when compared to conventional nurturing methods. It will indeed take a long time before research can catch up on the hundreds of home brewed child rearing methods currently in practice. Although some might dismiss that academics, being human, tend to resist new ideas and changes even if they are beneficial (sometimes just to hold the status quo), their caution is simply too important to ignore : Over ambitious parents might see children as a perfectible product into whom they can quickly and efficiently pour some learning. Parents might try to transfer their own hyper ambitious goals to their children. Some children might eventually become very nervous and anxious, and afraid of failure and risk-taking. Some have felt that this kind of upbringing would bring about robot virtuosity with little understanding and no lasting gain. Children come to believe they are valued for what they memorize or produce or achieve. As a result, hot housed children might be at risk of developing achievement anxiety. Undue parental pressure on young children may threaten children's zest for learning. Pressured to learn through inappropriate methods, children may get turned off learning at a very early age. About fifty per cent of reading problems come from starting kids reading not too late but too early. Children are not developmentally ready to read until about the age of six and a half, when they get their permanent teeth. However, certain children won't be ready for reading or counting or colors or art at a particular age, they won't show any interest in it or skill with it. One might just as well present it to them, so that when they are ready for it, it's there for them to learn. If one wants to have children who are very knowledgeable, then Hot housing probably would work. But if one wants to have children who are original and creative, then it may be counter-productive, because one may destroy the very motivation that would normally lead them on to working things out for themselves. The Future Like most issues connected with education, health, and human potential, hot housing touches on politics, philosophy and social concerns in the widest (and most controversial) sense. One of the most vigorous areas of debate and experiment is at what age the stimulation and education of children should begin. There is a growing enthusiasm amongst parents (especially mothers) to take on a new role as educators themselves and how their considerable energies are being mobilized in the interests of producing 'better babies'. Studies of individual parents who, for a variety of personal reasons, deliberately set out to make their children geniuses seems to suggest that they really work. If hot housing works (and it does) for special cases, where objectives are narrowly focused (for example, in the cases of young gymnasts, chess players, violin virtuosos or ballerinas), can it work for whole sectors of society at the general level? Conventional wisdom has it that hot housing children to create genius denies them their childhood, causes unhappiness, and produces human wrecks more often than it creates successful achievers. However , there is abundant evidence that hot housed children can be (and usually are) both happy and successful. Unsettling though the thought may be, they also turn out to be wealthy - with adult incomes of around four times the national average, according to one USA statistic. Are these techniques worth indulging into even for economic safeguard alone, or are their adoption mandatory for your child's success in the next century? Are these techniques simply a means by which parents can live vicariously through their offspring? Are they a special forms of parental cruelty? Can we envisage a future when rivalry between nations will no longer be commercial, or strategic, but cerebral? Will third world countries try to leap the north/south divide in a single step by hot housing a whole generation of young people? Can we imagine the impact of groups of super-people, whose intellect and potential for achievement far exceeds our own? Or is it all just hokum? |
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