xinjomecblog

“Genius are made, not born”, this encouraging saying has driven a great number of parents to explore their children’s potential by all educational means. But what I believe is right opposite; I think geniuses are born, not made. 

Bright Sparks, an article in last week’s The Economist[1], was written to compare two kinds of educational systems used to cultivate geniuses. One is selecting natural born geniuses. Another is making geniuses.  

And the author tended to think the latter was more scientific. One reason was that a lot of time and money on trying to pick winners could be saved. But I would argue that making geniuses might cost more, not only time and money, but also children’s happiness.  

“Genius” is defined as “a very great and rare natural ability or skill”[2] by the
Cambridge dictionary. Attention, “natural” is one of the key words here. Then making genius means doing something unnatural. Fighting with nature has been never easy. It requires people to make extraordinary effort to approach the goal.  

Undeniably, there are lots of successful cases of enabling normal children to achieve greatness through compulsory education, like the author mentioned in the article.  

However, they are just a small proportion if comparing with the failure. In addition, most of these cases are based on the premise that parents are experts on some fields or able to invest enough money and time in extra teaching and send their children to best schools. Usually having parents as experts has more chances to create miracles.  

Meanwhile, for children who fail to be turned into geniuses after hard work, it would be a tragedy depriving their happiness and confidence.

References1 – The Economist – February 10 2007