
How Do You Raise a Prodigy? - llambda
http://nytimes.com/2012/11/04/magazine/how-do-you-raise-a-prodigy.html?src=dayp
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jnazario
amusingly not a mention of benjamin bloom and his seminal work "Developing
Talent in Young People". he and his team studied over 120 individuals under 40
in 6 fields and found consistent themes. this few page PDF breaks it down
nicely:

[http://www.kragen.net/uploads/4/5/4/3/4543087/developing_tal...](http://www.kragen.net/uploads/4/5/4/3/4543087/developing_talent_in_young_people_-
_book_review.pdf)

in short, parents, educators, and kids have to own specific roles in this.
sadly little of this is outlined in the piece. more on this in an interview
with bloom:

[http://leading-learning.blogspot.com/2009/01/developing-
tale...](http://leading-learning.blogspot.com/2009/01/developing-talent-in-
young-people.html)

while not everyone can raise a prodigy, a prodigy can come from anywhere.

~~~
niels_olson
Nice to see a comment on Bloom. The Kaplan folks mentioned in their initial
lecture that they found most MCAT questions fit within that schema. So, like
we do in the military, I read what the enemy wrote for each each other: I
pulled his Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. Most of it is very dry
government-reporty sort of stuff, but the Appendix is a nice concise outline.
Email me if you want a copy, or see if you can get it through interlibrary
loan.

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cma
Freeman Dyson on Norbert Weiner (intentionally raised as a prodigy):

[http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2005/jul/14/the-
tra...](http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2005/jul/14/the-tragic-tale-
of-a-genius/)

~~~
Centigonal
This appears paywalled -- Is the full article available anywhere?

~~~
benihana
Not just that, it stopped it at the most awkward place in the story:

> _He made his reputation as a pure mathematician by inventing concepts such
> as the “Wiener measure” that …_

~~~
d23
I assumed this was where he lost his status as prodigy.

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S4M
advice on education, by Terrence Tao who is himself a prodigy mathematician:
[http://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/advice-on-
gifted...](http://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/advice-on-gifted-
education/)

I think the article doesn't really answer to the question of the title, but is
rather a bunch of example of very gifted children (in the field of music).

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001sky
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4722667>

~~~
tokenadult
I'm curious about how the HN duplicate detector distinguishes cases like this.
I had seen the earlier submission and was surprised that there wasn't more
discussion about it.

Elsewhere in cyberspace, I have had parents of high-IQ children (as
ascertained by national membership organizations) tell me that they think the
submitted article is thoughtful and reasonably factually accurate. I would
like to read the book on which the submitted article is based.

If you like reading about this subject and closely related subjects, it
happens that I was just at my town's local Wikipedia Loves Libraries event,
and in a conversation with a librarian there a bibliography about human
intelligence

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WeijiBaikeBianji/Intellige...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WeijiBaikeBianji/IntelligenceCitations)

was viewed by the librarian and me. That's a good source for more current
reading about bringing up gifted children and closely related topics.

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gnosis
Another case in point: the Polgar sisters[1][2][3], raised by their father[4]
to prove the point that "geniuses are made, not born".

[1] - <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Polgar>

[2] - <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sofia_Polgar>

[3] - <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judit_Polg%C3%A1r>

[4] - <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_Polg%C3%A1r>

~~~
ShabbyDoo
It would have been even more profound for each daughter to have been made a
prodigy in a different specialization. I suppose the availability of
instructors in three separate areas would have been a barrier though.

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dschiptsov
Great variety (and quality) of the sensory input and stimuli from the very
first breath?

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hornbaker
Win (or lose, depending on your perspective) the genetic lottery.

~~~
pcl
The first few pages of TFA seem to be more about raising a prodigy than about
giving birth to one. I.e., given that your child is a prodigy, what parenting
techniques are useful?

