| This article appeals to our deepest and most widely-held educational values, which makes it all the more dangerous, being wrong in several ways. The author rightly belittles the concept of talent but it seems to have found its way in through the back door: “Two of our four turned out to be musically gifted and before long were shuttled out of Suzuki to hard-core classical violin teachers.” (Talent is just the way we describe people who have some competence in a field which is inexplicit; nobody knows why they are good, otherwise one could learn it.) Another thing to point out is that apparently none of the children have developed careers in music or composition (yet), so it remains to be seen if they have any creativity intact. Why might they have lost creativity in adulthood? Because of childhood coercion. Those long hours of practice -- children don’t do that without being forced. It can be subtle, such as the worry of a slight loss of parental affection, sibling rivalry encouraged, etc. Children will play for hours on end and this is where true learning occurs. Some children are bright enough to make their ‘practice’ a form of play, so they manage to improve despite appearances. Creative adults continue to play, it’s just that the subject matter appears more serious. But progress remains open-ended, with stops and starts, switching between activities, and unpredictable (not ‘guaranteed’) results. The unpredictable nature of achievement follows from a law of epistemology: we can’t predict future knowledge (including our own). |