The Grandmaster Experiment

Just read this lengthy article called The Grandmaster Experiment, and it's really quite fascinating as it details the rise of the best female chess grandmasters the world has seen. The significance? The experiment was a trial to see if genius can be nurtured as opposed to common belief that genius is in-born, and it also supports gender equality in a game that has been largely male-dominated.

Forty years ago, Laszlo Polgar, a Hungarian psychologist, conducted an epistolary courtship with a Ukrainian foreign language teacher named Klara. His letters to her weren't filled with reflections on her cherubic beauty or vows of eternal love. Instead, they detailed a pedagogical experiment he was bent on carrying out with his future progeny. After studying the biographies of hundreds of great intellectuals, he had identified a common theme—early and intensive specialization in a particular subject. Laszlo thought the public school system could be relied upon to produce mediocre minds. In contrast, he believed he could turn any healthy child into a prodigy. He had already published a book on the subject, Bring Up Genius!, and he needed a wife willing to jump on board.

haha I laughed when I read that. What a romantic pursuit of love. But it (their eventual happiness found in marriage) does go to show that love is nurtured as opposed to a natural compatibility and chemistry between two parties. Alright, I'm distracted, back to the article.

Anyway, it dawned on me that the geniuses of contemporary society (I have encountered quite a few of them in school) may have undermined their potential in particular fields as students nowadays study a curriculum that is extremely diverse, thus spreading their mental resources across a spectrum of disciplines.

A few centuries ago, education was not universal and only the social elites had access ago, thus making their fields of education much more specialized than ours today, granting them the opportunity to focus all their attention onto a singular field.

Certainly, it could also be said without such a varied curriculum, students may never discover what they are best at, and that a balanced and healthy development of a person potentially hinges upon a broad-based curriculum that encourages growth in multiple intelligences as opposed to a rigid attachment to one. haha this reminds me that geniuses of the past like Albert Einstein and Leonardo da Vinci often harbour weird and unconventional fetishes or habits, so I guess an asymmetrical development of a person can possibly result in the rise of dialectical forces that wreck havoc on the person, so it's not very good either.

Some other tidbits to chew on from the reading:

Anders Ericsson is only vaguely familiar with the Polgars, but he has spent over 20 years building evidence in support of Laszlo's theory of genius. Ericsson, a professor of psychology at Florida State University, argues that "extended deliberate practice" is the true, if banal, key to success. "Nothing shows that innate factors are a necessary prerequisite for expert-level mastery in most fields," he says. (The only exception he's found is the correlation between height and athletic achievement in sports, most clearly for basketball and volleyball.) His interviews with 78 German pianists and violinists revealed that by age 20, the best had spent an estimated 10,000 hours practicing, on average 5,000 hours more than a less accomplished group. Unless you're dealing with a cosmic anomaly like Mozart, he argues, an enormous amount of hard work is what makes a prodigy's performance look so effortless.

"I had an inner drive," recalls Susan. "I think that is the difference between the very good and the best." Ellen Winner, a psychologist at Boston College, calls this drive the "rage to master." She thinks it's what propels prodigies through grueling years of training. "The rage to master is a prodigy's primary motivation," she says. "Mastering a certain activity is more important to them than socializing, than anything else." Winner believes that infusing a child with the rage to master is impossible: "You can force your kids to work harder, but you can't get them to have that level of passion. The sisters could have just as easily rebelled against Laszlo. In fact, they couldn't be stopped. Laszlo once found Sophia in the bathroom in the middle of the night, a chessboard balanced across her knees. "Sophia, leave the pieces alone!" he said, shaking his head. "Daddy, they won't leave me alone!" she replied.

And today has been rather unproductive. Sigh, and I have set myself a goal of finishing my Physics TYS in 1 week! 5 more days left.

And I still have to contend with finding out more about colleges and courses. zZz