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Notes -
Beware of making generalizations based on data with massive survivor bias. Yes, the individuals extremely successful in their field may have started young, but you also need to consider all the kids that were pushed into a field just as early. If at five you try to ascertain a kid's interest (ballerina!) and then push them into it with rigorous training (hours of ballet classes!), sure, you will get reasonable competency, but not Anna Pavlova quality. Meanwhile, there is this massive influx of ballerina-wannabees where already there is a glut.
I agree with your idea that it would help to introduce a child to various useful pursuits and to support it in those pursuits in which it shows interest and aptitude. (So something like the Montessori method.)
I think this depends on what you mean by pushing. There are ways to incentivize and promote childhood expertise that don’t revolve around “I will punish you if you don’t train for hours every day”. You can put a child in formative social contexts where their identity becomes tied to the skill, and where they want to master the skill in order to enhance their reputation in the social context. A bad thing to do would be to threaten your child to be a pianist. A good thing to do would be to show him how amazingly well good pianists are treated socially, how they get to go on adventures around the world, how the skill is valuable, how beautiful the music they make is, present them in front of a kind pianist who they now want to please… once their identity has been changed, then you can gently criticize their worst habits of laziness. I recall reading a study on this (child prodigies) and the author noted that the first months of skill development must purely involve play, interest, and fun. The hard training comes later in the same way it does for soccer players — but surely no one would think a top soccer player ought not be forced to train.
If you take the Chomsky example, you can imagine he was eager to please his father and father’s friends. The Magnus example, he was eager to accrue as many wins and titles as he could. There’s an element of, like, gentle propaganda here.
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Yeah, for sure. Kids being pushed/prodded into extracurriculars or enrichment is par for the course in high-SES areas; few become any good.
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