Child's Play: Prodigies and Possibilities
What do Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the painter Raphael and chess champion Bobby Fischer have in common? They were all child prodigies. NOVA explores the current efforts to learn more about the nature of giftedness.
Transcript
00:00This is the Columbia University
00:29Orchestra preparing for the world premiere of Marnon Eden's second symphony.
00:35The composer himself is in attendance hearing for the first time notes he set
00:41to paper over a year ago.
01:00This is Marnon Eden. He celebrated his 10th birthday one month before this rehearsal.
01:09Is that while we're holding? Yes. Okay, so you were just giving them the notes.
01:38I'd like to run through... Um, no, wait a minute, wait a minute. I made a mistake.
01:43For centuries, children of extraordinary ability have fascinated their elders.
01:53Their accomplishments have sparked endless debates
01:57about the origins and nature of intelligence, talent, and creativity.
02:05Many of these questions are currently being explored by both biologists
02:09and social scientists. Their research is leading to fresh insights
02:14into the lives of these remarkable individuals and the human potential we all share.
02:22Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, that pertains to the second violin.
02:28My mom cut and pasted the parts and she didn't do very well.
02:43Child prodigies are among the rarest and least well-understood examples
02:48of exceptional human ability.
02:52Though there is no strict definition for the term prodigy,
02:56it is generally used to refer to a child whose ability is so extraordinary it inspires wonder.
03:02These guys are going to be the eigenvalues. Okay. All right, and after you find the eigenvalues,
03:10you can then go ahead and find the eigenvectors. Okay. Kevin's very good in math. As an eighth
03:15grader, he could enroll in a graduate program in mathematics and probably be the best student.
03:22Got it.
03:27I suspect that he has a chance to be a very productive mathematician or scientist or computer
03:35scientist. For all I know, he could be a Newton. Some prodigies go on to lead adult lives of
03:42sustained brilliance. Many burn out and never fulfill their early promise. But in almost every
03:49case, children of high talent live a childhood that is profoundly different from most of their
03:54peers. At 18 months, I already have a type of recall of dealing in my mind and body with
04:09what I would now call the 12 tones of music. By the time I was three, I was spending every waking
04:16minute at the keyboards, standing, placing my hands on the keyboard, and pushing notes.
04:24And I would choose very carefully what tones I would choose,
04:30because I knew that when I would play a note, I would become that note.
04:35I remember at three, my father leaving a stack of music near my toy box, and I went through
04:57this music, and I came across the first page of the well-tempered clavier of Bach,
05:04and I looked at this, and I knew that if this existed in the world,
05:10then there was a higher order, and that it was a path to follow.
05:22I gave my first concerts when I was in kindergarten. I played, actually, on a day
05:27called Circus in kindergarten class, where the other kids were lion tamers and clowns
05:34and tightrope walkers, and I played the two-part inventions of Bach, which was my first experience
05:42with too much Bach on a concert, because I was beat up in the schoolyard by my entire audience,
05:49which was rather valuable because that was my first experience with music criticism,
05:53which has prepared me for the world at large, but I was already performing
05:58at five, six, and seven years old. At ten, I played with symphony orchestra,
06:03and at eleven, I debuted in Carnegie Hall.
06:12I can't say that I was driven to practice by anyone else, but I drove myself. Something drove me.
06:20I knew I had to work at that keyboard. That was where I became most fully myself.
06:36K.K. Karanja is most fully himself when he's playing chess. Just ten years old,
06:43K.K. has a good chance of becoming the youngest chess master in history.
06:51For most prodigies, K.K. included, fascination with a particular activity appears suddenly
06:57and unexpectedly, but once these children get started, they pursue their goals relentlessly.
07:06Oh, yes. Well, actually, how I started chess was accidental. See, I was going to a toy shop when
07:14I was younger with my parents, and I was seven about, and my parents told me that I could pick
07:21three games. He selected Scrabble, he selected Badgammon, and chess, and he asked me, he asked
07:29me, what kind of game is that? I said, it's called chess. I don't know anything about it, but he
07:35became very interested, and he said, no, I want to buy. I want you to buy me that game. On the
07:42cover, there were little pieces, and, you know, the kids, they like to, they like a lot of
07:50adventures, I'd say. And so I chose the game. Later, I went to my public library, and I got
07:56two books on the game, and I studied it. And when my father came back home later that night,
08:02my father studied the game, too, and I played him, and I beat him. And I was so happy that
08:08a friend of mine told me to start playing in tournaments, so I started playing in tournaments,
08:12and I did very well. I won my first tournament. I won all my games.
08:16So I would say that's a pretty good achievement at that time.
08:21KK prepared for this exhibition against former world champion Boris Spassky
08:27during his weekly lesson with American national champion Lev Albert.
08:32Oh, I saw that. How's these? Queen check, king takes, bishop check.
08:37So you mean this one, giving away a queen? Yes, it's comparatively easier.
08:41Among the kids under 11, he's the best in the world. He certainly is the best at this moment
08:46in the United States, and he certainly has the talent to become a great player, but of course,
08:52he needs work, he needs practice, and he needs to be devoted to chess, not only in
09:01this year or next year, but for several years at least to achieve the very heights of chess.
09:10Watching a child who has mastered something as intellectually demanding as music, math,
09:14or chess inevitably raises certain questions. What are these children really like?
09:21Are they little adults with developmentally mature minds trapped inside immature bodies?
09:27Are they capable of mastering anything they set their minds to? Is the brilliance they display
09:33the product of their genes or support from parents and society? Why do we hear of prodigies in music,
09:41chess, and sports, and almost never in painting, literature, and philosophy?
09:48We're led to ask, what is the nature of intelligence itself? Is it a universal quality,
09:55or is it just a specific set of cultural definitions? How do we as a society choose
10:01which talents to call important? Are we choosing the right ones?
10:07There have always been prodigies. It's an ancient tradition. It didn't refer only to children. The
10:14term prodigy, the word prodigy, actually meant literally to say before or to presage. It's part
10:20of the prophecy tradition. And when prodigies appeared, either as children or as events,
10:26natural events, it was supposed to mean that there was some kind of portentous change coming,
10:32something major was going to happen. That's the tradition of the prodigy. That's the history of
10:37the prodigy. Every culture has its celebrated prodigies, the children whose talent or creative
10:43output is so stunning it is remembered for generations. But for every Mozart, Pascal,
10:50or John Stuart Mill, there probably have been ten other prodigies whose accomplishments,
10:55for one reason or another, have been largely forgotten. Christian Heinrich Heineken,
11:01the infant of Lubeck, is a good example. It was said of Heineken that he talked within hours of
11:08his birth, knew at one year all the principal events of the Pentateuch, knew Latin and French,
11:14history and geography by three, and sadly predicted his own imminent demise at the tender age of four.
11:23In this century, we've seen the early blossoming of such diverse talents as computer genius Norbert
11:29Wiener, gymnast Nadia Comaneci, and musical performers like Yehudi Menuhin, Shirley Temple,
11:38and Michael Jackson. If you understand an exceptional individual, even one exceptional
11:44individual, it gives you insight not only into that individual, but into other people who are
11:49less exceptional. On the other hand, if you understand a lot of normal people and one
11:53exception comes along, you may have to throw your whole theory out. That actually happened in the
11:57area of children's drawings. There were all kinds of theories, including my theory around
12:01about children's drawings, and there was a single autistic child discovered, a four-year-old in
12:06London who was named Nadia. And the way she drew was so exceptional, it actually blew all the
12:11theories out of the water. And that, I think, is a very good evidence for why psychologists
12:16really ignore exceptional performances at their peril.
12:57Midori came to play for us first when she was eight years old, here in Aspen.
13:24It's a tiny little thing, and she came in and she said,
13:28I will play the Bach Chaconne. I thought some ambitious teachers made a terrible mistake,
13:36but we didn't want her to be embarrassed, and so we said, thank you, we'd like to hear some
13:40of the Bach Chaconne, and we agreed we'd hear a few measures. But she started to play, and it was
13:48But she started to play, and it was so incredible that we couldn't stop her. We listened to the
13:53whole work, and we couldn't believe what we were hearing. Midori began playing the violin at the
14:02age of four. Since then, she has eagerly practiced up to five hours every day. Her progress has been
14:09so swift that by 11, she had performed as a soloist with the New York Philharmonic and had
14:16given a recital for the president. I like violin. Violin knows everything I want to know.
14:24Violins like me and myself, together. You see, I can tell anything I want that I cannot say with
14:34a word with my violin. She seems to be able to play a musical phrase in such a way that it has
14:51meaning for the audience, and in listening to her play, she sounds like an adult,
14:59and while her emotions are child's emotions, sound is not.
15:08I listen to her play, and I say I can't understand how any human person can know these things at that age,
15:18and yet we can, and because she can, I think the rest of us can too.
15:28Regardless of the particular field in which the prodigy is working,
15:43they all seem to have tremendous energy that they can focus on the task at hand.
15:51They simply cannot be prevented from doing what it is they want to do.
15:56One chess player I watched sat at a chessboard for eight hours at a stretch,
16:03almost without moving. The intensity of concentration
16:08is truly remarkable, and it extends across the fields in which prodigies occur.
16:19Part of it is, as Midori says, just that she likes it very much.
16:23If she hadn't put in the hours, I'm sure she couldn't do it,
16:26but also if the hours had been miserable hours, I'm sure she wouldn't have learned that much.
16:34We don't watch the creative person growing himself or herself. We watch,
16:40we see the product, or we see the end stages of the process, and it looks like magic.
16:47And it looks like magic. So one type of theory of creativity you have is,
16:55it's not one theory, it's a type of theory, it's the magic theory,
16:59the bolt of lightning from the sky, the visitation of the gods, the magical gift.
17:07The other way of thinking about it, the way I prefer, is to think that a creative person
17:14is someone who is caught on fire with something important that he or she wants to do,
17:22and works hard at learning how to do it, and ends up doing it better than anyone else in the world.
17:27And that is magic. It's wonderful. I don't want to take the magic out of it,
17:31but it's a different kind of magic. It's the magic that comes
17:35out of hard work, like a magician himself is a hard worker, practices, practices, practices,
17:43and then it looks like magic.
18:13You have the same option to play over C file. You will have threads on A to pawn.
18:42Yeah, I worked and worked and worked. Nothing comes easily, really, I would say.
18:47Nothing just comes right to you. You have to work for it.
18:51You have to be determined to get it. You have to be engrossed.
18:56It certainly means some sacrifices. I don't think it's too much sacrifices for a 10-year-old kid,
19:01because a 10-year-old kid still can enjoy chess, and I'm sure he enjoys chess. Also,
19:06the kid can see the world. The 12, 13-year-old kid can travel all over the world
19:11and live in the best hotels, like Hilton's, where they usually hold chess tournaments.
19:16They meet presidents and queens, like Dutch queen sometimes with a chess tournament. It's a lot of
19:22fun. Though prodigies have long been a source of fascination, they've only rarely been the subjects
19:31of systematic scientific inquiry. In fact, other than to say that they are very, very rare,
19:38no one will even venture a guess as to how many prodigies actually exist.
19:47Many researchers now studying prodigies came to the subject looking for other things.
19:53David Henry Feldman is a developmental psychologist. He's interested in how
19:58children grow and change. Some time ago, the phenomenon of the child prodigy piqued his
20:04interest. What I was hoping to find with the prodigies was a natural laboratory where the
20:12developmental processes would be similar to the processes that go on in every other human being,
20:19but at a much more rapid rate. And that by virtue of looking at prodigies, I would be able to study
20:24development in a much shorter period of time, but span a much longer developmental time.
20:31What began for Feldman as an adjunct to his work on child development
20:35grew over the years into a full-scale study of child prodigies.
20:40His research involved interviewing and observing prodigies and occasionally giving them standard
20:45psychological tests like the logical thinking problem-solving exercise being given here to
20:5012-year-old writer and musician Matt Randall. Feldman's observations have enabled him to make
20:58some basic generalizations about childhood prodigiousness.
21:03In some fields, like music and chess, prodigiousness shows itself very early,
21:10as early as two, three, or four. In other fields, for example, mathematics,
21:17extraordinary work, creative work, generally isn't done until after 10. And in some fields,
21:24there is no evidence of child prodigies at all. In the field of nuclear physics, for example,
21:31it seems to be so large and complex and requiring so much technical mastery that it simply hasn't
21:38been the case that a child has mastered all of that and been doing mature nuclear physics.
21:45It also could be that in some fields, say moral judgment or ethical philosophy, that the children
21:51are perfectly ready to be doing work in that area, but we've never looked.
21:58From his research, Feldman gained insight into the developmental patterns prodigies tend to display.
22:06What I found is that the prodigy is actually a mixture of adult and child. In the specific area
22:14in which the prodigy is working, there is a rapid movement through a field. But in every other
22:20area, pretty much, the prodigy is like every other child his or her age. What you find is that if
22:27you didn't know that that prodigy was performing at an adult professional level in music or art
22:33or chess or mathematics, you would think you had an ordinary nine- or ten-year-old child,
22:38albeit sometimes a child who does very well in school or less well in school. But in the sense
22:44of a child precociously running through all of development across the board, that's not what a
22:50prodigy is. I have found that the children who can be called prodigies tend to have very, very
22:58wide spans between their emotional levels of development and their cognitive or specialized
23:06levels of development, so that a child will be very young emotionally and very advanced
23:13in terms of the content and the sophistication of what's being discussed or worked on or explored.
23:21For instance, a child of whom I know was being interviewed by a psychologist at a university
23:29in order to see whether the child could be accorded special privileges at the university.
23:33The child was four, and the psychologist noted the stuffed cat under the child's arm
23:40and asked the child what that was, and the child held up the animal and said,
23:44this is fluffy, my transitional object. A psychologist was somewhat taken aback and said,
23:49your transitional object? What does that mean? And the child explained in very technical,
23:55accurate, and precise language exactly what that meant, and then went on to say,
24:00I take her with me. It makes me feel good.
24:10The mixture of child and adult that characterizes prodigies raises interesting
24:15questions not only about development, but about the nature of talent, creativity,
24:20even intelligence itself. Midori plays the violin wonderfully and is good at math,
24:27but isn't especially distinguished in other subjects.
24:34Kevin Wald is clearly a prodigious mathematician, but doesn't outperform his classmates in English
24:40and literature. If intelligence is a general unified trait, which historically has been
24:46the prevailing view, how can we explain these varying levels of achievement?
24:51Shouldn't the tools Kevin relies on in math also be available in other subjects?
24:58The concept of general intelligence is further brought into question when we watch a talented
25:03young athlete like Susan Sloan. Games like tennis require endless mental calculations
25:09in addition to physical prowess. Yet these game smarts are ignored by the traditional view of
25:15intelligence, as are the special talents exhibited by successful politicians, artists, and mothers.
25:21For the past 75 years, intelligence has generally been equated with the ability to perform well
25:27on an IQ test. Now, thanks in part to the evidence presented by prodigies, the belief that intelligence
25:35can be tested by a single-timed, multiple-choice exam is being questioned. Most of the things that
25:42we value are not things which are produced in 30 seconds or even an hour. They're things you work on
25:48or even an hour. They're things you work on days, weeks, months. They call for deep immersion in an
25:54area. You have to know a lot about mathematics to be a good physicist. You have to know a lot
26:00about language to be a good writer. And those are the kinds of things which, by the very definition,
26:05can't be assessed in 30 minutes or an hour. Howard Gardner studies prodigies and brain
26:13damaged individuals such as stroke victims. His work has led him to offer an alternative
26:19to the traditional view of the nature of intelligence. The assumption of classical
26:24intelligence theory is that there's one ability, and that ability allows you to be good in anything.
26:30My theory makes exactly the opposite assumption. It assumes there are at least seven different
26:34abilities. I'll run through them quickly. Language, logical, musical, spatial, bodily kinesthetic,
26:42using your body, interpersonal, and intrapersonal. And my claim is that each of these intelligences
26:48is separate. A person can be strong in one, and it makes absolutely no prediction about how they'll
26:52be in any other one. Now, when you think about prodigies, you find that, in fact, there are
26:56some prodigies who are good at everything. We call them omnibus prodigies. But, in fact, that's
27:01really the exception. And what you usually find is a child or an adolescent who's very, very strong
27:06in something and is pretty average in other things. And that's something which most standard theories
27:10of intelligence or cognition have no way of dealing with, because the assumption is everything
27:15hangs together.
27:24Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences presents a thought-provoking picture of the mind
27:29and a framework within which the phenomenon of the child prodigy becomes easier to understand.
27:35What it doesn't help us with is where a particular gift comes from.
27:40For want of another explanation, most of us assume high talent is a product of the individual's genes.
27:51Good afternoon, Repository for Germinal Choice. Yes, this is what the press has been calling the
27:57Nobel Sperm Bank. Selective sperm banks, like this one in California, exist in large part
28:04because of a widespread belief in the inheritability of talent. I'm finding good morphology,
28:14excellent motility. This is okay. Wonderful. I had great hopes for this donor. His children are
28:22outstanding. Our genes do provide a basic blueprint for guiding the development of our
28:29brains and nervous systems, and at some level, exceptional giftedness can be expected to reflect
28:35differences in brain structure and functioning. Nevertheless, the question remains, are these
28:42biological differences significant in the development or expression of talent, or is their
28:48role trivial when compared to environmental factors?
29:01Thirteen-year-old Nava Perlman is a talented young pianist.
29:05Has she inherited her talent from her father, virtuoso violinist Itzhak Perlman,
29:12or is it the product of a household which, in her mother's words, lives for music?
29:18The debate between biology and environment is an old one, perhaps one that can never be resolved.
29:24Indeed, most scientists now agree giftedness is a product of a combination of factors
29:29that may include genes, biological influences on development, the social environment, and the
29:35culture. For example, in a major study of 12-year-olds conducted by researchers at Johns
29:44Hopkins University, over 10 times as many boys as girls scored over 750 on math SAT exams.
29:55Dr. Norman Geschwind, director of the neurology department at Boston's Beth Israel Hospital,
30:01speculates on one non-genetic biological explanation for this particular difference
30:06in performance. He is interested in brain structure and how it can be influenced in
30:12utero by stress, nutrition, and hormones. There's a very conspicuous difference in the hormonal
30:19atmosphere of the male fetus and the female fetus because the male fetus is producing
30:24these enormous amounts of testosterone in utero, and there's clear evidence from many
30:30kinds of studies that testosterone can alter brain structure. It's generally accepted that ability in
30:37math, spatial relations, and music is mostly located in the right hemisphere of the brain.
30:43Dr. Geschwind hypothesizes that testosterone slows the development of the left hemisphere,
30:50allowing certain regions of the right to become bigger. All right, the first effect, therefore,
30:55is going to be that there are going to be more male left-handers because certain areas in the
31:00right hemisphere are going to become larger. The second point is there are going to be more males
31:05with things like childhood dyslexia because when the slowing on the left is excessive,
31:10we actually get abnormalities in the brain, which we've seen. But the third effect, and a very
31:16interesting one, is that you're probably also setting the stage for certain particular kinds
31:21of giftedness. By moderate slowing of the left hemisphere, you're developing superior right
31:28hemisphere talents. Dr. Geschwind's as yet unproven hypothesis might help explain why
31:35boys score better on math tests, but even he would agree it is only part of the explanation.
31:42Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi of the University of Chicago Human Development Center is interested
31:48in how culture and the social environment influence the development of talent. His
31:54studies of young mathematicians, both boys and girls, suggest that talented youngsters
31:59can be discouraged from developing their gifts by factors like cultural bias enforced by peer
32:05pressure. This is especially true of the girls in high school who often stop doing math because
32:14they find that if they are really first rate in the competition and they win over the boys,
32:21they become ostracized in the school and out of the school by their friends, both male and female,
32:29for displacing some of the boys from the top ranks in the competition. And this seems strange,
32:36I mean, in this day and age that this should still be a big issue, but apparently it's true
32:42in the high school we studied and seems to be true in other high schools that for girls it's
32:48just as important to maintain the emotional contact with friends as it is to, or perhaps
32:54more important, than it is to be first or second in the state tournament.
33:02Csikszentmihalyi suggests that society does not just help or hinder the development of talent.
33:09It defines what is to be valued, and only when the culture values it does talent in math, music,
33:16chess, or anything else become meaningful. To take an example from sports, we have these Olympic
33:25champions who can do all these various things very well, and if you are a runner or a hurdle jumper or
33:32a disco stroller, it's clear that in those areas these people are using biological physiological
33:38gifts that are superior to other people. But these performances would not exist unless we had
33:46competition and rules in these areas. I mean, disco strolling, what is that? I mean,
33:52is that physiological? Or even running, I mean, at one point people had to run in order to chase
33:58down antelopes or something, you know, to get their dinner, but at this point to be a runner
34:04is such a strange cultural artifact, and to be a great runner means that you can
34:14match the expectations of the culture for this performance. That great runner may not, in fact,
34:20be good at running down antelopes or gazelles if he had to for a living. He's very good at running
34:26in that particular, you know, oval-shaped track, and that's what he's good at. And so it's rather
34:36foolish to try to separate what is physiological from what is cultural in the genesis of talent.
34:44Okay, you feel that? Yeah. Okay, great. Nasia Job began running with her father at the age of three.
34:52By five, she had won numerous road races, including a 26-mile marathon, in which she placed first in
34:59the 18-and-under category. Since then, she's been featured in the national media as a running
35:05prodigy. Nasia is a gifted young athlete, but without the current national preoccupation with
35:12running, it's doubtful she would have achieved the near-celebrity status she now enjoys.
35:18What happens with a prodigy, you see, is that a child, and a field, and a point in time,
35:23and a moment in history come together. If the child is off in some remote part of the world
35:31where chess isn't played or music isn't taught, no matter what the child's abilities are,
35:36the opportunity to express them won't be made available.
35:48At age 14, Susan Sloan is about to join the women's professional tennis circuit.
35:53Experts who have seen her play think that within a few years,
35:57she may become the best woman tennis player in the world.
36:03The development of her talent demonstrates the number of things that have to come together
36:08for a child to reach his or her potential. Well, Susan just sort of took it out of our hands. She
36:15started hitting on the garage door and loosening the panels, and so we decided it was time that
36:21she got to go at least on a tennis court. And she did, and she immediately showed a talent.
36:29And I have kind of found that out from talking with other people, that if the natural talent
36:35is there, no matter what it is, they know it right away. And that's kind of what happened
36:39with Susan. It was just sort of taken out of her hands. It was there. I'm going to play tennis. I'm
36:44going to play as much as I can. Now, how do I do it? One early realization was that local tennis
36:54resources would not be sufficient to meet Susan's needs. After a long search, the Sloans decided to
37:01enroll her in Nick Bolateri's Tennis Academy in Sarasota, Florida. Short back swing. Good girl.
37:08Move in. It's now a business to become a champion. The audience and the moms and dads must realize
37:15it's no longer a sport. It's actually a hard business. Raw athletic talent is not enough.
37:22It's being thrown into a set of circumstances where the child each day experiences a pain as
37:29well as happiness. They've got to dedicate themselves. They've got to have blisters.
37:34They've got to have the support of their moms. They've got to have directions of well-qualified
37:38professionals. Susan has always been willing to work hard to improve her tennis game.
37:53But now her efforts are supported by a small army of professionals. That includes a personal coach,
38:00Nick Bolateri and his staff at the school, a fitness coach who helps plan her exercise program,
38:05and a nutritionist. In addition, she plans to sign in the near future with a professional
38:10management company. I'm excited about, you know, playing people, you know, who are number one in
38:18the world. That's, you know, that's exciting. That shouldn't be, I shouldn't be scared about
38:21that because I have nothing to be scared of because, you know, they're the ones who are
38:26number one in the world, and they're the ones who would feel all the pressure and everything.
38:30It would just be, you know, some fun, you know. I know what's going to happen when this little
38:39girl goes out on this circuit, and it's important that you as a parent and Fritz, who's sort of a
38:44guardian on the road, know what's going to happen. She's going to get thumped. And how are you going
38:50to prevent her from saying, Mom, I'm frightened. I don't want to go out there anymore. You're going
38:55to do it the same way you've been doing it the last four or five years. You're going to be with
38:59her. We're going to talk about what she's going to experience. She's now not playing a little girl
39:04who's not physically mature. She's going to play an animal. She's going to play a person who's out
39:08there that's hungry. She doesn't care about your daughter. She knows one thing. She's going to beat
39:14it to death because she's trying to take money away from her and her endorsements. So rather
39:18than hiding about it, you've got to tell your little daughter, look, don't be scared, or if you
39:24are scared... The support of parents, family, and teachers is crucial to a prodigy's development.
39:33Without it, there's almost no chance prodigies will realize their potential.
39:39With virtually every prodigy, there is someone who has devoted his or her life to the development
39:46of that child's talent, regardless of the field the child is working in.
39:51Here is young Yitzhak Perlman of Israel, and he's just magnificent. Let's have a
39:57wonderful welcome for this employee.
40:16Well, I feel that my parents, and specifically in my case it was my mother, had a lot to do with it.
40:28Your mother believed in you. She thought that you were a great genius.
40:33It didn't matter that nobody else believed in you, that you couldn't get concerts,
40:37that nobody would help you. She knew you were great, and she conveyed that to you.
40:46I don't know that it can be done without a constant force in a child's life pushing you.
40:56Well, I'm saying I was pushed. There's no question about that. No, that's my point.
41:01In other words, you can love it, and you can eat it, and you can drink it, and sleep it,
41:04but it isn't a personality in your life.
41:07You don't think I'm unusual.
41:08I can think of a child who is a very gifted little boy,
41:18who, because he's getting no support at home, will not develop into a pianist, I don't think.
41:33My parents have supported me, I would say, 100 percent all the way to where I am now.
41:39I would say that they would want me to be the youngest master, and to live a happy life,
41:44and play the game, and do very well in it, and accomplish something,
41:47since I put in so much time into it, which I would say three years is a lot,
41:52because I could have been playing tennis, soccer, become a professional football player,
41:56anything, but I think chess is for me.
42:00Having a prodigy in the midst of a family is an enormous change for that family.
42:08Much greater than anybody could have anticipated before that child's gift appears.
42:15I think I reacted poorly at first, to be perfectly honest.
42:19It kind of blew me away.
42:20I didn't know, it was in my thoughts like 24 hours a day, you know,
42:24what do I do, how do I handle this?
42:26I've got other children here who need me, and then I've got Susan who is needing me
42:34200 percent of the time, and came down to do we do it, do we not do it,
42:40do we regret it if we don't do it, do we regret it if we do do it,
42:44do we take a chance on it as a family, and we decided to take a chance on it.
42:49The prodigious child sucks from the environment,
43:02responses to his needs that take a tremendous amount of energy.
43:14Very often the family will begin to wonder if this is a blessing or not,
43:18and I have had parents come to me and say, can't you make my child normal?
43:24That's all we want at this point because we can't handle the talent, we can't handle the needs.
43:31Can't we do something?
43:33Now that's hard to imagine when you just look at the productive side,
43:37when you just look at the pleasure, when you just look at the wonderful output,
43:42but the family impact is sometimes tragic.
43:48The challenge presented to the family is no greater than that confronted by the child.
43:55Prodigies have a special burden to carry.
43:59They're different in some important way.
44:03How that difference is dealt with is going to be an issue for every extraordinarily capable child.
44:12Somewhere between the ages of eight and ten, the child experiences a choice to be made,
44:18and the choice is, shall I continue to be different and become further and further alienated
44:24from the group of other people around me, or shall I try to turn off those special parts
44:30of my thinking or producing or experiencing, and instead become more like the others?
44:37Either of those choices has consequences for the child, for the family, for the school,
44:42for the friends, but in adolescence, that whole scenario is reenacted
44:48much more strikingly and much more painfully sometimes.
44:52We don't want to use Sunday night, we don't want to use our rehearsal timings.
44:55Nava Perlman, Gil Shaham, and Matt Heimovitz began performing as a trio together.
45:02Nava Perlman, Gil Shaham, and Matt Heimovitz began performing as a trio two years ago
45:08when they were all eleven.
45:09I can't say at least, we have to have two rehearsals before we see her.
45:13We want to perform again, we want to perform in a recital, you know?
45:16Much of their lives has been spent listening to, talking about, practicing, and performing music.
45:24Most of this time has been joyful, but they are beginning to understand
45:28that there are drawbacks as well.
45:31I don't really feel isolated, but I sometimes get confused because I have like,
45:38it's like a set of two worlds, you know, one minute you're up there like rehearsing with an orchestra
45:44and you know, it's total world of music and concentration and work,
45:47and then you go back to school and it's such a different world.
45:51When you have people understand you, it's kind of nice to have them around
45:55because I expect negative attitudes toward me.
46:01Well, as I get older, I'm sure it's going to be easier to find friends, but now, like, my friends are,
46:08but I mean, my real friends are like my teachers, my teachers, my teachers,
46:16I mean, my real friends are like my teachers and my, you know, my parents.
46:24Your mom is your friend, right?
46:30For the child of prodigious capability, the issues of separation, which every adolescent faces,
46:37are thrown into very, very sharp focus.
46:42The child has to separate from his own sense of self as a child prodigy,
46:48has to separate from the people who have been supportive to him as a child prodigy,
46:54and has to find some way of bridging the adolescent gap into a self-sustaining kind of adulthood.
47:02That can be very, very difficult, it can be a time of tremendous upheaval,
47:08and for some children of great gifts, it's a time of turning away from their gifts.
47:14In fact, many times it looks like the more sensitive individuals in these fields are
47:19the ones who drop out first, who can't stand the single-minded devotion and the
47:26impoverishment of their emotional lives, social lives.
47:31I had a very troubling period. At about 16, I was playing concerts all over the country with
47:37the great masters, with Zell and Rudolf and Monteur and Steinberg, and I began to lose
47:43physical control of my right arm and hand. It was a type of tension, but it was part of a metamorphosis.
47:53The emotional changes we all experience in adolescence are mirrored by cognitive changes.
47:59We become more self-reflective and analytical. For the prodigy, this often means skills that
48:06once meshed and functioned seamlessly come apart and are questioned.
48:12For the prodigy, this often means skills that once meshed and functioned seamlessly come apart and
48:21are questioned. The result can be a crippling loss of confidence, and often the loss of the gift
48:27itself. Many prodigies, perhaps even most, never completely succeed in re-establishing the mastery
48:35they once knew. Between the age of 17 and nearly 30, I was struggling to regain the type of control
48:46that I thought I had as a child. I only now realise that I grew for the first time as an artist,
48:55became for the first time an artist, and so far surpassed what I was doing as a child, that
49:04I really became an adult prodigy in discovering what music was about as a fully grown person.
49:19Because the environment and the culture play such strong roles in defining and developing talent,
49:24it is possible that there are more prodigies and more of the prodigy in each of us than we know.
49:33Consider the Chess Club at Public School 27 in Indianapolis. Organized and inspired by teacher Robert Cotter,
49:40this team of inner-city youngsters, most of whom had never played chess before,
49:45progressed in three years from raw beginners to national elementary school champions.
49:54I confess that my own image of the favourable environment in which to become a great
50:01chess master is to be the children of Jewish intellectuals, preferably
50:07engineers, where the father is an engineer and the mother is a doctor or something like that,
50:13and they push the child. But the stereotype is not always borne out. In fact, the striking
50:20departures from it tell us how wrong it is and tell us what the human potential
50:26is that's being ignored in the rest of humanity.
50:32If they want to do well, if they're motivated to do well, they will. Rabbit's our best player. He's
50:38our worst student. Well, the reason is because Rabbit has never been motivated to do anything
50:43in school from first grade on. No one's been able to reach him. You know, I remember a time when
50:49I went into a pool hall to drag Rabbit out of the pool hall. In his environment, that's not
50:54uncommon for a kid to be in a pool hall, but he had skipped chess that particular night. I walked
50:58in the door and I just glared at him. He knew he was wrong. He just kind of sauntered out and came
51:04back to practice. We talked about it, but that's kind of the way he approached school, too. He
51:09didn't care. Nobody took the time. Nobody had the time to be with him after school and direct him
51:15toward things that would allow him to excel. Now, wait a minute. Don't say anything. Let him go
51:20ahead and play. Every child is gifted, and what we need to do is to find ways of discovering what
51:30those gifts are. We need to avoid going into a classroom situation, say, with blinders on.
51:40If we want to cultivate every child's gift, what we have to do is find ways of setting them free,
51:47seeing what it is they're good at, and then helping each child to move down his path or her path
51:53the way they need to go. Well, when I wrote this, I just finished crying before because
52:02my mother was pregnant, and at that time, I didn't feel that I wanted a baby sister or brother.
52:10And so this poem is entitled My Tears. Elephants shower in my tears. Alligators swim in my tears.
52:24Horses drink from my tears. Minnows swim in each drop. My tears could put out a volcano.
52:32You could water plants with my tears. My tears could moisten cement.
52:42Where the standards of superior performance are well defined, as they are in music or chess,
52:48children of uncommon abilities stand out. In other domains, like writing or the visual arts,
52:55it's harder to be certain about a child's level of talent.
52:58Veronica is fortunate. She has people who believe in her talent for poetry.
53:06She's encouraged by her parents and by the principal of her school, who regularly takes
53:11eager young writers to the museum for inspiration and a chance to talk about their craft.
53:17Because of this interest and concern, Veronica has a better chance of developing the talent she has.
53:24In too many other cases, narrow preconceptions of what is possible or important limit a child's
53:30development. For example, say a young child, particularly a little boy who's very, very caring,
53:38that child might actually be prodigious in that area, but because we're not particularly interested
53:41in cultivating that ability, we don't give a lot of rewards for it, we don't have competitions for
53:46it, and kids get the message pretty fast that that's not something that you ought to cultivate.
53:50So there's something which is potentially prodigious, potentially very important for
53:53the society, might actually help to save the society, but because we don't think of it as
53:57being an important behavior, because we don't know how to react to it, we don't reward it and
54:01it kind of disappears from the horizon. You go into a supermarket with a short shopping list,
54:08you'll come out with a small number of things. You go into a classroom and you have math and
54:15chess and grammar and a few other adult preoccupations on your mind, you'll come out
54:21with a small number of prodigies. If you go into a classroom with an open mind and have genuine
54:30respect for each child, then you might find that there are many more gifts hidden than you ever
54:41dreamed of. We haven't looked for moral passion and moral leadership. We haven't looked for
54:50interpersonal skills that help us live together as human beings. We're going to need these qualities
54:59and many more, and it's of the essence that we begin to find them.
55:59So
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