David Epstein examined the world's most successful athletes, artists, musicians, inventors, forecasters and scientists. He discovered that in most fields--especially those that are complex and unpredictable--generalists, not specialists, are primed to excel. Generalists often find their path late, and they juggle many interests rather than focusing on one. They're also more creative, more agile, and able to make connections their more specialized peers can't see.Robert Heinlein famously said that specialization was for insects, but we also know that dabbling is for dilettantes. Epstein and Gladwell are lining up on either side of the long-running dispute over the purpose of education: should our children be drilled in facts and techniques, or should be we planting 1,000 seeds in virgin soil and confidently awaiting decades of creative flowering?
"Complex and unpredictable fields" are just what most people aren't going to master. The students who will master them may need a completely different kind of education from what an aggressively leveling public school is equipped to provide, particularly if it's staffed by administrators and teachers who have never mastered a complex or unpredictable field themselves, relying instead on legislated job security and a monopolist's command of the public funding teat.
Schools need to provide a fair shot for all young comers, but the good they can do for some students won't be much like what they can do for others. Epstein's generalists are probably soaking up basic facts and techniques so easily that teachers barely had a role in the process. The teachers won't do their average students any favors by skipping the ABCs and hoping for a brilliant synthesist to emerge after years of impoverished job-hopping.
3 comments:
Teachers and administrators automatically think that they jobs they do are "normal, respectable" jobs, and the skills and credentials necessary to get those jobs are what they should be teaching children. They just don't think all that well, and can't get out of that. It is a very natural prejudice, and not ill-meant, but it is wrong.
Ace of all trades from king of all trades. Possible yes. Most are stuck at jack of all trades. That is the prereq to a straight.
The key is to specialize but min max your sp time. 100 hours per field and language.
Skills benefit from special input and growth. But at diminishing returns. Fields that use mind and wisdom are easier for cross class level up.
Once someone understands a few. They can understand the many
Post a Comment