Childhoods of exceptional people
added by Jake and · updated 14d ago
Childhoods of exceptional people
Aristocratic tutoring was not focused on measurables. Historically, it usually involved a paid adult tutor, who was an expert in the field, spending significant time with a young child or teenager, instructing them but also engaging them in discussions, often in a live-in capacity, fostering both knowledge but also engagement with intellectual subj
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Tejas Gawande added 14d ago
Exceptional people were heavily tutored 1-on-1 (Not just regular tutoring). Helping another person grow rapidly requires a deep and delicate bond.
- At some point in their teenage years—and sometimes earlier—the future geniuses would apprentice themselves intellectually to someone with exceptional capacity in their field.
from Childhoods of exceptional people
Tejas Gawande added 14d ago
Exception people did some kind of cognitive apprenticeships in their teenage.
- Exceptional people grow up in exceptional milieus
This seems to be true for >95 percent of the people I looked at.
These naked apes, the humans, are intensely social animals. They obsessively internalize values, ideas, skills, and desires from the people who surround them. It is therefore not surprising that those who grow up to be exception... See morefrom Childhoods of exceptional people
Tejas Gawande added 14d ago
The adults had high expectations of the children; they assumed they had the capacity to understand complex topics, and therefore invited them into serious conversations and meaningful work, believing them capable of growing competent rapidly.
- A lot of care went into curating the environment around the children—fascinating guests were invited, libraries were built, machines were brought home and disassembled—but the children were left with a lot of time to freely explore the interests that arose within these milieus.
A qualified guess is that they spent between one and four hours daily in... See morefrom Childhoods of exceptional people
Tejas Gawande added 14d ago
Exception people in their childhood had time to roam about and relied heavily on self-directed learning