My daughter is a talented musician. She whizzed through her latest ABRSM exam and her progress has been continuous and amazing. She even wrote and played the soundtrack for a videogame, which you can get here!
So as everybody tells me, “she has a talent for music”.
Only problem here is that she doesn’t. She has no talent for music: none at all. She never showed a particular attraction for music as a young kid. How did she start playing? We just took her when she was four to a course on “free musical expression” (because a friend was going), found a good teacher, she enjoyed it, so after that she started taking piano lessons.
She just practised, and kept practising. Helped by the inexhaustible patience of her mother. Sometimes crying and swearing, but she will practice her piano by her own will. We as parents are supportive, but we are not pushing her in that direction: if she wants to become a pro piano player, fine, but anything else for us is fine too.
What happens when she does not practice for a couple of weeks? All that “natural talent” she supposedly has just doesn’t show up any more. Bizarre eh? So when she practices, she is suddenly talented, and when she doesn’t, talent declines. Talent is an ultra-mundane corpuscle, which explains… nothing, but usefully justifies bad teaching and parenting.
My daughter skills are simply linearly proportional to the amount of focused practice she takes. And I’ve seen this happen again and again, in both my kids and about the most diverse topics: mathematics, language learning, grammar, programming, basketball, drawing… start practising, keep at it, and some magical talent emerges.
The principle is:
(talent in activity X) = k * (amount of focused time dedicated to it) * (1-amountof time elapsed since practice / study normalized to [0,1])
(where k some constant)
I am so hurt when I hear parent saying about their kids “he just doesn’t have the talent for that” “she can’t do it, she does not have the skill [the ability..]”; this is why I am writing this — for all of you: stop it!
The belief that competence is a question of talent and not the product of focused practice actually creates and reinforces the problem. And if you listen carefully, people “reason” along this line all the time. The existence of talent is a deeply rooted social superstition. I suspect also that the belief in talent is also related to considering the aim of ability somehow being “winning”; but isn’t the point learning, trying, failing, acquiring competences for life — life with others?
I’ve used some specific terms: focused practice, and contextual help, from teachers and parents. Kids and adults need help to “keep at it”: contextual help and protected spaces can elicit a positive feedback loop. Distracted parents that rely on talent, can deeply damage and compromise a learning process. School teachers that facilitate practice oriented class time, like in an flipped classroom, can make use of the principle.
Problems in learning are not due to lack of talent; they are due to the wrong context. Learning, teaching, families can be changed, can evolve towards facilitating practice. I too am trying to contribute to the research with games for learning.
Apart from what I can do to convince you with episodes from my life experience dedicated to learning (50 years now, with several setbacks due to lack of focused practice :-) ) and by raising two kids, here are some readings where you can explore the talent superstition in depth:
The Genius in All of Us: New Insights into Genetics, Talent, and IQ.
Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else
The Myth of Ability: Nurturing Mathematical Talent in Every Child
Say no to the talent superstition!