It seems as if you're defining someone without talent as someone who doesn't pick up these skills as quickly.
that seems valid to me.
So once we've identified them, we watch them practice, and they don't pick up skills as quickly as the others. Quelle surprise.
but you're the one who said that that shouldn't happen at all, that given the same amount and quality of practice, everyone should be at more-or-less the same level of skill.
True, but isn't that due to the horrific stuff they see and do, or the culture shock returning to civvy street, than the skills they've learnt? (Obviously learning to kill a man with your thumb changes you, but not as much as if you actually kill a man, or are shot, or captured etc.)
the actual skill acquisition seems to be a part of it, as there's a noticeable difference even with people who are trained extensively in combat skills even if they've never seen action. it's worse if they have seen action, obviously, but it's still there even if they haven't.
Einstein- alright, he was a revolutionary scientist and so his lack of formal education turned out to be an advantage, but he still took up science late in life and became excellent at it. Isn't that evidence that adults can do that?
but the point is that, even though we call them both "science," normal science and paradigm-shifting science are actually two totally different skills. as such, he didn't "pick up" the same skill that other physicists had, he essentially did something else entirely.
basically, the skill in question that Einstein had was not physics itself, but innovation (which is realy a skill in and of itself), which he then applied to to the field of physics.
If you take practice as a baby to count as more effective as practice as an adult (due to infant brain plasticity and increased connectivity etc) then fair enough. I agree that children learn better than adults, but that doesn't mean your brain gets fossilised into a set pattern that you are then stuck with.
OK, three points:
1) children not only learn better than adults, but in so doing they also learn how to learn (same/realted skills) better as adults, which gives them a noticeable advantage later on.
2) the link between the skill learned in infancy and the skill learned as an adult in most cases will not be obvious. for example, playing with your child will help them develop hand-eye coordination, which may then be helpful in learning to draw. accordingly, it's a little tricky to say that you're "practicing" the "same" skill in both stages.
3) most of the things we're talking about learning in infancy are perceptual abilities or aptitudes. examples: hand-eye coordination, spatial perception, tonal differentiation, etc. these aren't really "skills" in the same sense as something like, say, chess playing. they are generally both:
a. invisible to the person who has acquired the skill (they just "see" the board and can't imagine what it's like to look at the board and not "see" the spatial relationships involved)
b. virtually impossible to "learn" later in the same way. a tone-deaf person can't really "practice" hearing.
so, despite the fact that they are "learned," they are not "skills" in the sense that we're talking about. moreover, these aptitudes (or the lack thereof) are crucial in determining how well someone can later acquire those things we do consider to be skills later in life.
so, ultimately, though these things are "acquired" and not "inborn" they aren't really "skills," but they do determine how well we can acquire skills and the limits to what we can ultimately achieve. considering all that, we might as well call those aptitudes "talent."
I can understand why people 'see' talent all over the place, and me too- it took several months for my tutor to convince me.
you shouldn't have let him convince you. he's wrong. there is such a thing as talent, it's just not (primarily) genetic.
That talent we see in people though is developed through experience (as I think dizfactor agrees).
yes and no. yes, it's experience, but no, it's not "practice" in any recognizable sense of the word. it just means that your mother read to you a lot in your crib, and your brain soaked up all the complexities of language and configured itself accordingly.
what it all comes down to is that you and Joe Artistic sit down next to each other in the first drawing class, and he draws a fruit basket that looks like a fruit basket and you draw something that looks like a bunch of blobs, and then he proceed to completely outdo you at every turn through the rest of the class regardless of how much you practice compared to him.
is it because of genetic differences? probably not. it's probably because of something his parents did while he was still breast-feeding and crapping his diapers. however, what does the distinction between genetic and learned mean for you? not much. tough break. maybe in your next life your parents will play with you more.
Furthermore, if it is the case that skills are devoloped only through practice,
a case you have yet to make.
then by practicing a skill you can become excellent at it.
not necessarily, no.
It may take longer than if you started younger,
it's more than that. it's much more than that.
and you may die of old age before you get to be the best in the world, but there is no reason in principle you couldn't become an expert in anything.
yes, there is a very good reason: the opportunity for your brain to pick up the basic necessary talent necessary to do so may be long since passed.
let's say you're a baby. you have a single mother, working two jobs just to feed you and pay the rent. she can't afford day care, so she has to leave you in the care of your elderly grandmother who just sits and watches TV all day and leaves you in your playpen. when mom comes home at night she's too exhausted to read to you or talk to you or anything like that. as a result, you very rarely hear complex language.
under these circumstances, by about age three, your chances of becoming an expert in any field which requires a deep grasp of complex language (like, say, lit crit or linguistics) have become pretty much zero.
if you ever had the chance to do that, you don't anymore. it's done, it's over, pick another career, whatever: you can't do it, and you are never, ever, in a million years, going to be able to do it.
the moral of the story: read to your kids, support early childhood learning programs and that sort of thing. |
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