Usually with post and articles of this nature the writer has an opinion which they are trying to convey and express and which informs the article. This is an unusual one for me in that sense because I am genuinely undecided as to which side of the fence I come down on. There are two schools of thought. The first is that talents are set at birth primarily through genetics, the talents being passed down from the parents and that these may or may not be fully expressed depending on subsequent environmental factors. As an example a child born with a natural talent for running but born into a family that doesn’t value athletic ability is unlikely to express that talent to its fullest extent. The second thought is that all healthy children are born with the same potential in terms of talents which can be learnt such as mathematical ability or musicality, and that it only through subsequent environmental factors such as education that there is an appearance of talent, but that this talent could be expressed in any healthy child.
I think it is probably clear that environment plays a tremendous role in child development, and certainly there are a raft of environmental limiting factors to development, so it would make sense that there are corresponding environmental enhancing factors that would encourage the appearance of talent. The question is rather one of perception. Given that we have anecdotal evidence of children from less supportive and nurturing backgrounds ending up apparently highly talented, and correspondingly, children from tremendously supportive environments failing to show any obvious talents at all, can it be said that expression of ability above the average can be instilled in any child.
Part of the difficulty here for me is one of language. My understanding of “talent” is that it is an ability to perform a given task at a level above what could be considered average, or that it is a facility to learn a skill more easily that the average. This begs the question of how to measure average ability. Without a global testing programme this seems impossible. Further it raises the question of whether these are appropriate definitions, seeming to rely quite heavily on assumptions. Let us consider athletic talent. One could argue that a child who is genetically predisposed to develop a taller than average physique and who is provided with the nutrients to achieve full genetic potential is at a physical advantage in athletic pursuits in which height is an advantage over someone who is genetically programmed to be shorter. However, if we look at something like basketball, a sport where height is considered to be critical we see one of the best and most highly respected players in the professional sport, Michael Jordan was 6’ 4” tall, 6’ 6” in basketball boots, which is considerably taller than average, but somewhat short of the average for professional basketball players. There are several players under 6’ tall competing at professional level despite being a full foot shorter than some of their rivals.
This suggests to me that there is a possibility that children who are naturally tall are more likely to receive more basketball coaching, being perceived as being more likely to succeed, but that if the same level of training is given to shorter players they can be similarly successful, or to put it another way, talented. I believe that a similar case can be made in other areas where talent is considered to be crucial such as art, mathematics, chess and so on. In all of these areas we see that a supposed talent requires a tremendous amount of nurturing in order to be expressed and one wonders if that level of nurturing applied across a spectrum of children would produce significantly enhanced results for all of those children.
I think my concern with the concept of talent is that it may do a disservice to children who are not “spotted” as being talented. I know myself that during my school days I developed physically far quicker than my peers, and by age eleven or twelve was able to compete athletically with far older children and even adults, but I don’t consider myself to be talented. I simply benefitted from a well balanced and nutritious diet that removed limiting growth factors and provided me with a slightly faster metabolism from a very early age thus allowing me to develop physically more quickly. As a consequence I was singled out by sports coaches for additional coaching beyond that received by my peers as I was perceived to have “talent” but I know from inter-peer sports activities in the playground that there were children with more co-ordination and ability than I who didn’t receive this extra support. It seems somewhat unfair.
I’m not sure how we as a society resolve these challenges, nor do I know whether I believe talents are real or not, but I am certain that we let some of our children down by starting with an assumption that some are more talented than others rather than assuming that all children have the same basic potential. I’m also sure that in reality ability is a function of a combination of genetics and environment, but I’m pretty sure genetics is only a very small part…..
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