The argument against raising well-rounded kids
There's a reason that you see so many photos of the same activities on this blog. Because I'm not a big fan of dabbling. I want the kids to find what they are great at and focus on that. There is a wide body of research to show that being great at something feels a lot better than dabbling.
We should use this research to guide education, because nowhere in the world is well-roundedness still valuable. The last time you actually needed to be well-rounded was when the landed gentry was trying to marry off one of their daughters in the 1500's. Then, it was good to find a woman who could dance, speak a bit of French, cook enough to supervise the household help, and play a bit of piano and keep up with male conversation about politics if need be. That's well rounded.
Why does anyone still think well-roundedness is a worthy goal? Probably because that's what schools focus on teaching. But it's a misguided goal. Because you make less money if you do not specialize. You do not get into a top college without specializing. And, in theory, each personality type (here are the sixteen) has special gifts, and if you have good mentoring as a child then you learn to leverage your natural speciality. Some people are great at doing things, some people are great at thinking things. Why bother forcing the doers to think? It's not what they will be passionate about.
Elisa is a woman who sends me amazing research about homeschooling. Each day my inbox is peppered with small gifts of thoughtful analysis with links to articles that I can't download. Like this one, about how kids who are gifted should be guided to a specialty.
Elisa is finding great articles from academic publications. I will have to tell you what they say, because even though the US government funds universities and makes the Ivory Tower possible, academics continue to publish in journals that are not free to the taxpayer. It's absurd. I am not alone in thinking this is a colossal rip off. The Economist thinks so as well.
But that article Elisa sent me? Here's a great quote:
Our current curricula and instruction for gifted students may very well be discouraging pursuits of scholarly productivity or artistry by focusing too much on well-roundedness. Too much focus on general education during secondary school might be robbing our young people of the opportunity to explore a topic in great depth, and to develop the beginnings of expertise. The advantage of gifted children pursuing specialization in an area of interest is that they find other young people who share their interests through the internet, out-of-school programs, or school clubs. These peer support systems provide positive social supports for pursuing academic or performance careers — at least up to university level.
The article assumes that the only gifted kind of kid is intellectual. But really, each kid is gifted in something, because that's what strengths finder tests are all about. We each have special strengths. Maybe not strengths worthy of Carnegie Hall, but special all the same. So if we each have gifts then we should each specialize. And this is where homeschooling really matters— it can give kids freedom to find their strengths and leverage them to specialize.
You could say early specialization is too early. But we each specialize by dint of our parents' choices. For example, city kids learn about cities. Farm kids learn about farms. If your parents love movies, you watch them. I have taken my kids to a movie one time in their whole life. So specialties start arising early on anyway; why not make them relevant to the kids' strengths?
A diatribe against college by an anonymous professor has received lots of attention. One of his arguments is about the futility of teaching most people to write. Because you have to be a reader to be a writer. I taught creative writing at Boston University, and I totally agree. I could tell after the first assignment who read books and who didn't.
This is true of body types as well. I was a figure skater growing up. I skated three days a week at 5am and most days after school as well. But I couldn't do double-rotation jumps. I'm simply too large. I am tall and big-boned. I am too heavy to rotate in the air twice, even as a very skinny fifth-grader. I wish someone had told me to stop focusing on figure skating because it would never work for me. I wish someone had helped me find what I'd be great at.
On my career blog there is huge discussion about how essential specialization is as an adult, and how difficult it is to figure out what to do as an adult. It makes sense, then, that education should focus more on helping people leverage the talents they have. Many, many highly capable people are left out in the cold from a well-rounded education.
And here's something about Elisa. She wants to figure out what to do with her career. She is so so smart and capable and interesting to talk with. But no one taught her to focus on what makes her special so that she could market herself in the workforce. You cannot really market yourself as having a high IQ. There has to be more. So she's a good example of how if someone had helped her marshal her talents as a child, she would be more able to leverage her individual gifts as an adult. She would have the confidence that you get from having done things before, as a kid.
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Comments (84)
Comments are closedVery thought provoking. Could you share the citation for the article Elisa sent you? The link takes you to the journal webpage not the abstract of the article.
Thank you for writing so many interesting posts.
Posted by Jane on May 31, 2012 at 8:57 am | permalink |
That's the only link I could find the the article. It's certainly very stingy with information, isn't it?
Penelope
Posted by Penelope Trunk on May 31, 2012 at 10:32 am | permalink |
Rena F. Subotnik, Rochelle Rickoff, Should eminence based on outstanding innovation be the goal of gifted education and talent development? Implications for policy and research, Learning and Individual Differences, Volume 20, Issue 4, August 2010, Pages 358-364.
dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.lindif.2009.12.005
Posted by Elaine on May 31, 2012 at 12:46 pm | permalink |
Thank you!
Posted by Jane on May 31, 2012 at 10:20 pm | permalink |
This is pretty much the underlying philosophy of why I wanted to homeschool, sixteen years ago. Three kids in, I still believe it.
My oldest is now studying film at a prestigious film school, which was became his "thing" when he was about 13. Funny thing is, he tells me his degree won't matter. What matters is the films he works on now, and the connections he makes. He just finished his sophomore year, and is doing camera work on an indie and loving every minute of it. Says he's learning "a TON." That means he won't be home this summer, and I miss him terribly, but I get it. He's doing what he wants to do. He's not just some sophomore college student, partying and taking a bunch of general ed classes; he's doing the real work he's been wanting to do all along.
That's where this kind of homeschooling philosophy can take you.
Posted by patricia on May 31, 2012 at 9:12 am | permalink |
This article resonates with me a LOT. Everything post-school is about specialization, and my kids have different strengths, so why not develop it?
I feel like our highest calling as parents is to help our children discover who they were created to be and encourage and equip them to be that person as best as they can. Homeschooling is a great way to do this.
My oldest (who is 6) is an entrepreneur at heart (as am I) so we're doing lemonade stands this summer to learn math, health (don't put your mouth on the lemonade spout!) marketing, weather, climate (you can't grow lemon trees in our backyard!) and all sorts of other lessons that take me by surprise and come out of it naturally.
My next daughter is 5 and she is a lover of beauty and loves stories and art. So all our teaching is done within the context of story and beautiful things.
It's a gift and a blessing to be able to help them discover themselves and learn to grow in their passions. And I believe, as this article states, that they'll be better off for the specializing we do anyways. Thanks for putting it into words and adding such awesome resources.
Posted by Jamie Swanson on May 31, 2012 at 9:23 am | permalink |
Hi Jamie, I really like your blog and thought it would be fun to compare notes. I don't know if you'll get this but if you do, can you please email me at paul (at) shaferpower.com? Thx!
Posted by Paul on September 25, 2012 at 4:15 pm | permalink |
Penelope, I'd love to hear your ideas for helping kids specialize. (My older kids are almost 6 & 8, and I'm thinking now could be the time to start.) Kids' interests shift quickly, though. What's your opinion on helping kids develop "stickToItness" vs. letting them dabble?
Posted by Alina on May 31, 2012 at 10:05 am | permalink |
A good place to start is to give your kid a Myers Briggs test. I did that with mine. You might not be able to nail down every letter, but some will be very clear.
For example, my youngest son is two grades ahead in math. But his Myers Briggs score is clearly EFP (I don't know about S/N) so there is no way that he's going to grow up to be a math genius. You just don't get people with that score who want to sit around thinking of math all day. So I didn't push the math.
The cello playing lines up perfectly for his score. Skateboarding seems suited as well.
My older son is an INTJ. He's a get-things-done guy. And he loves animals. So I have indulged every single thing he's wanted to try on the farm because I think he'd make a good farmer. My youngest son would hate growing up to be a farmer, so he has very few responsibilities with the animals.
Penelope
Posted by Penelope Trunk on June 1, 2012 at 1:30 am | permalink |
"But his Myers Briggs score is clearly EFP (I don't know about S/N) so there is no way that he's going to grow up to be a math genius"
From what I've seen and read (been into MBTI for 15 years) ENFPs- particularly men, are frequently great at math. My brother, an ENFP, was always excellent at figuring out mental shortcuts to math problems. That's the dominant intuition at work. He's not a mathematician, but I'm pretty sure it has helped him in everyday life.
Posted by Lisa on June 1, 2012 at 9:08 pm | permalink |
That's really interesting. I'm an ENFP, and I was a Mathlete as a kid, got a perfect math score on the SAT, etc. I sometimes wish I'd really pursued it. At the same time, though, I dropped math for a year in high school to study music theory and my undergrad degree was about as far from math as you could possibly get. I always ascribed it to the fact that my school had phenomenal English and language teachers and mediocre math teachers, but maybe it was more of a personality thing…
Posted by victoria on June 4, 2012 at 1:40 pm | permalink |
I was in that same position as a kid. I didn't get any direction as to how to specialize so instead I was "smart" and got A's but I have never known what to do with my life.
After getting a marketing degree and being a stay at home mom for 20 years, I'm now learning graphic design just for fun. I have never enjoyed something more!
Of course I did things differently with my own kids. They have done the minimum in subjects they are not good at and they have each found a specialty where they can excel.
I think this is the area where education fails kids. Somehow we have made it admirable to be good in everything.
Posted by Jana Miller on May 31, 2012 at 10:06 am | permalink |
Oh, and being well-rounded doesn't have to get on the way of being a specialist. Well-rounded people are more interesting (if you have to spend a lot of time with them), and their life is more interesting because they can relate to a larger piece of the world. If the Farmer could Only talk about pigs, it probably wouldn't be very interesting for a curious and multifaceted person like you, right?
Posted by Alina on May 31, 2012 at 10:11 am | permalink |
Alina, the research simply does not support this. The only reason we believe in well roundedness is because that's what we send kids to public school for.
But specialization makes for a better life for kids or adults. And for any type of skill set. I linked to two books that are the definitive research on the topic of specializing, and it's pretty well established that people are happiest in their life when they can reach flow, which requires a certain level of mastery, which demands specialization.
Of course, not everyone will find mastery in their lives, but everyone would find more happiness if they could find that mastery. And what seems really significant to me is that the article about teaching kids to specialize early says that most of the onus of childhood specialization falls on the parents as guides.
Penelope
Posted by Penelope Trunk on June 1, 2012 at 1:33 am | permalink |
I agree with Alina that well-rounded people are more interesting, but that kind of well-roundedness is not acquired at school. Only reaching mastery in one area (ok, or a few) gives one the self-confidence needed to explore more and become a well-rounded and interesting person.
School spoon-feeds kids a selection of subjects that are only rarely relevant to them. That is neither a way to mastery, nor actually to become well-rounded. In order to become an interesting person, one first needs to become interested, and kids are simply not interested in what is not relevant to them.
Personal example – i was a model student considering my grades, but school was in general BORING. In elementary school i doodled, and in high school during classes i used to read books that had nothing to do with curriculum. I'm terrible learning in a group and the regimented structure called for rebellion. Everything i've ever learned that is in any way useful to me, i learned in my own time, school was mostly a waste of time. Didn't help with social skills either, i had to find out about those on my own too… My brother who is an entirely different personality type had exactly the same impression, and so did all of my most interesting friends.
I take turns becoming really good at different things, i'm a stickler for detail, and i go into depth every time. Mastery in one thing is always a stepping stone to something we find even more relevant, and so on. That way lies bliss. I'm lucky to have known flow pre-school, and i've certainly known it post-school, but never at school. I'm not sure home-schooling is right in absolutely every situation (for me it would have meant spending more time with abusive and tiresome parents), but there always have to be ways to encourage and support kids to find their own individualised ways of exploring the world and yes, even without the “priviledge” of dabbling in all sorts of school subjects, become interesting people. And it all boils down to accepting kids as they are.
Thank you again, Penelope, for an intriguing and lovely post.
Posted by gradalis on June 2, 2012 at 8:27 pm | permalink |
I couldn't agree more! I have been homeschooling for 18 years and mentoring new homeschooling families for nearly 13. I strongly believe that education should be about talent development from the earliest ages. Yes, Penelope, ALL children are gifted and it is the parent's job to help discover and nurture those gifts. If only schools knew how to help children learn what they feel best doing and support that! Lynn Stoddard's wonderful book, Educating For Human Greatness spells out a way to make that happen. But until it does, I will continue to nurture my own children's special talents and encourage other parents to do the same.
Posted by Joanna Lodin on May 31, 2012 at 11:12 am | permalink |
I loved this post, Penelope. It's passionate and lucid and fresh.
The only nuance I'd like to contribute is that some kids are born generalists. I know because I was one, and am one. The last time I tried to make a list of every topic I am passionately interested in, I stopped at 250.
As far as I could tell my interests bled from a core 10 or 20 areas into pretty much everything I could think of. The philosophy of needlecraft? Hell yeah…My curiosity is unbounded. Coming up to fifty, with a lifetime of study behind me, I feel like I have only gotten started. And I still love the adventure.
The world needs all kinds. It really does. And so every time you speak up for breaking kids out of the ruts society tends to plop them into so readily, I stand up and cheer. This post was one such occasion.
I would just caution that we want our born-to-be-generalist kids too, our multi-disciplinary synthesists, our coordinators and mediators, translators and polymaths to have a place in the future as well.
Let kids find and follow what they love wherever it may lead.
If they love everything–God help them–then so be it!
Posted by Mark K on May 31, 2012 at 11:22 am | permalink |
Thanks Mark. I would find it hard to find better words from one generalist to another. I have my "specialties" but I think I tend to trend more towards generalist. This post and your comment makes me think about my personality and temperament. It is what it is. I think the important thing is to be aware of it.
Posted by Mark W. on May 31, 2012 at 12:22 pm | permalink |
Isn't generalist also a kind of specialty?
Posted by redrock on May 31, 2012 at 1:32 pm | permalink |
Those are honestly the sweetest words you have written! (on this blog, I mean)
Posted by CJ on May 31, 2012 at 7:26 pm | permalink |