Whatever happened to child prodigies?

[theHandpuppet]

I was listening to NPR on my way home this afternoon when they aired an incredible work that Chopin had composed at only 17 years of age! Hearing that reminded me that history is full of child prodigies in the fields of art and music, but these days you rarely hear of artistic prodigies the likes of a Chopin, Mozart, Picasso, etc.

Am I just imagining this or has modern society's emphasis on conformity dampened the talents of the exceptionally gifted?

[Uben]

1. Condoleeza Rice

They said she was a prodigy, too. After that, no one wanted to be one!

[theHandpuppet]

2. LOL!! You got me there.

Hard to argue with that one.

:rofl:

[Bicoastal]

3. Chopin, Mozart and Picasso's talents were APPRECIATED in their era.

When's the last time a fresh-faced young composer or artist got top-billing in the newspapers, over the likes of Lindsay and Britney?

Society rewards people differently these days, is all. These young talents are still OUT there, they just aren't famous.

[LisaL]

9. Well, by the same token, both Britney and Lindsay

started out really young.

[lastliberalintexas]

28. I agree

"These young talents are still OUT there, they just aren't famous."

[MadMaddie]

4. They are poor, malnourished and attend poor schools.

or they are serving in Iraq because they had no choice but the military.

Schools have cut many musical and arts programs simply because they don't have the money.

It saddens me that they are all around us but they aren't getting the opportunities to explore their special skills.

[americanstranger]

5. Nowadays they're labeled as 'oddballs' and ostracized.

I mean, could you imagine Chopin on 'American Idol?' He never would have made it through the tryouts!

- as

[AX10]

11. True.

[kurth]

6. Adragon De Mello

"Adragon De Mello graduated from the University of California, Santa Cruz with a degree in computational mathematics in 1988, at age 11, at the time the youngest college graduate in U.S. history... As of 2003, De Mello was working for The Home Depot." - Wikipedia

Sad, huh?

[jmowreader]

31. My question is, what's he doing at The Home Depot?

If he's selling lumber at a store, it's sad.

If he's working at one of the Store Support Centers (HD's name for headquarters complexes) as some sort of an analyst, that's different and not so bad.

[MedleyMisty]

44. Maybe he likes it and it's what he wants to do?

His family had the opportunity and money to send him to college so young, so unless their fortunes have changed he should still have the seed money and opportunity to do what he wants to do - for less fortunate but equally intelligent kids they're probably working in jobs like that because they didn't have the opportunities that being born into money brings.

Einstein was a file clerk when he wrote about relativity. Making money and having some external social status is not the point of life.

[rawtribe]

7. On YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=prodigies&search_type=

[theHandpuppet]

8. Hadn't even considered that

But you're right -- there's an incredibly high level of creativity happening there.

[ikojo]

10. Now, ALL children are told they are special

To say one child is a prodigy might hurt the feelings of another child, so all are labeled prodigies.

I feel for whomever becomes the boss of kids who have been brought up thinking the sun sets in the crack of their rear.

[woo me with science]

15. "whoever"

subject of the clause

[AlphaCentauri]

12. they are not part of the popular culture

marketers can't make money with them

[Romulox]

13. Our country is incredibly hostile to children and young people.

Unless a baby boomer can be deemed a "prodigy", you likely won't hear about it on the nightly news!

[tuckessee]

14. Chemically altered through Rx. n/t

[Cleita]

16. There have been child geniuses or prodigies in the recent past.

However, there seems to have been questions of their exploitation by greedy parents and others wanting to make money from their talent. I think most parents today try to keep their special children under wraps so they can enjoy a normal childhood, which is why you don't hear much about them today.

[dysfunctional press]

17. television.

the national babysitter for children's minds.

[AlphaCentauri]

20. plus the XBox and Playstation n/t

[Runcible Spoon]

18. they're all labeled Aspies, fed drugs, and sent to program in Silicon Valley?

:shrug:

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

19. They don't perform badly enough to get on a reality show

or an American Idol spin-off show.

Back in the 1950s, prodigies like violinist virtuoso Itzhak Perlman performed on the Ed Sullivan show when he was just 13 years old. Nowadays, no one seems to care who's who among the young and gifted in the sciences, literature, the arts and the like.

[LeftHander]

21. Waste early childhood development on TV

Many of these so called prodigys of the past were simply products of their environment. Children of already successful composers. Immersed in music at a early age their malleable brains quickly learned the "language" of music. Today those same brains are subjected to constant barrages of television, ruining any chance at early comprehension of complex non-verbal languages (even verbal ones for that matter)

"Baby Einstein" does not make Baby smart...

[noonwitch]

22. www.interlochen.org

Lots of prodigies at Interlochen, either at summer camp or at the year-round school. Same with NY School for the Performing Arts, or any big city's music and arts school.

Josh Groban is a graduate of Interlochen. 60 Minutes did a story last night about a young conductor-60 Minutes covers the prodigies, always.

[TalkingDog]

23. Mass media promotes conformity and ignores "difference"

I can name you a small handful of prodigies in various areas, music, visual art and so on. But it's because I'm tapped into both education and art.

It's not that prodigies don't exist, but MSM have no real interest in promoting anything that challenges the norm.

It is a way of artificially creating "unity" and groupthink.

So less-than-intelligent, usually out of shape shlubs who have hot, intelligent wives that never really challenge their husbands in the generic TV sitcom, let all of us know how lucky we are, because hey, we're just like that guy.....

Our "educators" have no interest in teaching you that MLK Jr. went to jail a number of times for his cause.
Or that Helen Keller was a Socialist Labor Organizer who gave speeches at rallies.

They would rather sell you the sanitized versions of their lives and the Life-According-to-Jim-King-of-Queens-Raymond-My-Wife-and-Kids happy home. So that way, we can all remain calm. We won't go out and organize protests, passive resistance or anything at all that might disrupt.

Go back to sleep now. This message has been a forgettable daydream......

[SoCalDem]

24. Most, if not ALL, of the prodigies I learned about had one thing in common

a doting mother who spent a LOT of time nurturing her child prodigy, and seeing to it that he/she (usually a he) had plenty of encouragement in pursuing their special skill.

With more and more mothers trudging off to work outside the homes, those special skills may go unnoticed...and since many of the skills seem to be of the musical nature, how many homes have pianos these days, or how many households can afford music lessons ..

Schools, these days, are not all that interested in finding our and nurturing what one or two kids have as a special skill. They are mostly too busy trying to get the slower kids' test scores up..

Music used to be a big part of a grade-schooler's day, and often, that would be where that small kid's talent would be noticed....not so much these days..

[Bill McBlueState]

25. Wow, this thread.

Life spans from wikipedia:

Mozart 1756-1791
Chopin 1810-1849
Picasso 1881-1973

So we're talking about less than one gifted individual per generation here.

Anecdotal evidence of the kind found throughout this thread is absolutely *useless* in evaluating a once-in-a-generation phenomenon. All it takes is one overachiever born since ~1980 to disprove the OP's allegation that we don't have child prodigies anymore.

[ck4829]

26. They're all diagnosed with some disorder nowadays

[walldude]

32. Bingo.. then they try to drug them to make them conform

My middle son has functioning Autism and with the big surge in Autism recently and the attention it's getting he's wondering why everyone wants to "cure" him. In his mind, he's smarter than most people(and he's right), just a bit more high strung.

[skypilot]

27. Watch "60 Minutes"

They seem to do a child prodigy story about two or three times a year.

[mitchum]

29. When they started considering 10 year olds who could play blues licks...

on the guitar to be "child prodigies"
All a part of the era of diminished expectations

[walldude]

34. You don't consider a 10 year old who can play the blues

a prodigy? Prodigy: 1:a person, esp. a child or young person, having extraordinary talent or ability..

Is it that you don't consider the blues worthy of having a prodigy? Diminished expectations are thinking your kid is a guitar player when he can beat Guitar Hero on "hard". I am a guitar player and have been trying to teach my kids to play but only one shows any interest and he has no natural talent. He'll have to work at it to become good. But there have been young blues players who were born with the talent, Derek Trucks and Johnny Lang come to mind. That's what I consider a prodigy.



BTW, not trying to be a dick, just wondering what you have against the blues..

[mitchum]

35. No, I have nothing against the blues...

in fact, I play it and consider myself to be somewhat of a blues scholar...unlike many "blues scholars" who are actually far more blues mythologizers than scholars- "Damn it! The Blues is what I want it to be!" seems to be their operating principle.

The whole idea of blues prodigy runs counter to the hoary old blues mythologizer shibboleth of "Yes, the blues is a relatively simple musical form, but it isn't about the complexity, but the life experience put into the playing"
Oh really, and just how much freakin' life experience does a 10 year old bring to his playing? Which is it fellas? You can't have it both ways. Maybe I just like tweaking those people, I dunno...

A friend of mine, who is another fine guitarplayer, put it best when he said, "All other instrumental prodigies are 4 or 5 years old, but you can be 10 to 16 years old and still be considered a freakin' blues guitar prodigy. Just further proof that guitarplayers are a little...y'know...retarded"
:)

[KansDem]

36. "just how much freakin' life experience does a 10 year old bring to his playing?"

I think the same thing whenever the entertainment industry foists on us yet another singing group of 13-year-olds singing of "love and heartache."

[walldude]

38. All great points.. especially the "The Blues is what I want it to be!"

line. I know a few of those guys... But I will say that it doesn't always take life experience to learn to "feel" it. I think if you have a kid who can play the blues, and you know what I mean, not just go through the motions, but actually play the blues, he's probably going to grow up to be an exceptional player when he does get the "life experience". On the other hand, a kid playing the blues these days is never going to get the "life experience" that guys like Howlin, Muddy, Lightning, or Robert Johnson got. Hell most of em' think Eric Clapton invented the blues and passed it on to Stevie Ray and Johnny Lang. I guess prodigy isn't a word to throw around when you are talkin about roots music.

"All other instrumental prodigies are 4 or 5 years old, but you can be 10 to 16 years old and still be considered a freakin' blues guitar prodigy. Just further proof that guitarplayers are a little...y'know...retarded"

LMAO.. true, true, but on the other hand the best blues players are all 70 freakin years old. I played with a few blues guys awhile back and at 44 years old I was still considered "the kid". "Hey lookit dat! Da kid can actually play!"

[UTUSN]

30. Everybody's equally gifted now. n/t

[KnaveRupe]

33. Two words: "Stevie Wonder". n/t

[Lilith Velkor]

37. They have pills for that now. n/t

[seasat]

39. They're playing the cutting edge music and doing the cutting edge art

Prodigies like those of the past tend to be more experimental in their techniques. I imagine that modern young prodigies would focus on something less tried and true like classical music or realistic oil paintings. Remember that some of the work by those child prodigies of the past were considered very controversial for their day and time.

[MedleyMisty]

40. I wasn't spectacularly gifted in a specific creative area

But on an individually administered IQ test in fifth grade, I came out as working at college level and above. I remember the last sentence of the result summary - "Stacy has the temperament and the abilities to go far with her life." But of course I was stuck with the age/grade lockstep and forced to do stupid stuff and waste my time and learn that life was really easy and if you just did the bare minimum everyone would tell you how great you were and you'd win lots of awards for barely any effort for all 12 years of school - with the result that I completely broke down when I got to college. It's not like I ever learned to study.

There's a lot of factors - like you said, conformity. Go on any board for parents of gifted kids and you'll read stories about how they can't tell friends and family about the kid's accomplishments if they want family relations to stay peaceful and how people say that kids all even out and that no one is actually smarter or more talented than anyone else, and if you say that your kid is doing calculus at 12 you're just a pompous bragging elitist snob who's probably pushing the kid and not letting them have a normal childhood or whatever. We mercilessly cut down tall poppies.

[Johonny]

41. well

Isn't it simply harder today because society is much more complex? I think it's easy to find highly skilled young musicians, artist and actors. Certainly extremely young intelligent college graduates aren't that rare either. But to be on the very top of almost any field requires a lot of training. Society and the information available is simply more complex today. To be a master of both leading edge of your field and a master of all the history of your field simply is a time consuming process. The more information that is compiled the harder it becomes.

[Javaman]

42. The are diagnosed with ADD and give copious amounts of Ritalin. nt

[EFerrari]

43. "Prodigy" used to mean "monster"

Nowadays, we call those children "gifted".