[snip]Brad, There are web sites that talk about Bush's IQ and grades. He seems clever to me and he also is a member by birth of the political club. I am a great believer in family capital i..e that the family that has a long history in a business gives their offspring an inate advantage simply by growing up there. I've seen it happen constantly with the people that I teach. Often people with the higher IQs and better intellectual educations have the ability to think through and act on something but it takes a long time, many years, to become inate. I witnessed this again just last week when we auditioned many cum laudes and graduates from the finest schools. Those who didn't have it in their background but were extremely smart were able to make it in good condition through the initial audition but in the flexibility of the "call back", their intellectual knowledge, in spite of their potential, was simply too shallow to deal with performance. On the other hand we had a young artist who had grown up in the business and walked away to go into academics and graduated in the highest levels from the best rated school in America (but not in music) and she was rusty. Her culture got her through the first audition magnificently, but her skill was out of shape and she couldn't compete inspite of her genius level academics.
I wasn't "extremely smart", and I certainly didn't have the background. I have little doubt that had I started from higher than the bottom of a deep pit I might have gone far. As it is, I at least got to see the sky, and enough native ablity to know the difference (the one is up and the other is down).
I believe that, short of the kind of genius which can only be stopped by something like a bullet thru the head or oxygen deprivation for over 3 minutes followed by resuscitation, *background* is very important. I also think it's possible for a little seed to flower into a strong tree -- but I can't speak from personal experience, only extrapolation of very limited data.
Worst of all is to f-ck up a person's "reflexes". I often "put my foot in my mouth", and figure out what I should have said/done several seconds or minutes (etc.) *after* I needed the right reaction. This is largely a result of having been threatened that I loved my mother because they had done so much for me, etc. I survived, but with keloid tissue all thru my soul.
There is no substitute for innate gracefulness that is able to freely flourish in life -- A childhood not just Winnicottean but also Matissean too.
\brad mccormick
--
Let your light so shine before men,
that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
<![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] ----------------------------------------------------------------- Visit my website ==> http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/
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